The Knitting Pirate

It’s been a hard year in many ways, but I have so much to be thankful for.

Pirate-Husband. The amount of work that he has put into the house in the last few months is incredible. Scrubbing, sanding, washing, staining – the logs look amazing, and the house is more ready for winter than it’s ever been. Okay, so we still have the scaffolding on the porch, but if the weather holds out we’ll be done with that soon too. I am so grateful that he has the knowledge, skills and ability to take on a gigantic project like refinishing a log house. Not to mention, he’s a heck of a good cook. We eat better at home than we could in most of the local restaurants. Last week we had new friends over for dinner and they were seriously impressed with our crepes manicotti and crockpot cobbler – and I thought it was just a normal sort of weekend meal! Also, he takes the garbage out and does the laundry. Those seem like small things to be thankful for, but I really appreciate them.

The cats. Losing Aubrey started the whole year off on the wrong foot. Kipling isn’t really any kind of replacement for my kitten, but he’s pretty awesome in his own right, and he’s a perfect companion for Floyd. They are always together, whether they’re playing or sleeping. Floyd is coming around to be fairly cool himself; he pretends he doesn’t want any love but every morning I wake up to find him curled up against my stomach. Unless they’re sleeping, both of them follow me around the house wherever I go, and make sad kitten-faces when I go somewhere they can’t follow. And to think, I was afraid that they wouldn’t like me at all. I had nothing to worry about.

My blood-family, too large to appear all in one picture, but here are the two newest members of the clan. I have a big family and we’re kinda spread out across the world, but when we need each other, we’re there with no questions asked other than “what can I do to help?” Some of the hard stuff this year has brought us closer together, and I’m thankful for that even though we had to go through the rough times to get here. I’m going to see a bunch of the far-away relatives for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday and I can’t wait!

My sworn-family. (Here we are at one Winterlude or another!) I don’t even know how to begin to express how much the three of them mean to me. They fill a place in my heart that I didn’t know was empty before I met them. They love and accept me for who I am and at the same time cheer me on to become an even better person. I would do anything for them, and I have no doubt that they would do the same for me.

I’m thankful for my job. (These are the monkeys who live on my desk, since there is no way to get an interesting picture of my office.) Sure, I have to get up early for it. Sure, it’s a long drive to work and home again every day. But it’s a good job, and I like it, and I like most of the people I work with too. This year I got to learn how to use Illustrator, which I’ve wanted to learn for years, and they sent me to a JavaScript class just ’cause I asked, and to a conference in Florida. Overall, it’s a pretty fine job indeed.

And of course, since this is a knitting blog after all, I’m thankful for my knitting and crocheting and spinning skills, for my stash of yarn and fibre, for my spinning wheel and spindles and drum carder, for the knitter friends I’ve made, and for Ravelry, without which this would be just a little hobby instead of one of the defining aspects of my life. I’m so excited about the projects I’m working on right now, and for the designs and ideas that are percolating in my head! I have so many fibre-ish plans for next year, including my first for-sale pattern, blending some batts on the drum carder, getting some stock into the never-used Etsy shop, and at least two projects made with my own handspun yarn: a hat and a pair of armwarmers.

And maybe I’ll finish some of those projects that keep lingering on…

Last weekend, Pirate-Husband and I volunteered to pour wine at Vintage Virginia, a local wine festival. We were working in the Top Five Tasting Tent, so we were in the shade all day. I put on my extrovert face and ended up having lots of fun, much more than I’d expected! We split the sixteen tables between the volunteers, and one of my patrons took this picture of me. (They also gave me a completely unexpected tip!) As thanks for our service we were given free entrance to the festival on Sunday, but I think I actually had a better time working than I did waiting on line to taste wines.

I’ve been keeping up with Operation: Badass. It’s definitely made easier by the beautiful scenery. Farms with horses and cows, the mountain rising up in the background, old buildings with boards over the windows being reclaimed by nature. The way the trees arch over this driveway make it seem almost like a magical place. I don’t like thinking that it’s “just” a driveway; I couldn’t see the house from the road so I imagined what it must look like, and I’m sure my imagination did it justice.

Most of the time I stop to take photos when I’m recovering from speeding up a hill, but other times I stop just because something is so pretty that I need to have a picture of it. This driveway was one of those times, and I’m glad to have stopped for it.

The flower season is almost at its end, as we’re turning the corner into summer’s oppressive heat. The mountain laurels are starting to look sad and wilted. But these two were still going strong, hiding in the shade next to a cow field. It occurred to me after I’d leaned in to take the pictures that I was likely to be bitten by a tick, but fortunately that didn’t happen. Anyway, does anyone know what kind of flowers these are? I especially like the ruffled petals of the pink ones.

Back from vacation with 2/3 of a completed sock. It was too hot to knit, most of the time. More later! :)

Pirate-Husband, the sock, and I are going on vacation; I don’t have any posts queued for while I’m gone, so there’ll be nothing from me for a little while. Be good, knit lots, and I’ll see you in a week and a half!

The socks which fit perfectly, fresh off the needles, are now too big. The socks which I thought were too small, fit perfectly after a few wearings. There’s a lesson to be learned here, one which is brought to mind when I try on my handspun socks: “These socks are not really too small.” Sure, they’re difficult to get on and off – but a few wearings and washings will soften them up. And they fit just right around my ankles, no bagging or wrinkling at all.

This is what I have learned about socks this year:

• With standard sock yarn, I should make a 64-stitch stockinette-footed sock for myself.
• I might consider 68 stitches if I want ribbing down the foot.
• The socks aren’t too small. Really. Unless they are, in which case
• It’s so easy to rip back and fix mistakes.
• If I make the sock leg six inches long, there should be enough yarn left over for the foot.
• Heel-flap-and-gusset socks fit better than short row heel socks.
• Short row heel socks are acceptable, though.
• I need to learn to do a heel flap and gusset sock from the toe up.
• Here is a conveniently free pattern from Wendy for just that.
• I like to knit socks for the people I love best.
• Handknit socks are so much better than store-bought, but toe socks from Sock Dreams are a close second.

In the coming year I’d like to try new sock architectures – the Hat-Heel Sock looks interesting, and I have Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters book to work through as well. I have a half-ton of sock yarn and I’m not letting myself buy any more until I’ve used some up!

This is the reason I’ve not been knitting. This is a 1998 Oldsmobile Cutlass GLS. It has been my car for the past five and a half years. It has 147,000 miles on it. It’s not sporty, stylish, or very much fun to drive… but up until this winter, it has been incredibly reliable. Then the power steering pump started making some funny noises, and then we realized that it really needed new tires. Well, that was just too much money to put into an old car, so we decided to trade it in. The only problem with that is that the car I had set my mind on has a manual transmission, and I’d never driven one before. So Pirate-Husband took me out driving in his Miata, not the easiest of cars on which to learn, and it took me so long to get the hang of it that I thoroughly neglected my knitting. I have made almost no progress on anything but learning to drive.

I think it was worth it.

No, THIS is the reason I haven’t been knitting. This is a 2009 Mazda 3 S Touring in Galaxy Gray, and today I drove it by myself for the first time. I didn’t stall on the way home from work (let’s not mention the way *to* work; I was tired) and I even managed to park it uphill and backwards in the garage. Having done that, I have no excuses left. I should be knitting right now. Pardon me, I think I hear my yarn calling! Hopefully I’ll have some progress pics to show off later this week!

Yarr! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties! I would cast on for a pirate-themed project, but I have too many on the needles already and another slated to begin on Sunday. I’ll just have to settle for saying YAR(n) every so often.

Earlier this summer I set Mom up with the pattern for the Ostrich Plumes scarf that I’ve been working on. She admired it quite a bit and wanted to make a stole for herself. Unfortunately, because most of her knitting time is in the car or in front of the tv, she was finding it a bit too complicated. She asked if I knew of a less complex pattern, and after a quick search I sent her the English version of the Upstairs stole. Hopefully that will work better for her!

Also speaking of Mom, her birthday is coming up this week. I’m giving her a certificate for a pair of hand-knit, custom-fit gloves. If she doesn’t pick the pattern, I’ll probably choose something out of the Selbuvotter: Biography of a Knitting Tradition book that I recently bought.

As for cameras, I’m leaning towards getting the Canon PowerShot 870IS. It seems to have gotten the best reviews, and it fits into my price range fairly well. I would really like to show you some of the works in progress that I’ve got, so unless my old camera miraculously reappears, I’ll probably be ordering the new one this weekend.

Pirate-Husband’s motorcycle, the namesake for the Highwayman Armwarmers, is no more. Here’s a pic of Pirate-Husband getting my dad set up for a ride last May.

For anyone who doesn’t remember, Pirate-Husband crashed back in late October, breaking two ribs and quite a bit of motorcycle. He was three hours from home at the time. The bike was brought to a shop near the crash, the insurance adjuster came out to look at it, the shop fixed the bike, and he got it back mid-January (uninspected, though the inspection had run out while the shop had it). It sat for a while in our parking lot while Pirate-Husband’s ribs healed.

About a month ago, he took it out for a ride and noticed that there was an incredible amount of oil leaking out, so it went to our local shop.

There is $4800 worth of frame damage.

The bike is being totalled.

I may knit another pair of Highwayman Armwarmers in requiem.

This awful cold has come back for round two. It’s bad enough that I went to the doctor yesterday (I don’t have the flu) and bad enough that I called out of work today and pre-emptively, tomorrow. It’s bad enough that I haven’t even wanted to knit. I did pick up the sock and got through one needle – not even one round, just one needle – before going all woogy-eyed and giving up.

This, my yarn-loving friends, is bad. I am so bored, but I can’t concentrate on anything. I can’t wait to be healthy again and go back to work.

I haven’t been posting in the past week because I really haven’t been knitting in the past week, and the reason I haven’t been knitting is because I’ve been busy *buying a house*.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up on the story, there have been three houses in this hunt. The first one needed a lot of fixing. Our first offer was rejected, but when the other buyers disappeared, they came back to us. Meanwhile, we had found a second house that we really liked, but it was a short sale and the bank was taking forever to process the paperwork. We withdrew our offer on the first house, deciding that it would be too much work for us, and were waiting patiently for the second house to come through, when…

Pirate-Husband found a log house on top of a mountain. You can see pictures of it here (flash slideshow). I’m sure this link will expire eventually, but it’s still working now.

We went to see it December 29. We put an offer in on December 30. We got an answer back on December 31 – negotiated a little bit, and agreed! The inspection was yesterday, and most things were in good shape. There are a few here-and-theres to fix up, but nothing that would prevent us from going ahead with it!

Closing is January 25. I am alternating between “oh gods what have I done,” and “wow, this is gonna be great!”