sara skates

Jenn asked how I made the tassle on Hannah’s hat.   I’m in the throes of a fever/stuffy head/hit-by-a-truck cold, so apologies for any wacky descriptions that occur here.

*I finished the crown decreases of the hat – decreasing down to three stitches

*I knit I-cord using those three stitches – knit three stitches, slip all 3 back onto the left-hand needle, knit them again, repeat.  So the third stitch then has the yarn pull from behind and knit into the first stitch…it creates a skinny knitted tube.  When it was long enough, I pulled the end of the yarn through the three stitches, and left a length to attach to the tassle.

*Then I wrapped tassle yarn around whatever was handy and about the right size- I think I used a box of coasters.  I wrapped a bunch of times – then cut through all at one edge – so I had a bunch of equal-length pieces of yarn.  I tied/cinched them together in the middle, folded them in half at the cinch, and then wrapped another piece of yarn around about a centimetre down from the cinch.

*From there – easy peasy – I threaded the end of the i-cord throgh the tassle and attached it.  Voila, tassle.

Back to couging and wild temperature fluctuations.  Terry’s a day ahead of me, I’ll feel better tomorrow.

Apparently, I code like a girl.  Who knew?  More on that in a bit.

*I knit.  really.  See:

It’s for Hannah.  The rainbow is one of my first handspun yarns – from a sample of Fantom Farm’s roving.  I had no idea, but I made self-striping yarn.  I probably have enough left for the cuffs of mittens, but the white is about gone.  I should be able to find a suitable substitute.

*I spin too.  (Duh, since I made some of the yarn above.)  This weekend, we put off painting our unfinished bookshelves, on theory that it was way more important to be able to use the shelves than to have them a painted a color and not using them for another week month 1/2 a year.  So I got to move most of my fiber books to one place in the house, with a shelf of the little bits of yarn I have spun (and a few bits of commercial yarn on the right that is in queue for a WIP):


Beneath the books are two shelves of mostly roving.  Again, the stuff that might be in queue sometime soon.  There’s more (way more) upstairs stuffed into a closet.  Ditto on the yarn.

Since I’m apparently currenltly on a small project binge (it has been socks socks and nothing but socks or maybe a hat since spring), I decided it was a good time to start using some of my handspun.  Most of what I have spun to date consists of a few hundred yards of stuff – not enough for a vest or sweater, but plenty for mittens, hats, scarves. 

*I’m not sure I ever blogged this.  This was my Olympic Knitting project:

oops, I’ll have to get a photo of it, there is one somewhere but it must be on the other computer.  The yarn is lovely, the three colors are great, it’s yeti-sized and makes me look like my head blew up.  The pattern is probably better suited to a finer gauged yarn.  Since it has a 4-layer cuff (essentially, you knit the equivalent of two hats, joined together in the middle, and you fold one inside the other – hey it’s reversible! – and then fold up the brim), it’s warm but exceedingly poofy in circumference.  Not so attractive.  I’ll probably frog it and redo it somehow – maybe slice it and make two hats ROFL – although it’s huge even without its bulkiness.  I’m rather attached to the yarn itself so …

*I’ve been matched with my Knit Tea Swap 2 partner, wheeee!  I haven’t flashed my stash or anything on the group blog, soon.  Maybe.

*So the girl code thing.  I spent the better part of the day AND THEN THE EVENING TOO sorting through a slew of SAS programs, and trying to figure out how they feed into an excel table.  Suffice it to say, I code a lot more iconically.  You know, with helpful little comment lines re the point of the code, and label names that match the intended page of the output, and I dunno, things totalled up already.  I’m not obsessive about any of it, but maaaannnnn I could have used Cliff’s Notes today.  The good news is that I had the whole week blocked off to sort this out and populate two pages with 4 tables total, and I think I’ll be done tomorrow, so heck, maybe I’ll spend the rest of the week re-writing the SAS code.  We’ll see.  No doubt, some other emergency will present itself, and I’ll be back where I am now next year when doing it all over again.

*in closing, cute kiddo pix.  Toby crashed in his new room:

Hannah’s angling for a jungle room at the moment, we’re making slow progress on that front.  First we need to dig out the spare bedroom – into which everything went during the painting process.

It’s only Monday, but who says random is just for Wednesday.

‘k.  I figure skate.  Wherein gender roles are utterly entrenched.  Typical competion garb includes things like this and this and this.  About two years ago, the official governing body of US competitive figure skating changed the rules so that in freestyle and pairs competition, women are *allowed* – oh my – to wear pants!!  (But not in dance skating competition.)

Props to Grace for pointing me in the direction of this twist:  SkirtSports.  Skirts for women runners, complete with this number apparently specifically for marathoners, the MarathonDress: 

It comes in screaming pink, and

black with white trim (with keyhole back detailing).

Holy hell, while I am ecstatic that there are signs of movement towards widening the range of choice on ice, it’s totally different when the flip is occuring with running, and marketing of clothing for women runners.  The "look hot, run faster!" (running faster in this attire is "unscientifically proven" according to their website – good to know) is the modus operandi.

Grace (in training for a marathon as I type) suggests a tiara to go with.  I predict sparkles and sequins are next.  Skates, running shoes, who cares. Just dress up the chicks folks – since looking sweaty and athletic is way too "male" for words.

How far we have come; how far we have yet to go.

Toby had PT yesterday after school, and they were working on standing up from and sitting down on a bench, using his canes to help.  Part of the process is supposed to involve Toby putting one hand back behind him to feel where the bench is before he plops his bum on it.  The therapist reminds him to do that part (it’s hard for him) saying "put your hand back Toby, you need to know where the bench is."  he quips:

"I know where the bench is.  I know where I am.  I don’t need to do that."

While the therapist manages to stifle a giggle and admonish that "It’s practice, Toby, practice", Terry does giggle.

And the boy has a point methinks.

Go here for a pretty inspiring creative amazing awesome example of figure skating.  It’s Gary Beacom.  I want to skate like he does when I grow up.  Complete with head-to-toe lycra body suit – that’ll solve my urge to "hide" while out there on ice alone

I’m working a lot, skating a lot, and generally just busy. We did go to Hemlock this weekend (The Fingerlakes Fiber Festival) – it was fabuous as usual although the fairgrounds were quite muddy.  We needed a little help getting our car moving from its mudspot at the end of the day.  I felt sorry for all the bemuddied spinning wheels…the mud will wash off but they were quite dirty.  The yarn was lovely, I picked up a few things (photos at another time) – some hand spun and dyed cormo yarn for a pair of mittens, a pound and a half of loverly peachy-orangey combed wool, and a bit of koigu KPPM and KPPM (which who knew – the only difference is that KPPM – or is it KPM? – is nearly solids, and KPPPM is the multicolored).  Oh, also a kit to make a scarf – where you felt small amounts of wool into a piece of silk – from Cloverleaf Farms (I can’t find a link so you’ll have to wait for photos). 

I’m barely managing to keep up with blog reading – I will undoubtedly get back into the swing of writing more in a bit – perhaps after the next work deadline or two on the horizon

There’s SO much to say, and yet no way to say enough.

Pat Humphries and Sandy Opataw sing about some of it really well here though.  Go ahead, download the MP3 file – it’s worth it.  The pain of losing a loved one and not being able to name them or participate in any of the impromptu grieving venues – for fear of deportation – underscores so much wrong with our system.

While it won’t solve everything, 1.20.09 can’t come soon enough.

Day one, grade one and grade four:

Hannah was SO ready to go – she missed her friends, she couldn’t wait to see all of who would be in her class (turns out most of last year’s class stayed together, although another girl with two moms joined the class, yay!).  She smiled furtively so as to not be uncool while the bus arrived -

She hopped on:

and never looked back:

Toby was caught up in the excitement:

but somewhat nervous about the day to come – as the bus approached, he stuck his hand out in the universal STOP! signal, and proclaimed:  I am NOT getting on!

Terry helped him on, Toby brightened at seeing his bus driver again – and he clenched his little palms into which I had planted some kisses for the day:

As the bus drove off, all I could see was the top of his head with little fists madly waving good-bye.

I got home after work, and both of them couldn’t wait to tell me all about the exciting bits of their days – Toby now gets an art special every few days with none other than Ms. Jordan!!  Who is one of his favorite people in the world – she’s the mom of one of Hannah’s best friends, and what’s not to like about ART after all.  His teacher called tonight and he did fabulously well all day.  We’re setting up a time to go into the class and do CP-101 with his classmates – as first graders do, they were asking questions, and we’ll add some of our answers to the mix for them.

We made vanilla ice-cream milkshakes to wrap up the day – with chocolate sauce swirled in.  Yum!

The second round of Knitting/Tea swap is open!  Head here to check it out and sign up – signups are limited to the first 200 folks.