Get yer Japanese yarn here! (Prize alert!)

So I'm not finding much time to post about my trip (due to the fact that I had a gazillion things to send out as soon as I got back combined with a sick kid and a kid who's insanely jealous of my laptop...), so I thought I'd get the yarn talk out of the way since I know that's probably what y'all are most interested in anyway - am I right?

The first yarn I found was in a big department store called Matsuyo, in the Ginza shopping district. We didn't spend too much time in the store since the kids were going out of their minds after a morning of sightseeing, but the yarn section wasn't very big anyway.



Not exactly an entire LYS, but it was cool to see yarn in a department store setting. This is where I picked up my two Japanese stitch dictionaries along with some Puppy yarn:



This looks to be one of the higher-end Japanese yarns. I don't know if it's available in the US or not (I don't remember seeing it, but that doesn't necessarily mean much since I have the memory of a gnat). The ball bands are all in Japanese, so I can't tell you exactly what they are - the pink is Alpaca (I'm assuming, since it's called Alpaca Rimisto on the ball band), I'm guessing the cranberry is wool, and the multicolored looks to be a wool-mohair blend or something like that.

Interestingly, there weren't any American yarns at either of the shops I went to. The department store had a lot of high-end European yarns like Rowan and Anny Blatt, and the craft store (which I'll get to in a minute) had Australian yarn but nothing from the US.

My second stop (which was barely fit in amongst all the other things we tried to do) was a big craft store called Okadaya. Owen & I ventured out to find this on our own while Anthony, Bill and Sydney went to stand in line at Krispy Kreme. This was near Shinjuku station, which is pretty close to the Park Hyatt hotel in Lost in Translation. We first went to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office, which has a free observatory and some great views.







It's also where the Tokyo Marathon started - here is a view of the approximate starting line:



Bill barely recognized it empty - the start of the marathon was insanely crowded (30,000 people ran it).

After enjoying the view and shopping at the super-cool Hello Kitty-filled toy store in the observatory, I needed to get to the other side of the Shinjuku train station to get to Okadaya. This is not as easy as it sounds, and I ended up winding through this little alley of shops which led to a tunnel under the train tracks. I would've been a lot more nervous if Tokyo wasn't such a safe city! I ended up on the other side with only a vague idea of where Okadaya might be. I wandered around a bit aimlessly, looking for the police station where I could ask for directions if I didn't spot Okadaya on my own.

I finally got to the police stand and asked the officer where Okadaya was. He started speaking Japanese a million miles a minute (although it wouldn't have helped even if he'd been talking slowly) and pointed behind me.



It's not quite as obvious in the picture (at the top of the photo, smack in the center, is a big Okadaya sign), but in person it was like a huge flashing billboard right in front of my nose. I never would've thought to look up to find the store sign! I was thinking it was a little hole-in-the-wall shop, not a huge building. I managed to find the back entrance, which was down an alley, and headed up to the 5th floor (fortunately they had English on their directory, unlike Matsuyo, which did not!).

Okadaya is sort of like a Jo-Ann Fabrics or Michaels, except covering like 7 floors. I didn't stop to explore all the other floors due to limited time but saw buttons, beads, fabrics, ribbons and a bunch of other stuff as I headed up to yarn.

Here are a couple of pics taken in stealth mode (I wasn't sure if the sign of a flashing camera with a slash through it meant no flash photography, or no photography at all, so I tried to take these as surreptitiously as possible).





In addition to these walls full of yarn, they had a section of really cool felting kits (as in, hand-felting and needle-felting, not knitted felting) and some funky crocheted animal kits. I am kicking myself for not getting any of these, but I was a little afraid of trying to make something with Japanese-only instructions! Instead, I scoured the aisles for the most exotic yarn I could find, and came home with these:



The purply stuff at the top was swatched up into socks and was the closest I could find to sock yarn. The stuff right smack in the middle is from the same company and looks to be mohair and something else (it's got 30% of the same thing that the multicolor yarn from Matsuyo had 20% of, and 70% of what the tan ball just to the left of it has, but since I can't figure out what that one is, either, that doesn't really help!). The blue and tan yarns off to the left are REALLY interesting - the blue is some kind of flat ribbon yarn that looks almost like raffia. The tan is 50% of what's in the blue and 50% of what's in the fuzzy stuff just above it. Sort of like a logic puzzle, isn't it? Then there's some good old Noro, which I grabbed because I thought the color was so pretty. This one is made of stuff that isn't in any of the other yarns and I have NO idea what it might be.

I also tried to find some knitting tools that had Japanese writing on them, and those little needle cases at the bottom were the best I could come up with. I got an extra, so I'm going to have a little contest - anyone who comments on this post that they want Japanese swag by Friday will get entered into a drawing for one of the needle holders and their choice of one ball of any of the yarn I brought back.

Now on to some thank-yous! First, I returned home to a great package from my SP9, although she was supposed to include her reveal and she didn't! So, SP9, if you're reading this, please tell me where I can find your blog!!! Here's what I found when I opened the box:



Two giant balls of yarn (yes, one of those is made up of strips of plastic bags, but that is because my fabulous pal included directions for making the recycled plastic bag tote from Knitty Gritty along with handles to use for it - too cool! I can't imagine how long it took my pal to wrap these balls up (and I will say it took a fair amount of time to unwrap them - especially for an impatient paper-tearing unwrapper like myself), but what a fabulous idea! Now I just need to find the time to sort through all this...



As you can see, the cat was very enamored of this process as well. Once I got everything unwrapped, I was rewarded with this lovely swag:



Some nice, hefty wool yarn, a ball of Opal sock yarn (that's the blue & white in the back), some Confetti sock yarn, some Rayflax from Wool in the Woods (that's the pretty pastel stuff off to the right of the Confetti), and a bunch of Burts Bee's goodies, a couple of Knitters Rock Magnets (one says Knit, one says Purl) and two toys for the kids that couldn't have been more perfect - a princess crown and earrings for Sydney and a tractor book with wheels for Owen. They both were instantly obsessed with their new toys. Thanks again, pal!!!

I also owe a photo of my Sockret Pal's last package, but unfortunately I wasn't quick enough and the pieces have been scattered to all corners of the house (or devoured, which was the fate of the chocolate). Sydney especially loved every single thing in the box, which was Valentine-themed, and is putting it all to good use. I salvaged one thing for myself, and it was the best thing - a ball of Tofutsies sock yarn!



I can, of course, only show you a sock sole, but isn't it pretty? I really love this stuff! I wasn't so sure about it since it doesn't feel that soft to me in the ball and I wasn't hugely impressed with the swatches I got to fondle at TNNA. While I absolutely love the whole concept behind SWTC's alt plant-fiber yarns, they often feel kind of unpleasant to me. Knitting with this stuff, however, is a dream. It's a little bit splitty, but I just adore the way my socks are turning out. They are actually quite soft. I would DEFINITELY knit with this yarn again.

Unfortunately, I can't find my Sockret Pal's card to link to her, but I will as soon as I get my desk cleared off. That could be next week, or it could be next year. Just call me little miss organized!

Now, it has taken me literally all day to write this post. Owen really does hate my laptop, and to prove it, here's what he did to it when I left him unsupervised in my office for ten minutes:



Yup, those are keys lying in pieces around my computer! He's done this several times before, and I'm getting very good at putting them back on, but the first time he pulled these off I almost had an aneurysm. That child is precocious, to put it kindly...

Ugh...jet lag.

We've been fighting jet lag since we got home, but last night we officially lost the battle. We thought we were doing well - both kids were asleep in bed before 10 pm. I was finishing up a couple of submissions that need to be sent out today, and Bill was heading upstairs to join the snoozers. Then, disaster struck. Owen woke up, deciding that what he'd just had was his afternoon nap. After about two hours of trying to get him back to sleep, Sydney woke up.

Bill took Owen downstairs while I tried to get Sydney back to sleep. She tossed and turned and whimpered for about two hours (she also ended up with a 103 degree fever, which may have been the reason why she woke up in the first place), and then she decided she was done trying to go back to sleep and we went downstairs to join the boys.

Around 4 am, the kids finally wore down and we were all able to get to sleep. Poor Bill had to get up 3 hours later to go to work, and Sydney woke up crying shortly thereafter, hot with fever again.

Both the kids are snoozing now, but of course I can't get back to sleep despite only getting about four hours last night. Okay, I spoke too soon - I hear someone getting up...and here comes Sydney, looking miserable and sleepy. Between the time change and the constant illness, we are a wreck here at Chez Gardiner!

Where do I start?

I don't even know where to begin talking about the trip. It was amazing, challenging (with the kids) and hard to leave even as I was very glad to be heading home. A few of the rockin'est things about Tokyo:

1. The subway system, which is fast, comfortable (apart from the crush at rush hour), and will get you pretty much anywhere you need to go.
2. Heated toilet seats!
3. The vending machines, which are everywhere and sell hot drinks like cocoa, tea and corn soup in addition to sodas.
4. The people are extremely polite, friendly, and love kids.
5. Tokyo is clean, safe and has just the right amount of Asian exotic-ness. I loved my trip to China, but it felt a little bit like visiting another planet. Tokyo is much more like home but with a different alphabet.

Here we are at the airport, about to embark on the never-ending bus ride from hell (from the airport to our friends' apartment).



I was already a bit sick from the bumpy plane landing, and this bus trip through the streets of the city put me almost over the edge. Fortunately, all I had to do that evening was sit around and go to bed early. It didn't help that Owen was trying to get away from me so he could run down the bus aisle for pretty much the entire trip. This would be a recurring theme throughout the trip (bus aisle, subway aisle, sidewalk crowded with marathon spectators, crowded subway platform...you name it, and Owen was ready to run away from me on it!).

Saturday was spent trying to recover from jet lag with a short field trip to Tokyo Dome City so the guys could pick up their marathon packets. There is a small amusement park there with an insane roller coaster (which nobody rode, since the kids were too short and I'm too prone to motion sickness):





The kids had a fabulous time on the kiddie rides, including this thing which bounced them up and down:



And the teacups:





I had to ride with Owen due to his small stature. He spent most of the ride trying to climb out of the teacup, and I spent it trying not to barf. Fun stuff! After spinning ourselves silly, we went into a crazy arcade filled with wacky electronic games/rides/toys.



Most of them, like this little train thing, were a combination of all three. It rode back and forth along a track while playing music, flashing lights, and encouraging kiddos to push buttons to play some incomprehensible game. We liked these, since they were only 1-200 yen instead of the 1000+ yen that the bigger rides cost.

After we'd spent all of our 100 yen coins, we headed to Bubba Gump's to meet up with the boys for lunch.



I know, it's kind of silly to eat at an American restaurant chain on our first day in Japan, but I've never been a snob about only eating local food. I've eaten at McDonalds on three different continents (although not at all on this trip), and I was quite happy to find there was a Starbucks a block away from the Zeller's apartment in Tokyo. We did get our fair share of authentic Japanese food, but we ate Vietnamese, Indian and Korean as well. It's all good!

After lunch, we rode the gigantic ferris wheel called The Big O. It's kind of cool since it doesn't have a hub or spokes, and the roller coaster goes through the middle of it. I was a little uncomfortable for the first 1/4 of the ride or so since I'm deathly afraid of heights, but this thing is seriously built and I managed to actually enjoy myself for most of the ride. It didn't bother the kids in the least.



Here are the Zellers in the next car:



That's all I have energy for now, so the saga will continue in my next post. Also, I've got a great package from my SP9 which I've got pics of for next time as well as a big thank-you for my Sockret Pal. I've got the best pals!

Headin' home...

Blogger is currently in Japanese on this computer, so we'll see what happens when I post. We may end up with a Japanese blog for a little while! We are about to head off to the airport and the 10-hour flight home (after a 2-hour bus ride and a nice long wait for the plane to depart). Yesterday we visited Hakone, which is a scenic area about 90-minutes west of Tokyo. We were lucky enough to catch a short glimpse of a snow-covered Mt. Fuji from the train before it was swallowed back up by haze. We had a nice enough day, although I've decided that our vacation pace has been much too frantic for a not-quite-2-year-old. Owen has spent most of our many train rides screaming his head off. Despite that, I will have great memories of this trip.

Time to make the final sweep of the apartment to make sure that we haven't left anything behind. I will have many, many pictures and tales of adventure (and even some Japanese yarn) to show you when we get back and recover from the flight home. I'll see you all stateside!

Konichiwa!

This will be short, but I just wanted to post a short report from the front. Tokyo rocks! We all love it here and are having such a great time. Bill ran the marathon in 3:42:49, which was nicely under his goal of 3:45:00. This despite freezing cold pouring rain all morning on Sunday. The rain didn't seem to hurt the marathoners (Anthony missed his goal of 3:10:00, but easily qualified for the Boston Marathon, which was his bigger goal, with a time of 3:19:xx), but it didn't do much for us watching the marathon with the kids! After a three-train ride to the 5k mark with two screaming, cranky kids (one of whom was walking slower than molasses and the other who kept trying to run away), we decided that kids, rain and marathon-watching just don't mix. Sadly, Bill didn't know we'd gone back to the apartment and spent the whole run scanning the crowd for us. Fortunately it didn't hurt his time at all!

I even got in a bit of yarn shopping yesterday at the big department store Matsuyo. I got a few balls of Puppy brand yarn as well as two Japanese stitch dictionaries. The yarn section was small but very nice (lots of Rowan but no Noro - go figure!). Tomorrow we are going to try to hit a bigger yarn shop.

Today we are off to the aquarium and hopefully will finally get some sushi for lunch. Since we've been here we've eaten American, Vietnamese and Mexican but very little Japanese. I did get some sukiyaki for lunch yesterday, which was amazing. I was a little leery about dipping the cooked meat into the bowl of raw egg before eating it, but I decided to go for it and it was quite tasty.

Gotta run - I will try to post once more before we leave, and when we get back I will have a gazillion pictures to share. I can't remember how to say goodbye in Japanese, so I'll leave you with the one word I have been saying a lot - arigato!

Oh, no!

I am paralyzed with fear this morning - not by the 10-hour plane ride with two small, unruly children, or the anticipation of fumbling our way around a foreign country...

No, the fear that is putting butterflies in my stomach this morning is - did I pack enough knitting? Will two bags and two pairs of socks keep me occupied the entire week? I could never knit that much during a normal week at home, but we'll be in a place where the kids have their friends to play with and there are two more adults to help keep them distracted. Maybe I should pack yarn for a sweater, just in case?

Okay, I'm taking a deep breath, packing a couple of (gasp) books (pleasure reading - not stitch dictionaries!) and reminding myself that they do sell yarn in Japan.

Happy Valenstine Day

Sydney cracks us up constantly by referring to Feb 14th as "Valenstine Day". She had a delightful time gorging herself on chocolate pretty much all day long. I hope all of you had a great day - just wanted to drop in briefly before I head off for a week. I will have internet access in Tokyo, but I'm not sure how often or if I will even have time to blog. Prepare yourselves for a nice long post when we get back!

My daughter also cracked me up the other day when she informed me as I was picking her up from school "Savannah's my best friend and she's coming to my birthday party, but not Laura because she thinks 'butt' is a bad word." I can't make this stuff up.

Quick pic of Wandering Cable Socks heel flap...

I just found this pic of the cool cabled heel flap of the Wandering Cable Socks. It was way back in my July pics (since that's when the sock was due to Interweave) and I'd totally forgotten about it.

Sorry about the poor picture quality - I'm always so excited to get my designs sent in and professionally photographed I neglect to take decent pictures of them myself! I have a side view of the pair, but the picture is so crummy I'm not even going to post it here. Unfortunately you can't see any of the detail, so it would be pointless. I guess you'll just have to knit some yourself to see what they really look like from the back...

Also, I think I figured out why they look so short on the model's legs in that picture - I accidentally had 12" instead of 14" for the height of the leg in the pattern that I sent to Yvonne when she knit the sample socks! They did correct it in the published pattern so it should fit longer legs (and of course you can always make a longer heel flap it you need to). D'oh! Thank goodness for creative photography...

See, I told you this was a knitting blog!

A little of dis, a little of dat...

Okay, prepare yourselves for a post that's all over the place. I'm going to try putting section headings in bold, just for a little bit of coherency (yes, I know that's not really a word - at least I don't think it is...). I've just got so darn much to say! Who knew that once SAM2 was over, and the threat of sock updates was no longer over my head (the new format is da BOMB, by the way), the floodgates would open.

Knitting for a Good Cause
I've been meaning to post about this for days, but never remembered when I was anywhere near a computer (why is it that all of my best ideas come to me in the car, but leave me as soon as I turn the engine off?). My dear blog friend Sonya and her husband just learned that he has cancer. The wonderful, generous Rebekah immediately started a Blanket of Hope for Sonya & Kevin.



The only requirement is that the pieces be wool. They can be any shape, size, color and don't need to be superwash. Rebekah will take everything we send to her and piece it together into a wonderful work of art. I can't wait to see the finished product! And the no specific shape requirement means that I can dig through my bag of swatches to see if I can find any flat wool pieces to fit in (and knit with any of my stash wool scraps). I am also offering a sock kit up as one of the prizes that Rebekah is giving away to participants.

Boobies for Babies
There is a great link that has been making its way around the blogosphere (although I first received it from a non-blogger friend) about a hospital in the UK that is using knitted boobs to help moms learn how to breastfeed correctly. After the link was sent to the MomMA mailing list, an LC immediately wrote back and said that the Nursing Mother's Counsel could use some knitted breasts to help with their classes. I bet there are plenty of other places who could use some knitted boobs as well.



When I get back from Japan, I'd like to get a charity knitting project going to knit some boobs for babes. Who's with me? Let me know if you'd like to knit OR if you know of any place who might be able to use knitted boobs. My dream is to get the Harlot involved and end up with a mountain of knitted boobs in my living room, just waiting for new & expectant moms to use to help master that magical perfect latch. Of course, we all know that I need another project like I need a hole in the head...

Get a Haircut!
I have this thing about getting my hair cut. It's not that I don't like to do it - it just gets pushed to the very bottom of the priority list. I don't have bangs or layers or terrible split ends, so cutting my hair seems like something that can be put off. Indefinitely. I haven't gotten my hair cut since the fall of 2004, before we moved to Oregon. Until last night.

Before:


After:


The Fallout:


The Result:


(Notice how the kids, who both insisted on being in the picture, are not at all interested in posing nicely...) You can't really tell what it looks like since it's still wet in this pic, but I think it looks great (as does Bill). Guess who my stylist was. Bill! Yup, I let my husband cut my hair off. And he did a darn good job! We were both pretty nervous, but it's not that hard to cut straight across (at least, it's not that hard when you have a cooperative patient who's not squirming and trying to get the scissors away from you). Think of all the money we'll save on haircuts! And if Bill ever loses his job, he'll have a skill to fall back on.

The only bad thing about this new hair length is that I no longer will be able to go to bed with wet hair and wake up with it decent the next morning, but think of all the shampoo I'll save!

Speaking of the kids, they were digging out some old winter gear last night, and look what we found - the world's cutest knitted hat! This is from an old Knitty Gritty episode that featured the faux aviator hat and baby Uggs. The booties have long since been outgrown, but that hat still fits great!



Of course, it's impossible to get a decent picture with the children who are unable to stand still for two seconds.



Sydney insisted in showing off her single mitten for the camera.



She loves seeing herself on camera. I'll take a picture of her, she'll insist on looking at it and then she'll giggle hysterically at herself on the screen. What a ham!

Around the Neighborhood
I took my camera out again today (and managed to remember the memory card this time). Here's the view of the golf course w/ Mt. Tabor in the background. Isn't it gorgeous?



This is the view that the row of houses on the other side of the street has. Aren't they lucky? Of course, I took the photo at just the right angle. The panoramic view is a bit marred by this sign:



As if it wasn't obvious that you aren't supposed to dump your trash off the side of the hill here.

In the spirit of Project Spectrum (since I'm obviously not going to get PS-themed knitting projects done each month), I'm going to try to photograph a uniquely-colored house that matches the PS colors each month. There are a ton of very interestingly painted houses in Portland. Here's my favorite blue one:



Now, I'm much too conservative to ever paint a house that color, but it sure makes for interesting viewing!

A Little Neighborhood Magic
Someone has been putting these little gems up all over our neighborhood:



Yes, that's a tiny toy horse, attached to a ring that's set in the curb. I'm not sure what the rings are for - are they left over from horse-and-buggy days and actually meant to have horses tied to them? Or are they there for some other reason? Regardless, there are tiny horses all over the place in about a five-block radius. I've seen them in other spots around the city as well, but they seem to be particularly concentrated in this little area right near us.

I have to smile every time I drive past one of them - it adds a little magic to what would otherwise be a boring old curb!

In our next post, stay tuned for evidence that this is indeed a knitting blog (even though there is precious little knitting I can actually show you)...

SAM2 prizes & stats

Well, I just got the SAM2 prizes dug out of my stash and drew the big prize winners. I've also got winners for December and January, along with our Brownie Point winner and our winner drawn from all the folks who knit socks in each of the six months. As a little something extra, I'm also giving all of our socks-in-each-month folks a $5 gift certificate for GYW for being such awesome sock knitters.

But first, here are a few statistics about this round. There were 145 active participants (as in, people who signed up and knit at least one pair of socks). There were a whopping 523 pairs of finished monthly socks, along with a gazillion brownie points. That's a whole lotta socks! There were 31 people who knit a pair in each of the six months. Wow! If I can really get my act together, I'm going to start a sock "hall of fame" for those folks who knit six pairs of socks during one of the SAMs.

We'll do the smaller prizes first. Our December winner is Adrienne, and our January winner is Jenn. You'll each get some random offering from my stash (folks will have to visit your blogs to see what it is because my camera battery died before I could take pics). Next, our prize winner drawn from the folks who knit all six monthly pairs is Pat Q! Pat will get her choice of sock kits from GYW.

Now, on to our big winners! The first set of six pairs-worth of sock yarn goes to...Mary! Here is her prize pack:



The three pairs on the top are all random Knit Picks yarn. The bottom left is Koigu, in the middle is Chewy Spaghetti Succulent and on the right is Swamp Water from The Sweet Sheep.

The second prize pack goes to...Ginger! Here's what she gets:



There's more Knit Picks (yes, I got a bunch on sale - running this knit-along can get expensive!), more Koigu, more Sweet Sheep and a little hank of Brooklyn Handspun thrown in for good measure.

Sorry, Christy - you still didn't get drawn. I tried my hardest, but the random number generator just didn't respond to my brain waves (and I'm not about to delve into the seedy world of knit-along prize-fixing). You will definitely get a spot in the SAM hall-of-fame, though!

Thanks for socking-along, guys! Winners, please e-mail me your addresses ASAP so that I can get your sock yarn out of my house and head off some eye-rolling from my husband... Also, if you knit all six socks, please e-mail me so I can get you your gift certificates. I will try to track you all down, but I can't make any promises. Also, I apologize for all the GYW prizes I'm giving - I'm honestly not using this as an opportunity to time-share sales-pitch you all. It's just easy for me since it's here in front of me and it beats paying retail!

Isn't it knit-tastic?

I couldn't come up with a title for this post (does anyone else despise coming up with names for things? I am so bad at it), so wysiwyg. If you don't like it, well...neither do I, but it's the best I could do. Give me a break - I'm all hopped up on homeopathic cold medicine.

Thanks again for all your encouraging comments on the Interweave socks. I'm still disappointed that they didn't get more coverage in the print mag, but it looks like folks are finding them and liking them, so that's all that really matters. My Fall socks have a teeny little chart, so hopefully they won't get bumped due to space issues. I've come up with two other sock swatches, one for Interweave and one for Blue Moon, that I'm totally proud of. We'll see what happens when I send them off for others to judge!

I should be going to bed now - I'm totally exhausted. It seems like I turn the tv in our bedroom on every night, just to see what's on and watch for a little bit before I go to bed. Bad idea. Last night I got totally sucked in to North Country and had to watch to the end. That movie is just so satisfying - if you haven't seen it, you really should. It's the kind of movie that is so incredibly frustrating all the way through but the ending makes it all worthwhile because it's so...well, for lack of a better word that hasn't been used before in this paragraph...satisfying!

On a totally different subject, I took my camera with me this morning to get a couple pictures I've been meaning to take for ages. I found a beautiful vista looking over a golf course towards Mt. Tabor, with clouds and pine trees and a pond, but when I turned my camera on I got a nice little message - no memory card. D'oh! So I had to come home and take my first pictures for Project Spectrum here instead. First, the yarn I just got in the mail from Mama-E - it's called Arctic Tundra, it's sport weight, and I love it:



BTW, we are going to have two very exciting exclusive colorways coming into the shop from Mama-E very soon, along with a couple sport weight colors from Chewy Spaghetti. Yay!

Next, I was wandering around the kitchen and noticed that my new teapot (picked up at Ikea on our trip home from San Juan island) is in PS colors. Here it is, cozying up to my yarn. Hmm...think it wants me to knit it a tea cozy?



Curious about those plastic spoons in the background? Well, this is what happens when Bill and I are both too tired/sick/apathetic to supervise our children in the kitchen:



Lately they've been entertaining themselves by bypassing the child locks on a couple of our kitchen drawers and digging out everything they can find. Tonight they got into a couple packs of gum (not sure how much Owen swallowed before we caught him red-handed, but I'm assuming that a couple pieces of gum won't kill him) along with a package of plastic spoons. Sydney was never this bad when she was Owen's age, but she's terrible now that she has her little partner in crime (on whom she tries to blame everything - her favorite phrase is "Owen teached me how to do it").

Speaking of criminals, once again my time is up. Someone is trying to climb into my lap and get ahold of the stapler.

Thanks for the lemonade, guys!

Thank you all for your encouraging comments on my little pity-party post. What do you all think of the Knits redesign? It seems like they're copying Vogue Knitting, which in my opinion is a mistake. I loved the old layout of the magazine, but maybe I'm just resistant to change. Anyone? Anyone?

In other exciting news, I ran 3 miles yesterday in 36 minutes. I took nearly 2 minutes per mile off my pace from when I ran my 5k in December. It was great - I actually felt like a runner!

Uh, oh, the wee troublemaker has discovered me in the office and run in and grabbed the scissors. I'd better grab him before he cuts up my knitting...

In with a whisper...

Well, my Spring Interweave Knits arrived today. I immediately tore through it, trying to find my socks. Unfortunately, my Interweave debut is much more of a whisper than a roar... I'm not even sure if I can say that I've been published in Knits, because I didn't make the index or even a mention as a web-only project (like they did for the staff projects, which are also web-only). The only mention of them is in an ad for the Interweave website on p. 117, and it doesn't even tell you where to find the pattern. Granted, they are on the front page when you go to the Knits website, but you have to scroll down to see them. Sigh. Since they're so difficult to find, here's a linked pic for you:



I guess I should be happy that I had a pattern accepted by Interweave in the first place, but this isn't exactly the way I pictured it being published! It makes me wonder if everything that Pam said about everyone at Knits loving these socks was just lip service to save my feelings or something. It's also a little frustrating that she wanted them as knee-highs, but the chart to do the back-of-leg decreases (which wouldn't be necessary if they were regular-height socks) is what kept getting them bumped from the magazine (if indeed they didn't get included because of the size of the charts). Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and she may not have asked for knee-highs if she'd realized the chart was going to get so huge.

Anyway, I just need to vent a little. We'll see what happens with the socks they accepted for the Fall issue - hopefully I'll be a little more successful with them! They obviously don't hate my socks because I got a second pair accepted, but it's hard not to feel a little bad when I was SO looking forward to seeing them in print in my favorite mag. That's life, I guess!

To top it all off, the whole family is sick. I'm hoping we get over it in time for our trip next week, but it's still no fun while we're in the thick of it... And now that you've had your daily dose of sunshine and happiness here at the Knittin' Mom blog, I'm going to go nurse Owen for the 24th time this morning. For some reason, being sick makes him think that the milk bar is open full-time.

Time for SAM2 wrap-up

Since SAM2 is officially over and SAM3 is now in full swing, it's time to do the big prize drawings for SAM2. Make sure your letters are updated in the sidebar and get me any corrections before Friday midnight. I'll do the drawings this weekend. I haven't dug through the ol' stash yet to see what all we've got for you, but I know there is some good stuff!

Is it worth it?

What is the correct ratio of amount of yarn that is tangled to time that will be spent untangling it? Do I really need to spend an hour working on this snarl?



I don't really need the yarn. I have another hank and a failed sock that needs to be frogged. It's the principle of the thing, darn it! I can't just throw it away (it's Lorna's Laces, after all), and I hate to throw it into a bag to sit around for 10 years. It's not likely that I'll ever feel like untangling it. Do I just wait until my daughter's old enough to find untangling yarn a fun diversion? Hmm...that might work!

Sydney's great-aunt has a condo in Costa Rica where she's wintering now that she's retired (must be rough!), and she sent the most adorable little outfit for my wee gringa.



She is so funny in front of the camera these days. She's been out of school sick since last Friday, so she's suffering from a serious case of cabin fever and acting pretty goofy. Her brother, on the other hand, has no trouble entertaining himself. He dumped an almost-full container of sea salt all over our stovetop, and here's what happened when I left him alone with a bowl of applesauce for a few minutes:



The little monster!

Finally, I want to share with you this little piece of knitting voodoo, which just blows my mind (I wish I would've known about this last summer, when I had to duplicate stitch a mis-crossed cable with unsatisfactory results). Go check this s*** out (and a warning - Cara's blog is not necessarily family-friendly, language-wise, but this post is worth navigating a few f-bombs)!

Knitting in Tokyo?

We are off to Tokyo in a couple weeks (that's going to be a fun plane ride - thank goodness for the back-of-seat video systems, which is the only thing that will keep the kids alive during that long trip...). Bill is running the Tokyo marathon with his friend Anthony, and then we're going to be tourists for the rest of the week.

What I'm wondering is, does anyone have any advice on knitting shops in Tokyo? I would love to pick up some Japanese stitch pattern books and yarn, but I am totally clueless about where to go. Any of you ever done any LYS-hopping in Tokyo?

What a day!

Every time I say that now ("what a day"), it goes through my head in the voice of Mary from Jack's Big Music Show. One of the hazards of having small children in the house!

I started the day glued to my computer, finishing up the February newsletter for the Tigard Knitting Guild. It was a mild form of procrastination, since I was planning to do a long run - 7 miles! - and I wasn't looking forward to it. I finally got as much done on the newsletter as I could, then mapped out my route on the awesome Map My Run site and got going.

And I did it! I actually ran 7.3 miles, and it didn't kill me. In fact, I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am a long-distance runner if I am any kind of runner at all. I am usually in complete agony for the first 45 minutes of a run, which means that when I never run more than 3.5 miles, it always sucks! So today, the first half of my run was awful, and the second half was great. In fact, I felt like I could've kept going (which is a good thing since I'm signing up to do a 15k in March). I love the feeling running that far gives me - like I can do anything. I can't imagine what running an entire marathon will do for me mentally!

After I got home, I turned around and headed back out the door and up to Scappoose to meet with Tina Newton at Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I had a couple finished samples for her, and we talked about what designs she's looking for this year. And of course I got to see yarn, yarn and more yarn! I scored a couple skeins of new yarns that I can't tell you anything about (because then Tina would have to kill all of us), but let me tell you that they are amazing! I also got to see the March sock club colorway and pattern - also amazing!

It is always so fun and inspiring to visit Blue Moon. Tina regaled me with tales of Madrona (next year, I am so there!) and the whole bank vs. sock club fiasco - what a mess! Just don't contact Blue Moon about it (unless you have a specific question about getting into your reserved sock club spot), because Tina needs to spend her time dying yarn, here, folks! Apparently they got flooded with calls and e-mails after the Harlot's post, and although they appreciate the support, they just can't handle the sheer volume of people who get all fired up when the Harlot writes about something like this. Tina is not going to tell you the name of the bank - she does not want to be sued for libel. Makes sense to me!

But that's enough talk - I've got some swatching to do!!!

Get your Martha On!

This morning, my friend Chris hosted a little crafting get-together that we're hoping to get going on a monthly basis. In-between sips of Candy Cane Cocoa and huge snarfs of this amazing salsa ranch dip I happened to sit by, I did a little crocheting. Yes, crocheting! I pledged that I would not do any work knitting while at these little gatherings, and I pulled out this kit that I've had since Sydney was a baby:



As you can see, I got two ears, the snout and part of an arm done for the Piglet doll. I made the Eeyore doll right before Owen was born, but never got to the other three. I'm hoping maybe I can get Piglet done before the kids are off to college. Next month, I'm going to host a candlemaking party. Yay!

When I got home, I found the thing I hate most about being a knit designer waiting for me in the mailbox...



Yes, it's a rejection letter. I've submitted these particular designs three times, so I'm starting to see a trend here. One of them I really love, so I might end up self-publishing it. The other one is going to the swatch graveyard.

One great thing about becoming more established is that I've had editors start approaching me for projects. I love this! It's so much nicer to have someone e-mail you and say "hey, can you come up with a pair of lace socks for us?" rather than doing a bunch of sketching and swatching only to end up with everything rejected in the end. It's like, no matter how good your designs are (unless you're brilliant, like the Norah Gaughans and Kate Gilberts of the world, which I most certainly am not), the editors have a certain thing in mind when they're putting together the issue and have to sort those few things out of a massive pile of submissions. I feel very fortunate that I get as many things accepted as I do!

On the flip side of rejection, I had two designs come out recently - one in Creative Knitting, and my Interweave socks finally hit the web - they are a free web pattern (apparently they couldn't fit into the print mag due to the size of the charts). I had to laugh at how they were photographed - the model looks to have freakishly long legs, so the knee-highs didn't quite go up to her knees. Okay, I shouldn't call them freakish - how about longer than average? I would kill to have legs like hers, but most of us don't, so the socks are certainly knee-high on us average-sized folks. The photo also doesn't show the gorgeous cabled heel flap (this was my sample knitter Yvonne's idea). FYI, these socks could easily be made into regular-length socks by leaving off the leg increases and just starting out with 64 sts.

Now I am off to write the February issue of the Tigard Knitting Guild newsletter. What have I gotten myself into? I am waaaaay too good at biting off more than I can possibly chew. That doesn't stop me from trying! I'll leave you with some of my daughter's crazy artwork - there is some artist who draws things kind of like this, but I can't remember who it is. It makes me think of something out of a Tim Burton movie. Nice kitty!