Uncle Leona's Day Camp

I can be very dangerous when I'm creative

For those of you out there not in my knitting guild, I was just recently elected Vice President, which puts me smack dab in charge of programs for our meetings. My first attempt at a program is in August (I think), and I have decided to start by coming up with a project that our group needs desperately:

Name tags.

We've tried a little of everything in Guild to keep us from going, "And your name again is....????" Nothing has stuck. So it's time to do something fun. I was fiddling around the internet looking for ideas, and surprisingly, no one out there is fessing up to using handknit name tags at their own guilds.

I am nothing if not a trendsetter.

So, here's the almost finished prototype:

It's amazing what one can do with size 2 needles, Rowan Cotton Denim yarn, and a Clorox Bleach Pen. I am pretty pumped about the results so far. The double point will be replaced with makeshift needles crafted from food skewers and beads that will be crossed in some creative fashion to look like pretend knitting. I'll wind up a small ball of yarn and tack it on to see how it looks, too. Add a pin (or a couple straight pins), and voila!! Name tag!! I'll write up a pattern once this looks like it'll work the way I want, and you too can be known by all!

I feel so Becky HomeEcky it's sick.

Now for more Earth Mother News: I have produce!!

Two Early Girl tomatoes and one Anaheim chili. Can you just feel the salsa coming on? Or perhaps a Mexican pizza? I'm so excited! I have never grown produce in my life, and now I have two tomatoes and a pepper!

Trust me...that won't be all for the tomatoes. And I have about 50 tomatillos growing. Green salsa and tomato relish are in my future for a loooong time. Better find me some Mason jars.

At the moment, I have one functional appendage

I have been accident-prone over the past day or so. You know how it is...running into stuff, dropping things you normally don't drop, hitting trees with golf balls...normal klutz stuff. This happens to me from time-to-time, but it now has resulted in me having a left hand that isn't in pain.

Right hand: smacked into bush whilst mowing the lawn--the index knuckle is stiff and bruised
Left foot: jammed into corner of metal bed frame last night--the sole is bruised
Right foot: didn't do anything--the change of weather has me aching in that ankle

It looks like it may rain us out of golf this evening. That could be a good thing--no saying where those balls may wind up.

The Canyon Sunrise is moving verrrrry slowly.

I got two pieces sewn up, and have worked the arm decrease (one row--my kind of decrease). Now the big issue is that decorative edging--between it having to be intarsia'd and the fair isle color changes popping up right at that intarsia edge, it has been a pain. Looks nice, but it's a pain. I'm hoping to have that side done and sewn to the black and white panel before the Olympics. I do have all those brown strips done, so that's good. If I get another rainbow strip started before the Olympics, it'll be a bonus.

And for all of you out there yelling that my knitting speed should make those jobs easy, I put a couple of things before you:
1. I don't knit this at work--too many colors and too many distractions
2. I'll be out of town this weekend
3. I'm on call next week--distractions a'plenty

The two plus weeks of the Knitting Olympics will be a blessing. For those of you dying to know what the red yarn will be, your wait is over.

Cheryl Oberle's Chinese Vest, from her book Folk Vests. I just thought it made sense for this year. The yarn is cherry red Norsk Strickgarn from Nordic Fiber Arts. To knit with one color will be a joy beyond belief.

Casting on in 16 days!!!

Look, Mom, it's a sweater!!!

OK, so it doesn't look like much at the moment, but it will eventually be fabulous. What you're looking at at the moment is the mid to right back (they aren't lined up right...you'll just have to trust me); the black and white piece is the center, the rainbow piece is next, and the brown piece is the armpit side. I'm at the point where the last two pieces are sewn together and the armhole decreases are made. Figured that blocking was a good idea given the tubular nature of those pieces.

More to come...and come...and come... This puppy is going to take a while.

You have to see this, though. It appears as though the Stitches Midwest Stash Reduction Challenge worked!

The red yarn in the upper right is my Knitting Olympics project, which will begin on August 8 and hopefully be done before I head to Chicago on August 21. This is about as empty as I have ever seen Ikealand.

Heh, heh, heh.

The stash keeps on a'shrinkin

Despite my body's aversion to wool in the month of July, the great Stitches Midwest Stash Reduction remains in full swing. Latest off the needles.....

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you can't see the cables. Trust me, they're there. They even worked evenly across the shoulder seams!

Better buy that lotto ticket now. That luck cannot possibly hold out.

I did try it on--in that 10 second period, I realized two things:

1. It fits nice.
2. When I work in the yard, my hair winds up looking really bad.

This has been a lovely weekend around here--nice and warm, no humidity, bright sunshine. Great swimming weather, right? Well, if I could get the damn pool clean it would be. Thanks to my little brush with bleeding out, getting the pool ready for summer was delayed about two weeks--that's on top of the fact that it wasn't warm enough for shorts in May, let alone a swimsuit, so I didn't officially start to open the pool until mid-June. It's still cloudy. I think all it really needs is a good vacuuming by my little automatic pool cleaner...

...which is sitting in the deep end.

I had been running the vac, and it had seemed to jam up. So, instead of turning off the pump and manually trying to remove leaves, I grabbed the hose and shook it. It fell off the hose and dove into the deep end just beyond my outstretched hand. And what is the problem, pray tell?

Remember, the water is cloudy. Can't see the damn thing. And it's what I need to clarify the water!!

You may all stop chuckling now. Tomorrow, come hell or cloudy water, I'm heading into the pool to retrieve the vacuum. I'm hoping that there isn't a body down there with it. That would be a bummer.

Back to stash reduction. I decided that it's time to bite the bullet and get to work on the Canyon Sunset cardigan I got at Stitches Midwest last year. I balled up the yarn around 2 AM last night (after finishing sleeve two):

More wool. Oh well. It'll look outstanding. Tonight, I play first grader and color the graph paper--the pattern is just too confusing. My biggest issue right now is whether I do the sweater in stripes or in standard pieces. I think I'm going to go for it and do thing in standard pieces. Extra seams are never a good thing, especially when one is doing intarsia AND fair isle at the same time.

Fewer things to think about. I need that. Remember, I have a vacuum in my deep end.

As a corollary to the stash reduction, I feel it's time to discuss the Knitting Olympics. Somewhere along the way, it was decided that this year needed to be a Knitting Olympics "Trials" year. I am an Olympic junkie, and I have an issue with that.

All you Yarn Harlot fans, I apologize now.

Here's my thinking: the Olympics are every two years. Just as American athletes compete both in winter and summer sports (heck, some compete in both!), I knit without regard to my season. In my mind, it's an Olympic year, and I will treat it as such.

Besides, if you don't make it through the Olympic Trials, you ain't goin' to the Olympics (see Tyson Gay, 200 meters world champ, who didn't make it out of the semis in the trials today--no Olympics for him). Not a good thing if you're making plans for 2010 and you fall short in 2008.

Yes, I'm being picky. It's all about the Olympics; I'm getting focused.

And to give another hint on the project (other than it's red). It's a vest. But one that makes so much sense for this Olympics that it's silly.

And now, I leave you with a Lake Erie Water Snake that was on our beach chomping on a fish last weekend.

Clearly, he washed down the fish with a Bud Light.