Katydid Knits

You may have heard that there’s a little bit of snow falling in this area. I know everyone is posting about it, but I have to throw my 2 cents in as well.

I took some pictures on Saturday of what we got then. It ended up at officially 25″ here in Bowie. Kris managed to get the Jeep out, and we made it up to Laurel to kidnap our friends Erica and Michael for an evening of hot tubbing, Venture Brothers (a new one for us. Weird but funny) and just hanging out with awesome people). I have a flickr set here of the pictures I took that day.

I haven’t been at work since we left on Friday, because my poor boss is entirely snowed in.  The plows didn’t even hit her street until yesterday, and then only once.  And of course that was shortly before round two hit us starting late yesterday afternoon.

We’d noticed that the sliding glass door to the porch was sticking a bit, but at first we thought it was just the cold.  This morning, though, a terrifying thought struck.  There were two and a half feet of snow on the roof.  Could the weight of it be messing with the wall?

Just in case, Kris decided that the roof needed to be cleared.  He climbed out the window with the shovel, and spent four straight hours getting the snow off the roof.  By our calculations, that was 2400 cubic feet of snow, which would weigh somewhere around 48,000 pounds.  And he moved ALL of it.  Alone.  He’s insane.  And I love him so much.

This is what it looks like piled up around the sides of the addition and the porch.

And this is what he looked like when he came in.  My snowy Browncoat. 

There’s a few more pictures here.  And if you are wondering, the door stopped sticking entirely once the snow was off the roof.  Thank goodness he cleared it.  If that wall had collapsed, we’d probably have been killed – it’s right behind where we sit.

So, anyway, if you need me, I’ll be on my couch, knitting and watching “Glee”. And praying that this crap STOPS before my parents are set to arrive on Thursday.

ETA – Sorry.  That was unclear.  NEXT Thursday, not tomorrow. 

February 10th, 2010 | Category: Misc. | Comments (12)

Noelle is one of my coworkers, and is responsible for introducing me to the HILARITY that is the Umbilical Brothers.  And I love her for it. These guys are awesome!

“Bathroom” followed by “Schwarzenegger”

“Battery”

“Somethin’ Special for the Children”

And now, I buckle down for Snowpocalypse: Reloaded. *sigh*

February 5th, 2010 | Category: Misc. | Comments (4)

I have two things I’d like to discuss with you.

First, thank you so much for making such awesome people.  I just checked the CPA group on Ravelry, and the four skeins of Bugga! were sold for $450 in last night’s auction.  The week of auctions has raised over $22,000 in donations to various organizations working to help Haiti.  That’s right – TWENTY TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS, just by a bunch of knitters.  Never let it be said that knitters don’t have power!

On a different, personal, first-world-problems whining note…

Could you stop fucking with my husband now?  Please?

Last Friday, he was driving home from getting a haircut when someone ran him off the road.  He wasn’t actually hit, but he was forced out of his lane and into a grass median.  This wouldn’t be a big issue, except that said median has posts in it, one of which damaged the front bumper of his car and took the driver’s-side mirror off. (Well, almost off, it’s hanging by one wire at the moment)  Now, this isn’t a HUGE issue, because we do have his Jeep as a backup, so we didn’t have to freak out about us both getting to work (You’ll notice this happens once I have a job and need to get to it, of course).

Last night, we were at our friends Rich and Mary’s house, hanging out with them and Roy.  We got home just after midnight.  We were upstairs getting ready for bed when the alarm on the Jeep went off.  This happens sometimes – it’s got a shock sensor that will set the alarm off if it gets bumped.  So, he went downstairs, unlocked the front door, and grabbed his keys to shut off the alarm.

That’s when he saw the glass.

Someone, within 20 minutes of our getting home, smashed the driver’s side window of the Jeep to steal the GPS off the dash.  So, there’s now glass all over the inside of the car and on the street where it was parked.  He called the police to report it, and now we’re trying to find a glass repair place that can fix it this weekend so that we aren’t down to one car for too long.  Because of course I’m going to the Easton studio on Monday for work, which means I can’t exactly take him to work and drop him off.

So, yeah, would the universe please leave my husband alone for a while?  He’s a little busy trying to juggle work and the show (which opens February 12!), and it would be nice if he wasn’t fighting with any other crap at the moment.

ETA: Happily, Kris did manage to track down a place that could replace his window, and Serenity is once again home with a driver’s side window in place.  Plus, we were able to drop off the Focus (he was so slammed at work last week that we didn’t have a chance), so it should be fixed within the week.  Still frustrating to deal with, but happily almost over.

January 23rd, 2010 | Category: Misc. | Comments (12)

Yeah.  I don’t really know what to say – it’s so much.  So devastating, so awful, that I don’t even have words.  What I do have are two ways you can help, if you are so inclined, and haven’t done so already.

My friend Mary works for CHF International, and they are very active in Haiti.  They have been for some time, and in fact have (had) an office in Port-au-Prince.  Mary was there just two months ago herself, which is such a scary thing to think about for me.  Anyway, CHF is taking donations, and information is on their website here about how you can help.

For my knitterly-inclined peeps, if you are on Ravelry, you may have heard about the auctions being held by the “Completely Pointless and Arbitrary” group.  So far, they have raised almost $4,000 in donations to various charities.  Well, this Friday, my wonderful employers Sarah and Gryphon are offering up four skeins of custom-dyed Bugga! yarn for one of the auctions.  And yes, they will dye it in any Sanguine Gryphon colorway, even a discontinued one.  So, if your interest is piqued by this, take a stroll over to CPA and check out the auctions thread.

January 20th, 2010 | Category: Misc. | Comments (2)

Yup – today marks one month since I’ve once again been a productive member of society.  And I’ve got just the YPF post for the occasion.

This is Sanguine Gryphon Eidos in “Alethia”.

I dyed this.  We were short two skeins of Skinny Bugga! in one batch, so we put these in to fill it out, and that happened to be one of the pots I did.  So, I had to buy them as a souvenir of my new job.

And yes, I DO have the best job ever.  In spite of a number of days when I thought my fingers would fall off from the cold, and Kris having to wrap me in an electric blanket when I got home, I completely love what I’m doing.  My fingers are frequently stained, but I love the women I work with, and I honestly look forward to going to work every day.  I’m the luckiest woman ever.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get dressed and go to work. 

January 15th, 2010 | Category: Misc. | Comments (13)

Yeah, I totally see why Jesh likes that word.  It’s just kind of fun. 

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get to test-knit this pattern for her adorable sideways-knit mittens, Skeuomorph.

I had dragonfly buttons in my stash (shocking, I know), and I think they look perfect on the garter-stitch cuffs.

Cozy hands!

They are a super-quick knit, too.  I cast the first one on Monday, and the second yesterday.  Even after ripping out a finished thumb (because I had a pattern-reading brain fart on the buttonholes), I’ve still got finished mittens in less than a week!

I did tweak them slightly, because my gauge was a little bigger than hers.  So, if I had left the thumbs where they were written, I’d have 2 or 3 inches of mitten flopping above my fingertips.  So, I just shifted them up 10 stitches, and grafted the 10 together below the thumbs, instead of just grafting everything together above the thumbs (That will make sense once you go buy the adorable pattern).  And yes, you read that right – I GRAFTED.  And I did it without stabbing my eyes out!  And it looks GOOD!

What do I think of them? I think you can tell.

Thanks, Jesh, for letting me test this for you – it’s an awesome pattern!

January 2nd, 2010 | Category: Misc. | Comments (5)

So, I figure it’s safe to post this, because our friends Irene and Dave are currently at the hospital, where Irene is busy giving birth to their first baby, a little girl.  Irene is a HUGE pirate nut.  So, I knew that baby Cristin was going to need something appropriate.  The Baby’s First Tattoo pattern to the rescue!

I used Encore Worsted (washable and all, you know), so my gauge was different than the pattern.  I used the numbers for the three month size with the lengths for the twelve month, figuring that would get me close to the 12 month size, and I could give her a sweater that would last for a while.  This was my first time using Encore, and I was VERY impressed with it. It knit up beautifully, and I like that it’s washable.

You might notice something else in that picture.  I didn’t knit the booties.  Those were a commission from an awesome friend from the Knittyboard – Poops!  I told her what I was planning for the sweater, and asked if she could do an appropriately-themed pair of her awesome booties to go with it.  When the envelope arrived, I about fell over.  She totally went above and beyond with these.

Seriously – are they not the cutest things you have ever seen?  She’s brilliant, and I think Irene is going to love them, too.  It’s the little whale on the treasure map foot that just kills me.

ETA: And I just looked on Facebook and saw that baby Cristin arrived just an hour ago!  Congrats Irene and Dave!!!

January 1st, 2010 | Category: Misc. | Comments (8)

OK, first, I don’t think OMGTHEWORLDISENDING as soon as they call for snow. I grew up in Pittsburgh and lived in Meadville. I’ve done snow. The difference is that in PA, they have the equipment and infrastructure to HANDLE snow. Hell, through most of the winter when I was a kid, we knew the school bus was coming because we could hear the chains on the tires. Here? Not so much. I’d bet a lot of MD natives wouldn’t have a clue what that sound was. So, yes, I know that to the midwest and Buffalo, this is nothing. But talk to me when YOU live somewhere where this happens once every 10 years (to this degree – we do get snow once or twice a year, but it’s gone in a day or two), and you’ll be singing a different tune.

Plus, really, I just think “snowpocalypse” is the funniest word ever.

Anyway, I decided to snap a few pictures this morning. I would have yesterday, but it snowed all. Day. Long. Seriously – it didn’t stop until after Kris and I went to bed at 11. It looks like we got about 18″ or so here at the house.

The stump from Big Giant Tree.  Yes, it’s still here, and no, I don’t want to talk about it.

The fence along the side of our yard. And yes, that’s an Off Mosquito Lantern. Don’t think we need it at the moment.

The green bench, next to the stump.  I was amused by the pile on the cement post behind it.

The side part of the back yard – too deep for the dogs to slog over there.  The Testicle Toss set is a good gauge on the depth – that bottom rung is about 2 feet off the ground.

The red maple in the front yard.  The footprints are mine.  I was cleaning off Kris’s Jeep so we could move it off the street so it didn’t interfere with the plows (who seem to only have gone down the middle of the street anyway…), and I set the stupid alarm off.  So I had to slog up to the house to get my keys.

Hoban (Kris’s Focus) and Kaylee (my Fit), buried in the driveway.  The Jeep is on the other side of them, in the yard.

We shoveled this yesterday, using a little mini snowblower that belonged to my grandfather.  It helped, although you can see that another 6 inches or so fell after that.

The paths forged by the dogs and us.  The snow shovel and blower were in the shed.  Probably not a wise plan – should have moved them to the garage on Friday, in retrospect.

We’ll see what the plan is for today – Carrie had planned a party, but I’m not sure what the roads are like near her, so I don’t know if that’s still on or not.

ETA: Just found out that my county has declared a state of emergency due to the snow (and the morons who decided that they HAAAAAD to go out in it), so it looks like even if the party goes on, we won’t be there.  No non-emergency driving allowed. 

December 20th, 2009 | Category: Misc. | Comments (8)

Catching up on the Wool Girl Oz Sock Club kits…

October brought us the Flying Monkeys kit:
Curious Creek Fibers Serengeti in “Enchanted Forest”, Enchanted Forest Socks pattern by Christina Bain, a “Don’t make me get the Flying Monkeys” mirror by madisoncraft.etsy.com, “Who invited the Flying Monkeys” Post-It flags, an Oz greeting card, a project bag by Edie Castleberry, Mama LLama Super DK in “Flying Monkeys”, Flying Monkeys Made Me Do It socks pattern by Christina Bain, a Flying Monkey stitchmarker by weeones.etsy.com, and the Flying Monkeys Fingerless Gloves pattern by Christina Bain.

Mama LLama Super DK in “Flying Monkeys”

Curious Creek Fibers Serengeti in “Enchanted Forest”

Yet another ridiculously awesome stitchmarker from Wee Ones:

Thursday’s mail (Spoiler alert for any other club members!) brought the Cowardly Lion kit:

A Cowardly Lion tin with two magnets in it, another Wee Ones marker, tile magnet (for those who did the full Oz Sock club – we’ve gotten a few of these), Cowardly Lion charms, a Cowardly Lion bookmark, an accessory bag by Jhiro Designs, Union Center Knits Whatnot Sport in “Cowardly Lion” with contrasting toe skein, and the Courage sock pattern by IRISHGIRLIEKNITS! How cool is that? Carrie – it’s awesome! Great work, girl!

Union Center Knits Whatnot Sport in “Cowardly Lion” with contrasting toe skein

The painfully cute Cowardly Lion stitch marker with the tile magnet

A little playing with my new camera’s macro mode – both skeins:

and just the main skein:

(Can you tell the Cowardly Lion kit came the same day as the new camera? )

December 13th, 2009 | Category: Misc. | Comments (5)