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I’ve been working on a skirt, knit out of Lion Kitchen Cotton, that I’ve been making up as I go. I wanted the bottom to be scalloped lace, and instead of merely using one color, I was thinking of alternating the rose I have with a lighter pink, as that’s the way it appears in my knitting pattern dictionary and it’s really pretty. Lion has a light pink (#101) but after a long stint of googling and calling stores, I’ve given up on ever finding some. It appears to be pure urban legend. Instead, I thought I’d go wild and spend the $5 on a ball of white kitchen cotton and a pack of RIT dye, since everyone in my knitting group raves about the results they get by self-dyeing. I got home, unwound the yarn, boiled the water, and started making test strips. They kept being way too bright, so I would dump out half of the dye-filled water, refill the pot to the brim with fresh, and try another strip. I was trying to be neat, but still had to do some fierce scrubbing to keep the red dye from permanently staining the white plastic and paint in my kitchen, and I had a miserable time trying to keep my hands clean so that I didn’t inadvertently leave handprints everywhere.

By the time I got to the one on the far right, I was happy with the color, so I dumped the full tangle of white yarn in. Something obviously went awry in my test-strip process, however, as this was the god-awful result:

Kevin’s only comment was a somewhat horrified “did you MEAN to do that?” Utterly defeated, I put the mass of fluorescent mauve horridness out on the deck to dry, and left it there for a week. I don’t know if it was the sun(?), but when I finally went out to reclaim my cookie sheet, the top half was a lovely light pink. The bottom, however, was just as hideous as before. I flipped in and left it outside for a few more days, then I ran it through the laundry once to try to lighten it (worked a bit, but mostly just turned it into a 236-yard snarl). I’ve spent the last week picking out the myriad knots so that I could wind it up.

It’s finally done, though it clashes with the skirt, and I don’t think I’ll use it for anything else — I think this ball will ultimately be going the way of the red cotton-ease and will be gifted to a crafts program somewhere. Chalk this up as a learning experience: no more dyeing. Back to the single-toned lace for the skirt.

Have you seen this? Especially if you live in the Seattle area? It’s one of my new favourite sites: http://busmonster.com/

It’s still no Boston System Map, since you can’t see all of the connections and all of the transportation options, but it was good enough to make me get my work-benefits bus pass and start riding #245 to work. Public transportation is great: a walk on either end, free time to read or knit, and I don’t have to contend with the other drivers — so many of them aggravate me. It’s nicer not to have to think about how slowly/erratically/cluelessly the guy next to you is driving. I know a lot of people (and date one of them), who think of their car as an private oasis, where they control everything, can burn off the irritations of the day, and get to spend time alone communing with themselves. Though I loved having my license in high school, the novelty has long since worn off — I could really do without having to drive places every day. Long trips to see new places? Sure. Going through the 17 stoplights it takes to get from home to work? Nah.

Which brings us back to busmonster. Click the “Routes” link at the top of the page, type in 245, and you can see the entire route, complete with stops and the current locations of in-service buses! Pretty cool. 🙂 And then, if you click on the individual stops (look like tear drops), and then show all routes, it lists everything coming through for the next half hour! Good for connections. 🙂 And then, if you need to see the other rootes that go through a stop, you can enter them in with commas and see where they all go! Good for exploring. 🙂 And I know it’s nothing new, but I love the traffic status. I don’t really use it, I just think it’s clever.

Once upon a time, we had a lovely spikey tropical plant that came home from work with Kevin after his team moved and he didn’t get to keep his window office. We turn it now and then since it seems to lean slighty towards the light, but otherwise there’s been no noticeable change in the thing since November. Then, two weeks ago, it started putting out new stalks.

And now, it’s turned into the rapidly growing man-eater pictured below. The next picture was a mere week ago, the second is today. I’m afraid that it will break out of it’s pot. (I’ve heard of that — is it possible?) We’ve stopped watering it in an attempt to subdue it, but so far it seems unphased. We don’t know what it is or how big it’s supposed to get.

After the luck with the cyclamen, I’m turning to all of you again — what is this plant? How big will it get? And is the pot in mortal danger?

This is one of those “Worth A Thousand Words” pictures. Life has been very busy. Kevin gave me the box set of Harry Potters 1 through 5 for my birthday (what an awesome gift! especially since my parents’ copies are all the way away in New Hampshire and thus hard to borrow!), so I’ve been at Hogwarts for every spare-able minute. Unfortunately, the later books are THICK, and my reading time was starting to impede on my knitting time. I feel like Hermione would have found a way to get the books to lie flat (and for that matter, to turn pages automatically), but I lack her skills. So, I invented the awesome Cascade-220 book-opener loop, proudly displayed below. The only downside: makes it harder to get to bed on time, now that it means leaving both reading and knitting. And yes, for those readers with sharp eyes, that is the never-ending sock on the needles.

P.S. Check out my left foot: worst sandle tan Ever.

We’ve had about two weeks running of amazing sunsets. I think it’s been a bit hazy, and it’s producing amazing pinks and oranges that linger for nearly an hour. I’ve been getting home late, recently, and it’s been making for lovely, tranquil drives.

(These were taken from the top of my street.) The only pity is that sunset’s coming sooner, and it definitely isn’t that bright light past nine anymore. I love the long days — I wish they’d stay a bit longer.

A saturday morning tradition gets even better with the addition of fresh nectarines and blueberries instead of the typical frozen raspberries!

I love summer fruit season.

Last night was Stitch n Pitch, aka knitting at the Mariners Game. The way the story goes, there are some unflappable female knitters who work at the Mariners Headquarters. They’d spend their lunchhours knitting and ignoring the teasing. Then, someone watching them had the idea of selling tickets to knitters as a theme night (the mariners are neither leading their league nor selling out the park), expecting a crew of maybe 40. Instead, they had between 1200 and 1600 people show up (depending which paper you read). Knitters rock.

It seems that as the ticket count continued to mount, the organizers got more and more psyched. They draped the Mariners Moose (does he have a name? not sure?) in yarn, gave him huge needles, and had him throw a basket’s worth of yarn out (instead of the usual t-shirts or towels) to an adoring crowd of knitters. They displayed each of the Mariner’s names in cross-stitch on the jumbotron when it was their turn to bat. They changed all of the crowd-rousing slogans to things like “You hit the STITCHES off that one!” Very cheesy, and very fun, though with $10 tickets the food prices felt particularly ridiculous, and so also very hungry. I ended up in the middle of a slew of eastside knitters and bloggers, including Laura and her husband, Diana and her boyfriend, Rebecca, and Janell and her husband. (You’ll note that the pictures are all of the moose — we were all way up high at the tippy top of the stadium, so attempting to take pictures of the game would have been optimistic. :-))

I found these buttons at Fred Meyer for $2 a package:

A little bit of fishing line later, I now have:

In a slightly misguided moment at knitting on Wednesday, the conversation devolved into a game of “guess that houseplant.” I have a plant that I got at the grocery store with pink flowers on long stalks. I keep forgetting to water it, and on the next sunny day it wilts and looks dead, and then I water it in a fit of obtuseness and the thing spits out new leaves and flowers — I love it. We’ve been doing this for nearly a year now. The group decided by consensus that it was a geranium. I’m confident it’s not.

Here it is… You can see that it ‘s been through a drought and lost most of its leaves, but there are two more buds in the back so not too much harm done.

So, all-wise knitters… now that you have a visual, what kind of flower is this? 🙂

My sewing machine is contagious. Or maybe I’m just particularly susceptible to the siren song of fabric stores, but I have more sewing projects. Specifically, shirts for work.

In true dive-in spirit, I found fabric for versions B and D, buttons, thread, and fusible interfacing (that I haven’t figured out yet). My only tailoring experience was in fourth grade (third grade?) when I “helped” my mom make me these two one-piece summer outfits that I loved dearly. So, I can’t entirely say that I know what I’m doing. Exhibit A in that regard is the amount of fabric bought… I read the back of the pattern, deduced that I needed 2 1/4 yards of each color, brought it home, washed it, ironed it, hung it over the railing and realized that I’d bought enough to clothe the Von Trapp family.

I guess it’s better that too little though? And it wasn’t exactly an extravagant purchase at $2.50 a yard, so no harm done.

I’ve now made it through cutting out all of the patterns from the tissue paper, and folding the mountains of fabric right side together. Cutting is next, wish me luck. There are four cutting patterns — I think I’m supposed to choose the most appropriate, not use them all, but I can’t say that it’s entirely clear. And I think bias tape is only needed for version E, but I also can’t say *that’s* clear. And there’s a boatload of symbols scattered all over the pattern, which I’m sure are there for a reason (mysterious as they may be) — any offers of websites with tips or tricks would be very helpful and well-received at this point! I’m sure I can’t go too woefully wrong by just jumping in, cutting, and sewing, (I’m a smart girl, right? And I knit!) but I’d really like to understand the finer points of what’s expected — the pattern gives basically no discernible guidance.

P.S. Bonus points/Project motivation: I’ll get to use my sewing machine’s buttonhole-maker! Sweet!!