Annie's Blog

It always amazes me how much of a community spinners and knitters are. Let me give you three cool things to think about.

Five months ago, I started a pair of socks for myself out of KnitPicks Vineyard yarn. I was just finishing the first sock when dear son Luke (4) looked at me with those big blue eyes and said “Mommy, could you please make me a pair of socks just like yours?” No way I could resist a request like that from someone as sweet as my boy, so that second skein of yarn was immediately started for new socks for Luke. Which left me with one sock for me and about a third of a skein of yarn left for the second sock. Obviously not enough.

I love ordering from Knit Picks, because you actually get a nice pile of stuff for the money. But paying for shipping for one skein of yarn makes for an expensive inexpensive skein of yarn. Reading around the blogs, I realized that Sylvia had just finished a pair of socks in the same yarn, so I dropped her an e-mail to see if she might have any left. And she had a whole skein, which she graciously offered to send me. And so I have been assembling a careful care package to send back, because it’s really cool that she sent the yarn, and even cooler to put together a package of goodies to send to someone because you know that they’ll really smile when they open the package.

The second in my string of adventures in the extraordinary world community of knitters and spinners centers around the shawl that I’m making in Elann’s Peruvian Alpaca yarn (color 402—a rich charcoal grey). The pattern calls for seven skeins of yarn, so I ordered 8 just to be sure (anyone getting a premonition of the problem?). And you guessed it, I ran out of yarn. And of course, the color is no longer offered.

So again with the blog memories…Vibegrrl had posted a picture of the exact same yarn on her blog in June. Now, keep in mind that I don’t know Lara from Adam. I mean not at all. Had never even occupied the same comments on another knitter’s blog . But I was desperate, so I girded my loins (or something to that effect) and sent an email to see if she (or the person who sent her the yarn as a gift ) might have an extra skein she might be willing to part with. Amazingly, both Lara and Betsy, rather than thinking me some sort of crackpot yarn-begging stalker chick, graciously offered to send me the yarn. And so when it arrives I’ll be able to finish the shawl without altering the design to accommodate a color change.

My final and most recent fiber community adventure hopefully will start on Friday. A friend who’s still on Sheepthrills sent me a note to let me know that there was a woman in Las Vegas who was looking to find someone who might be able to help her learn how to spin (on a spindle and a wheel). So I sent Jesse a note, and we’re due to meet up at a nearby Barnes and Noble on Friday morning. Her husband just retired, and they’ve lived here in Las Vegas 30 years. She was hoping to try a Majacraft Gem or Suzie, or an Ashford Joy, but I’ll bring my Louet and my Jensen and see if she likes either of them. I’m all about helping people decide how to spend their money. I’m really looking forward to meeting someone new who appreciates knitting and spinning. I really miss the Odd Tuesday COTFU group, and making a new fiber friend would go a long way toward helping to fill that void.

One of the biggest complaints people who don’t like living in Las Vegas have about Las Vegas (other than the very obvious, very hot weather) is the lack of neighborliness around here. I think the walls around the (non-existent) yards are one reason, the heat another—but I think the biggest reason Las Vegas seems so non-neighborly is that there are so few people here who have been here more than a few years. In any crowd of people in Las Vegas, you will find less than one in ten who was born here, and less than two in ten who have been here more than 10 years. No one feels like a host—we all feel like guests. But my philosophy is that courtesy and friendliness are contagious, so the best way to have an impact on Las Vegas is to live by example. Smiling, waving, and chatting in line at the grocery store are all standard practice—so is complimenting parents on well-behaved children or puppies.

The project I’m working on now is the Rosedale Cardigan from Knitty. Theoretically it will be for my other sister-in-law (we draw names for Christmas gifts in our family, and this year Eric and I got both our sisters-in-law). My problem is that I am falling desperately in love with the sweater, and I’m only through with half of one sleeve. The pattern calls for 11 skeins of Noro Kureyon for the size I’m making (medium), so I have 15. The last thing I want to do is start trolling the Internet to try to find extra skeins of color 148.

I’m thinking that I may not incorporate the intarsia block on the front of the cardigan. I’m afraid it might make the sweater seem too dated….that and I really love the striping of the Kureyon and the colors in 148…

OK. Time to wrap up lunch and think about getting the rest of my work done for the day so I can go home and nurse DH. It’s our 10th anniversary today (as well as the 29th anniversary of the day that Elvis died). Eric is home sick with a really nasty cold—and colds here are so much tougher to kick because of the single-digit humidity. There’s no way for you to expectorate the crap out of your sinuses and lungs—you’d have to chip it out with a screwdriver. But you’re no less congested. It’s yucky.

Ta, all.

We’ve just moved into a new building at work, and I took the opportunity to reorganize my space—especially my wall space. The work I do involves a TON of reading documents (and editing them) on the computer, so the bulk of my day I spend looking at my two monitors. To give myself a break, I look at the stuff on my walls.

There are pictures of my children, pictures of sunsets over the river at my parents’ house, pictures of the river during a beautiful blue sunny day, an Endangered Cuban Crocodile, safety signs (we’re big on safety here), and various and sundry calendars and important notes. It all works together to give me a variety of focal points to give my eyes a break. Plus the visual clutter is reassuring—focusing on one thing out of many helps me concentrate (or zone out) when I need to.

One of my (new) favorite things on my desk is an African Violet. It’s just a common variety (no special hybrid, just a grocery store score), but the leaves are more upright than I’m used to with violets, and they’re a medium to light shade of green. My cube has windows(!), and the violet lives in a pink pot on the edge next to the window. The light shines through the Venetian blind in the mornings directly on to the plant for about two hours, which I figure is just about right. But when the light shines on it, the plant becomes magical. The “hairs” on the leaves glisten in the sunlight, and I can imagine that I can see individual cells in the leaves as they become translucent. The plant is strong and healthy, reaching up toward the light. This is a plant that is in an eternal good mood—a plant optimist, where the pot is more than half full of dirt and the water is plentiful. Do plants have secret lives? I can imagine that this one does, and she’s happy.

There are clouds in the sky today—wispy, white, clean clouds moving quickly from right to left across the top of the window. Strangely, the wind on the ground is blowing the opposite direction. It’s how hot air balloons can choose where they want to go, and why flights from Las Vegas east arrive more quickly than flights from east to Las Vegas. Clouds grow larger as the day goes on—more sun and energy feeds them and makes them gain fantastic shapes. I did not expect to see as many clouds as we have here in the desert. There are clouds, but no rain.