A picture and a thousand words

Last year in Boston, buying ornaments for my first tree, I quickly seemed to develop a theme:

It wasn’t that I was extremely enamoured with snowmen, they were just the most widely available option. A few weeks into advent, I began to notice the alarming trend, yet was helpless to stem the flow of snowmen onto my tree. I looked far and wide (and I really do mean everywhere) for variety, particularily along more religious lines — we do celebrate this holiday for a reason. However, I had almost no luck.

Then, this year Kevin’s mom sent out all of his old ornaments. Along with the obligatory snowmen, we have a whole new genre inhabiting this year’s tree:

Firefighters. 🙂 I suppose though if I had to choose a theme to guard our tree (who will be unwatered for over a week, poor thing), firefighters aren’t half bad. We’ll have to leave variety for 2005.

… and so we finally bought a tree. Apparently in Washington, they only sell Douglas Firs and Noble Firs, which both look a little odd for a girl used to Balsams. After a fair amount of calling around and u-eys (how would *you* spell that?) on busy roads looking for something under $50, we finally ended up at home depot where we found a reasonably nice douglas fir for $20. I’m worried that it’s going to lose all its needles, but it does look and smell so Christmas-y in the living room, so I’m going to stop stressing and just enjoy it. My mom packed my share of our family’s ornaments as well as a good bit of tinsel (I couldn’t find any last year — maybe it’s a boston thing?), so it was fun to see them all come out of their wrappings and find a spot on the tree.

I like that the tree lights and the fish tank are both reflected in the window. 🙂

We finally have a fish!! Want to see him?

Yeah. We can’t see him either. He’s a royal gramma, which sounded like a great fish to start with until we got him home, he disappeared into our live rock, and we googled for a bit more information. It turns out that these fish live in caves that they either find or make in the rocks in your tank. They venture forth occasionally, but mostly just stay in their lair. Our guy booked for the rock as soon as we let him into the tank. The entrance is in the back, and therefore invisible to us, but we can see through a tiny hole in the rock to part of his cave (The dark patch in the center of the photo above has about a 1/3″ hole in the back and we can sometimes see part of his fin.) So, basically we’re doing more rock watching.

Speaking of the rock, though, you can see some of our coralline algae (the maroon, purple, and pink on the rocks) — this is supposedly highly desirable and shows that we have good calcium carbonate levels in our tank. The plant at the bottom is about 2 inches in circumference. We had a worm munching on it, but he’s finally stopped. To the upper left of the fish lair cave, you can see five of our unidentified purple tube polyps: they have brown fringed exteriors and bright green interiors and are about 3 mm across. They look like short stumpy purple tubes when they’re closed. I’d love to know what they are. Finally, doesn’t the white rock w/ the splash of red just above the fish lair look like a skull with a bloody mouth? It gives me the creeps.

Really, you say. Enough gushing about the rocks! Show me a fish! Well, our guy is getting a little braver, so I got a photo:



Isn’t that great? You can see a millimeter of his purple head if you squint through that little opening there. So far he’s out of his lair, but sticks right by the entrance to it on the back side of the tank.

Since Kevin and I probably have more patience with this game than you do, here’s the best shot I have:



In person, he’s a lot more magenta than royal purple towards his head. I think that the flash and the tank lights are responsible for the odd color. I had to crawl around the side of the tank to get this shot, but isn’t he pretty?!

It’s measuring in at 4 and a quarter inches. Pretty cool. 🙂 Here’s a blurry photo:

For my sister’s bday, I’d made her a little Sophie bag (around the time that my parents were here visiting). Now that she has it, I can finally post about it. 🙂

I made the bag using Cascade 220 (of course), in Black, medium rose (#9424) and light pink (#8114), on size 10 needles. I made a pocket big enough for an id or credit card on the inside by picking up 19 stitches, knitting 20 rows, then binding off and sewing up the sides. Here are the exterior and interior before felting:

I ran it through two cycles so that the stitches would be completely invisible, which led to a smaller Sophie than others than I’ve seen. For comparison’s sake, here are before-and-after measurements of different parameters of the purse:

	Prefelt:	Postfelt:
Base->Top:	10″	5.25″
Circ. of Opening:	17″	14″
Base: Width: Height:	7.5″ 6.25″	6.75″ 4.25″
Pocket: Width: Height:	5.25″ 4.25″	3.75″ 3″
Straps:	28″	19″

I was really happy with the result overall. If I could go back I would have made the stripes a little wider and the pocket a little deeper. Here it is blocking:

In the foreground, you can see the pieces of a flower that I made to go with it. The flower turned out to be much too big, so I made an even smaller piece to add, which is awaiting felting in this picture. Here’s the finished flower:

Instructions for the finished flower (composed of a dark pink “smaller flower” and a light pink “larger flower”) are here:

Smaller flower:

Knit 5 petals in color A:

Cast on 5 stitches, knit 4 rows in stockinette.

Row 5: knit 1, CDD, knit 1

Row 6: CDD, pull yarn through remaining stitch to bind off.

(CDD = Centered double decrease: sl 2 stitches to right needle, pull

right stitch over left. sl st back to left needle. pull left stich

over right. RS: K remaining stitch. WS: P remaining stitch)

Sew in any loose ends, then take a new piece of yarn, thread it through the base of all the petals, and pull tight. The petal should dimple. Sew back and forth to close up any gaps.

Larger Flower:

Knit 5 petals in Color B:

Cast on 7 stitches, knit 6 rows of stockinette.

Row 7: K2, CDD, K2

Row 8: K1, CDD, K1

Row 9: CDD, pull yarn through remaining stitch to bind off.

Sew in loose ends, then bind together as for smaller flower.

Leaf:

Cast on 9. Knit 9 rows. Dec 2 every other row, bind off last stitch.

Sew in ends.

Felt, felt, felt.

Trim off excess fuzzies, then sew (with thread) the two flowers together, the leaf to the back of the flower, and a bar pin or clasp onto the back. I added metallic thread and 3 beads as an accent to the front. The finished flower is about 3″ x 3.5″.

If you want to make the larger petals visible in the blocking photo, just keep increasing your cast-on size by two.

Yeehaw! With the impending holidays and my newfound dearth of projects (I finished the red hat & scarf, but haven’t sewn in ends. pictures tomorrow?), I’ve decided that my “no new yarn until I get a job” rule only applies to projects for myself. 🙂 Ahh, rationalization.

The really exciting part of this is that Kevin mentioned in passing that he wouldn’t be adverse to hand-knit socks. This was incredibly exciting news to me for several reasons. First, on a knitting level, I feel like knitting socks is the way in which you prove that you have truly arrived. The holy grail, if you will. However, I don’t like any of the sock patterns for myself, except maybe for these. So, I’m delighted to get to try my skill and *not* have to wear the result. 🙂 Second, most of his previous girlfriends have been knitters (he obviously has good taste), and so I didn’t want to duplicate their past projects. I’m also a firm believer in the sweater curse… it may have been two and a half years, and we may be living together, but you don’t start a sweater unless you have a ring on your finger. No need to jinx these things.

So, I went down to Kirkland Yarn & Stitchery on the way home from other errands and found this yarn (Patons Kroy Socks 4-ply, color #54108) and the Patons Classics Winter Warmth pattern book. The sock pattern I have in mind has the blue arrow pointing toward it.

Kevin gave the go-ahead. Here he is with his future-socks (though it’s hard to tell if the yarn or the eggnog is the reason for the smile…) Woohoo for new projects.

I also picked up some Plymouth Encore for one of the gifts on my list. The colors are a neutral beige (#240), a nearly-navy blue (#848), and a slightly tweedy medium blue (#658, which looks much more light blue/gray in real life than in this shot). Expect more info on this project in a few weeks. 😛

Kevin’s downstairs working on dinner so I’d better run, but I had to share my new-yarn fun!!

I’ve been restraining myself from posting about the fishtank because I feel like it’s more interesting to me than to anyone reading, but I can’t help it, the thing is too cool.

Leah and Ginger were laughing at me & Kevin last night for our watching chairs…

I wish I could say that we don’t really spend all of our time sitting there, but I really can’t. 🙂 We bought new lights the weekend before thanksgiving since our used bulbs really seemed weak and we weren’t seeing much plant growth. The lights are JBJ Formosa DX which are two blue actinic and two white bulbs. The difference from the old ones is surreal, and our tank is so alive now. We also bought a dude crew — hermit crabs and snails to clean our rocks, substrate and tank. They all seem happy and are doing a great job keeping all of our new plants in check. Here’s a sample view of one of the most popular rocks (you can see three hermit crabs and a snail covered in purple algae — I circled them in yellow so that they’d be easier to find):

Then we have this guy, who spends all of his time eating (as opposed to most of our snails who spend all their time looking asleep):

He delighted us (I’m serious. we were entranced.) last night by standing up and waving his antennae around. We couldn’t decide if it was a king of the mountain display or gastronomic distress, but it was fun to watch.

We also have a neat little double fan which started growing on our rocks once the new lights were in place:

We don’t know what it is (it’s about 3/4″ tall right now, and deep green), so we need to find some sort of salt water algae field guide, but i’m hoping that it continues growing. So neat.

Here are two other unidentified algae colonies:

The green algae on the left has globes between 1 and 4 mm, and sticks to the rock. We have several groups of it. I think that it’s some sort of single celled bubble algae. The hermit crabs and snails munch stuff off of it, but haven’t eaten any of the bubbles. I’m hoping that it spreads.

My favourite algae is the purple tubes on the right. When the lights are off or any animals come near it, it shrinks into itself and becomes a little purple tube. This blurry photo is of five of them, when they’re open. The biggest is 2 or 3 mm across. The centers are a greenish/yellow, and the edges are surrounded by a very fine orange fringe. I don’t know what they are, but they’re amazing, and I get a lot of milage out of watching them.

It isn’t so hard to see why I spend so much time sitting in the chairs watching, right? 😛

Our water quality is looking good, so we are looking at getting our first fish this weekend!! Maybe a neon goby or two?

Leah and Ginger came over tonight to learn to knit! Ginger had taught herself to knit before, but needed refreshing, and Leah was a newbie. Both of them are quick learners. 🙂

Leah laced her two squares together to make a lovely pair of earmuffs. Here she is, modelling them (“brrr!”):

I’m back in Seattle after a long weekend home in Weston.

(and back from a second trip to the airport this afternoon to retrieve my wayward luggage! my bag had my knit sweaters and the scarf Sharon gave me from Spain in it, I didn’t want to take chances with FedEx after my recent demonstrations of airport karma.)

Lots of news, which will probably get its own post after I go to the grocery store to restock the fridge, but before I go, I thought i’d quick post about my 5th-and-a-half year high school reunion.

Here’s the yearbook picture of the class of ’99 from 6 years ago when we were seniors:


 

(I had to get my yearbook out to reminisce before heading home.)

We met in Boston at Felt (some club on Washington St, pretty good even if their DJ didn’t have Living on a Prayer). I have to say that I haven’t done a great job keeping in touch with people — I mean to, but I think it’s kind of hard to slip into my high school self sometimes, and hard to tell what’s changed and what hasn’t in other people. If I’d been there for the changes keeping up would be easier, but as is for most people all I have is semi-recent batches of single sentence updates that I got when my mom ran into someone else’s mom at the grocery store. So, that said, it was fun to see people and hear what they’re up to, and realize how long ago high school was. I don’t think that there will be any official record, so here’s my utterly unofficial record of the thing, filtered through the open bar (and still in single sentences, max):

In reasonably alphabetical order by last name:

Tara is in New Haven, at Yale, and hasn’t lost one bit of her smile. Mike Allain, I talked to too late in the night once we were both past the point of doing the resume bit — all i have is that he’s a friendly, cool kid. Lauren Balsbaugh was there but on the phone the only times I ran into her. Bill Barclay looks exactly like himself plus a goatee, is doing performance art sort of stuff and teaching. Selby is in Colorado? I think? David Bell didn’t come but I’ve heard a rumour that he’s married to “Rita” — don’t know if that one’s pure gossip or true. Shana looks amazing and is working w/ Austin for a tv channel in Boston. George the Sun God is working for a tiny software company in Cambridge but wishes he was still running a hut on Mt. Washington and getting to ski and ice climb all the time. Caroline Broderick was there, but I didn’t get to talk to her. Chad is in San Francisco and reads my blog at work! So double points to him. Lauren Carr, Kathryn Doherty, and Sarah Duggan, I barely saw, which was sad. Jared Chandler looks awesome, but was getting up to leave as I saw him so I don’t know what he’s up to. Dawn-Marie is working for 94.5 and ready to do something new. Jeff Coburn was there with his girlfriend. Patrick Doherty is in NY (I think?) and has some awesome financially-related job that he seems to like. Krissy Ewton accused herself of having a Barbie-look which wasn’t at all far off but in a good way. Bill Fagley has gotten even nicer and cooler than the last time I saw him, which is saying something, and getting his masters (I think?) in psych. Kate Ferguson was definitely there and then disappeared and I didn’t get to talk to her at all. Laura Fox is doing research on perception at MIT which just sounded cool. I talked to Shayna Garlisi (while she was talking to Mrs. Igoe) but didn’t get to hear at all what she was up to. Lauren Gibbons is in philly doing psych research and applying to grad schools. Evan Hoffman is nearly unrecognizable if you haven’t seen him since high school. I didn’t get to talk to Sarah JD except to thank her for friendstering me. 😛 I could have sworn that I saw Aya right at the beginning but then she was gone by the time I got to her, so that’s a mystery. Katie Kelly has a sleek haircut and no one recognized her at first. Liesel is living in a safer building than her first one outside DC, and looks great. Jess is doing some sort of Art/Architechture masters at Christie’s in NYC and her boyfriend is in DC. Amelia is in NYC still, and utterly looks it. Carrie Neill said hi to me with such a big smile, but then too much open bar for the two of us later we didn’t get caught up. Jeffries is in his second year of Harvard Law, and I personally think that he should choose intellectual property as his specialization. Kristine is working at MGH and might come to school in Seattle for her masters — I have my fingers so crossed. JP Parker, who grabbed my boyfriend’s crotch while getting kicked out of a bar the last time I ran into him, was there, but I didn’t find out what he’s up to other than hanging out w/ Chad. Sara Peterson had opened a restaurant in Amherst, MA, but her partners were bad news and so now she’s on to something else. Kerry Purcell is a journalist for the Boston Herald and living in Boston. Alexis Romanow was definitely there, but by the time we were in the same group, she was on the opposite side and I couldn’t hear her over the music. Caitlin Rothstein was getting everyone to try Budweiser’s new energy drink. Steven Sahlman was there early, but left before I talked to him. Jack Sallay is working for the publishers Simon & Schuster in NYC. Meg is producing a play off-Broadway but I can’t tell you the name of it because it would be bad luck. I spent an age talking to Danielle but it was about everyone else, so I hardly have anything to report on her. I think that Julie Shapiro was there, but she was another one that I didn’t get around to, along with Jill Simon and Wendy. Andy Starr’s living in Somerville (along with half the class, it seems) and dating Angela McMahon, and we talked about the Red Sox. I saw Mari and her eyes are still amazing. Dan Whittenberger was there at the very beginning and we said hi. Connor Wilson is working in Wesleyan’s fundraising office and assistant coaching lacrosse. Justin Woodside is still his smiley self, but I didn’t get to talk to him beyond a wave. Kevin Wright looks exactly like himself except older. And Trish did an awesome job being the organizer, especially after Fran’s Army training meant that he wouldn’t be there.

Whew. And it’s entirely possible that I missed people, since I really just stood in one place and talked to people as they walked by. I wished that Peter and PGW had been there, along with Stush, Sarah Doherty, Alyssa, Sarah McNeer, John Kushner, Sam, and the others that I haven’t seen from our class in years and have been curious how they are doing. :-/

Whew, long post, but this gang’s worth a mention. 🙂

So I haven’t had any interesting knitting pictures recently, due to the impending holidays and my reluctance to post anything that might ruin any surprises…

So, to make up for it, here’s the code to post progress bars if you use Blogger or one of the other free guys that don’t include web hosting for flash files:

Step 1: Go into MS Paint (or your drawing program of choice) and make a rectangle that’s 17 pixels high by 88 long. You can decorate it or just choose a plain color. Save this to wherever you keep your blog photos.

Step 2: Add the following to the style sheet part of your blog’s template:

#percent {

    align: left;

    width: 88px;

    height:17px;

    margin: 0 0 0 20px;

    background-color:white;

    border:1px solid black;

}



#knitDesc {

    align: left;

    margin: 0 10px 0 20px;

    font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;

    font-size:12px;

    color: #300;

}



If you want to change colors, fonts, sizes, etc, this is the place to do it.

Step 3: Wherever you want to put the % bar, add the following:

<div id=”percent”>

    <img src=’RectangleAddress‘ width=’W‘ height=’17’ align=’left’>

</div>

<div id=”knitDesc”>

    <b>Project Name:</b> Percent%

    Yarn: Name of Yarn

    Colors: Yarn Color

<div>

You should fill in your own details:

RectangleAddress is where you’re storing the picture you made. It’s the full address, starting with http.

W is the percent complete * 0.88 (the width of the bar, divided by 100)

Percent should be the number you used to determine W

Project Name, Name of Yarn, and Yarn Color are self-explanatory.



Have fun!