Ali over on Skeins Her Way is having a contest to keep your knitting on track this summer. I thought I would jump in since I seem to be aimlessly drifting lately.

1. Finish the Firebrick Mittens (ravelry) & get them ready to sale the pattern.
2. Finish BILs socks
3. Finish Prayer Sock Swap II socks
4. Finish Labyrinth with the Sexy Knitters Club
5. Frog & Re-cast on Churchable’s Mariners socks in LL sock
6. Start Sanford’s ski hat in yarn provided by him
7. Start Bubble Pullover from Norah’s Knitting Nature in Malabrigo
   
8. Start one more Christmas gift. Most likely Bud’s in knitpicks lace
9. Start Tomato by Wendy in knitpicks shine
10. Start & Finish my Mom’s Christmas present in Knitpicks comfy
11. Start & Finish my Dad’s Christmas present in LL Worsted
12. Start & Finish Urchin in Noro Transitions
13. Start & Finish Christmas Fiddle Faddle for our tree in random stash bits
14. Start & Finish RPMs for Churchable in STR Mediumweight

Updated: 7/18

Pick a number between 1 – 20. Remember that number. It will be important at the end.

YES/NO GAME RULES ARE AS FOLLOWS:

You can only say yes or no. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages you and asks!

Over 18? Yes
Danced in front of your mirror naked? No
Ever told a lie? Yes
Been arrested? No
Kissed a picture? No
Fallen asleep at work/school? Yes
Held an actual snake? Yes
Have YOU Ever run a red light? No
Ever drink and drive?No
Been suspended from school? No
Ever been fired from a job? No
Totaled a car/motorbike in an accident? Yes
Sang karaoke? No
Done something you told yourself you wouldn’t? No
Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? Yes
Ever laughed until you wet yourself? No
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? No
Kissed in the rain? No
Sang in the shower? No
Sat on a rooftop? Yes
Thought about your past with regret? Yes
Been pushed in the pool with your clothes on? Yes
Shaved your head? No
Blacked out from drinking? Yes
Had a gym membership? Yes
Been in a band? No
Shot a gun? Yes
Liked someone with nobody else knowing about it? No
Played strip poker? No
Been to a strip joint? No
Donated Blood? No
Liked someone you shouldn’t? Yes
Have a tattoo? No
Have or had any piercings besides ears? No
Made out with a complete stranger? No
Caught someone cheating on you? No
Skinny dipped? No
Regret any of your ex’s? No
Been to a rodeo? Yes
Been to a NASCAR race? No
Been in Love? Yes

The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

Ten years ago today I was home from college working two summer jobs and going to lots and lots of doctors appointments while they tried to figure out why I was having the problems I was. Needless to say they just told me that I needed to not get so stressed out. They had no real answer after having more blood drawn than I cared to have in such a short time period and CAT scans, MRIs, EEG, EKGs. I kind of lost all confidence in traditional medicine after that. I finally found the answers via a chiropractor and naturopathic doctor 3-5 years ago. I also had my first visit to the ER from a drug the stupid DRs put me on and they tried to pass it off as a food allergy. This visit made my problems worse and the main reason why I can’t use things made from none natural materials. Just a taste of what I went through. Imagine having hives all the time and never knowing what it was. When I went to the ER I was so itchy from hives that I could not walk without pain or use my hands and arms. I felt like a walking skeleton. I also lost my will to work out that summer because of drug side effects. I was able to kick the last bits of anorexia out of my system without medical assistance. Needless to say this was a dark period of life for me.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?

• Blog
• Knit
• Do laundry
• Pray my husband still has a job on Wednesday because of company wide cuts
• Swatch for a proposal due on Friday

3. Snacks I enjoy:

Fake Cheesy puff stuff, berries, Kinder eggs, salt & vinegar potato chips

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

I would pay off our house. Buy Churchable a new truck & pay to have the classic car fixed to specs. Donate to many worthy causes and lastly invest it. I am a simple girl. I could buy yarn with that but then I would for sure have more than I could knit in my lifetime.

5. Places I have lived:

Ok sit back and let me mark the places. Born Houston, Texas (lived in several apartments but since I had the memory of a pea I don’t remember how many). At 3 moved to Oklahoma city, Oklahoma (lived there 1 1/2 years because the oil companies were doing poorly so my dad lost his job). At 5 moved back to Houston, Texas (lived in one house while my dad worked his dream job of working with his father). At 12 moved to Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia (my dad got hired the day Operation Desert Storm started). At 15 went to boarding school in Kandern, Germany (loved the freedom of living away from mom & dad). At 16 changed schools to one in Dublin, New Hampshire (can I count all the moves between rooms while I was living there, that would be 5 rooms & 7 roommates in 2 years. Gah that was not me for all those moves. The RA was annoying and moved people around all the time). At 18 went to college in Columbia, South Carolina (lived there for 4 years but had 1 dorm room & 3 roommates in 2 1/2 years, 1 duplex with 1 roommate for 1/2 year & a house with 2 roommates for a year). Summer of 1998, my parents moved to Udhailyah, Saudi Arabia while I was home. Summer of 1999, I lived in Jerusalem, Israel for summer studies. Summer of 2000, I lived in several cities in central Turkey for my Intercultural studies Internship (I was in a different city every week out of 2 months). At 22 I moved out to the west coast where I had wanted to move since I was 17 to Portland, OR (I attended art school for 3 years). I had 3 apartments (Tigard, West Linn & Multnomah Village and 3 roommates, which is a much healthier rate. During this time, my parents again moved while I was home on break to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. At 25 I moved to Longview, WA to be closer to my fiance Churchable. After the wedding I moved in with him and so far have not made plans to move again.

6. Jobs I’ve had:

Summer school assistant (1997, 1998), Assistant Librarian (1998), Circulation Librarian (1999-2001), Receptionist (2002), Stock Room Clerk (2004), Designer (2007-present)

7. Peeps I want to know more about:

Those of you who I asked to pick a number. Do you remember your number? If it is 17 (the number of roommates I had from 1994-2004) then consider yourself tagged for one or both of these memes.

The weather decided to be good almost all weekend. Sunday was a bit overcast and had the usual drip drip of the Northwest. As you can see from Saturday’s post, the weather was nice enough on Friday to allow me to get pics without grimacing in cold pain. Actually it was rather pleasant during the photo shoot and when I did go out into the surf, it did not seem cold. Oh no, I am acclimating to this coast’s idea of what beach water should feel like. Saturday was spent with family and walking along the beach. I got my husband and Bud (the little sil of Arwen fame) to go with me into a yarn store, even though all they wanted to do was head back to the beach and dive into the surf (tis not my idea of a fun activity but they are native washingtonians).

Sunday was spent saying our goodbyes and heading home. We stopped at Ecola park (my favorite park on the coast), which is just at the northern end of Cannon Beach and went for a short hike before the skies opened up and left us wanting our car and something dry and warm.

Upon arriving home, I found tons of comments for my contest and the Schrodinger Cube Bag in my mail slot. The observant among you might have noticed the yarn in the bag. I’ll wait while you scroll up and see if you see it…………………………………..

……………. What!?? you did not see it. Fine I guess I will have to show you. I got it monday morning, not with the bag. That would have been nice but I don’t know Jen that well. I just love her box bags. This brings me to the total of 3. Oh and one more thing before I share about the yarn. If you are my monkey pal and don’t have a bag for me (not that you to), but she has a monkey cube on her site. Now run not walk over there and see it. Isn’t it lovely and classy? Ok I will stop being pushy with the bags, I still want to buy them for myself and not make her always be out of stock.

Now the yarn is sock yarn. Well what else would it be. I don’t have friends that are so generous that they would give me a sweaters worth of nice yarn. No but my walking buddy whom I taught to knit, got me a skein of Mountain Colors Bearfoot. I gave away my only skein in my blogiversary so I was waiting on a cool color to show up at our LYS. My friend got me this wild one called Firestorm. I think there is almost every color in it. so lovely. What Huh you want to see it? Oh right why else would you read me. Ok yarn Prn for ya’ll to enjoy. Hmmm…. just a moment, I seem to have not uploaded it to the web.

Ahhh there much better. Now don’t forget to enter the contest if you haven’t yet.

Mr. Bun feels that once the month of April appears, we should be hanging out outside without a stupid doxie around to herd him into heart racing palpitations. No fear Mr. Bun, I think we can work out something if you are willing to wear a leash.

Tis strange to be answering a question about May flowers and April showers and what I would be doing on when the April showers are showering, since I am sitting outside in the sun blogging. Glorious sun! Here we have april showers every month of the year. It is the rare occasion that it does not rain in the Northwet.

A better question for me would be, what do you do when the sun shines. Well I will answer both. We know Mr. Buns opinion on the matter. How about mine?

April Showers make me curl up and knit. Now that we have a wood stove in the living room, I can be found with a kettle boiling on the stove and a fire within. Tis my fav, but then I have always loved the cool weather. I like sweaters and woolie things. I prefer to ask churchable to set up the fire the night before, but sometimes he is busy or the day was not expected to be so chill. On those days, I hop across the doxie intimidating grass (tis hard when you are only a foot tall and the grass grows like a weed and needs to be mowed the day after it was mowed) and fetch wood from the shed.

Now this year has been odd and we have not had many warm days yet. Two years ago when Care Bear was visiting from Michigan, it was so hot we both got burnt from hanging out in the backyard. I love to go outside and dink around in the dirt and clean up. I am not much for gardening when the weather is unpleasant. Call me a fair weather gardener and I will take it with pride. I think this year I will be pulling my laptop and knitting out to the hammock under the tree to chill all day long. Now if only I could figure out a resting place for my glass of iced coffee; I would be completely happy.

So today is my 29th birthday for the first time. No silliness here about 29th for the 29th time or anything like that. I am almost ready to release Alisa.

I thought I would share a few pics here on anticipation of the release. I hope that you are not too overwhelmed. We did take 84 pictures and still need to do another photo shoot since churchable did not get a great picture of the whole sweater so that people would get a good impression of the overall look.

Don’t worry I don’t have that many photos to show ya’ll. Just enough to wet your love of this simple summer sweater.

At this moment Alisa has been perfected through bust size 38″. The two largest sizes need the shoulder shaping reworked so hopefully they will be all nice and ready for the 30th.

Now this last photo, tis rather good. It was on flickr for a matter of minutes and already had several views. I took it because I wanted to show that it is long enough to be worn as a beach cover-up.

So it is my birthday today and that means I want to have a contest. There are several prizes. Everyone should find something they like. If you prefer not to win one of the prizes, let me know and I will take you off that list.

Contest:

1. leave a comment with your name and your email in the email spot (I will be the only person to see that part) and if you participate in the posting bit then leave the link in the post for extra points.
2. tell me what makes you happy. Pictures are great. I would love if you blogged about it or you could post a pic in flickr and leave a comment in the description about why this makes you happy. You don’t have to post outside the comments about your happy thing but you will get added to the drawing a second time if you do post about it.
3. tell others about the contest. Yes this is just my way of getting more people here. I want to see my blog feed have 100 or more subscribers. I have between 75 & 80 right now. This will also get you another spot in the drawing.

Now you are all wondering about the prizes. Well since Alisa is coming out now, I will be giving out a free pattern to 2 lucky people. Details about Alisa here and ravelry. The other prizes are yarn.

Butternut Woolen sock yarn (local blogger and dyer)

Black Malabrigo Merino Worsted

This is the mystery laceweight yarn. I don’t know what it is. My stash has an unhealthy amount of unmarked laceweight and I don’t knit lace. I am sure this was recent addition to the stash, say last 5 years. For those of you who would like a better description, here is a close up pic.

I took this picture without the flash because it has a shiny fiber in it that washes out easily.

So read that folks, 5 prizes to be won. Any questions about Alisa, can be directed below and I will have a blog post up later with answers to those questions. If I get enough entries there might be more goodies appearing. I have been blessed lately by yarn and other goodies.

Thanks and have a great day. Oh and you have a week to enter the contest. Next Saturday at 11:59 PM PST is the end.

PS: those of you posting to the contest. This blog has moderated comments so you only need to press publish once, a notice will be sent to me and I will agree to publish. All multiple comments have been left unpublished. Typically I get comments up within 24 hours or less. Anything left on a Tuesday goes unverified till Wednesday since I take a day where I don’t turn on the computer all day so that I can focus on designing and other important facts.

PSS: Thanks for all the interest and participation. IF we keep this up, I will have a post with the most comments ever and the highest commented month.

This weeks topic for the coffee swap is about how green is our thumb.

Well I might have been interested in getting out and growing things in years past before I started blogging and designing knitting garments. Now I hope my yard does not die from neglect. The houseplants have been weeding out which of them survives on once a week watering. The gerber daisies seem to have survived the winter (they can be seen sprouting next to the Endpaper mitts in the earlier post.) My roses seem to be doing better with the neglect.

I would love to do more, but with the whole discussion and plans to build an addition to the house. Things have stalled because most of my usable garden space will be under the addition. We have enough yard to move it all to new locations but as of yet we don’t know the exact footprint set in stone.

For now I get my veggies from a local farm through a CSA share. It starts the first weekend in May. I am excited to see what we get. This year has been so cold that it might be good or it might be a bit sparse.

Now if I really had all the time in the world and the perfect house, would I still choose to sit and knit and ignore the landscaping. Hmmm…. would I also not live in the Northwet? My biggest challenge with gardening here is that it is not always nice. I do get out on rainless warm day and trim up the plants. My biggest complaint is the weeds. They make me want to give up and just knit.

Orata tagged me for: 7 random things about me.

The rules are:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

My seven random facts:

1. I am allergic to petroleum products. Those of you who actually take time to read my swap info when it gets posted may realize this, because I keep rewording it to make it more explicit and exact so that my pals are not disappointed that I can’t use the items they send me. I can’t use anything that does not tell me the source of glycerin, lanolin (yes this can be fake), mineral oil, and parafin. I have decided that I got this allergy because my family line has always worked in the oil fields. I can trace back the ancestors that worked in Pennsylvania on the first discovered oil fields in the US. Now almost 150 years later, the toxins have built up and I have to watch everything I use. Foods, medicines, bath products, cleaning products, etc contain one of these ingredients on a normal basis. Sometimes I can find products that state that it is not made with petroleum but rather vegetable or animal based. Those are rare. As oil prices climb higher it might become more common, but who knows.

2.I love to listen to music, who doesn’t, but I can’t tell you a musicians name to save my life. My husband thought it was so funny that the first two years we were together, he would ask me “Who sings this?” I never was right and every time it was the Beatles. Yes I don’t “know” the Beatles music. Occasionally he will catch me humming a song and go ah ha I knew you knew. I will look at him puzzles and ask know what. “Don’t you know you are humming a Beatles tune?” “Really what song?” This can continue for hours till he realizes I really don’t have a clue.

In High School I was always baffled by the people who said you should not listen to certain songs because the lyrics have bad values. I would ask for an example and scratch my head because the song had a rocking beat. I was always on the look out for the best sounding song. It was all about the beat and the mix of beat plus sound. It was no surprise that European Techno was my ticket to happiness. Words mean nothing to me in a song. It is all about the overall sound.

3. I spent the first 3 years of high school on 3 different continents. Asia, Europe and North
America. I tried to angle for a 4th for my final year of high school, but my parents felt that I had moved enough.

4. I used to wear a hoop skirt, petticoats, and pantaloons under my dress every Sunday when I went to church as a child. I even still have the hoop skirt under the bed in my studio. My nickname was Anne of Green Gables.

5. All my dresses up until I was 12 years old, were made by my grandmother. She used to take me to Saks Fifth Avenue and let me try on dresses, then we would go to the fabric store and pick out the fabric that fit with the style of my favorite dress. I had a new handmade dress for every easter and Christmas. The Christmas dress was always velvet.

6. When asked “Where is your wife from?” my husband tells people “I don’t know. Texas?”

7. I have chronic finishitis. I can’t leave UFOs around. It is an affront to my person. The only reason one happens to be around is because I have deadlines but as soon as I have a little free time that UFO comes back to be a WIP.

I’m tagging:
1. Knittymuggins
2. Robin
3. Indigo mouse
4. Hilary
5. Rebecca
6. Turtlegirl
7. Heide

Of course we all have addictions. Some are legal and some are not so legal. If you are reading this blog, you probably have a thing for needles and yarn. Maybe you also like a little FO every once and a while. If you’re me you might have a huge thing for FO. I can’t get enough of them and the cool thing is that I can get at least one a week unless I am struggling with something like the Big Green Monster.

Now I feel a little dirty after writing all that, but I have another addiction. I started a bit younger than most. I have to blame the start of this addiction on my mother. She would cringe every time I would tell people at the age 5 that “I loved coffee” and people would look at her like she was crazy for giving me this adult beverage. Ok so it was not straight coffee it was as my husband likes his coffee, a little coffee with my milk. My mother allowed me to heat up milk in the microwave (a new to us and came with the house appliance) and then place an exact number of instant coffee crystals in my coffee. The number of crystals was based on my age. So when I tell you that I loved the taste of coffee and that I am very picky, you understand that I learned to discern the taste of milk with and without and I loved the special little taste that coffee added. I also loved things made with coffee.

It was another 5 years later at the age of 10 that I tasted real full blooded coffee. I was being watched by a friend of the family who did not have kids. That evening there was an adult function which I attended with my parents since I was practically a mini adult from the years of being an only child and only grandchild. I got to help this friend get ready. She asked me if I would like to make the coffee. I said ok and started to get out what I considered “coffee stuff.” After she finished laughing at my choice of items, she taught me how to set up Mr. Coffee. Her way quite intrigued me. She used ground coffee but she added ground cinnamon (my favorite breakfast cereal additive, yes odd, but remember only grandchild here). After it finished brewing, she let me have a taste and let me have it black, then with a little sugar, and then with cream added. Of course I needed all those things because of my little milk with coffee habit.

But by the time I reached 15 and had moved out of the house (ok moved to boarding school), I had developed a full blown coffee habit. I got myself down to black Kenya AA coffee. The stuff was heaven in a mug. I loved it and my 2 pot a day habit (listen don’t judge me it was only a 4-cup coffee maker). Maybe a bit much because at the age of 18 my body started rejecting caffeine. This was totally not fair because chocolate had also become off limits to me. Chocolate made me lose my lunch (even the smell of it) and Coffee made me have convolution. Upon graduation from high school, I cut out the coffee and learned to love tea. Let me tell you, I thought tea was vial. Most disgusting stuff ever. The only stuff in the college cafe that I could bear to drink was the mint tea. After a year of drinking mint tea I loved the cool menthol taste. I stayed off coffee for a total of two years.

During that time I loved my mint, but I had discovered Chai tea. Yes yes that means tea in another language but Chai had this almost coffee flavor that I loved. It lead me back into coffee. It did not help that if a guy wanted to hang out with you but not “ask you out”, they would ask if you wanted to go for coffee. Now this coffee house things was new to me. They had all these strange words on the reader board. I tried them all. At first I picked and chose what sounded interesting, pretty soon I get started with the first item and worked my way down. I was back to my old love of milk and coffee. The latte was picked for the nice coffee flavor and its cheap price tag and giant mug. I could sip at it all night and not get another.
As graduation drew near, I looked for a place to attend art school. I wanted to knit for a living but first I wanted a degree in art. Where else did I land but in the Pacific Northwest, the land o Starbucks. I started heading to Starbuck because my fav store was not out here. I stuck to drinking Chai lattes since I did not really care for the taste of 4buck’s house coffee. Luck would not allow me to continue drinking my Chai’s and coffee because my convolutions came back. Stupid things. At this point I switched to herbal chai (without a speck of caffeine) and Steamers. I never felt deprived but my coffee maker felt deprived.

My return back to coffee was 3 years ago. I probably drink on an irregular basis the same amount of coffee that I did back when I was in High School. I don’t have an every day habit, because I don’t need the caffeine but I love the taste and nothing can chase that love away. I hope I have kicked the convolutions in the teeth. Every allergist I have visited has told me there is no part of coffee that could cause me those problems nor do I have an allergy any more.

I know I have become spoiled living in the abundant land of coffee where on every corner. Even out in the sparsely populated areas, you can find a coffee shack (for the uninformed, this is a trailer like building that is permanently placed in the middle of a parking lot so that you just drive up and get what you need.) I realize this every time, I leave the NW, because I miss being able to decide I want coffee instead of having to hunt for coffee. I know there are 4bucks in every state in the Union but I don’t go there. It is not anything thing against big business or any such thing. I just don’t like the burnt coffee I can taste every time I get a glass.

Currently I am in the fifth largest city in the US, in the land of my birth, but I think the only coffee place I have seen has been Starbucks. Any one know a good coffee place in Houston?

Mark with bold the things you have knit, with italics the ones you plan to do sometime, and leave the rest.

Afghan – I can’t even imagine something so boring and repetitive. more power too ya’ll
I-cord
Garter stitch
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl – I started on and put it aside for too long forgot where I was and made it a scarf.
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up
Knitting with camel yarn – I have some to spin up
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk
Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (=modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing – i will be knitting for my nephews frog soon
Knitting with circular needles
Baby items
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Slippers
Graffiti knitting
Continental knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns (incl. Aran)
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book
Scarf – only one it was supposed to be a shawl.
Teaching a child to knit
American/English knitting (as opposed to continental)
Knitting to make money
Buttonholes
Knitting with alpaca – my first sweater project
Fair Isle knitting – my first ever project
Norwegian knitting
Dying with plant colors
Knitting items for a wedding
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cosies…)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on one or two circulars
Knitting with someone else’s handspun yarn
Knitting with dpns
Holiday related knitting
Teaching a male how to knit
Bobbles
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dying yarn
Steeks
Knitting art
Knitting two socks on two circulars simultaneously
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting
Kitchener stitch
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
Long Tail CO
Entrelac
Knitting and purling backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with self patterning/self striping/variegated yarn
Stuffed toys
Knitting with cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intarsia
Knitting with linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular CO
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mits/armwarmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Rug
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public
Knitting a tube with two dpns