Monday, January 24, 2011

So much for more frequent blogging!

I'm really trying to do more tweeting, Facebooking and blogging this year, but I keep forgetting! Forgetfulness runs in my family, and it doesn't get better with age. It's very unhelpful combined with my tendency towards procrastination.

I'm sure you'd like to see a little knitting, so here's what I've been working on. It's all about the CSK these days, and I just turned out one of my favorite patterns so far:



This is Supernova, which I named for the little star-explosion looking motifs up the front and back. It's made in the colorway Ladies That Lunch, dyed by my friend Lorajean of Knitted Wit. I fell in love with this colorway when she introduced it at Deb Accuardi's pre-Sock Summit luncheon in 2009, but it was a toughie to work with. I probably love this sock so much because it was such hard work finding a stitch pattern that actually worked with the crazy variegation!

Besides knitting sock after sock, I've also managed to start really getting myself in shape by going to daily boot camp workouts. Fortunately I was sort of in shape already from all the walking I did to train for the marathon last fall, but my muscles (other than in my legs) were totally soft. I wasn't so sure about my chances for survival after the first week, but I do like the fact that all my pants are too big now. Too bad I don't have any money left for shopping after the Christmas craziness!

I've also grudgingly accepted the fact that I enjoy watching football. From about the 8th grade on, I've spent my life cultivating a studious disdain for football (and golf). Bill has had a lifelong love affair with the Pittsburgh Steelers (even though he's never lived anywhere near Pittsburgh), so I finally sat down and had him explain the game to me a few weeks ago. I watched the entire playoff game yesterday and am now looking forward to watching the Superbowl. There - I said it. The planet can officially explode now. I've been watching golf lately, too, although I can't sit through a whole day of it (or more than 45 minutes or so, to be totally honest).

I will always prefer basketball to any other spectator sport, however. Tennis and running are a close 2nd and 3rd, but basketball I'll take any day of the week. One of the big irritations in my life right now is the fact that Comcast blocks out games in our local market so the only way to watch all the Blazers games is to have Comcast. We've had DirecTV longer than we've had Sydney, so Bill especially is not enthusiastic about changing. His grand plan is to sign up for Comcast during the basketball season just to watch the games but nothing else. I'm not sure why he's so attached to DirecTV, but he is!

Now is my chance to get a bit of work done while the kiddos are at swimming lessons. Sydney finally mastered the back glide last week, so she's pretty excited to be moving up to the next level. She's so skinny she can't actually float on her back without sinking, so it has been a struggle to get her courageous enough to glide on her back on her own.

Hope you all are having a great first month of 2011. I promise my next post will be a little less sports, a little more fiber!

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

New pattern for the new year!

It has been awhile since I've released a new pattern for Gardiner Yarn Works (the book is taking up almost all of my pattern-writing time and energy, along with a couple other little side projects), but I've finally got one for you.

These are the Desmondus Socks (named after the vampire bat, if you were wondering):



There is both a men's version (that's Bill's giant foot and hairy leg there on the right side of the photo) and women's version (the women's has a little lace panel on either side of the foot while the men's is just cables).

Men's close-up:



Women's close-up:



It also has two heel options - linen stitch or heel stitch:



This pattern was designed exclusively for Sandra Singh, and can be purchased either as a pdf pattern or in a kit with the yarn (which is also exclusive to her, from our talented friends at Serendipitous Ewe).

Look at that - two posts for January already. I'm on a roll!