Purl, Interrupted

tagged - again!

And now I've been tagged by karrie . This one's fun. Here are the rules:

1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five some other people to do the same.

Ok, my 23rd post only had 4 sentences. The fourth of which was:

It's the little victories that get you through....

This is particularly funny to me because the little victory in question was that the frogged and re-started alpaca sweater, now 3-4 inches below the armholes, had somehow dodged the unfortunate "alpaca sportsbra" fate of the first attempt. (The same alpaca sportsbra which makes an appearance, so to speak, in my Knit Lit story!)

So ... anyone else want to play?

tagged

Here goes:

ten years ago: I was a senior at Macalester College, recently returned from a year abroad in India and studying frantically for the GRE.

five years ago: I was a very unhappy law student wondering if I'd ever have a job I loved or meet someone I wanted to go out with on more than one date.

one year ago: I would not have believed you if you told me I'd be moving back to Alaska.

five snacks:
-----------------------------------
Dark chocolate
Roasted almonds
pumpkin bread
powdered donettes on long drives with Terry
are cheesesteaks a snack?

five songs I know all the words to:
------------------------------------------------
anything by Terry
traffic, by richard shindell
the iditarod trail, by hobo jim
angel from montgomery, by john prine
ten year night, by lucy kaplansky

five things I would do with $100 million:
-------------------------------------------
start a charitable foundation
pay off our loans
buy a house
adopt a baby
open a yarn store

five places to run away to
-----------------------------------
hawai'i
prague
british columbia
kerala, india
alaska ... which is why i'm here!

five things I would never wear:
----------------------------------
a 4 (or a 6, for that matter)
stiletto heels
downhill skis
hair extensions
pleather

five favorite tv shows:
----------------------------
arrested development
scrubs
lost
simpsons
futurama

five biggest joys:
----------------------------------------
crafting
discovering i was crafty
writing
cooking
love

favorite toys:
-----------------------------------------
majacraft suzie
my fancy 8-billion stitch sewing machine
film and photo scanners
a digital SLR
my new subaru impreza wagon

five people to pass this on to:
-----------------------------------------------------
karrie.
janis.
li.
B?
anyone else? put it this way: if you're reading this, and you have a blog, you've been tagged.

luck of the draw

My friend Lauri is the luckiest girl I know. Not only did she just have a beautiful wedding, she is the niece of these wonderful Alpaca farmers! Man, I would be up there every weekend.....

it's finally here!

It's here!

I don't know how long I've been this out of it (feel free to insert your snide responses here), but it was the middle of the morning when I realized that TODAY is September 27 -- release date for Knit Lit the Third! Somehow I'd been thinking it was coming out on Thursday (which, in turn, I'd been thinking was the 27th). But it's here!

So at lunchtime I left my office and went on a mad dash around Anchorage looking for a bookstore that already had it in stock. (Yes, they're sending me a copy, too, but since everyone I know is getting one of these puppies for Christmas, what's the harm in buying one today?) I got a copy at Barnes & Noble (and was happy to see I wasn't buying their only copy...) and spent the day running around my office showing people the book instead of, say, getting anything else done.

I also stopped by my friendly neighborhood LYS, Far North Yarn Co., which I hadn't visited since their relocation across the parking lot to the store formerly known as the Helly Hansen outlet. WOW -- their new locale is very snappy. It's very spacious, the selection is great, and they've added big red couches and chairs for knitting at the shop. The shop rocked before. Now it's even dreamier. Wait, don't take my word for it, they were just featured in this article in the Daily News.

So Kay (the owner) and I are talking about doing some kind of event to celebrate the book, the article, the big move, etc. Mr. Purl,Interrupted happened to notice that another Knit Lit author lives in Anchorage, too, so maybe we'll be able to get her to join us! Then again, her story is about knitting for soup kitchen patrons and the glory of god and overcoming grief, so it might be an odd transition....

Anyhoo, to celebrate the arrival of the book, and since my ongoing shoulder gimpy-ness means I still have no new knitting pics to share, I thought I'd share a pic my friend Catherine took when we went to the State Fair in August.

That watermelon weighs more than I do.

I will tell you this much. I love Alaska, and am thankful every day that we've made this move. But it's really bittersweet to be home on this particular Tuesday night, so far away from the Post-modern Knitting Circle at the Mel-O-Dee, which was of course the inspiration for the story-that-still-shall-not-be-named.

lots of news

brrr ... it's getting cold up here! saturday's forecast is the first day we've had where the high won't get out of the 40s. yikes.

i got back in the wee hours of monday morning from a weekend getaway to milwaukee for my friend lauri's wedding. what a cool town! who knew? (lauri, apparently). i didn't get any knitting done, sadly, but did get a nice stash enhancement -- as a "thanks for being the wedding" gift, lauri gave me 3 beautiful skeins of alpaca! in my favorite color green, too. an incredibly thoughtful gift by any standard, but even more so since lauri doesn't knit. lucky girl, though -- her aunt and uncle raise alpacas in wisconsin! man oh man....

speaking of stash enhancement, i got two great and unexpected things in the mail from my mom yesterday. first, she sent me a sweater's worth of some kind of black boucle yarn. it's such a sad story -- apparently this yarn made her give up knitting for about 15 years b/c she made this sweater with it and then hated the sweater so much that she just gave up. fortunately, she mentioned this to a new friend who owns a yarn store and who had the good sense to say, "the pattern just sucked." so they frogged the sweater and sent me the nicely rewound contents.

she also sent me an old set of boyle interchangeable needles. they look pretty cool, although i haven't tried 'em out yet. i'll post a pic later.

in other news, this was recently posted on the anchorage SNB group. if anyone's interested, let me know and i can get you in touch with the woman who emailed us. (it's a national group, not AK-based):
Sheila's Shawls and Paul's Scarves
We welcome shawls and scarves created with healing thoughts
and kind intentions, whether they be knitted, crocheted,
hand-sewn or woven. We share these shawls and scarves with
members who have lost a loved one to domestic violence or is a
survivor of domestic violence. The idea and intent is to let
healing energies and good will flow from your heart through your
hands into what you create, so those who receive one of Sheila's
Shawls or Paul's Scarves will feel the comfort of kindness and
concern. We warmly welcome you to join with us in this
wonderful work, as we each volunteer however much time,
energy and heartfelt effort we can as best we can, while we
create, collect, connect with others, and share Sheila's Shawls
and Paul's Scarves with those who can benefit from them.

as far as i know, knit lit the 3rd comes out on thursday! yee haw. i can't write anything here about my story, b/c every time i mention the title, the nasty internet spam web crawlers decide i must be writing about something obscene, so i get gross spam blog comments suggesting visits to other, er, like-minded websites. my story, for the uninitiated, is about knitted footwear for babies. figure it out....

more news to come, but for now i'm off to physical therapy.

time for a new project, perhaps?

i'm taking a redeye tonight to milwaukee -- the land of beer & cheese, which is almost as good as the land of milk & honey -- to be in my friend lauri's wedding. in honor of the stupendous amount of flying i'll be doing between now and sunday night (i think the total flight time RT > 14 hours), i thought it might be time to start a new project. (not that i've finished any projects lately, mind you....)

but i think i'm going to start a diagonal scarf using some noro kureyon i've had lying around for far too long. i've never tried making one of these, and while some people i know have made fancy variations of it (aka the multidirectional diagonal scarf), i think it might be sort of challenging for me. maybe not -- maybe i just don't get the concept but once i start it i will....

i can't go, but you can!

I got this by email yesterday. I can't believe I never visited these guys before I left. Now Esparto, CA is just a little too far of a drive for me. But for my CA pals -- for the love of god, go meet the baby alpaca!

---------

You're invited to:

West Valley Alpacas Fiber on the Farm

Saturday, October 1, 10 AM to 4 PM
19190 Road 87B, Esparto, CA

Visit the alpacas (including Adobe, born 9/13/05), see fiber artists demonstrate their skills, take a couple of short introductory classes in spinning, weaving, knitting, needle felting and crochet. The store will be open and we'll have raffles, prizes and refreshments. No charge for general admission, but the classes below are $10 each:

10 AM - 11 AM Spinning on a drop spindle
11 AM - 12 noon Weaving
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM Knitting
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM Needle felting
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM Free form crochet

more pics

Here are more of my pics from the trip to Denali. I think the bears are ready for winter. Sadly, I'm not....

finally!!

look who finally has her computer up and running! no knitting pics to show you today, but for your infinite patience, here are some pics that i took this weekend in denali national park.

by way of background, the park is closed to private vehicle traffic except one
weekend a year, when they open it up via a lottery system to about 600 cars (200/day). we drove the entire length of the park road -- 85 miles -- which took us 11 hours roundtrip. part of the pace is due to road conditions (unpaved, windy, treacherous, etc) but mostly it's because of all the stopping you do for wildlife viewing.

mr. purl,interrupted was off canoeing with friends of ours (naturally, the canoe trip wasn't an option for me, since my arm is still in a sling and i'd have a tough time explaining any injury to my doctor). so i went with my old roommate ryan, who's gotten really into photography during his time up here. he was using his medium format camera, and lent me his ultra-fancy canon "EOS 20D" digital SLR, which was a ton of fun to use. (the lenses from our canon SLRs work with it, so you have all the benefit of a digital plus all the benefit of an SLR. really fancy stuff).

the wildlife viewing was amazing. we saw 8 HUGE grizzly bears (including 2 different sow/cub groups), a huge moose, a wolf, a fox, a large group of caribou, lots of dall sheep ... and the tallest mountain in north america. (seeing the mountain is actually a big deal, too -- it's so huge that it creates its own weather, and is usually not visible within the park).

we had (mostly) great weather. rain on friday meant waking up in my little tent with damp feet (grumble grumble ... i let my friend use our good tent) but it was nice out all day for driving through the park, and beautifully sunny and crisp and fall-like sunday for the drive home.

anyway, here are a few pics I took!

Oh it's so nice to have my computer back. I still can't get our wireless router to work (I promised T that if he moved my computer into the room with the cable jack, I would get his laptop back on wireless ... so it looks like I may be buying a new router). But hopefully we can learn to peacefully coexist in here....

Coming soon: photos of me amidst the giant veggies. (at the state fair, of course!)

thank god i'm not a dishcloth

all the folks on the spindlers listserv have been taking this quiz, and it seems like 85% of them have turned up "dish cloth cotton." not me, i'm happy to report.

You are Mohair.
You are a warm and fuzzy type who works well with
others, doing your share without being too
weighty. You can be stubborn and absolutely
refuse to change your position once it is set,
but that's okay since you are good at covering
up your mistakes.


What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

knitting in the north

ann's comment reminded me that yes, there are in fact yarn events happening in anchorage.

unfortunately, food poisoning, or something like it, kept me away from today's monthly knitters guild meeting. a big bummer, since it was a "get to know you" meeting. i promise, no one would have wanted to "get to know me" today -- i was much to pukey to be any fun.

next saturday the knitting guild is sponsoring a "saturday seminar" on sock making. (i'll miss that one, too, unfortunately, as i will be the gimpiest person to ever sit in a canoe on nancy lake). that's okay - they're only learning the top-down, DPN technique, and my prior experience with trying to knit socks on DPNs has led me to believe that if i'm ever going to knit socks, it'll have to be another way.

speaking of great events i'm missing ... the following weekend (the 24th) is the Valley Fiber Guild's annual fiber retreat. i'm incredibly bummed to be missing it. but i'll be in milwaulkee helping a very dear friend get married. ah, timing. not like i'd be able to spin anyway, given the current state of my arm. i'll definitely be there next year!

i'm not missing everything, though. fortunately, i'll be in town for the Yarn Expo -- October 14-16. there are going to be vendors and 5 classes from Jean Schrouder -- sort of our own little slice of stitches way up in the far, far north. I think i'm going to try to take the intro to Entrelac class. (The other classes are "Charted Lace," "Faroese Lace Shawl," "Techniques, Tips, & Tidbits" and "Toe-Up socks").

in a final bit of happy ANC knitting news, i think the anchorage knitting yahoo group is finally going to take the plunge and set up a meeting this week. there are now a whopping 9 people on the list, so i think we'll be heading to cafe felix this wednesday night for a little stitching, bitching, gnoshing, etc. yeehaw.

breaking news

Finally, even Fox News understands the gravity of our current political situation.

one year!

happy blogiversary to me,
happy blogiversary to me,
happy blogiversary, purl,interrupted,
happy blogiversary to me!

restless

i'm restless.

mr. purl,interrupted left tonight on a redeye bound for the city of brotherly love and cheesesteaks. he's a very crabby traveller, so, as is almost always the case, we spent the whole day leading up to his trip bickering. throw in four days of rain and a trip to the dmv .. what could be better? but now he's finally gone and the house ... which was completely quiet all day because he was crabby and i was pouting over his crabbiness ... is impossibly quiet. why do we all act like such idiots so much of the time? (wait -- i have an excuse -- i just had surgery and am still a sickie....)

in any event, my quiet house has me awake and restless. so it's 3 a.m. and i'm e-window shopping for yarn, carders, clothes, airline tickets, an iron, whatever. (gotta get an iron if i want to make a quilt. would also probably be good to have an iron anyway, since i'm a lawyer and occassionally need to wear unwrinkled shirts).

hooray -- the fall issue of knitty is up! the theme is sweater weather. they must be tuned into anchorage, where it's been in the 40s at night and we had a frost warning last week. yowsers. so it's time to start thinking about what to do with the grey cahsmerino. the "samus" sweater is really pretty, although it might be a little oppressive in all grey. maybe i could buy a skein of black and do the cables in black. spiffy....

i guess it's a sign that my arm's healing, having the energy to be restless, the desire to shake things up, go somewhere, get the hell up off my couch and turn off the incessant "prime time in the daytime." it still looks like i've got weeks of "imaginary knitting" before the doc lets me do anything fun....

signing off from the quiet and empty house on 12th ave.

happy labor day

i'd like to thank the labor movement.

of course, being on medical leave makes the 3-day weekend concept pretty illusive. i can't believe it's been less than a week since my surgery -- it seems like forever. i have thus far resisted the urge to try some 1-handed knitting or spinning. incredeibly tempting, since i'm homebound with a zillion fun fiber projects laying around. but there's a lot of uncertainty vis a vis how this is going to heal, and i'd feel like a complete dumbass if a little knitting wound up causing, say, major surgery number 4. so i'm trying to have some restraint.

i've been getting to know my new sewing machine, however, since that's largely been book-related. and can i just say -- wow is this thing cool!! i learned how to thread it today, and practiced some very basic cutting and piecing. as i suspected, this new hobby is going to be very challenging in terms of precision and attention to detail. knitting and spinning are far more forgiving.

of course it's probably made worse by trying to cut fabric and guide stitches with one hand. i suspect i should leave it alone until i'm out of the sling, too. it's just too easy to start over-using the bad arm....

in the meantime, i guess i should start making notes or drawings to figure out all the things i'm going to make when i'm better. hard to believe it's time to start making xmas gifts, too! i might give my mom and some other non-spinning knitters handspun yarn. (all the spinners i know are much better than i am!).

i'm also thinking of trying to make some kind of funky quilted knitting/craft bags. i'm sure i'm getting ahead of myself, but now that i've discovered the wonderful wolrd of online fat quarter retailers, there are so many cool things i want to make! (oh thank god i've found another way to spend money!)

i'll probably make my mom-in-law and my 13-y.o. niece felted bags for xmas this year. lest she feel left out, maybe i can make mr purl,interrupted's sister some kind of felted holster. how about a nightstick cozy? oh, the possibilities are endless!

my 2 front teeth

lately i've become obsessed with the Strauch Petite P05 Belt Drive Drum Carder . It's probably a good thing i no longer live within driving distance of Carolina Homespun (or any other spinning-related shop). But my parents told me last week that they'd get me a "really spiffy" belated b-day present once surgery was over and things settled down. I wonder if this is spiffier than they'd had in mind...

If anyone has any experience using this or any other drum carder, I'd love to hear it. The Staunch Petite is supposedly very good for superfine fibers (the cloth has 128 teeth per inch, compared with, say, 72 on the Ashford). And it's a lot less expensive than the others i've seen (although it's more if you buy the "brush attachment", but you can always add that later). Anyway, that's what I'm thinking of.

I spent most of today lying on the couch watching movies and wishing the drugs the doc gave weren't causing me to break out in terrible itching fits. this morning we did leave the house for a short bit -- grabbed a mocha and a croissant at a great local coffeehouse (kaladi brothers) and then went next door to buy used quilting books at Title Wave Books. I was hoping they'd have something like "sewing machines for dummies," b/c all the intro quilting materials seem to assume a level of knowledge that i don't have.

Sadly, that big outing was pretty exhausting. I hope the hives, pain and fatigue start to simmer down soon!

If i make it outside of the house tomorrow I may see if i can get a basic sewung machine book at Joann Fabrics or Barnes & Noble. Otherwise I guess I'll order one.... My next door neighbor, who's about my age, also an attorney, and quilts, says the best way to figure it out is to just buy a bunch of fabric and thread and spend an evening screwing around with it. i can see her point, but I feel like i don't even know enough to do that much....

By the way, this is my new sewing machine. It both terrifies and delights me.

giant food for thought

from today's anchorage daily news:

Records set this year at the Alaska State Fair

• Watermelon: 168.6 pounds Scott Robb, Palmer. Previous record: 68.55 pounds, 2002.

• Pumpkin: 942 pounds. J.D. Megchelsen, Nikiski. Previous record: 707 pounds, 2004.

• Marrow (zucchini-type squash): 90.05 pounds. Dave Iles, North Pole. Previous record: 59 pounds, 1998.

• Winter squash: 569 pounds. Dave Iles, North Pole. Previous record: 303.5 pounds, 1993

• Parsnip: 4.25 pounds. Ron Castor, Palmer. Previous record: 3.81 pounds, 2004

• Corn height: 13'3". Dave Iles, North Pole. Previous record: 11'8", 2002.

• Table beet: 32.45 pounds. Ron Castor, Palmer. Previous record: 22.97 pounds, 2001

• White radish: 13.15 pounds. Scott Robb, Palmer. Previous record: 11.52 pounds, 2001.

a brand new me. or something like it.

i'm home from the hospital, alive and in not nearly as much pain as i'd expected. sadly, that's probably b/c the local anesthetic won't wear off for another few hours.

but they gave me a skin patch for nausea, so i'm not sick like i've been in past -- what a difference!!

the doc said it all went as well as can be expected, and he's optimistic about the recovery. i'm not sure how i'm going to negotiate life 1-handed for 8 weeks, but we'll see how it goes.

the good news is that the nurse said i can knit (just off to the side to accomodate the sling). i hope she's right!!

anyway, thanks for the kind comments and wishes. it means the world to me.