Radio Silence

It's been a busy two weeks since my last post. My boss has come back from leave, so I've been working extra hours to get her caught up and reintegrated into the job. It's great to have her back and I'm remembering how much I love working with her. It's going to make it even harder to leave.

Last weekend my parents and in-laws both came out for my beloved's graduation:


He's officially a math doctor! (As soon as he finishes his thesis later this summer!)

Jorah's folks went up north with some friends for the rest of the weekend and we hung out with mine on Saturday. We did the Farmers' Market and State Street and had a great time. All of the parents loved the new babies.


Another busy week passed and then last Saturday we drove down to Decorah, Iowa and met Jorah's parents for wonderful day visiting The Vesterhiem - a museum about Norweigian immigration to the States.


Jorah has Viking blood on his mother's side and they had been wanting to visit for a while. There were six of us there and three of us are past or current National Parks people, so we love our museums and guided tours. It was a great day.

This is Jorah at lunch, where we all tried the Lefse Special (awesome).


Doesn't he look super Norwiegian? Look at that Dale of Norway sweater! (We found it secondhand in La Bella Vita, a wonderful little yarn/vintage shop in Mineral Point, WI.)

I first read about the museum in this knitting book, which I bought with my Christmas money. I don't love the projects, although there is some good stuff there, but the history and the pictures of the museum made me crazy with geeker joy. It was a wonderful museum and I really recommend it if you have even a passing interest in the 19th century, Norwegians, immigration, textiles, or prairie living.


We also visited Blue Heron Knittery, where I was seduced by the beautiful knitting kits and allowed myself to be talked into a book I've had my eye on for a while . . . and some real Norwegian yarn to go with! As you can imagine, it was very hard to convince me that I needed more books and yarn.


I'm excited to make these mittens - a year and a half ago when I was all crazy about Latvian Mittens I didn't know how to knit colorwork with two hands OR magic loop! I can't wait to go to town on them.

In the meantime I'm all over the May classes for the HPKCHC. I don't have photos of any of the rest of my homework, but here are my SPEW (Skew) socks:


I am up to the cuffs and expect to finish tonight. Then I just have to find someone with small enough feet to model them for you! They came out bigger than the pattern (which was my intention - I have Sasquatch feet, even if they are beautifully shaped) but still too small for me. I think they are going to be winging their way south to sunny Florida to live with a dear friend who has much more ladylike feet than I do. Don't let the ridiculously bad photo fool you - they are beautiful in person!

Tomorrow I'm hoping to knit with the other HPKCHCers in the area at the Union Terrace. They are way farther along this semester than I am, so hopefully they can light a fire under me so I finish up in time. I haven't even written up an OWL proposal yet!

S.P.E.W.

I got another shipment from Blue Moon on Friday - I won one of the RSC contests and got a 20% off coupon, so it would basically have been like throwing away free money not to buy a bunch of yarn, right?

One of the skeins I bought was the new color Queen Charlotte and I have to say, I loved it so much that I didn't even get a picture of it in the skein before it was wound up and I had started knitting it. Originally it was going to be a smaller Funky Sock Monkey (it's medium weight instead of the called-for heavy weight) but then I liked it too much, so I frogged that and now it's becoming Skew.



I am crazy about this pair of socks and this colorway. I want to go hog wild and order 3000 yards and then just roll around in it. It is a genius combination of colors - I'm definitely doing that thing where you just want to keep knitting to see what happens next - I am on the edge of my seat waiting for the next gorgeous marroony purple to show up!

These are my project for the HPKCHC Defense Against the Dark Arts class. I was running around looking for them in another house members' queue and when I found them she described them as her SPEW socks, because of the Society to Promote Elvish Welfare. Now of course that is stuck in my head too.

I just want to stay home from work and knit! I can't wait to see what happens next!

Plans Plans Plans

I'm making the simplest baby sweater in all the land (Louise Cardigan from Vintage Baby Knits) and I keep goofing up the yoke because I'm not reading the directions. First I was decreasing too quickly, now I'm decreasing too slowly. Thank goodness it's such a small sweater, otherwise I'd be knitting it FOREVER.

This weekend some of my favorite ladies in the whole world came over to knit for a couple of hours. We hung out in my living room and talked and had show and tell. It was really great - I'm going to miss them like crazy when I move in August.

Kj brought her Skew sock to show us all while she worked on the second one, and I have to say it was like a revelation. I'd seen the pattern of course, and lots of people made them for their Olympic project, but it is so much cooler in person. She let me take some pictures of her feet -



See how cool that is? Another reason I hadn't wanted to make it was because I have such gigantic feet and it's a difficult pattern to alter. Kj suggested just changing the gauge (of course) and so I'm going to give it a try with my STR Mediumweight ST-1. When I knit with mediumweight on US 1.5s I get a much more standard sock.

And so that brings me to my Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup Plans.

1. Frog the Kettricken Mukluks and reknit them on US 1 needles for History of Magic and Fantasia.

2. Skew socks for Defense Against the Dark Arts - need to find them in someone's queue, which I know I can because two other Ravenclaws are doing them too.

3. Ravenclaw Husband's Auxiliary Rune Hat for Ancient Runes (I think out of Bearfoot)

4. Monkey - I ordered the Blue Moon pattern - I can't decide what class it fits in though.

5. My mom is going to get here in 9 days - I really really want to finish the Olympic Sweater before she does, so that's going to be my priority before I can start all of these House Cup projects.

I'm also going for Convocation. Good luck with that self.