I’ve been so, so bad about blogging. I know. You noticed, didn’t you? No word from me in ages. My excuse, and I’m sticking to it, is that I prepared to be away for a month, I was gone for a month, and I’ve been recovering from having been gone for a month. We were busy while we were gone, too. We found that it was actually cheaper for two people to drive to Columbus, Ohio from southern California than it was to fly, so we drove to the annual TNNA trade show there this year. Since we were going to be out on the road anyway, we decided to see a few people we hadn’t seen for a while, and to make a sort of side trip to Portland, Oregon on the way back. I was going to give you a basic blow-by-blow of our trip, but frankly don’t have the time or energy at the moment. There are still way too many things circulating in my brain.

That doesn’t mean that you don’t get to see some of the pictures we took while we were gone. Dave took most of them. I drove the whole way, and most of the photos were taken while we were moving, making Dave the main photographer. The pictures I’ve processed are in the Portland by way of Columbus gallery. They’re in alphabetic order by filename. Kind of awkward for viewing sometimes, but I did what I could. I’ll add more photos as I get time to sort through them. As a bit of a tease, this is a photo of me (center) with my dear cousin Jeannette (right) and her daughter Megan (left) who just finished her first year of college. We had lunch with them one day, and really wished we could have stayed for a longer visit.

I’ve released two new patterns since returning home, Spanish Dancer and Kumasi. Spanish Dancer is a scarf pattern that starts and ends with just a few stitches, but widens then narrows through the middle. It’s available through my normal channels. The printed pattern will be in shops soon.

Kumasi is something I did especially for Bijou Basin Ranch. It’s a large shawl that starts with a provisional cast on in the middle, and works to either end. You can purchase the pattern through them.

I hope to get more of our trip images online soon. Keep your fingers crossed.

I actually have two new patterns out, and have been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to post about them here yet. I’ve been feeling like I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Here are the two patterns.

Gloriosa

This is the cardigan that I’ve been working on since late last summer. It’s eaten my lunch in so many ways. I can no longer even count the number of times I re-knit it during the design process. At one point it was seamed, and I’d worn in a few times, then I ripped it out and restarted it from scratch, including getting a different tech editor to help me with it. It took forever, but I learned a lot.

There are more pictures of Gloriosa on my pattern site. You can buy the pattern at Patternfish.

Doric

I’ve played with this gorgeous golden yellow sock yarn a number of times, and nothing clicked. Then I stumbled upon this stitch pattern, and it was magic. Less than two weeks later I have a pattern out, and both socks finished. The stitch reminds me of columns, so I named the pattern after the simplest of the old Greek and Roman columns.

There are more pictures of Doric on my pattern site. You can purchase the pattern at Patternfish.

That’s it for this pathetic excuse for a blog post. Now for breakfast, then I need to get my oil changed, run other errands, work on more patterns (I’ve started tinkering with another sweater design)…

Kumasi

Huge thank yous to everyone who participated in this naming project, especially to those who suggested the names that we voted on. The clear winner, coming in with nine votes—four more than the closest competitor—is Kumasi, suggested by Carolyn (sadly blogless). Carolyn, I sent you email just a few minutes before posting this. If you haven’t responded with your pattern choice by the time you read this, please let me know which one of my patterns you want. I’ll get it to you right away.

Sock yarn scarf

Ever knit a scarf in the round? I know. Funny idea, isn’t it? Well, that’s what I’m doing, and so far I’m finding it to be fun, though the rows are pretty long for a scarf.

I used a toe-up sock cast on to start, put extra increases in the corners so that it would lie flat, and viola! I have ideas for more complicated scarves knit this way, but I wanted to do a simple one first. I started with a few rows of stockinette in the center, then worked the rest of the scarf in garter stitch. I’m adding a simple little four-row, five stitch applied border, as I couldn’t face binding off that many stitches for just a scarf. Besides, the frilly edging is fun. I have my test knitter lined up already. I’ll get the pattern to her as soon as I get the kinks out of it. Hopefully this little project will be ready to go before June. No promises, of course, but that’s my current goal.

Oh, the yarn is Silkie Socks That Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts in a color called Muckity Muck (the picture on their website looks a lot pinker than my yarn actually is). It’s a truly awesome muted orange color that I traded for on Ravelry. I never would have purchased this yarn, as I normally avoid anything remotely orange like the plague, but I love this colorway. It’s luscious. Rich. The garter stitch gives the color additional depth, while giving the scarf a glorious drape.

Okay, folks. Here’s your chance to vote for your favorite name for the secret project described last week, made with the dark brown yarn in leaf/heart patterns. You may vote for only one name. The suggestions below are in alphabetic order.

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Nope. You’re right. Ningaloo was not suggested in the comments. A friend is camping there this week. Ningaloo a coral reef on the northwest coast of Western Australia. Man. I want to go there! Check out these images. Clear blue water, large creatures, tiny creatures, coral, white sands. Oh man.

I reserve the right to not go by the majority’s vote. This is not a democracy. It’s happened before. If it happens again, the winner and the person who suggested the name I choose will both get their choice of one free pattern.

Sometimes the name of a design I’m working on just jumps out at me. Sometimes, after digging around on the Internet for a bit, following links here and there, I find inspiration, and the perfect name is right there in front of me. Sometimes, no matter what I do, no matter what I discover, what I find isn’t quite right.

Sometimes I just need help. Like now. I need help discovering the name of a pattern that I can’t show you. The pattern is a secret. I know! How do I get myself into these messes? Sigh. Anyway, the yarn is a rich chocolate brown. The lace has large and small leaves. The large leaves look like hearts when inverted.

In considering tropical sources, I’ve gotten some wonderful suggestions from friends, including Loulu (a type of palm native to Hawaii), Ishtarut (pronounced Ish-ta-root, a Portuguese fort built near an oasis on an island in the Persian Gulf), and Al-Ain (a suburb of Dubai in the UAE). All are wonderful names. But none of them feels… right.

I’ve also considered names like Valrhona and Dagoba, but found that those are chocolate company names, not places, so those won’t work. I’d hoped they were named for places. Disappointing. I was looking forward to naming the pattern Dagoba. I love the way it sounds. And tastes. Yummy. Wouldn’t that have been lovely? Alas. It is not to be.

Because of the nature of this one, I cannot give away a copy of this pattern, but if you twist my arm, the person who suggests the name I end up using will get to choose one of my other patterns as a thank you gift.

Before that can happen, though, I need your suggestions. Please leave your ideas in the comments to this post. If you want to add reasons why or how you arrived at your ideas, I’d love to hear them. I’ll run a little poll next week with the best of the pattern names suggested here.

I released a pattern today. The baby blanket pattern done in garter stitch that looks like a quilt. Yup. That one. My test knitter was finally done with me, and the proof-reader also, so we have a pattern. Here it is:

Knit with two strands of Elann’s Sonata, an all-cotton yarn that not only survived a trip through the washer and dryer, but emerged softer and with a much nicer hand.

You can see more pictures on my pattern site, and you can purchase the pattern on Patternfish. It’s also listed on Ravelry.

Office update

Back in February I told you about moving the “new” office furniture into my home office, an began in early December. The last big part of that process finally happened on Saturday, almost exactly four months after it suddenly began. A couple of things came together that allowed this to finally occur: Dave’s torn rotator cuff has finally healed enough that he can do most things again, and our (good) next door neighbor’s brother-in-law was in town for the weekend, so we had three strong men available at the same time to move the huge hutch from our entry way down the stairs and into my office.

I wish that at some point in the last four months I’d taken the time to snap a picture of this hutch standing on end next to my front door. It was a sight. The thing is huge: 43 inches high x 69 inches wide. The entry way seems ten times bigger now with it gone. As it is, I only have photos of moving it down the stairs, and getting it set in its new home.

Now that we have the manpower, it’s time to move the hutch. Blair and Bob came over wearing their matching t-shirts. Dave had already moved the bookcases—and four boxes of books—that normally line the landing, so there was room to turn the corner easily. Here they come: down the stairs, a brief pause while they figure out how to get it around the corner, then down the hall it goes.

We’d also done a bunch of preparation in my office. Everything had to come off the top of the part of the desk where the hutch would go, plus the wire shelves came down from on top of the oak printer table in the corner. Once the dollie was under it again, it was a simple thing to roll the hutch down the hall and into my room. Then they had to figure out the best way to lift it into place, which took but a moment, then voila! there it is.

Most of the rest of the day was spent moving stuff back in, a lot of which has been in one guestroom or the other since mid December. It’s sure nice getting my life put back together again. There aren’t as many shelves in here as there used to be, so I don’t know quite what I’m going to do with everything, but I’m making progress. The knitting books that I reference all the time are in a handy spot that I can reach from my chair, blank envelopes are within reach, printer paper is actually just above the printer—what a concept—and most of the memorabilia have new homes.

Weed abatement

It’s time to comply with local fire authority laws, and cut down all of the weeds in the yard. We learned early on that it’s much, much more efficient to hire the local gardeners to do this for us. They take care of a lot of the weeds in our neighborhood by cutting them down and hauling them away for somewhere between one and two hundred bucks. Well worth it, especially since they haul them away, and take care of the required paperwork. That, and it’s kind of fun to watch. Some of the gardeners in the area stuff the cut grasses into plastic bags. Our guys rake it all onto large squares of burlap, which they reuse—a practice that I wholeheartedly applaud.

They started this process on Monday, but were rained out. They returned on Tuesday, but it rained a bit Tuesday morning, so it was still too wet to cut. Now they’re back, and are nearly done cutting down the neighbor’s grasses. This is good. The sound of the weed-eater is getting a little annoying. We were hoping that the stuff they cut down on Monday would be dry enough to haul away today, but I’m assuming not, since they haven’t started moving it yet. Drat. Maybe they’ll be able to do it tomorrow.

Amaryllis

The amaryllis, though still beautiful, has begun to fade. Both flowers are getting age spots on them, and the petals are starting to curl a bit at the edges. I don’t feel at all gypped. Mom did. She didn’t think her flowers were open very long at all, when her bulb bloomed last year. I actually love that they’ve been so delightful and showy. The sheer size of these flowers is truly awe inspiring, especially when you consider that they’re putting on this fabulous show for us right there on our kitchen table.

We went and picked up the blocking wire tubes from the printer this afternoon. Check this out. Just like downtown. (You know, it’s hard to get good pictures of these things.)

No more labels stuck onto the tubes. What’s more: no more endless hours spent sitting here sticking labels onto tubes. The labels are now printed directly on the tubes. Score. And what’s that? Why is one tube printed with a green label? Well, it’s because we now have blocking wires in two weights: lace (original in blue) and sweater (new in green). We’ll be sending the first sets of sweater weight blocking wires to our distributor early next week. Be sure to ask for them at your LYS. (End shameless plug.)

The amaryllis blossoms are even bigger today than they were yesterday. A full six inches across, and at least seven inches high. There’s Le Mutt hanging out close to the blossom, so you can see the size of this flower. He’s far enough away to avoid the nasty pollen that’s just itching to stain his fur.

I finally got pictures of my finished Wanida socks that I made from Cookie A’s pattern in her book, Sock Innovation. I love my Wanida socks. Fit like a dream. Comfy.

Socks knit with Shibui Sock in Midnight. Yum.

They’re open. The flowers opened this morning. Late yesterday they finished moving into position: both flower buds horizontal to the ground. And today? This:

In honor of Georgia O’Keefe’s closeups of flowers, paintings I have long admired, these:

A number of years ago I was wandering around San Francisco with my dear friend Rebecca, when we ran across a gallery that had a number of original O’Keeffe flowers on display. I had no idea how huge most of the canvases are. They’re… ginormous! The smaller ones on display that day were a mere four or five feet high, while the large ones were a good eight, ten, twelve feet high, by a similar width. It was incredible. She painted the inside of tiny flowers at dimensions almost impossible to imagine. It was like being a tiny bug and being next to or walking inside these glorious flowers. Breathtaking.

Watching the amaryllis change every day is awe inspiring. The bulb has been busy since yesterday. In the afternoon the flower buds started to move apart from each other. This morning they looked like this:

The flower buds themselves don’t look much different than yesterday. But the first leaves down below grew a bit.

The small strawberry farm on the hillside opposite me planted three more patches of berries this winter. I missed preparation and planting days; they must have been really something. That hillside is steep. The strawberries won’t have to worry about sitting in water on that slope. The three patches that are up higher, all in a row, are the new ones. They now have a total of five patches. Harvesting will be fun, too. Let’s try not to roll down the hill with ripe strawberries in our hands…

Today the youngest of my grandparents, my Grandma Esther, would have been 110 years old, if she were still alive. It was always the simplest of things to figure out Grandma’s age, since she was born in 1900. Grandma lived to a good age, had a fine life, three children, five grandchildren, and a husband who was a good provider. Happy birthday, Grandma.