Vacation Clues (part II)

(I will note that there are some really good guesses so far, so if you're waiting for more clues you better guess soon... actually I have no idea how good the yardage guesses are because I haven't done the math yet.)

So Monday we hung around the resort, went swimming, went up and down 192, which is one of the tackiest places on earth, and bought some crap. I got Sean a 2007 Disney shirt for $3 since it was the last day of 2007, and talked my niece out of buying clams playing poker for her dad.

The resort was really nice. There were so many creatures right in our back yard. Caitie found another one, this time a very cool tree frog.
It was tiny (and sticky)



We had a great big new year's eve get together in one of the rooms.

I should say that this trip was a gift from my dad and his wife for our entire extended family. He got 3 large condos at the resort, each one not quite as big as our house.

This picture shows my dad and his mom(who lives in Sarasota), Dad's wife and BIL, with Molly laying across them, and my sister and her daughter. That's not even half of the people that were there.

There was food and wine and I knit until I finished the sock:
And then had more wine and played Euchre all night. I have forgotten how very much I enjoy playing cards and need to find a way to keep doing it now that we're back.
Some people didn't make it
This picture of daddy sends the kids into fits of giggles

Caitie and I managed to stay up until midnight and then collapse.

Next day (Tuesday) we drove to Clearwater Beach to visit DH's parents and aunt and uncle. I completely forgot the camera, but it was far too cold for the beach. Their pool was heated and quite warm so there was more swimming, but it was quite the shock getting out of the water with that cold wind.
On the way there and back I began and finished this Dream Swatch head scarf out of some acrylic yarn that my kid's had gifted me. I added an extra row between the drop rows because otherwise the yarn was pooling weirdly (and because I cannot follow a pattern, I just can't).

It's a bit bulkier than I wanted and a little too short for me, so I gave it to Caitie, who loves it.

I will have to make myself another one though, in the blue/green/purple color family, as I really like the pattern and the idea. Maybe I'll try to follow the pattern next time.

Contest Clues (or, what I did on my vacation, part 1)

We got off to a late start on Saturday. We planned on leaving at 8 (ish), but I wasn't that upset when we weren't ready until 9. Then a problem with the DVD player and lots of people getting back out to go potty caused further delays. A couple stores later, we got out of town around 10, and drove and drove and drove until we finally stopped south of Macon, Georgia, on Saturday night.

There was, of course, lots of knitting. I brought the Pi shawl, and realized that it helps a lot with the pattern if you read the instructions where it says work rows 1-10 of the previous section, and spent nearly an hour ripping back 6 rows of lace and getting it safely back onto needles. I apparently felt no need to take pictures of this while trying desperately to keep merino laceweight from running away from me.

(In case you're wondering, re-knitting doesn't count toward the yardage in the contest. This will come into play again later as well.) Then I started over and a long while later I got it back where it was when we left and a couple rows further before putting it away. (For the record, these are rows in the 288 stitch section)

Then I decided lace might not be the ideal thing to knit in the car and I'd better at least get some other things going. The gorgeous purple jitterbug was wound and cast on for a plain jane ribbed sock. This yarn is so wonderful and the colorway so perfect that I loved every stitch of it.

I was a good girl and also wound and cast on for the custom order jeans sheepy pants I've got to get done. They are size large and the yarn is Peace Fleece Galooboy Blue. I saved these babies for after dark knitting, for which they were perfect. I have now made so many sheepy pants that I can even work short rows in the dark, a feat of which I am quite proud. I got to the gusset before having to stop, because I don't think it's possible to kitchener in the dark.

We stopped for the night at the Worst Motel Ever, ironically called the Deluxe Inn.

It seemed ok when we first came in. Cheap, nothing spectacular, but that's what we wanted since we were coming in to sleep, shower, drink coffee, and leave.

The problem came when we were all asleep and the train came that was surely going to plow right through our room and scared the shit out of Sean, and continued to do so a dozen more times. I looked at my watch to see how often it was and it was 20 minutes between once and 40 minutes later the next time. I'm sure I somehow slept through it a few times after becoming delerious.

The only plus is that Sean seems to have become desensitized from his fear of loud train noises. By morning when the train came he started to be scared and then realized, hey, it's just that stupid train, and went back about his business.

The best part of all was when I got up to take a shower in the morning and found someone else's wet towel crumpled up behind the door in the bathroom.

So we packed up and got the hell out of the "Deluxe Inn" and drove the rest of the way to Orlando. More sock knitting was accomplished, and the gusset on the jeans and the beginning of the first leg. Oh and a couple more rounds of shawl.
This is the resort we stayed in (thanks Dad!).

Molly spent the entire vacation calling it our Orange house, and it took us much longer than it should have to realize she was calling it that because it is Orange Lake Resorts. She's a smart girl.
There was swimming...

(That is an optical illusion, BTW. That pool is much bigger than it looks from this angle and Sean is not nearly so close to cracking his head open on the side of the pool as it looks like he is.)
There were toads

There were cranes. That is our back patio, and behind those trees is the golf course.

There was knitting (and beer)

(no they are not both mine)

This is the sock at the end of the second day, with a bit of heel flap worked. The color in this picture sucks. I took no pictures of the jeans.

Up next - New Year's Eve and a little jaunt to visit DH's relatives.

Home!

We got home from Florida yesterday and we brought the warm weather with us.

I got some knitting done:

More on that later.

The bad news is I broke our camera. I was so careful with it the whole trip, I kept the wrist strap on or kept it in the camera case. Then on on Friday night I had the case clipped to my purse and it hung down between the van and the door and I closed the door. I didn't close it hard before realizing something was in there, and since it was in a padded case I didn't think that much of it, but the next day I discovered that the LCD is trashed.

What this means is that the camera still works, but I have no idea what pictures I'm taking. I can still turn the flash on and off, but I don't know if it's on or off until I take a picture and find out. I can't control any other settings, white balance, resolution (it's stuck on high, which I guess is better than stuck on low), or any other settings. This means my pictures will look like shit for a while until I get it fixed.

It also means that I have been taking many many extra pictures to make sure I got a good one (lots of them are out of focus). On the last day, on the way home, it stopped taking pictures. I thought the battery was dead, but when I got home and plugged it in, it turned out that my card was just full. 887 pictures (ALL since we left on 12/29). That's a LOT of pictures.

Here this is one of them:

And since I just feel like it (and to force you to read through the vacation portion of my blog...)

Announcing my first ever blog contest.

The contest has 2 parts.

Part 1: Guess how many miles we put on our van on the trip. First person within 50 miles wins. If no one gets within 50 miles then the first person within 100 miles wins. If no one gets within 100 miles then the closest person. The trick is when to guess, because the longer you wait to guess the more information you'll have to go on about where we went. For now I will only tell you that we live in Indianapolis, and that we went to Disney World, but that that wasn't the only place we went.

Part 2: Guess how many yards of yarn I knitted while away. Um, first person within 50 yards wins (or 100, or closest, blah blah blah). All I'm going to tell you is that we we left Saturday 12/27/07, and that we returned Monday around dinner time 1/7/07.

And I'll give you these pictures as clues...

This may or may not be everything that was knit on the trip. Probably not... but both of these items were started and finished away from home.

Rules: There aren't really very many rules. Send your guesses to sheepytime at gmail dot com between now and next Tuesday 1/15. Oh, and you can only guess once for each part. (Well you can, but second guesses won't count.)

Winners will get a choice of a cool prize that I haven't exactly picked yet. But there will be yarn. Or a copy of one of my patterns. Or a small knitted something. Washcloth or diaper doubler or something. One winner for each part. I already know the exact mileage, but I still have some calculating to get my best guess for the yardage.

Oh, and if you live here and you're coming to knit night on Thursday, you have to put your guess in before then because I'm going to bring stuff with me.

Time

Well last night at knit night I showed off my Christmas score, I knit several rows on the Pi shawl (just past 12% according to my handy chart I made up... really really depressing. It *looks* bigger than 12%). Wound up the purple jitterbug, picked up the Pi shawl again and found a mistake, ripped back 5 rows to fix it, and then worked 2 rows.

So, I'm exactly where I started from. But I still don't think it was time wasted. I had fun with my friends and got out of the house for a few hours.

it is just past 10:00 and everyone is asleep. The dog is at my mom's, the house is clean enough to leave it, and car is packed. (Oh speaking of mom, she "loves" the wool socks, she told me today after she wore the. Ha! another convert.) Things are going much better than usual time-wise, packing for a vacation for our family. I will likely be in bed at a reasonable hour.

I am taking yarn for like 8 projects, I have no idea which ones I'll end up working on. Seems like I always take something that ends up having a problem, not working out, or being too big/diffuclt to work in the car. So this time I am taking a bunch, and we'll see how it goes. I have a custom order for some large pants, so I'll definitely be working on that. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine. There should definitely be socks.

Still no pictures. The camera is packed, and there was no time for inventory of yarn today. This time Monday we'll be in Florida, where today it was 85 degrees. Time with my family, not in a hurry, not trying to get work done or get someone somewhere or anything.

'Course there's also 20 hours of time in the car with 3 kids under 10. But I have lots of knitting and headphones.

Pictures when I get back, I promise

Score!

This is a photoless post. I haven't had time to do pictures.

Usually after Christmas I am lamenting that no one ever buys me yarn. Last year my daughter (then 8) was the only one who got me yarn (from the dollar store, but still... she knows..). My husband seems to think that I buy yarn all the time so it wouldn't be special. My mom prefers to buy me clothes at Von Maur that I would never wear. I even went through catalogs and marked them up with which yarn I’d like, sent online wish lists, and everything. Never works.


This year I cleaned up! Apparently I said enough times “I really really *do* want yarn” and “Really, you can’t have too much yarn” and "all the yarn I buy all the time is work yarn, so it would still be special" that it finally worked.

My DH got me a ball of the sock yarn I was using for Christmas gift socks that I was really wishing weren’t a gift (Lana Grossa Meilenweit Bosco), and then wisely gave me a $50 gift certificate to my LYS. My sister apparently found some Jewel Box at Thrifty Threads and bought it all for me (for probably very little, but still, it’s yarn!).

My mom, I was really worried about. Friday before Christmas she called me asking me what size everyone is (even though I had written down for her 6 weeks earlier an index card of everyone’s sizes and color preferences), and admitted that she hadn’t gotten me anything at all yet. I was sure I was going to be spending the day after Christmas at Von Maur returning whatever they had left in their store for her to buy me on December 23rd that I wouldn’t like (she doesn’t seem to ever notice what I’m wearing because she always buys me things completely unlike the clothes I wear. Either that or she’d just prefer I wear something else)... Probably that...

Imagine my surprise when I opened a gift bag with a yarn keeper, needles (aluminum, in a size I already have… but..) and my Knit Picks catalog that I’d circled up for her with a note that said she got it ALL !

I was hoping for 1 sweater’s worth, or a pair of socks or 2. Nope, she got everything I circled as a wish. Enough yarn for Rogue, enough fingering weight yarn for 5 color gloves, 2 pairs of socks, and some gorgeous laceweight. Plus a set of acid dyes, and lace blocking wires. I can’t believe it. Sscore one for mom shopping late! I’d much rather have yarn that I want delivered next week than clothes I don't like.

With the $ from my husband I got another sweater's worth of wool, enough undyed sock yarn for Jeanie, some gorgeous purple Jitterbug, and another ball of sock yarn that I can't remember what it is. Pictures will have to wait.

Sweet!

Still alive

Haven't been blogging much. This is partly why:

I got new yarn for the store
a LOT of new yarn for the store. Mostly Peace Fleece and 100purewool. Yum!










This is the other reason why. 2 pairs of Christmas socks, finished completely Thursday night.


This pair is Trekking XXL color 108. It's a waffle weave pattern at the top.

A warning if you try to use this yarn. It's beautiful, but it does not repeat. Ever.

If I had known that I probably wouldn't have used it for my mom's socks, who is a math teacher and fond of symmetry.

I ended up unwinding the rest of the skein after working the first sock, wrapping it around cards so I could see the stripes, and picking sections that matched pretty well. I broke the yarn twice to pick a new section. Worth it, I think, for almost matching socks.
This pair is for my sister. I loooove them, and really do not want to give them away.

Unlike the first pair, which are too big for me, these fit me exactly. And this yarn is thick and perfect on the feet. It's Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Bosco.

I love them so much I have more than once seriously considered going out and buying my sister a book and keeping the socks. I hope she appreciates them!

The only bad thing about that yarn is how much it runs.

This was the first (of many) rinses they went through. Then I heated them up with vinegar, and rinsed some more. I couldn't believe how much blue dye came out of them, and yet they are, surprisingly, still the same color as the unwashed yarn I have left.



So after I finished the Christmas knitting, it was time to finally do something that wasn't plain knitting.

Since we're getting ready to drive to Florida after Christmas, I started a Pi shawl. I look forward to following Elizabeth Zimmerman's footsteps working a shawl on the road.

Yarn is handpaintedyarn.com merino lace (which is now sold as Malabrigo lace). Colorway is Applewood, or something like that.

I love it intensely.