Close but no cigar

I didn't quite meet my goal to finish my Main Line sweater this weekend. But I did pretty damn good. The machine knitting took about 7 hours total. You knit the shoulder seams together by machine and the sleeves are knit right onto the body, so right there you eliminate 4 seams that would normally be done by hand. But there's still a good bit of hand work to be done. I've knit the ribbing for the cuffs and am working on the bottom ribbing now.The pattern suggests using garter stitch for all the edges, but I thought ribbing would look better. I'm also knitting the bottom rib continuously so I won't have to seam it later. I still need to do the collar and seam up the sides and arms. The hand work will probably take me as long to do as knitting the whole sweater. But still, 14 hours for a whole sweater, for me, is awesome. Oh, and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this yarn. It is super soft from the high cotton content, but the wool makes it not so stiff and string-like like most cotton. The weight is fabulous, not too heavy. I used the recommended 4.5 st/inch and it's perfect. I washed my swatches before I started and it looks like this yarn washes up beautifully too. I'll definetly be buying more of this yarn.

Painting...during & after

Such was our zeal to start our painting project (yeah right), I forgot to get any before pictures. Here is the carnage as of Saturday afternoon...

Looking from the washer towards the entrance to the kitchen...View from the entrance towards the washer and dryer...
Not much room to work in there. The washer and dryer got shimmied around like square dancers all weekend whilst we painted around them.

Painting goods galore on the kitchen counter...And the same views now that everything is dry and back where it should be.

Magic cabinet

I am so happy. Anyone guess what this is?

I suppose all the thread on the wall gives it away.
My totally sweet new sewing cabinet. Stayed up until midnight last Friday putting it together. I've been wanting one forever. Ever since I bought my own machine some 15 years ago and traded in the hand-me-down Kenmore in it's cabinet, I've had to sew with my machine on a table. This one is fully adjustable. You can completely lower the machine into the cabinet for storage, raise it full up for free arm sewing, and my favorite, flush with the table for unrestricted, straight on sewing (also awesome for free motion quilting!)
Like I said...sweet!

Unfortunately, I haven't yet had a chance to sew at it. With painting last weekend, I was too tired to sew. Then getting caught up on the laundry I couldn't do while the walls were drying behind the washer. And now this...

I'm machine knitting the Basic Beauty Pullover from Kangamoo Knits in KnitPicks Main Line (Red Velvet Cake) on my Bond ISM. The first pic was taken at 6:42 after I finished the first ball of yarn. Here's what I had at 7:30 and 5 balls of yarn...

Can you believe it? An ENTIRE back of a sweater, knit in a little over one hour! I've still got a lot of learning to do with the knitting machine (had to stop about 5 times to fix dropped stitches) but I'm getting there. And you just can't beat the speed. With any luck, I'll have the whole sweater done by Sunday night.

The fumes are clearing

Whew, what a weekend! We finally got around to starting our much needed painting this weekend. I had agonized over color selection for ages back in, like, June. Finally got the paint (Pittsburgh Paint Stone Harbor if anyone cares) and then it was too damn hot to paint. Bizarre as it may seem, now that it's August, we are having gorgeous weather. So before the mood completely passed, we figured we better get to it. Just tackled the laundry room this weekend. It probably took about 20 hrs total. Looks so much better with a fresh, clean coat of paint. The color isn't quite what I had hoped for, but it's growing on me. I had planned to have pictures to post for you, but I was too tired to fuss with pictures. Next weekend. Promise.

Now my every waking (and spare) minute is being consumed by this game and listening to this awesome new radio that customizes your playlist based on the artists you tell it you like. I caught a video from Panic! at The Disco on Friday morning (one of the RARE occasions that MTV was actually showing MUSIC) and have been jonesing on it all weekend. Have also discovered the dangerous (to my wallet) but sweet joys of MusicMatch. Serious music stash enhancement going on here. Anyway, enough chatter. Back to my card game!

Esprit Allsorts

The weather was GORGEOUS these last few days. Upper 70's, low 80's, no humidity. Such a change from just a week ago. Unfortunately, I spent the weekend laid out with a killer headache and got almost nothing done. My head feels better now though, so I guess that's all that matters.

I did manage to finish the Licorice Allsorts socks.I'm still coveting them. But I'm going to be good and send them off to the lucky recipient. They're too short for me anyway. Hope she likes them. Hope they fit! I've never made socks for anyone else before and this being a surprise, I couldn't ask for measurements. Had to ask mom to measure her foot since I think she wears the same size. Now I feel guilty and need to make mom a pair too! But these are a pleasure to knit and I've got lots of yarn left to play with so knitting more won't be an issue.

The cool weather suckered me in last night and I pulled out the long lost Cottage Creations Tunic to knit on. The wool felt foreign after, what, 3 months or so of knitting only cotton! I've still got plenty of cotton knitting to finish...the kitchen rugs (still on rug #1 and no discernible progress to report), more dishrags (currently working on the pattern from the new Creative Knitting magazine), and a machine knit sweater (although that may fall through. The jury is still out on that one. I HATED the first attempt at machine knitting Peaches n Creme. More trial and error is necessary before a verdict is made).

No more garden pictures or lovely vegetable harvest pictures like last year. The dry, hot weather left us with a very poor harvest. The onions were the only thing to do really well. The zucchini and cucumbers did alright for a short while. The peppers are all small. The tomatoes are taking forever to ripen, what few tomatoes we have. Mom and dad and my mother in law had decent luck with their gardens, so we've still been able to enjoy some nice veggies this summer. For now, we are planning next year's garden and researching ways to ensure better results.

As I mentioned last time, the heat has been considerable (the weatherman was also wrong, it didn't really break until Saturday). On Wednesday, our downstairs air conditioner decided it wasn't going to take it any more. It didn't completely die, but it was getting up towards 90 with it running so what's the point? We had some difficulty locating an air conditioner to purchase (apparently we weren't the only ones who didn't enjoy sitting in a pool of sweat all the time). But we lucked out on Friday and ahhhhhh....Sweet relief. A very nice, energy efficient, temperature controlled, albeit very flippin' heavy air conditioner. The lady at the store made a comment about how heavy the old air conditioners used to be. Obviously, she never tried to lift a new one. Believe me, way heavier than the old one! But it does cool things off quite nicely which is the important thing.

Finished the fixation socks.Despite the gauge trouble, they look and fit very well. I love 'em. Next pair is on the needles. These are for a gift, though I'm coveting them already.
They are Esprit Licorice Allsorts from Elann with grey slate heel and toes. The heels on the Fixation socks seem like they are going to wear out fast, so I decided to work a garter stitch heel and toss in some wooly nylon for strength. It's the first time I've worked with wooly nylon so we'll see how it works out.

The last bit of big news...Finished shower! Dad did an amazing job finding a wall panel to match the existing Formica. The style is slightly different, but the colors match perfectly.

Who turned up the heat?

Ay-curumba! It's toasty outside. The Weather Bug says our local temp made it up to 99 today, with heat indexes of 110. Whatever, it's hot. This is the little clock/thermometer thing in our spare room...
Yeah, it says 97.3. It sucks. We've still got the a/c running downstairs and its a much more livable 83. Our friendly local weatherman predicts the heat should break on Friday, boy do I hope he's right. Us northern girls can't take the heat!

So to avoid said hot temps, I've been staying at the office over lunch. Watching my absolute new obsession, QNN, and knitting on the Fixation Footies. Does anyone see something amiss here?How about now?I'd say I'm having a bit of a gauge incident. My gauge has tightened up considerably on sock #2. Could be sock one is a little stretched from trying it on. It is cotton after all and sometimes needs a dunk in water to bring it back in line. But still. It's looking a good bit bigger than it's infant partner. Good news is, Fixation has a good dose of elastic in it and sock #2, although it appears to be smaller, fits and looks fine on my foot. I am eternally grateful for this since I have no desire to rip it and reknit it when I'm this far along. That and I've got the Elann version of this yarn (called Esprit) on order. Enough to make 3 or 4 pairs I think. At this moment, my knitting life is firmly centered on little knitting...socks and washcloths. I've got some big knitting socked away for fall and winter, but this should keep my occupied through the next few too hot for knitting in your lap months.

Tumbler

I may have suffered a bit of quilt fever after Quilt Odyssey on Friday. A rather large stack of vintage fabrics leaped into my arms as I was innocently strolling through Martin's.
Mrs. Martin, bless her heart, just smiled and said ok when I asked for 1/2 yard of each of the 18 or so fabrics.

The heat is oppressive in my sewing room (the thermometer showed 94 when I got home today!) But we are keeping the a/c on downstairs to make life bearable. So on Sunday I set up my cutting mat on the dining room table and before long had this box full of patches.
It's kind of hard to see, but up there near the top is the tumbler template dad cut for me from some Plexiglas he had laying around. I looked online for a template, but didn't really want to spend $6 plus shipping for a little piece of plastic and I was too impatient to wait the week or 2 it would take to arrive. I asked dad if he had anything to improve on the cardboard template I was using. Sure enough he did. I love having a handyman in the family.

I then set my sewing machine up in the kitchen and spent the rest of Sunday afternoon watching QNN on the computer and sewing. Pretty cool. I haven't figured out how big I'm making this yet, just kind of sewing patches together until it looks right. So far, my strips are 15 patches across which only finishes to about 37 inches. Think I'll go 19 to make it a little more afghan sized.

Meanwhile, the bathroom is not much improved. The whole wall is out now. The plumber is coming tomorrow to replace the pipes. The next picture will hopefully be of a new wall!

Speed

After years (and years) of slogging away in dial-up land, we've taken the big leap to HIGH SPEED INTERNET! Woo hoo. I can't even begin to tell you how excited and happy I am. I can now get this radio , and watch this quilt station, and even wait till the last few seconds and have a chance at winning here. Life is good.

As I mentioned before, today mom and I went to Quilt Odyssey in Hershey. Once again, a great show. The antique quilts this year were fantastic. Unfortunately, they didn't allow photos of most of the quilts this year. I did see one pattern I simply must knit. It's a traditional pattern called Tumblers. You can see a pattern for it here. I'm a scrap quilter through and through, so this is a perfect quilt for me.

I was didn't find much to tempt me at the vendor mall, here's a look at my loot for the day...
Fat quarters in vintage prints. Knitting magazines (the publisher of Knit Style had a stand with all the different craft magazines they publish). Another Jim Shore cat to add to my collection. Yardage from a cute little shop in Annville called Hershey's Quilt Shop (sorry, no webpage). And too my surprise, my Knit Picks order was waiting for me when I got home. They Main Line yarn feels really nice. I'm going to machine knit a sweater with it once my craft room isn't 1000 degrees. The Options needle looks terrific. The cable is so slim and flexible. Right out of the packet it uncurled and stayed staight. And the lovely ticking surrounding it all is the inside of a very nice basket to hold my yarn cones while I knit my rug. Right now they are in a rather inelegant cardboard box. This should be much more attractive and sturdy. I even came home with money left over. Yes, life is good.

Drip, drip, drip

Our shower sprung a leak recently. Don't know exactly when, since the leak is inside the wall, but it made its presence known on Monday. I looked up after finishing the dinner dishes and noticed a rather large bubble in the ceiling. It didn't take long to figure out it was coming from the bathroom overhead. Stuart stood guard over the bucket the whole time it dripped.Here's what our bathroom wall looks like now.
Thankfully my dad is a very skilled handyman and should be able to fix the leak and the gaping hole required to get to the leak. The biggest downside to the whole thing is the mildew smell from the inside of the wall being wet. The extremely hot muggy weather this week has only compounded the problem. However, we are very lucky to have access to the inside of that wall through a closet. Just enough room to stick a little fan in there and dry it out. I've been reaching my arm in as far as I can to spray Lysol too. These things combined seem to be taking care of the problem.

Knitting continues on more dishrags...the kitchen rug (very little progress here)...
and the Fixation footieI ended up ripping the whole thing out last Sunday after discovering it was just too big. My first attempt was knit exactly for my foot size, this time I'm trying about an inch negative ease. Appears to fit much better this way. Yesterday I decide to try switching to Magic Loop instead of the dpns. It seemed no matter how tightly I pulled the first stitch at the start of each needle, I was still getting ladders. The last sock I made (or should say am making since it's only half done) was on two circs. I like this method, but found the extra needle flopping around to be annoying. Magic Loop seems the perfect solution. No ladders, the work seems faster than dpns because you don't have to switch needles so often, no dropped needles, no floppy needle tips. I'm using a 40" Inox US 3. The cable seems just a bit long and I'm going to try one of the new KnitPick circs in 32" length. They are having a big 40% off sale on selected yarns so I ordered enough Main Line to make a sweater and the needle. According to the site, needles are delaying shipping by about 2 weeks, but everyone is raving about them so I figured it would be worth the wait.

This Friday mom and I are off to Quilt Odyssey in Hershey. It's always a great show and a fun day. If you're a quilter and in the area, be sure to check it out.