30 December 2006

Broken knitting, ballet, and ipod issues

Hi. What a couple of weeks its been. I managed to finish all of my knitting projects for Christmas, although I'm still working on presents for friends. We'll call those New year's presents and they will appear in the new year. Here are photos from Christmas. Nieces shoes, Jodi's bag, mom's socks, and pile o'felting:

While I was knitting Rich's slippers, I broke a Denise needle at the connection. I've yet to send it in for replacement, but I hear they have excellent customer service, so no worries. Lorie and I exchanged Stitchionary 3 for Christmas, which forced me to purchase more items from Knitpicks in order to get free shipping. That makes sense right? Anyway I purchased the "Knit Scarves" book that I believe I have photocopied almost every pattern from and "Knit Fix". "Knit Fix" is excellent at explaining more technical problems and how to finish them. Except when you are knitting a lace pattern and then notice that you have switched how you slip stitches on every row. And dropped a stitch somewhere. Why did reading Knit Fix cause this? It didn't. It just forced me to pay attention. Yuck. I've completely ripped out the lace scarf I started months ago and put the yarn and pattern away for now. I think I can only do lace knitting and nothing else when I'm doing it. Require concentration. Happily, freeing up a project has allowed me to start my Karabella Boise cable scarf finally. I wasn't happy with any pattern I found, so I've made one up by combining two other patterns. I love it. It's a simple six row repeat, 4-stitch cable pattern. Simple and stunning just as that yarn deserves.

Meanwhile, Rich and I had a date last night. We went to Moscow Ballet's Cinderella and then out to a nice dinner! It was a fantastic night. The ballet was great. Good dancing, stunning costumes, and great sets. The only issue was super tall person two rows in front of me, performing a view block I thought Lola had reserved for herself when I'm watching TV and ignoring her. Anyway, we moved to the center between acts and had a great view of the dance for the finale. We are hoping to go to Maya Angelou in February and I want to see David Sedaris again in April, but I don't know which show, Eugene or Portland? We'll see.

I got an 8 gig Ipod Nano for Christmas in stunning red. Its causing me problems. I've been on the phone now for an hour with apple trying to fix it. Argh. It is formatted as a Windows machine for some reason and won't let me register or download purchased music. I'm not a happy nano owner right now, but hopefully they will get it fixed today. You only get one call under the 90 day warranty unless you buy the extended warranty. Can you say rip-off? (Post-call addition: nano not fixed. I have to take it to a Genius bar. I could go today, but since Rich and I are heading up to Port Orchard, I'll wait until Tuesday. We'll see what they can do. They assured me they think it can be fixed and won't need to be replaced. My luck with ipod continues. Argh.)

Besides the scarf, I'm knitting my gauntles, bowls, and vases. I have about 7 inches on the gauntlets, with three to go before reaching the thumb gusset. I'm stealing the pattern from Dani's non-patterned handwarmers in the previous posting! Hopefully it will work.


Bowls, bowls, bowls. Kendra was down before Christmas and we felted tons o'bowls. Kendra finished her first bowl, which felted beautifully. She started her second and finished it all by herself upon her return to Eugene. I'm so proud of her. She figured things out on her own. She's coming into her own!


Happy New Year to all and may all of your hopes turn into reality.

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