Happy Halloween

Beatles and I wish you happy knitting between the doorbell ringing!

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LIttle Yarn Crawl

Al took me to her local yarn shop. Wow. Windy Knitty is a great bright wonderfully stocked yarn store. The girls there were very nice. Why does buying new yarn make the whole day good?

I am going to knit Al's leggings in these two different yarns. Fair isle ahead! I'm very excited to get off size 2 needles....

But being the strictly monogamous uptight knitter that I am, I have a toe to finish on my current pair of socks before I can cast on.

What is ahead for you?

A Trick and Some Treats

The Trick is that the dessert pictured is not a baked potato, It is all ice cream.....
pretty cute I think. It tasted wonderful when I shared a bite with the birthday girlfriend on Tuesday night.

Here are some treats I'd recommend just because I want to say I really appreciate those of you who read this little blog. ( Following Donna B's lead at Quiet LIFE)

*Johnson's baby cream oil. (cocoa and shea butter but not smelly)
Dear nurse/friend/knitter Diane gave me a tube of this amazing wonderful stuff for my hands.
It says non-greasy rich, creamy texture and it lives up to in every way. It is my new go to for the poor hand season that is beginning.....

*Trader Joe's FROZEN steel cut oatmeal. Yup. They've found a way to eliminate the long cooking process that steel cut oats requires. Thanks Al for this healthy yummy tip. I usually refuse to make oatmeal because of the mess....now I can enjoy it with some brown sugar and butter on these chilly mornings.

*Thunder Dog, the book. I finished a book! This is a great account of a 9/11 survivor team of guide dog and person trapped in the World Trade Center Tower.

*My Walgreens is now a full service Post office stop. Is yours? How wonderful is this? I love to shop at Walgreens for some strange reason. Now I can mail yarn from Walgreens too!

*Bamboo plants for the house because you don't need soil. I was gifted my first bamboo plant by a patient's family this summer. It is so lovely and it only needs water....to live. I understand now there is all this bamboo etiquette to be followed . Do you DO bamboo?

*Dunkin Donuts Cinnamon Taffy Apple or something like that donut. Wonderful fake flavor....seriously try one

Any treats you want to share???



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Puss and Boots

Hey I'm sharing some good Chicago weather with you today for a change. Aren't the colors amazing in our woods? Hucky loved loved loved this bridge and these trails. Do you think I should teach Beatles to walk on a leash??? He's young enough....Do you know anyone who walks their cat on a leash??

I'm knitting a pair of socks and I'm anxious to be finished. It is the old Second sock syndrome here in the Second City. I'll show them to you soon. I'm going on a tiny yarn crawl with Al tomorrow.

She's all about the dance legging revival, and she's asked me to knit her a pair. She knows her momma is all about rows and rows of stockinette! I may do some real fair isle in the rows and rows. She wants to wear them over her boots.

There you have it; Puss and Boots. I'm all about the title today.

The Sweater Graveyard

Sorry about the image that is not the graveyard I planned. My coleus is headed to the graveyard soon as the weather is turning rapidly around Chicago. I love coleus; we have a shady front yard and coleus just seem to me to be the workhorse of the annuals.

I sent my first hand knit sweater to the trash/graveyard today. Wow it was hard to throw it out. Trashing something you worked so hard on, years ago is rough for me. Then again, it never hung right on me. I'd never reknit the pattern and the yarn was something I can't believe I ever wanted. Why then was it taking up precious space in my closet?

I think I can hear it screaming from the trash bin outside right now.....

Genetics and Knitting

Somewhere out there AL has a relative that passed along her knit genes. I won't even begin to take credit for anything other than enthusiasm for the craft. I dont' know how she knits these beauties....

Here is her Falling Leaves scarf. Purl Bee pattern. She's back to knitting! Last night she showed me a hat she is in the process of knitting up. It is all cables and bumps and what not, and it is gorgeous.

As for me, I am knitting up a pair of socks. Plain as can be, be right up my concentration alley. I'm all about the last week of good weather here in Chicago and the Halloween decorations. Our town really seems to go all out. Whole front yards are devoted to grave markers and silliness. This year, I have the quintessential Witch accessory in my own little black beauty of a cat. So bear with me, more Halloween images to come! And let's just see if I can wait until the actual day to have my very favorite bite size bar: a baby ruth!

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For and Against

I'm for Halloween and against raisin box treats

I'm for taking the coffee before it's done brewing and against styrofoam cups

I'm for sock knitting but against socks on circulars

I'm for Christmas gift knitting but against rushing myself at the years end

I'm for walking in any degrees but I'm against rain

I'm for relatives at the holidays but I'm against politics and religion talks

I'm for wool on my hands and feet, but against wool on my arms and chest

I'm for baby sweaters and hats, but I am against knitted diaper covers

I'm for quality cat food, but against smelly canned food

I'm for Halloween but I'm against blow up lawn decorations

I'm for email but I'm against most FORWARDS

I'm for bamboo plants, but I'm against soil plants

I'm for wooden needles and against aluminum....

what are you for? against???




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Yarn fight

I don't have any knitting to show you today. (What? was that a collective sigh of relief?)
I have been fighting with my new yarn since I started with it on Tuesday.
This is a long fight if you are me.
This means all I've knit for the past two evenings, has been ripped out.

I'm going to win this fight. Today, new sock yarn, I will cast on again!

In the image is a alapca scarf gifted to me from my friend Jen who brought it to me from:
Peru. The minute I put it on to thank her, all my collective histamines raced into action.
I'm considering allergy shots for wool. .......
My friend Linda is an allergy nurse.....
Say I do get to keep knitting until I'm 83 like my Aunt Elanore.......
Say it takes two years of shots to conquer the wool itch...
I think I could win that fight too!

Is there a fight you are going to win soon???

Inspiring

Joany's baby sweater inspires me. She is knitting it in Berocco Comfort and I guarantee it won't itch. I want to make one similar to it in pullover fashion. You know, I 'd avoid a button band and a v neck if I make a roll neck raglan.....

Meg's cabled top is Vogue inspired. Meg is a serious clothes knitter and she's darn good.

Carol is making this gorgeous shawl for herself. I am so thrilled it is for her. Her eyes are going to look so beautiful when she drapes this beauty around herself next spring on the beach.
Carol has me wanting to knit one for ME! When I decide to, remind me to use the exact yarn Carol is using, because it is perfect...and oops, I've forgotten the yarn name. It is a funny name...
I'll get back to you!

I've casted on with Major Jennifers stash sale sock yarn. I was going to knit the leg of the sock in a pattern, but I failed miserably while trying to watch TV and follow a simple repeat....so everything I knit during TV time last night....was frogged this morning...

Has a fellow knitter shown you something you are just dying to try to knit up?

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FO

Hat's done.
Really Soft.
Berroco Comfort.
Rain's coming.
Planted bulbs.
Cut zinnias.
Raked Leaves.
Radio's playing.
Heat's on.
Radiators warm.
Fireplace night.
Casting On.
Life's good.


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It may be in the genes

Seems I got some answers about my genetics and arthritis yesterday. I swear sometimes when I put the thought out there...answers come.. SPooky eh?

My Aunty El (elanore) called me yesterday. She's 85, lives in Florida and has never called me.
Seems she is great granny to a premie and wanted to tell me all about the NICU in Florida.

I was able to ask her if she was still crocheting. She said she is, just a tiny bit because of her arthritis. She said she made a popcorn stitch baby blanket 2 years ago......so that means she was able to crochet until the age of 83. WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOO.. Let's hope I have that gene.
I know I have some genes from that side that I'd rather not carry, but that one I'll take.
This is the same side of the family that claims our great great grandfather died while knitting at the age of 104.

Hmmmm seems I may get through my stash afterall....

(currently knitting Van's Twisted Rib Hat in Berroco Comfort. I am doing a little fair isle above the twisted rib. Can you make out the solid green stitches, every 4th stitch? )

Do you have any relatives who knit till they dropped?


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Give yourself a Hand

Today's post is all about our hands......

if there is way to keep our hands nimble, I'd like to know. I shudder, literally, when I think about not being able to knit someday.....
oops, there I go again. Catastrophizing....
I'm sure all the Monopoly games I played as a child had an effect on me...
GO TO JAIL, GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT 200.00.
Landing anywhere near that space made me nervous.....everything could change in an instant....

Where was I ? Oh, what if we couldn't knit.
So if there's a way to keep my hands going I want to know.

I read up on hands last night. There are no muscles in your fingers. Lots of tendons, but no muscles. There are 123 ligaments however, in our hands. There are 29 major and minor bones and ...ouch
48 nerves.

By the time we get to the 75 to 79 year old age group, 90% of women will have osteoarthritis.
(this is depressing eh?)

If you want to worry about now and not later, well then 1/3 of all ER injuries involve the upper extremities. AND 2/3 of all accidents to hands occur before retirement....

I suppose we can comfort ourselves with glucosamine and chondroitin tablets and hope for the best. Then again, the cost of those babies is nearly the price of a decent skein of yarn...

I think this is where I am supposed to be living in the moment......

I read we are supposed to release our grip every 15 minutes. I do put my knitting down about every half an hour for ...well a snack of some sort......honestly...

I can say this:

My hands take a beating in the nursing profression and the winters here are enough to make your hands crack and bleed by November.....

I have some Burt's Bees Milk and Honey Body lotion. It goes on a bit watery and has a smell I can put up with but don't relish.

I also have some KISS MY FACE in lavender. It goes on watery too, but leaves you with a very light coating. I love the smell.

I find wearing gloves on the really large side helps me at work too. All that pulling on of tight gloves and pulling off literally hurts my hands.

I also find that good old Vaseline coated on my hands and covered with socks brings much needed relief to cracked skin.

Could you give me a hand? What are your secrets???

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Prayer Shawl from leftovers no less!

After learning my new friend Regina wanted yarn leftovers for her Prayer Shawl crocheting, I sent her some. In next to no time, she wove the yarns into this warm and lovely prayer shawl. Regina has a knack for color that I lack. I love the shawl and we both know it will wrap around someone's shoulders and make them feel loved. She says she doesn't pray any particular prayer, while she crochets but she does pray for the recipient.

Regina needs some prayers for her someone in her life that is afraid to have a kidney transplant. If you can spare a prayer, would you send one up for Tommy? Thanks.





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The Pattern for the QUICK ACRYLIC TRICK COWL

The QUICK ACRYLIC TRICK COWL Copyright Kathy Boyer

(note buttons and buttonholes are optional)

One skein Vanna’s Choice 100% Acrylic #4 Medium Weight Yarn
(uses 70grams of the 85 gram skein)
One skein any wool yarn Medium Weight
6 buttons
Size nine 16 inch circular needles

Begin with acrylic yarn.
Cast on 92 stitches.
Join being careful not to twist.
Place marker
Begin 2 by 2 ribbing. (K2P2 around)

Knit in rib for 8 inches
Purl each stitch for 3 rows
Join wool yarn at marker and begin 2 by 2 ribbing in wool

Knit in rib for 6 and a half inches.
Next make the buttonholes by
Knitting 12 in pattern, then cast off 3 stitches, and repeat all the way around

Next row cast on 3 stitches at each previous rows cast on site.
You will make 6 buttonholes
Go back to ribbing pattern on next row.
Knit for 1 ½ inches and bind off.

Sew 6 buttons onto acrylic cowl at the buttonhole mark.

Fold wool cowl down over acrylic ribbing, and button in place

Wear in the WINDIEST cities and be warm.

The Quick Acrylic Trick Cowl

Ta Da! My very first pattern. Copyright and all that.

THE QUICK ACRYLIC TRICK COWL

It's quick because it thick.
It's trick is that you wear the acrylic side towards your very sensitive skin so you won't itch.
It's luciously thick and double layered to fool that winter wind that's heading this way.

Later today, the actual pattern for you all written up and pretty!



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When Knitted Pigs Fly

(pictured porky resides at 3 Bags Full in Northbrook, at the cashier's desk)

When knitted pigs fly, that's when you will see a pattern written by me.....
Guess what? I am writing my first pattern......It will be finished so soon.
It will be so easy the flying pig could knit it....

I did get my inspiration from little Alyoops. She is so young and new to knitting
and she is writing her first pattern without any fear at all. Ahhhh youth.
Al wrote a pattern for a baby blanket once and a sock pattern. I think we
are going to start something here......
what? Patterns at Irish eyes?

I'm so energized by this new path for me. I took the quotes from Steve Jobs this week regarding
connections and making things happen, to heart. Stay tuned please.......
and happy workend. I'm back to work tonight

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Indian Summer Knitting

This is my view from the screened porch this morning. Indian Summer has always enchanted me.
I'm pretty sure it is a mini miracle that I can focus on anything other than that Ash tree's show right now. It is one of those trees that drops its leaves all in one day......
Fireman nearly weeps over it when it happens....he needs to embrace winter.....then again, I am all about not telling others what to embrace these days.....

I'm knitting a cowl in acrylic. Go ahead and say Blech if you want. I'm all about not telling anyone else what to embrace these days.....

It is a cowl that is a real Chicago winter cowl. One that will hug your neck tight when the winds find their skinny fingers and try to seep in around you. The yarn is from a buy a year ago that in my vivid imagination was going to become a sweater. Wow, you are thinking, that's going to be a huge cowl. .....
not really. The yarn is kind of not too pretty after all when it gets on a needles and gets pushed around. It is much prettier in the skein and in the online image....

I'll bet that enticed you to come back and see it when it is, very shortly, an FO.

Happy Indian Summer.......

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Pet Portraits

Every morning Huck would stand in the kitchen. Rozzy would get up and touch Huck's nose and then serpentine around his legs; telling everyone Huck belonged to her. I loved this ritual. When Kate G at my vet's office, painted some incredible animals for the office, I asked her to paint my Huck and my Rozzy. I found a picture I had taken of the ritual. Here's the amazing and touching result. I just got it today. Kate captured their tenderness with one another perfectly.

I so admire those who can paint. I love when the painting exceeds your expectations. This one does.

Now along with Huck's ashes and ribbons and paw print, I have this amazing painting to hang in my home. It does them both justice.

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Nuttin' but knittin'

*First up: THANKS. Thanks to anyone who told me the new blogger format wasn't working for them. I cannot get by without your comments, I crave your comments. Telling me you couldn't post a comment went right through my knitblog heart....I think I had an arrhythmia over it actually....

*Second up: THANKS. Thanks to those of you who said you couldn't see the images I post on the new format. This must mean the images are getting better since Franklin's class last spring. I do try so hard with images.....Back to the old blog format! I'm a picture snob, I admit it. I don't read many bloggers who don't include pictures....

*Next on the agenda: I just got home from knitting at the bar with Karen and Meg and Joany B. I wish this bar made Mai Tai's. The are a BEER and wine bar. Oh and they do Bloody Mary's which everyone who knits with me likes.....Bloody's are just too healthy for me. Oh they can make rum and coke there....see? This is why fountain coke thrills me so. Sugar high....bubble high....
Coke right from the tap......
and Let's face it I can't hold my liquor well and since we start at 11:30, I really would be in the laz-y-boy the rest of the day if I drank when we meet at the bar.

*Here are the Regia socks I just now finished for Fireman. Regia Farbe 5376 if you must know.
This is the fastest pair of socks I've ever knitted. WHy? Well, I think it is because, and I did the math, it is about 2 thousand stitches less than a normal pair for me. I almost always start with 64 stitches. This time, because Fireman has tiny little ankles, not Hungarian at all, I decided to make them fit him. (not me) SO I cast on 48 stitches. I knitted NOTHING but these socks and yes I am crazy monogamous knitter.

*Funny thing is when I brought them to the bar, and before anyone started on Bloody Mary's, the group was enamored with the colorway. Then I told them it was the Regia they had on clearance at the store they used to work for....and showed them the hank. Gasps all around! Sometimes the hank just doesn't do the work up any justice! It really was underrated before it got knitted up.

*Good thing the women I knit with at the bar, who drink Bloody's are smart too. They were not at all excited when I showed them more potential next knit. I brought some Mohair......I was going to just knit it up in garter into a scarf as I saw someone else do recently. I should take it as a hint when no one comments...AT ALL... on my idea. So I pushed Karen into giving me a cast on number and knit until the little mohair fibers had sufficiently and sneakily entered my airway and I began to feel the fibers in my lungs. This didn't take long mind you. Maybe a inch or so of knitting. Then I declared it probably wasn't going to be my next knit afterall.

*SO, there you have it. Socks done. What next??? I don't know. But YOU KNOW I"LL tell you soon
I'm off to walk with Al and we will decide on my next project.....it is glorious out.
oh and I forgot to tell you..
all the while at the bar and during this post, and I have NEVER experienced this before.....
my oven has been cleaning ...itself.....




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Knot likely to Spin soon

No knitting to show today. Just my little October girl who adorns the back porch entry each year.
And yes that is Rosalyn's backside apparently wanted to be photographed. As many of you know, I am constantly directing anyone with a camera, not to "get my butt in that picture." Rosalyn knows the eternal cat trick of making herself look beautiful know matter the angle....

I am coming to the conclusion that I need to find a spinner. Someone gave me roving that is amazingly beautiful. It has been coaxing me from the basket it waits in. Now I am about as likely to start spinning as I am to run the Chicago Marathon Sunday. It ain't gonna happen.

Someday I will have a pretty spindle and learn to spin. I don't see me with a wheel...ever....
can't say why. Just don't see it. Do you spin? Do you have a spindle? A wheel? I think wheels are,
forgive me,
ugly.
Spindles are , to the contrary, cool. Did I just blow my chance to have someone spin my roving on a wheel?

Anyone know a spinner who will spin my roving? Do you spin? Do you want to spin? However will I get any knitting done if I start spinning? Oh yeah, someday I'll retire! Or win the lottery.

Did I tell you that our weekend work New Years Resolution was to play the Megagame each week?
I think I've mentioned it. Well, here it is October and we are still playing. I must say only a few people are in every single week. THey are the ones who most believe we will stand before the local media with our check, scrubs on and waving GOODBYE to a tough but rewarding job.
Our rule is that if you are in that week you are in . If you are out you are out. Did I also say I hate when people give me those coins for dollars? Where do people get those things?
Anhyhow, Maybe I'll spin sooner than I imagine....afterall the Megagame is tomorrow...again

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Best Knitted Shawls

Who would have thought the best knitted shawls I saw today at 3 Bag FUll were not lace based.
The Stephen West shawl is lots of "wraps and turns" I was told. I can wrap and turn.

The Peddler's Shawl is just so simple it is amazing. I love the brown border on beige. Who would have thought I'd love brown on BEIGE?

Then again, who would have thought

*I'd still be walking as my workout 20 years after I got on my first treadmill?
I prefer to walk outside when the Chicago weather allows. This means I walk April to November outside.....

*I'd prefer cats to dogs at this time in my life. I adore dogs, do not gasp. It is just that I find cats/kittens so much easier to live with right now. I get a lot back from the pride in this house. They have personalities plus. This is another post entirely though....

*I'd be overjoyed with how beautifully the white marigolds I planted as an afterthought, would thrive. They will be a definite on my flowerbed list next year.

*I'd come to a point in my diet where I prefer low fat chicken/turkey sausage to the REAL pork thing. Prefer, is the operative word here, I now prefer them.

*well, you would have thought, but I woudln't have thought that the i pod Santa brought me would bring me so much joy. I love walking and working out to the music I choose.

*finally, who really would have thought that Fireman would INVITE Beatles to sleep with us? Fireman who guards his sleep like no one I know..... yup who would have thought?

(Have you surprised yourself lately?)