Boo hoo!

I mentioned that we lost our digital camera during our move. It's not at the old house. It's not at the new house. And it's not under the seat in the in-laws' car (which we borrowed a couple weeks back so that they could have our car with Miss M's car seat). We think the camera is really lost. :-(

So now we need to go camera shopping again. Sigh... need to go to some stores and play with cameras. The Canon SD flavors are popular, and I love how small they are! My in-laws have one and they are happy with theirs. However, I would probably be perfectly happy with a Fuji Finepix F30 or Fuji Finepix F50fd since I am somewhat familiar with the Fuji quirks. Our recently lost camera was a Fuji F10, and the camera lost before that was a Fuji 601Z (I think, it was such a long time ago).

I went ahead and cleaned the armoire I mentioned earlier. It wasn't really dirty, just possibly slightly dusty from the move. And then I put most of my non-ghetto yarns in the cubby holes and drawers. It's 90% full now. I will have to take a photo of it someday... if we ever get a replacement camera. The doors squeak a bit so I will need to take care of that. I hope my yarn isn't claustrophobic because some of them are squished in quite tightly.

I've been thinking about using Elann Highland Wool for T's hat, in these colors:



Last week I had been thinking of using some sport weight yarn, but I think that the lighter weight yarn may not give the wearer proper "respectability" at a convention. The hat worn in that episode doesn't seem like a sport weight hat.

I just discovered that I already have the red one, so I'd be 1/3 of the way there! That means picking up 2 balls of orange and 2 balls of yellow. It seems ridiculous to order just 4 balls of yarn, so something else would have to fall into the shopping cart too. I'm a bit hesitant about placing another order so soon since I placed one with them 3 days ago. I seem to be better at collecting yarn than knitting with it. I'm saving it for a rainy day...

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Zara

I picked up a few balls of Filatura Di Crosa Zara and Filatura Di Crosa 501. I've used 501 before for Miss M's blanket and liked it working with it. I had never seen Zara before this, so I played around with it a bit and was pleasantly surprised to find how soft it felt in my hands. I wish I had gotten more of it. I'd love to wrap myself up in a Zara blanket...

Hmmm... what do you make of this? Out of 6 different colors I got, 4 of them are shades of purple and 2 of them are shades of blue. AND I don't think I am imagining this but I swear that 2 different purples (both Zara, colors 1722 and 1669) look like the identical shade of purple! I wish I could show you guys. I'll have to take photos of these two balls so you can see what I mean. I think you'll agree that they're identical. Unfortunately, this will have to wait until I find my lost or misplaced camera.

After working with Baby Cashmere and itty bitty US3 needles for the very first time while knitting my Osiris scarf, I wonder whether I should try my hand at more small needle knitting with Elann's Pure Alpaca Fina which comes in a gazillion wonderful colors. I'm not normally a green yarn kind of person, even though I seem to have a lot of greens in my stash, but I am drawn to all those shades of green this yarn comes in. I'm still thinking about making a Jayne Cobb hat for a big fan who not so subtly reminded me that he'd like one of these. I'm wondering if combining Crimson, Paprika, and Amber would make a nice Jayne Cobb hat. I've watched the episode, used pause/zoom on the DVD player, and still don't feel like I'm getting a good look at the hat. It doesn't help that the scenes where hat appears in have dim lighting.

During our house move, I inherited my mom's armoire which now sits in our bedroom. Since this is "new" furniture to DH, he hasn't quite thought of filling it up. It still sits empty. I'm thinking of using it as a yarnmoire. That would mean taking my yarn out of boxes and leaving them more "exposed" in the cabinet. I mean, people don't really have a good feel for what kind of stash I have even if they see all the yarn boxes in my closet. However if all the yarn is visible to anyone who opens the armoire, well then some people might be shocked at how much yarn I actually own! Anyhow, I need to make a mental note to take a photo of this armoire... I don't think all my stash will fit in there. No, I don't have that much in my stash, there are plenty other people on Ravelry who have entered in hundreds of yarns in their stash coughBarbaracough, so I really have a very small stash in comparison.

I need to work more with fingerling and sport weight yarns. I'm hoping that once I get comfortable with this weight, I can try to ease into some "thick" lace weight yarns...

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Osiris

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[Note: You can see a better view of the pattern here, where Devon gives better stitch definition than Baby Cashmere.]

I had an idea for a cable scarf while I was browsing through my stitch pattern dictionaries. I knew which cable pattern I wanted in the center, it was just a matter of choosing between the Hollow Oak pattern from BW2, the 28.6 pattern from HG5, or the 20.5 pattern from HG5. I wanted a "neutral" cable pattern to surround this center cable. The basic FC or BC cable is pretty neutral, but it slants one way or the other. So I decided to go with the Chain Cable from BW1. For the edge cable pattern, I wanted to continue with the undulating theme of the center cable. I was trying to decide between pattern 16.6 from HG5 or the Lorgnette Cable from BW2. I went with the latter because I liked the design more. What I like about doing those little bobbles is that it is done without having to turn your work, you just create 7 stitches from one stitch, and then pass the 6 stitches one at a time over the 1st stitch. Very simple, just make sure you have sharp needle points!

The scarf is knit with Elann's Baby Cashmere yarn, which makes a nice lightweight scarf. It's my first finished object using this yarn. I had started a shawl with some Baby Cashmere a couple years ago, but it still sits unfinished in a tote bag. The scarf is around 9 inches wide and 5.5 ft long after blocking. I like to do flat knitting with circular needles. I started with a 24" 3.25mm circular needle thinking that this should be fine for a small scarf. Boy was I wrong. There just wasn't enough slack for me to comfortably do the "needle acrobatics" needed for cabling without a cable needle. So I switched to a 29" circular needle and I was much happier. This scarf is pretty easy to knit, however it was slightly out of my US6 size needle comfort zone. This was the first time I knit with US3 needles! It really wasn't that bad in the end. Hmmm.. maybe there is hope for me to knit socks? I was using a Susan Bates regular size row counter which is supposed to fit needle sizes US8(?) and under, but mine kept flying off the needle. That was a minor annoyance. Need to figure out what I can do to make the row counter stay put on the needle.

Stitches used in this scarf include:
Chain Cable, BW1 pg 246
Hollow Oak, BW2 pg 196
Lorgnette Cable, BW2 pg 197
Seed Stitch, BW1 pg 11

Pattern was updated on 1/17/2008.



Osiris Scarf Pattern:
Osiris Scarf Pattern from Box.com (no registration required, just click on link & save file)

Osiris Scarf Chart:
Osiris Scarf Chart from Box.com.


This is my very first attempt at creating a chart, so I apologize if it looks unorthodox and is confusing. I haven't yet learned to knit directly from charts. I'm the person who will take a chart and translate it into row-by-row instructions, lol. However I understand that many knitters prefer charts to row-by-row instructions, so I made this attempt to create a chart for this scarf. You can read about my chart challenges here. I've spent a lot of time creating this chart and checking for accuracy, but I can't make any promises since I haven't knit from it myself. I would appreciate any feedback you have about this chart.

Special Thanks goes to the following people for their help in creating this Chart:
Barbara (http://catbookmomsyarns.blogspot.com/) for directing me to the Aire River knitting font and for the Chart Master Document without which I never would have attempted charting.
Bets (http://you-cant-read-my-mind-i-scribble.blogspot.com/), Grace (http://lovincomfortknits.blogspot.com/), and Libby (http://libbyknitkins.blogspot.com/)

My series of cable scarves...

Persephone Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2006/12/persephone.html
Ariel Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/04/ariel.html
Miranda Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/06/miranda-scarf.html
Osiris Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/09/osiris.html
Bernadette Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/11/bernadette.html
Regina Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/12/regina.html
Paquin Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/03/paquin.html
Beaumonde Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/04/beaumonde.html
Shadow Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/04/shadow.html
Hera Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/08/hera-scarf-pattern.html
Triumph Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/08/triumph-cable-scarf-pattern.html
Ezra Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/09/ezra-cable-scarf-pattern.html
Sihnon Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/10/sihnon.html
Londinium Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/10/londinium.html
St. Albans Valentine Cable Scarf:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/11/scarf-15.html

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We've moved!

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We've been busy lately but have finally moved into our new house. Yay!! But the fun isn't over yet. We still have to some cleaning up, fixing up, and unpacking to do. Unfortunately, there will be no photos for a while. We lost or misplaced the camera somewhere between houses. We're still hoping it will turn up as we unpack more boxes.

The Good:
-- I like the layout of the house.
-- I like being on a cul-de-sac. It doesn't feel like a cul-de-sac because it's a longish one, and we're halfway down the block before you get to the end. So you get a regular block feel without the heavy through traffic.
-- Living on one level. It is so nice to be able to do laundry without having to go up or down any stairs. This is a very refreshing change for me and it makes doing laundry less of a chore. Oh my, did I actually say that?
-- Miss M can't be woken up by any lights in our bedroom. In the old house, she could see the light from our bedroom because both rooms had frosted glass doors that led to a shared "sunroom".
-- I like having a dishwasher, although I don't actually use it to wash dishes. It's pretty much an oversize dish rack. I've never had a dishwasher before, so I'm used to hand washing. However is is nice to have plenty of space to place clean dishes after hand washing.

The Bad:
-- Bugs, bugs, bugs!!! Bugs everywhere! The few daddy long legs hanging around don't bother me anymore. The pantry moths don't bother me as much anymore, although they are a minor annoyance; we didn't have these at the old house. What really bugs me are the itty bitty "pinpoint" bugs (sorry, don't know what they're called) that show up primarily in the hall bath, but a few have also found their way into the master bath. We suspect they're coming in from outside through the exterior door that leads from the hall bath to the back yard. We've added some stripping to the bottom of the door to seal the big gap there and it seemed to help some. Plus, I really hate to admit this, I sprayed some ant/roach spray in the bathroom cuz it was just bugging me that there were so many of these bugs crawling on the floor! I try to keep Miss M out of the hall bath since I don't want her exposed to all that toxic chemically stuff.
-- The raking. OMG, there is so much raking. I lived in the city before, didn't have big trees, so this is a new thing for me. We moved into the house 3 months after getting the keys, so the yard had been neglected all this time. I guess not watering the lawn/tree might have contributed to our poor looking tree outside the house. It is a BIG tree, with branches overhanging our house.
-- We don't have internet access yet, so am using a borrowed connection.



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Grace's Blogiversary

Grace is having a contest to celebrate her one-year blog anniversary and is giving away lace shawls! So go and sign up and tell her I sent you so I can get a few more entries tossed in the hat.

Her contest made me think about how long I have been blogging. My first blog post was on 6/25/2005. Have I really been blogging for over 2 years? Of course, it hasn't been continuous. There were some off periods when I was just too busy with baby. My knitting time has improved as DD got older, however, I'm currently experiencing another hiatus due to the whole house move business. However I am pleased to announce that we finally have an official move date! It'll be this coming Monday, so I'll be busy between now and then to pack up the rest of the stuff that needs packing, and getting everything ready before the movers arrive. I will be offline for a while, from the time the computer gets packed until whenever we get internet access at the new house.

This will be my first time with professional movers. Do you tip them? If so, how much?



Yay! We finally got shutters at the new house, so we're not going to live in a fishbowl. This is the dining room. Due to the lack of space on the right side, the shutter doesn't open up flat against the wall.



This is the living room. I love how they managed to get shutters in that corner window. I was afraid it couldn't be done.



There is one little problem with the screws at each end of the living room shutters. There wasn't enough room for the screw, so it sticks out. It's normally not a big deal, but with a 2 yr old running around, I am worried about her getting close to the screw and getting a nasty scratch. I need to find some way to cover it up so she doesn't get hurt.

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