Saturday Sky & Springtime Trees

I am most likely done with sunrise pictures for a while, as the tree leaves are filling in & the sun won't be visible from my place until it's fully up in the sky. This morning, however, there was no visible sun at all. Grey & overcast is an improvement on the complete downpour we had yesterday, but at least the rain was good for the plants.





I have been getting bits & pieces of knitting done, but nothing is currently at a stage where photos would be interesting. Actually, the most exciting knitterly-related happening of the week was hearing Lime & Violet mention our very own local STL independent dye-mistress on their podcast this week. Congrats to Rachel!

100 Books Meme

Taken from Ann & from Deb.

Take the following list of books and highlight the ones you've read.

How many have you read?

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)

2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkein)

6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)

7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)

8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)

9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)

10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)

11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)

12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)

13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)

14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)

17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)

18. The Stand (Stephen King)

19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)

20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)

22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)

29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)

30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)

31. Dune (Frank Herbert)

32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)

33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

34. 1984 (Orwell)

35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)

36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)

38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)

39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)

42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)

44. The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Ablom)

45. The Bible

46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)

48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)

49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)

51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)

53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)

54. Great Expectations (Dickens)

55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)

56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)

57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)

58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)

59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)

60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)

61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)

64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)

65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)

66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)

68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

69. Les Miserables (Hugo)

70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)

72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)

73. Shogun (James Clavell)

74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)

75. The Secret Garden (Burnett)

76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)

77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)

78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)

79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)

80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)

81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)

82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)

83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)

85. Emma (Jane Austen)

86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)

87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)

89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)

90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)

91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)

92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)

93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)

94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)

96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)

97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)

98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)

99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

I have to say that I agree with Deb. This is an odd collection of books for a meme. The one thing I think they may have in common is that most, if not all, of them have been made into movies or plays. I'm not 100% certain of that, though, because a few of them I don't recognize at all.

(& no, I'm not going to confess how LONG AGO I read some of these books, or how many of the older ones were due to needing to read them for a class, or how many of the newer ones were due to reading them for a book club. I admit that all the sci-fi/fantasy type ones are ones I chose to read for fun.)

Knitting Update

I have been getting some of my own knitting done; here's some proof:



Thursday night, during Maureen's "Trunk Show", I finished my very first hat ever, for the STL Knitting Guild's charity drive. I basically made it up as I went along. I cast on 100 stitches, figured out a colorwork pattern that would go OK over 100 stitches, & winged it from there.







I completed the heel flap on my second sock during extra bits of time at the Japanese Knitting class on Friday, turned the heel after I got home (& could get out my Sensational Knitted Socks book to refer to while doing it.) I had just enough time to get the gusset started before going to hang out with friends for the evening. Fortunately these were good friends who didn't mind my knitting while I sat & gabbed, so the gusset is done now too.








Last weekend I got the main body of my Norwegian sweater finished, so I tried starting the next chart this weekend. It doesn't look like the pattern is lining up right though, so I'm going to have to go over the math a little more before I get any further into it.

It's Saturday, & it's a Sky Picture

It's a sky picture, posted on Saturday, but the picture is actually from the sunset last night. It's still too dark for sky pictures this morning, & I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to get back to the PC today. So I figured I'd better post while I have the chance.

Toronto Knitting is Well Represented

While others were in New York City imagining, St. Louis knitters had a Canadian visiting us as well. Today I attended a couple of FABULOUS classes with Maureen Mason-Jamieson. If you ever get a chance to take a class with her, I highly recommend it. I learned a lot of things that will come in handy in the future, & bought several lovely patterns that will help use up my stash.



See that jacket that Maureen is wearing? It's actually not knitted -- it's crocheted! Isn't it the most elegant crochet you've ever seen? If anything could make me do a whole sweater's worth of crochet, that pattern would be it.





The jacket in this picture is one of the ones I bought the pattern for today, to make for myself. I've got just the right yarn in my stash already. (That's a "yarn fish" by the way, in case you didn't know... It's a very special kind of fish. ;-) Actually, that's just what Maureen calls that kind of loop in order to help student's remember, & obviously, I've remembered long enough to post about it at least!) The picture on the pattern website is for the full length version of it, but also included is the shorter, more-like-a-shrug version that Maureen is wearing.




This evening there was also a trunk show at our usual Guild location, with a bunch of her fabulous designs on display. (As always, you can see the pictures larger by clicking on them.) It was very interesting to hear the thought processes behind each design, & the stories of how they came about.

Represent -- St. Louis Style

As probably the entire knitblog world knows, The Yarn Harlot is having a Represent Event in New York City for the launch of her latest book.

I will NOT be able to make it to New York tomorrow, as I will be busy at an event of my own. I'm going to my local guild's Spring 2007 workshops, with Maureen Mason-Jamieson. I'm really looking forward to it.

However, before I leave for the workshop, I'm hoping to catch this poster on the Today Show, when my favorite Boston-based Podcaster does his own thing to try to bring knitting to the public in general. Should be fun!

Finally "Officially" Halfway Complete

This morning I grafted the toe closed on my very first completed sock.






The grafting isn't quite perfect, even with a book to help the process. I realized about halfway through that I was ending up with a garter stitch type row of bumps on the backside of my work. I corrected it for the second half of the seam. For now, I'm inclined to just leave it the way that it is. I'm too worried about losing stitches if I try to undo that one small part & re-graft it with the Kitchener 100% correctly done. Excuse the blurring in the picture; my camera kept focusing on the pillow behind instead of on the sock itself.



Here are a couple more angles of the finished sock. The blurred pictures show the true colors, as the full sun seems to have effected the camera sensor in these next shots.





The second sock has more than half of the leg complete now, so hopefully it won't languish with second-sock-syndrome for too long. (That does depend on which current WIP calls me the loudest, though. I've got several things going right now.)

This morning's sunrise was even prettier than yesterday's, so I just have to share a couple more pictures.

St. Patrick's Day Sunrise & Snow

This morning started off with a glorious sunrise, but the sky was grey & boring by the time it was fully daylight. I'm glad that I was up in time to get sunrise pictures to share for Saturday Sky.






Now, however, we have Saturday snow. It was in the 70's here earlier this week, & now it's snow. How typical for March.

I Am Not Happy With Maytag Right Now

My husband & I recently purchased (full priced, I might add) a brand new Maytag front loading washer & drier, complete with the riser drawers that go underneath to put them up to a height better suited to my aging back & knees.

The washer & the drier are fine, but the drawer under the washer is defective. Unfortunately, I didn't discover this fact until AFTER the delivery guys left. It's got the point a screw sticking through into the drawer about a quarter inch on one side, & the front of the drawer isn't properly attached so it sits a bit lopsided. The insert for it doesn't fit right either. As you might imagine, I was a little dismayed to discover this. On the left side is the defective drawer, & on the right is the one under the drier, for comparison.

On the left side is the defective drawer, & on the right is the one under the drier, for comparison. This is with the drawer all the way closed, or supposed to be all the way closed. As you can see, there is still a gap on the defective one.

Here is a closeup of the under side of both drawers. You can see where a part that connects the drawer front to the body of the drawer is not installed correctly on the first picture on the left-hand side.




Here are a picture of the screw sticking into the drawer, & a comparison of the drawer inserts for both drawers. (Excuse the blur in the screw picture; the camera had trouble focussing on a single piece of metal in a sea of white plastic.


You can see that the drawer inserts are not the same size, even though the drawer under the washer & the drawer under the drier are the same size. Since the insert is supposed to span across the top of the drawer & give a solid place to rest a clothes basket when the drawer is open, the insert isn't worth much if it falls down into the drawer all the time because it's the wrong size.


When I called the store, I was given the phone number for the service center, who told me that they would need to order parts & then call me back to set up an appointment.

Fast forward to the middle of last week, when we got a call giving less than an hour's notice that they were planning on showing up at our house at a time that no one was home. Needless to say, I ended up calling back to reschedule, & no one at the service center could give me an answer as to why we hadn't been called in advance to set up a time. I was given an appointment for this morning, & I took vacation time off work to be here.

I started getting suspicious when there wasn't the "hour's notice" type phone call that we had gotten last week, so I called the service center back to confirm. (The front office opens an hour after their service people actually start making rounds, so I had to wait until they were open.) Come to find out, the part that supposedly was in stock for the them to come out to our house last week was mysteriously now on back order. No, they had no idea why no one had called me to reschedule.

So now I have a defective item for which I have already paid full price -- not scratch & dent price, & no idea when the company plans to make good on it, just someone telling me that "the parts are on backorder." Given their past history of not calling to let me know when appointments are or are not going to happen, I don't think I should hold my breath waiting for them.

In my opinion, they don't NEED parts, what they need to do is to replace the entire riser under the washing machine. I certainly paid enough money for the thing that I should have it in NEW condition, not repaired.

I'll be contacting the sale's person today to see if he can get me a replacement for the entire defective riser unit on the washer. If that is unsuccessful, I'll be contacting the corporate office for Maytag directly. Either way, I'll post an update.

Sunrise & Socks

No Time Travel Tuesday this week, since I was at my nephew's 4th birthday party last night. I spent my evening looking forward instead of back. Well, mostly so; as my nephews and niece are similar age spread & order to my own kids, except that my older nephew is my daughter's age. The birthday boy was very well-mannered & polite, & very, Very, VERY enamoured of the car sets that his grandma bought him for his birthday. His little sister, though, reminds me so very much of my daughter at the same age.



I did show off my nearly completed sock, & work a little bit on the start of the next one. I'm saving the Kitchnering for Saturday morning when I'm fresh & the light is good. I've tried it on, & it fits! Yeah!

Included for your enjoyment, here is a sunrise picture from this morning. I'm not sure how many more of these I'll be able to get, once the leaves start coming in on the trees.



(Also, with regards to your flattering comments about my organizational skills on my last blog entry -- I do have to confess that there's a reason that there weren't any pictures of the REST of the house. Getting the rest of the house back in order is going to end up a major priority for this weekend.)

A (Mostly) Non-Knitting Weekend

The bulk of my weekend has been spent turning this:





Into this:




So that I can do this:

FINALLY having my scrapbooking area set up in this house, for the first time since we moved over a year ago, is going to cut into my knitting time quite a bit. I really need to get caught up on my photo albums. I'm sure my portable knitting & TV knitting will still proceed as usual, but I won't be spending as many long blocks of time on knitting as I have been for the past few months.

I also got a chance to knit a bit with friends last night, though, as a reward for all my hard work.

Here's a picture of Mary Beth & I.

Saturday Sky & Sock Progress

I've been working around the house rather than knitting this weekend, but I did pop outside this afternoon & get a quick Saturday Sky picture, together with a bit of my sock-in-progress. Small needles = slower going, especially when I haven't had a lot of chances to knit this week. I even missed the Guild meeting today because I was so busy working around the house.



As you can tell by the tree buds, Spring is finally starting in St. Louis. On the one hand, YEAH! Warmer weather, longer days, flowers! On the other hand, Allergies! Boo, Hiss!

Flickr's fixed!

Yeah! (But that might mean fewer posts to my blog while I get the Flickr pictures organized.)

F.Y.I. -- if you ever need to contact Flickr "Powers That Be" for help, use the forums before you try sending an email directly to them. The forums seem to be answered much more quickly than email does.

Flickr Woes

You might have noticed the new link to my Flickr site in my sidebar. I finally bit the bullet & paid for two years of a "pro" account so that I could have more pictures visible & make a seperate folder for every project.

The only problem is that the Flickr folks have been paid via my paypal account, but my Flickr account hasn't been upgraded. It's still showing as a "free" account. Rather annoying. I've sent them an email. I hope they get it fixed while I'm off at work today.

Houston, We Have a Heel!

Using the Sensational Knitted Socks book, I have successfully turned my very first heel.



Basic 2-by-2 Garter Stitch Rib, top-down, on size 1 Inox DPNs. Yarn from Chris' Needle Craft Supply, Needles from The Loopy Ewe. I had to go ahead & try them on, since I wanted to be sure they would actually fit, which it's looking like they will.



It's amazing how much knitting can get done when staying home with a sick child. He'll be back at school tomorrow, though, so it's back to paid work for me...



My cats have also been rather spoiled by having people around during the daytime for two extra days this week. They like to sit on my lap & "help" me knit...











I also enjoyed getting to watch them bask in the sun -- an impossibility on days when I leave when the morning is still dark, & return after sunset.

All About The Knitting, for a change

As promised, this post is All About The Knitting. Besides the fingerless gloves, there has been progress both forward & backward on a few other projects.



I finished the body of my striped mohair cardigan. The shoulders got sewn up yesterday, & I picked up the stitches for the first arm this morning. The sweater is in reverse stockinette, so the arm is turned inside out for ease of knitting. At this point, it almost looks more like a flying saucer.







I'm starting the heel flap on my very first pair of top-down socks. Also pictured is the beginnings of the hat which I mentioned in this post.



As far as the backwards progress is concerned, it seems that I once again am inspired by Ann.



My Icarus Shawl was turning out more like a parallelogram than a triangle, & I was having doubts about the yarn's ability to cooperate with the severe blocking needed for such lace. The yarn is Cleckheaton's Studio Mohair 8 ply, which has quite a bit of acrylic in it. I decided that rather than continuing on & hoping for the best, the yarn would be better served becoming something different.



My daughter helped me turn my Icarus in progress back into a ball of yarn.





In looking for a solid color of Cleckheaton to become the edging of Icarus, I came across a couple of possibilities, along with a pattern book specifically designed for sweaters (Well, actually, Jumpers & Cardigans by Australian terms.) with this yarn. I've decided that the variegated yarn will be the sleeves for the sweater pictured here, & the body will be solid in either of the other possibilities.





Originally I was thinking the blue, but the blue in the variegated is a much more muted color, as opposed to the brilliant blue of the solid yarn. I'm thinking the other pinkish-brown color will be my final choice.