Uli's Creative Corner

 Well, the only real knitting I can talk about is my short rowing issues I'm having with my Secret Garden Vest.  We had a very, very busy weekend and I hardly touched my knitting needles.  I'm doing the suggested bust short rows but I can't quite grasp it.  I have no problem with the short rows but from the instructions it seems that I slip and wrap the same stitch in the two short rows I'm supposed to be knitting.  Is that a likely option?  I already knitted and knitted back a couple of times just because I can't count and then just as I was finishing for bed time last night I realized that I based my short rows on the number of stitches for a smaller size in the pattern so I really have to knit it all back again.  But once I get the short row shaping done and I start the individual back and front pieces, I'm ready to finish soon.  I think the two front pieces will knit up very quickly - with V-neck shaping.  And that leaves the back which won't be a big deal either.  Full steam ahead on this project.  I hope it will fit and look as good as it feels.  It is so much fun touching and knitting.

As far as the rest of the weekend............ I wouldn't call it a bust.  Not at all - but it was busy.  Saturday we took my wedding ring set in to get the diamond I lost replaced (fortunately one of the little ones) and the ring is in worse shape than expected.  Some other little diamonds were threatening to come loose so we have to have a bit of work done to the rings.  The goldsmith is actually going to rebuild that part of my ring.  So by next weekend and about $400 later I should have my rings again.  After that I went to the LYS but only to trade some balls of yarn for some needles.  Nothing very exciting at all.  And then we took Erika to the beach.  She had a lot of fun throwing rocks and driftwood into the water.  On the way home we rented a couple of movies.  We rented "The Notebook".  We didn't get a chance to watch it until last night but it was a good movie.  I was able to figure out the story fairly quickly but it was still a touching, nice movie.  It suited my frame of mind.

Yesterday morning was all about cleaning before we had some company.  I also made chocolate chip cookies and a cranberry blueberry pie.  I did get to do a bit of knitting with my friend while Evan took Erika out for a spin to get her out of our hair.  That was my one relaxing highlight of the weekend.  I still have at least 3 loads of laundry to get through, a bunch of shirts to iron - that's on the agenda for tonight.  But I have to say.... the house looks good and my sewing/yarn room is back in shape again.  I can go in there and start working on one of my quilting projects again.

So, it's all good...........

Enjoy your week.  I'll hopefully have some pics of something - anything - tomorrow.

 Good morning.  It's Friday.  It looks like a nice weekend.  I'll be busy.  First order of business is cleaning up my sewing/yarn room as I have a knitting friend coming over on Sunday and you know what that means............. going through yarn and looking at my new stash from Stitches.  I went to her house yesterday and looked at her new stash.......... oh, my new stuff pales in comparison but I'm still pleased with what I've got.

And then remember that yarn I was crying in my soup after Sttiches.... the lovely stuff I didn't buy that I was so upset about....... the stuff I couldn't find a Canadian source on the internet for................. I found out my LYS will be carrying it in just a few short months.  Oh, I'm so excited.  Someone is looking out for me. :-)  And then they've got another bunch of really neat things coming in that I am so excited about. 

Here are a couple of recent sock projects:

Here is the pair of sock I finished while I was on vacation.  It's a cotton blend, Plymouth Sockotta, yarn that was quite lovely to work with.  Definitely a bit harderon the hands (less elasticity) than the regular wool sock yarn but I really enjoy the finished product.  I hadn't tried this with cotton socks before but because of the cotton content I decided to go down a needle size from my regular needle size for socks but still use the same number of stitches.  I like the result.  I was gifted this yarn through an RAOK so the socks are extra special.

And then here is my first sock for the February sock for the German pattern sock KAL.  It's done in Lorna's Laces Child's Play.  Pretty wild colouring......

For me........... the more colourful the better.

I worked on my Secret Garden vest again last night.  I fear that I won't pick anything else up until this one is finished.  It's just such a pretty knit.  I do want to try to do more finishing work on my Phil'Onde shirt this weekend though.  And all around, I don't think it will be a big knitting weekend.  We've got so many errands to run and if it's nice I want to take Erika to the beach.

Enjoy your weekends.

 It's Thursday.  Just another day to the weekend.  I've been really busy this week.  But that's okay.  My evenings have been a bit frustrating to say the least, too.  Erika has been a bit of a pill, trying to assert her independence.  Not only in "I can do it by myself" but also as in "let me show you how to do it right...."  I need my quiet moments again!!!!

I said I would put my Secret Garden Vest aside for a bit.  Nope.... not a chance.  Too much fun.  Even when I had to go and wind up another skein last night int he middle of it all.

Tomorrow I'll try to remember to uplad some recent sock pictures.

I've been tagged by Brenda, so here goes:

How much space is left on your TIVO?
We don't have TIVO in Canada but our recent visit to California got us right into TIVO and now we really miss it. 

Have you ever bought a DVD of a TV series and if so which one?
I seem to buy series for Evan all the time.  Last Christmas I bought him Season 1 of Futurama.  I don't have any TV seasons on TV myself.

What was the last TV show you watched before reading this message?
I watched the very tail end of Yes, Dear.  Silly sitcom but that's what was on TV after I got Erika to sleep.  I really wanted to watch American Idol though but it was taping.

List five shows you won't miss.

We always tape Judging Amy.  I'm still a Survivor watcher and I always watch the Apprentice.  American Idol makes it on the list and we usually watch some of the sitcoms like Everybody likes Raymond and 2 1/2 Men.  I hate missing Global News at 6 pm and when I'm home I always watch the morning news.

And the folks chosen to carry on this meme are:
It's bed time right now and I can't think of anyone off the top of my head who hasn't done this meme already.  Maybe I'll pick someone tomorrow if I can think of someone.

Good night.

 Oh the lure of Elann.......... how about the baby silk/alpacca in Raspberry for the cardigan and how about the Seashell Pink for the Heartstrings Moebius Scarf.  Do you think those should make a home at my home?  Who thinks they will?  I would treat them well and care for them gently. 

The White Lies Secret Garden Vest will be very pretty I think but in my opinion it's not a quick knit (like I read about the pattern somewhere).  I have knitted on it since Friday night and I have about 7 inches of body fronts and back done (they are done in one piece to the armholes).  Mind you, I don't think I've had a whole lot of non-interrupted knitting time.  It's been so busy and hectic and I've been bringing home work.  I'm going to maybe put the vest away for a few days and get back to a couple of my other projects.  I should really make an effort to finish Erika's sheep sweater.  As it is, she won't get to wear it often this season.  It should still fit her next season though.

Will I get back to the top down swing coat this winter?  I can't seem to motivate myself to more garter stitch and the knitting is hard on my hands and heavy in my lap.  The big reason I should get back to it though is the fact that I'm worried about yarn amounts..... I should find out sooner rather than later whether I'll have enough.

Brenda tagged me for the TV Meme.  I'll get to that later on......... this evening.

Have a great one.  It's sunny here and Erika's first words today were "I want to go to the beach".

 I forgot to mention earlier today that I wanted to draw your attention to two fun things organized by my friend Shelley at Fun Knits.  I met Shelley through my Opal obsession and e-bay and we had the opportunity to meet in person late last fall.  Now she has her own little yarn shop and I think she is well on her way to having the best selection of sock yarns around.

Shelley is organizing a sock yarn afghan contest and a spring knitalong.  If you're at all curious, check out her last two blog entries over at the Fun Knits Blog.  I will most definitely throw in a square for the afghan contest.  The spring KAL project looks like an awesome top but the sizing is a bit off for me - unless I get a whole lot skinnier in a real hurry.

PS: I feel far less grumpy now than I did this morning.

 Thanks for all the birthday wishes.  That was awesome.  I was in a bit of a mood yesterday and I felt so under pressure at work and then I kind of felt disappointed that there weren't any gifts to open.  Yes, I spent all my birthday money at Stitches before my birthday but I'm such a sucker for surprises and there were no more surprises left.  I even knew that the little gift Erika had picked out for me was a charm for my charm bracelet - a bumble bee because I call her bumble bee.  So I was a bit sad.  Evan did bring home flowers to make up for the fact that he bought himself (on my birthday) a surround sound speaker home theatre system.  I'm sure it will be nice but I don't see the flaw in our current set-up except that the speakers are getting old and that we're planning on converting one of the basement rooms into a real home theatre soon (and this set isn't meant for that).  Ah well, I think his purchase was justified in his eyes because I got to spend money at Stitches.  Tit for Tat....  So among all my "oh, I feel so sorry for myself" I loved receiving all the kind birthday wishes.

Now life is back to normal it seems..... back to the daycare and work routine. 

I can't speak of a lot of knitting content yesterday.  I worked a bit on a bit of a sock at my inlaws' house last night and I got annoyed at getting "are you working on another sock?".....  Yes, and I have yarn for about another 70 pairs of socks in my stash. :-))  When we got home I did just a few rows on my White Lies Designs Vest.  That's about it.

I'm tired today because I had a pretty bad sleep last night.  About 3 am, I started thinking about work and I finally fell back asleep at about 5 am.  My alarm clock goes off at 5:30.  I don't think I realized it was on until about 6:10.  That makes me really grumpy.

More happier news tomorrow.

This is my "Monday" post.  I don't think I'll be able to stop by tomorrow.  I have a super tight deadline at work tomorrow and on top of that I have to run out and take Erika to a doctor's appointment at noon.  Yikes.....  I wish Evan hadn't made the appointment for Monday but when I told him to make the appointment I didn't know about how tight my timeline on Monday would be.  I only found out about that when my boss called me from his cell phone while he was driving home from work and I was packing up my things to go home, too.  I work best under deadline stress (all that adrenaline....) but I know this will be a bit much.

So I'll show you some pretty things.  Here is a link to a lovely project I brought home from Stitches.  The Secret Garden Vest from White Lies Designs.  It's a lovely project and I adore the yarn I bought.  I would have never even noticed it if I hadn't been at the booth just at the same time another lady was admiring the model and asking questions about it.  This is the Stitches project that I let myself start this weekend and here's a shot of my humble beginnings and the lovely yarn:

And here is another link to White Lies Designs: Laura is a lovely hooded sweater and the yarns I purchased are in a deep purple colourway.  And you know how much I love my purples.  I almost bought a kit with black as the main colour with some purple accents but when I dug out the purple kit from the back of the display, I couldn't leave it behind.  I have a feeling that this project will become a project for next fall but we'll see how much I can get stitched up in the next month or so.

What else came home with me from Stitches? Let me think.....  This Merino Mitered Poncho/Capelet.  The answer to my thoughts about maybe wanting a poncho and more shawls but never being sure on what to do about it.  I tried on the model and it was a neat compromise.  It didn't even look half bad on my body shape and size.  The colours I brought home for this project are in steely blues and a dusty rose for accent colours.  I should probably get going on this before the capelet/poncho style is totally no longer in style.

And then this lovely yarn from Brooks Farm also came home with me.  I bought 2000 yards of it and I will figure out what it will be at some point.  Cardigan or pullover and maybe one of my beloved top down raglan designs and I'll make up the pattern.  We'll see.  This yarn has to mellow in my stash for a while.

So, now you've seen it all......... there's a bit of Lorna's Laces and a bit of sock yarn that I bought at a LYS in San Jose but that's not as exciting as these other projects.

Evan and Erika are out buying my my birthday present for tomorrow.  Well, it's Erika buying me a present.  The money to spend at Stitches was my early birthday present.  I know she'll be bringing balloons back... Yes, tomorrow, I'll be 37 years old.  I'm not getting any younger.  By the time I was 35 I wanted to be done with having kids (2 of them to be precise) but life sometimes happens faster than we can keep up with it and  obviously we've only got one little one kicking around.  I kind of feel I'm getting a bit old at this stage in the game but we'll see what 37 will bring.

A couple more shots just for kicks:

This is one project I finished on vacation.  A little tank for Erika using Phildar Rivage, a shiny, slippery ribbon yarn.  I made that entire top in 2 days down there.

And this is the cutest story......... There was only one booster seat at the house in San Jose.  Reserved for Erika's cousin.  Erika wanted that booster so badly, just for one meal.  Her cousin wasn't about to give it up.  Erika was told that she could sit in it for dinner on this one given day.  She sat down in the chair about 2 hours before dinner would be ready.  She wasn't going to move so that the booster chair wouldn't be lost out on again.  We had to pry her out to open her Valentine's Day gifts and as soon as we were done with that she climbed back in.  This is how she ended up........ my patient and very stubborn little one........

And here's a shot of me and the two little ones.  I think it shows my new hair cut off fairly well.  I don't show many pictures of myself so you might not see a difference but I'm getting tons and tons of comments on it even 3 weeks after having had it cut and coloured.  So I feel quite good about it.

All in all....... we had an awesome trip.  It really is back to reality now.  I love all my projects and I have many projects to do and lots of work and lots of stress coming up because I did take the luxury to go on this trip - but it was all worth it.

My gang hasn't come home yet but they should be home really soon.  I think I will go downstairs and start working on finishing that Phil'Onde shirt.

 We're back and regular posting will resume this weekend with some pictures and all that good stuff.  Last night we didn't even dig out the digi cam.  We had a really fun time but it's also very good to be back home again.  I just wish that I didn't quite yet have to face the results of being away from the office for 10 days.

I knit quite a bit while we were away.  I made Erika a little tank top from last summer's Phildar kid's magazine.  I knit one pair of cotton socks and one lonely sock for one of my sock KALs.  And the big thing was that I started and finished the front of my Phil'Onde shirt.  The thing is finished and ready for seaming and finishing, hopefully this weekend.

Be back soon.

 Well, Stitches closes in about 1/2 hours and I didn't get to go back for a second look at things.  I'm a bit disappointed and sad this afternoon.  When you are with a bunch of people that just don't get it, it's hard to break their routines just to help me get one last look at all the fibery goodness.

But let's track back to Friday.......... I was so excited to get to the Stitches Market on Friday morning.  I had bought my tickets on line and was ready to go.  We finally got out the house and promptly we got lost.  Evan was dropping me off and Jeff had forgotten one major details in the driving instructions he gave us.  We took the wrong turn.  Not a great start but with some figuring, we made it.  I got out and Evan took off to do his thing.  It was great that I had on line tickets because I didn't have to line up.  I walked in and WOW............ so overwhelming.  So much yarn and so many colours in one place.  Total yarn overload.  I didn't know where to go first.  So my basic first trip around was to just scope everything out.  I couldn't even really focus in on anything.  And then.... once I got spending, the money was gone so fast, I could barely believe it.  The reason it went so fast is because I bought things for 4 very specific projects.  I'll share the exact details when I return back home because then I can take the time to take some pictures and send you some links.  But it boils down to 2 patterns and the yarn for 2 White Lies designs, one neat shawl/poncho/buttoned jacket made with mitered squares and some awesome mohair/wool/silk blend to make something with.  It was great.  By 4 pm my feet ached and I was tired so I made my way home on San Jose's light rail.  That was okay with the exception that a very drunk man boarded the train and made a real nuisance of himself in the car I was in.  He was rightout scary so I moved to another car.  After that it was a fairly uneventful ride home.

Yesterday I was given the choice to go back in the morning as we were driving to Carmel in the afternoon but since I had spent all my spending money at first I didn't see the point but it bothered me because I knew there was some unfinished business left there.  And unfinished business it will stay.  We went to Carmel and had a nice time but also an awful time.  We stayed at the house of my BIL's father (they were at their other home in Palm Springs).  This house was beautiful.  Not kid friendly.  The kids couldn't touch anything.  We couldn't use their towels.  We couldn't do this, that and the other.  I was incredibly uncomfortable.  I couldn't relax at all.  Had I known it would be like that, I wouldn't have given up on my opportunity to get another quick trip to Stitches.  For that I gave up meeting another blogger, Marie at Knitti Me.  Today we travelled back from Carmel and we arrived early enough in time for me to maybe make a quick sprint out for the last couple of hours of the market place but I could tell that nobody in the rest of the family had any motivation to come with me or even drive me (I'm not comfortable enough in this city quite yet to just boogie off by myself).  I guess if I had made my point and demanded it, we would have gone but that's just not my nature.  So I'm sitting here with thoughts of this one yarn I saw.  I walked by it and felt it at least 7 times on Friday.  Every time, it made my heart go pitter patter but I didn't quite know what to make with it and as a result I didn't know how much to buy and then there was always this huge line-up at the till for this particular vendor that I never did bite the bullett.  Well, I'm so sad that I didn't buy it.  Thinking of it now, I think it would have been perfect for Rogue or some similar sweater like that.  But so much for that.... it's done.  I can't get there now any longer so the lesson learned is that if you keep going back to the same yarn over and over again....... go for it.  This one is going to bug me for a very long time.  I've already scoped it out on line.  I know I can get it on line but I haven't find a Canadian source for it and I so much wish I had brought it home with me.

So I had tons of fun on Friday but today I feel very frustrated.  There were a few other things that I feel I shouldn't have left there at all.  They were mine to come home with me but.....

We have been to various other LYSs, on in San Jose, one in Saratoga and one in Carmel but nothing was too spectacular.  The LYS in San Jose I've been to twice now and there were a couple of things I looked at on my first visit and they were sold on my second visit.  I think I will go back there though and I will pick up a few more Lorna's Laces colours.

Oh, I better stop my whining and complaining.  I feel really sorry for myself today and really............. I had the chance to go to something I really wanted to go to and I'm coming home with some great projects.  See ya soon!!!