scifiknitter

What an interesting week it's been. It started with a call for help. A family member needed to go to the hospital, and so I cared for another household for several hours, bringing pizza, helping with homework, and keeping the home's fire burning. I'm hoping that this intervention happened at the right time to do some long-term good, but the healing (and growth) will be over time. Mo miracle pills here, although meds will surely be given. That same evening I learned that another person who has become a member of the family has come under fire from a group of Internet trolls because he does volunteer work for a website that they despise. I've followed the tale on a public forum, and watched the trolls get breathtakingly close to pinning down their quarry, only to head off in the wrong direction. The whole story has played out with the rudeness and vindictiveness that I find nearly everywhere on the web where there is a forum or a comment box. This same rudeness and propen...

I'm quite taken with the iPad. I'm positive that if I had one in my hands, I would know just what to do with it. My dear husband also knows that, without me saying so to him. I am currently suffering from technological obsolescence. My beloved PowerBook G4 just can't keep up anymore. The "whirling beachball of death" makes ever more frequent appearances and the fan runs as the machine struggles with the demands I make of it. Poor thing. Doomed to a life with Tiger, never to know Leopard. I carefully monitor the dock, knowing that it's important to run as few programs as necessary (and to keep the number of tabs in my browser down to the bare minimum I need for happiness). There are plans afoot for an upgrade this spring. We will buy our daughter a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro as a graduation present from college, and she will give me her first generation MBP. I can look forward to a bigger screen, faster processor, more RAM. Like mine, her machine runs hot, but...

I have been more persistent and consistent at my knitting endeavors. Two projects are lined up, jostling each other for blogging rights. Eenie, meanie, minie, moe... and I pick the project I finished last night at just about midnight, and wore for the first time today. Enter: The Ice Queen . This pattern was designed by Rosemary Hill, who is becoming a favorite designer of mine. It was published in the winter 2007 issue of Knitty.com, a free online knitting magazine of excellent quality. It's been a hit, with 1,277 project pages on Ravelry. First my daughter made it in a lovely gray, then she twisted my arm and made me buy the yarn to make one for myself. She also gave me the silver-lined beads needed to give the finished product the look of having been dusted with ice crystals. How could I say no? The yarn is Kidsilk Haze from Rowan Yarns, and it's a blend of 70% super kid mohair and 30% silk. It's a premium product, and I am going to enjoy this piece. I'm also not goi...

I've been blogging lots about knitting things. It's time to take a break and talk about the rest of my life, with a little knitting still thrown into the mix. *** WORK *** It's January, and I'm an accountant, so I'm busy contending with multiple screaming deadlines. And I'm just fine. I started the year with a resolution of sorts. I've become a drift-in-kinda-late-stay-even-later kind of employee. My resolution has been to get in earlier, spend less time being distracted during the work day, and to leave the office at a reasonable time each day. I am doing better! I'm still putting in 9 hour days, but that's hard to avoid this time of year. I am getting home early enough to feel like I have a life at the end of the work day. My desk has never looked neater during year-end. The uncompleted boxes on January's checklist are still numerous, and I have to put a chunk of work ASAP into getting our VITA tax prep program up and running. I'm confident...

Parents are always happy when their kids end up liking what they like. One of the joys of 2009 for me is that my daughter has taken up knitting. In her case, she is focusing most of her efforts on the art of the sock. A. has always been a person to dive into a pursuit completely, so she probably already understands sock patterns better than I do. I recently gave her some patterns. I look at them and say "ohhhh, pretty", she looks at them and says "this one creates a men's size with a cheat, this one needs to be resized...". After 25 years of knitting, I am learning from my daughter. A. is interested in how sock yarns are dyed. While sock yarns do come in solid colors, there are lots of multicolored yarns out there as well, some of which create patterns as they are knit. Because she wants to take control of as many aspects of a pursuit as possible, and loves finding a cheaper way to acquire materials, she became interested in the idea of dying her own sock yarn. ...

Usually I DO NOT knit many holiday gifts. I learned long ago that deciding to create gifts rather than buying them leads to lack of sleep and fevered behaviors as the deadline approaches. I don't avoid it entirely, but limit my goals to, let's say, one scarf or maybe a pair of socks for one family member. This year I did more than usual. It was all set off by T (my future DIL), who said she only wanted one thing from me this Christmas - a neckwarmer. Neckwarmers are small scarves, usually buttoned, that nestle nicely into necklines and have no surplus fabric spilling over onto the bodice. She sent a picture of a suggestion, but I ended up settling on a completely different project after an hour or two of pattern searching on Ravelry. FLOWER SCARVES The pattern I chose is the Flower Scarf by Robyn Diliberto, and it has elements of strong appeal to me, as everything is crafted from yarn, even the button that holds it together. It is also lighthearted, dare I say cute. I knit thre...

It was on a Christmas day a few years ago that I wrote my first tentative blog post. As quiet as I have been of late, I cannot let the day pass without writing a few words. I'm two days into my longest vacation break of the year - a week and a half off. Not that this break is totally free from work-related obligation - I have to study tax law and re-certify as a VITA tax preparer to get ready for another year of volunteer tax preparing. I am not sure if I will sign up for another year. I have few other volunteers to assist this year, despite my efforts to recruit others, and don't know if I really have the time and energy to squeeze this in to my schedule over the next few months. This is cutting in to my knitting time! And after opening packages today, I have even more yarn to transform! I'm still basking in the glow of one of the most wonderful Christmas Eves in many years. We went to our son's house for dinner and presents with him, his girlfriend, and all four grand...