Sassy Does It

It’s true that the only fire I really know about at the moment is the flame on my blogiversary candle, but that’ll do.  It’s one year today since I started blogging here.  Happy #1 to me!

And I am in New England, finishing with my business travel and now attempting to unwind from my little coil of stress.

Let’s start with the good news: oh joy, I’ve not only selected my next project, but have managed to decide on and actually purchase the yarn to go with it.  This is big progress for me; at the rate I was obsessing over yarn colors I thought I’d never pull the trigger.

After my kill-me-now meetings ended this afternoon, I was out like a shot toward a surrogate East Coast LYS to get down to some business that was actually interesting.

I’ve decided to make Fifi (downloadable on Ravelry, pattern link) from French Girl Knits.  I just like the look of it - fairly sophisticated as a souped up tee but without too many frills that would keep it in the closet instead of on me this summer.  There’s a time for being practical in choosing projects that I’m supposed to eventually wear, sadly, since most of the time I’m dressed for work and not for play. 

That said, this little number does hug things nicely - yes, I mean in the boob area - so I think that’s a point in the sexy column.  Under a jacket it’ll be fine for work, and should I ever make it to a happy hour again, this will be one of those day-to-night pieces that are always getting featured in magazines like Cosmo (or so they tell me).

I’ve linked to A Little Loopy’s version, as I think hers is fabulous.  Just about all the Fifis on Ravelry look better than the hokey picture of French Girl’s official one on their website.

Given the Ravelry raving over Rowan Calmer, I decided not to sub the yarn but rather to knit it with reckless abandon as designed.  Apparently the soft and slightly stretchy-clinginess is to die for, honey.

So.  Then it came to color picking.

I guess the colorway selection for this fiber is nice enough, but it felt too pastelly for me, or if not too pastelly then too full of colors that just don’t work on the pale-shanks likes of me; I just can’t kick it with bright coral or yellow or turquoise.

After shooting many options down, I had left in contention the Garnet shade (492) and the Tree shade (500).  Those two I liked.  But oh, how to decide?

I hemmed and hawed over this for several days (Googling and Raveling images of Rowan colorways like a banshee, nearly making a decision, then not).  At times like these, common wisdom says to go to your LYS to actually see the colors with your own eyes.

Which I tried to do on Saturday. 

I started out with a glorious midday stroll with Bidie-In through the farmers’ market, where I saw this bike.  

Ah, another reason to love California.

After this, I meandered into the LYS nearby.  Not only did I receive aloof and slightly put-out service in response to a couple of inquiries, but I also got denied in the colorway department because they didn’t have the ones I wanted to see.  Poor selection, sloppy displays, and crappy attitude.  Great.

I exited stage left, harrumphing away like a petulant child until a glass of wine at the German pub down the street made the world right again.

The wine had sparkles in it, which made me even happier.  I know that really this is called sediment, but I told myself they were delicious minerals that made my wine nutritious.

Then this business trip came up.  And then the unexpected early finish today - aha! - an opportunity to try another store today.  I did the finger-walking thing first and after a few stores not picking up the phone in the middle of their business hours (hello? how do you expect to sell things if nobody’s bloody home?), I found one that not only answered the phone, but also had my Calmer in both colors that had made it through to the championship rounds.

So I went to shop.  And oh, did I drool!  What a lovely store:  A Good Yarn.  Super nice people, and the most impressive little collection of fibers I’ve seen in ages.  I lingered for over an hour - so decadent, but I did it…because I could.

Tree beat out Garnet, although it was a squeaker in the end.  I liked both finalists (both slightly less intense than they seemed online, which was good - part of my hesitation with both, based on pics, was too much saturation), but I’ve decided I need to knit more green things.  Tree was just the shade I wanted.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d bite the bullet for full retail price when online discounts are just so rightthere; but, after hanging around like a rash for so long in the shop, my save-the-Local-Yarn-Store conscience kicked in.  A few bucks’ difference isn’t going to kill me, but my ten bucks more-than-I’d-pay-online plus a bunch of other people’s ten bucks more-than-they’d-pay-online could keep that store in business.

But only because it would be a shame if a store like this one weren’t in business.  I’ve been empathizing with Clumsy Knitter’s entertaining and well-written rants (here and here) over the poor quality of LYSes lately; I swear, some of them make it so difficult to love them.

I digress.

In the midst of my decision to buy, I came up a skein short.  The LYS lady (with the help of a few regulars who’d wandered in) rooted around in the back room trying to find one more skein of Tree in the same dye lot. 

Just when I thought my do-good LYS-loyal intentions would come to nothing, the girls came up with the goods.  And I whipped out the credit card.  It felt good.

Then I left, but came back because I realized a few blocks away (already in traffic) that I’d left my bluetooth headset thingy in there (it had fallen out of my purse because, like a dork, I’d left the purse unzipped while knocking it over, multiple times, all over the store; I kept setting it down to free my arms for full range of yarn-groping movement).

Then, I left the shop again, for serious. 

And then.

I got stuck in nightmare gridlock.  Not your average back-up, but indeed a parking lot, a log jam - call it what you will.  Many many cars going absolutely nowhere, with no alternative routes emerging.

Did I know, as they were ringing up my yarn,  that I was two blocks from Fenway when the Red Sox game ended and started spewing fans?

No I did not.

Ninety minutes and many honking horns later, I made it past those few clogged blocks just in time to enjoy - ahhhh, the normal rush hour traffic still remaining between me and my hotel.

Got my knickers in a right twist, but tried to enjoy the pretty sunset lighting as I watched free-swinging non-gridlocked people running along the water (much faster than I was moving) next to the fluttering white sails of little boats.  This scene was easy to observe in detail since I was sitting very still in my car, budging not an inch in any direction for long stretches of time. 

Sigh.

Did I mention I got some soft, beautiful, tree-green yarn today?  Before I can unwind any of it it, I’ll need a cocktail to finish off the unwinding of me.  Let me go on and do that.

I’ll raise a toast to my blog’s birthday while I’m at it.  Ooo, and maybe have some cake.

Work has been sucking down my free time pretty hard.

I’m a little down for the count after a busy week on the road. We had a huge meeting, one for which I’d been planning strategy and logistics for months. Once it finally arrived, it was as expected - long hours, little sleep, lots of stress. Mixed with fun - can’t say I didn’t enjoy.

And, I’m happy to say that it went down smoothly - mission accomplished. But you know how it works - being able to sit back and enjoy the peace after this would be too easy.

As soon as I took my foot off the gas, my body reminded me that it had been working overtime to support my excessive demands. Within 90 minutes of wrapping my meeting, the tatters of my immune system raised the white flag.

The flu, or something resembling it, came home to roost.

But so it goes - I guess it’s my turn.

In between squirting that sinus-clearing stuff up my nose and enduring the general malaise of sore joints, I might get some knitting done.

Poor, lost-in-the-shuffle knitting. By the time I finish my projects, both of which are winterish, summer will be here.

I made good progress on Maizy’s socks on the plane back from England a couple of weeks ago. Then I realized I needed my 2-at-a-Time Socks book in front of me to remember the instructions for turning the heel. Winging it resulted in losing more time cleaning up the mess I made of it, so I just put it back in the bag and congratulated myself on finally finishing the length of the sock up until the heel (at long last).

Kymber’s birthday gift didn’t quite get done while I was still with her for her birthday in the UK. I made huge progress on it while I was there, but after a few days of turbo-knitting while half-looking people in the eye through my needles during conversation, I reconsidered.  Better than getting it done in time for her b-day, I decided, was to cozy up next to my friends with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and give our interaction my full attention while I still had the privilege of sitting righttherenexttothem.

In short: the Sheer Poncho is still not freaking done, but it has become more fabulous by the inch.

Since this photo, I decided to pull through a yarn stitch holder along the bottom of the poncho so that I could go ahead and knock off the cowl before continuing with more (possibly superfluous) length. It’ll be easier to tell how long it needs to be once the cowl is on, I think.

Or maybe I was just bored with the body and hungry for the more frequent increases of the cowl.

I think I’ll have plenty of yarn, but I’d rather finish the cowl with confidence that I can make it as bulky and swishy as I want and not worry about how much I’ll need for the rest of the body length.

So. Er, I guess that’s it on the knitting.

In the absence of any other knitting progress, I’ll post a few photies from my vacation.

First, I was in the north of England with Kymber and her blossoming fam (you’ll remember the recent addition of Little K, the recipient of Curlicue). In spite of the general chilly drizzly weather at this time of year along the northeast coast of England, we had some beautiful days of walking. The area near the Scottish border has lots of places to explore - castles and rocky coastlines and sea-hugging little villages.

One of these is a tiny island called Lindisfarne - complete with just such a village and a castle that were fun to take in on a sunny, crisp winter day. This is a tidal island, meaning that you can access it only by driving across the sandy strip around it from the mainland when the tide is out. No bridge. Just a tidal table that tells you what time you won’t get stuck.

It’s also called Holy Island - a place rooted in religious history beginning with the founding of a monastery there in 635 AD. The ruins of a comparatively new-fangled priory that was built in 1150 stand there today.

We meandered around and made our way out to the castle. I accidentally wandered a little too close to a few sheep who freaked me out with baa-ing and dirty looks, but I guess it could be interpreted as me freaking them out first. I’m not good with animals - there, I said it.

We embarked on what really should be coined a Sticky Toffee Tour while in the North. Pretty much every meal needed to end with sticky toffee pudding. If there was a chance that the restaurant or pub we were considering for lunch did not offer such goodness, well, move it along, folks. We’ll take our bulging waistlines to the next place until we’re satisfied.

On top of the sticky toffee, I consumed a whole lot of cheese and chocolate, not to mention the wine and Irish coffees.

Oh yeah…I brought home a little extra jiggle with me from this holiday.

Before I left England I swung through London to see my pals there, and it was so lovely to see them.  Frankly, though, what I’ll remember most from this visit will be the snow. Not that there isn’t a smattering of snow from time to time in London, but it’s very rare to have inches and inches fall down and stick.

I was walking back to the neighborhood where I was staying on the last night there when the snow that had flurried earlier in the day started to pick up. Even after I popped into a pub for an hour (oh joy, a pint, my laptop, my knitting, and happy pub-goers chatting around me - does it get better?), the snow kept coming.

After a gratuitous parmesan-filled dinner at a little Italian place, I emerged on the street again. Soft, heavy snowflakes that stayed on my nose and eyelashes, just like Julie Andrews likes them. What fun! Even the locals were snapping pictures; flashes were coming out of flats all the way down the street as people stuck their heads out windows to watch the happenings below.

I’d taken a few pics earlier when the snow started accummulating, but by the time dinner was done it was even more important to capture for posterity. Too bad my camera battery died and I didn’t snap as many more as I might have done, but the memory of the thick flakes piling up all over - so outside of their natural habitat! - will stay with me.

In the morning, I was still happy but the natives were restless. It was beautiful, to be sure - nearly six inches on top of everything - but the fun had stopped for much of London. Nothing runs quite the same way with this kind of “adverse weather” (as the Voice of God making announcements in the tube called it). It was nearly impossible to get to Heathrow, but I did manage to sleuth my way there to try to catch my flight out that day. Much of the airport was closed altogether, and most of my day was shot with travel delays…but it was worth it. The snow was just so cool. Cold, even. Ha.

OK. Enough blogging. Back to knitting. Wish me luck finishing something.