Again No Pics

I wish I could post photos of how awesome the socks I knitted look with my Nike mary janes today. Despite all the problems and errors I am feeling fairly stoked with pride everytime I look down and see the blue and green stripes on my feet. Of course if someone even glances at me I am like, "Hey, did you see the socks I knitted?" I am sure by the end of the day my co-irkers are going to hate hearing it. Too bad!

Socks

I finally, after a year, finished my first pair of socks. I would like to jump and trumpet with pride at my success, but I will just say "yay" instead. The second sock was a different gauge from the first. The first was actually too slouchy on my foot, so the second one is smaller. And tragedy of tragedies as I was sealing up the toe I dropped two stitches. And of course they were the decrease stitches. And did I mention how much I hated the cotton blend yarn I picked out for the socks. Yikes, it was a mess. But D for done and onward to better socks and of course my holiday knitting.

Broken

My beloved Penelope (what I call my computer) is so broken. I keep getting multiply error messages followed by the blue screen of death. It sucks. I keep trying to remove the bugs that are causing the problem, but tenaciously I can't remove the smut. Again it sucks. I am going to hand over my dear Penelope to a friend who may be able to clean her up and save her hard drive. In the meantime, I wonder what I did before the Internet. I think of things I want to block about, like the sock I will finish knitting tonight. Or the recent Bread Company Tour I did of the St Louis area. But alas, I am at work (LIBRARY HELL). Again I say it sucks.

YIKES!

My computer is sick, it keeps giving me the blue screen of death. In other words I am having technical difficulties and can only post at work. Not the best scenario. Be patient situation will improve soon.

Strike a Pose

One day I found myself with a little time before I was suppose to meet some friends at Dewey's Pizza in Kirkwood. Rather than hang out in front of the restaurant, like a pizza junkie waiting for a fix, I walked down the block to the Kirkwood Public Library and decided to look at their knitting book selection. I found a whole cache of bound Vogue Knitting Magazines from the 1990s. I fondled the periodicals, but did not have the leisure to thumb through them and see what treasures of knitting gems awaited me between the covers. Fast forward about four months and lo there I was with the time to do just that. I gathered the stack up and found a sunny alcove and began the loving look through the pages.

I found 5 that I needed to get to know better, with my municipal library card I borrowed these babies. After two weeks with the VKs I decided, it is a good thing the nineties are over. There were some horrid fun fur sweaters and plaid, machine knitted suits that needed to die an early death sandwiched between the covers. The southwest themed sweaters only lacked the howling coyote, to truly be awful. But I also found some articles that I really enjoyed.The article with a very young Lily Chin, sporting a flip was particularly inspiring. She talks about learning to knit and then learning to rebel against all the rules of knitting. She reminded me of one of my knitting mentors, which of course made me spend some time at Office Max today making copies of selected articles for said mentor.

Despite some awful designs, some are as beautiful today as they were when first published. Timeless, would be the word for the above Lily Chin original. I love the soft, prettiness of the yarn and how it works with the cables. Of course, I have yet to knit anything out of a VK, my skill level is just not there yet. One day I hope to knit something just as beautiful from VK, one day.

I also liked the articles about chenille yarns, the Shetland Islands, and the article about knitting and literature was very charming. The journalist points out that in the story, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Holly Golightly does not knit, her roommate does. Hmmm, Hollywood take liberties, never. All in all I have enjoyed my time with these magazines. It is going to be hard to return them.

Et tu...

In the shortest post of my blog I will say with umbrage, ET TU SUGAR'N CREAM? There is nothing I hate more than merrily knitting along and finding a knot. Especially when it is so unexpected.

Nashville, Part Deux

So last week in the life and times of the knitting obsessed, our two heroines took themselves to the land of Opry to bask in the presence of the Mason-Dixon Knits twosome. You heard the gushy, gush about how fabulous it was and how I was on their national blog, blah-blah stuff. So famous knitters aside. I had a great trip with my beloved Cuz. Above she is showing off her almost finished shawl to some super nice knitters from eastern Tennessee.
I can't remember this lady's name, but she was working on some socks. She scooted right over to make room for the us while we waited for the room set aside for our group.
The talented Tara (http://learningfromchavah.blogspot.com/) was also working on these socks for her husband. They are Seminole football fans and she wanted to knit her hubby some Nole socks. Okay that is not was is so astounding about these socks, cause I could care less about football. She dyed the socks herself and even mixed the dye from her own kool-aid recipe. These colors very vibrant and were striping up like a dream. It is funny beloved Cuz and I used the same yarn and kool-aid, we even followed the same directions. Trust me our yarn did not come out looking this good.
The equally talented Lindsey was working on this adorable duck-billed hat. She had already finished a pair of duck-footed booties to match the hat. Wish I could post a photo of them, those booties are just so damn cute. It amazes me the endless variety of things that people knit.
Not only was the knitting fabulous, but the food was equally as good. We stopped at a yarn store Angel Hair Yarn (http://www.angelhairyarn.com/) and after ohhhing and ahhhing over their shop, the lovely knit divas sent beloved Cuz and I over to the Noshvile Delicatessen(http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=noshville+delicatessen&fr=yfp-t-305-s&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8) for lunch. We did some serious eating here, I had a truly tasty rueben and beloved Cuz had some concoction that had her lips smacking for awhile. I wish I could find someplace that yummy in St Louis. On the way out of town we stopped at Jacks and had some seriously good bar-b-que served up by some of the nicest people I have ever met. If I had to use one word to describe the people I met in Nashville it would be welcoming. I can't wait until the next time I get to visit that fair city.

The only really negative thing that happened was the four hour traffic jam and the accident which slowed our egress out of town. But I can't blame the good people of Nashville for that one, we should have just stayed an extra night. The trip's timing though couldn't have been better, it was a much needed balm on my soul.