I have a new toy — a Razr phone. The Husband and I decided it was time for new phones since Motorola denies the existance of the models we had, and the chargers were breaking down. (I’m sure the way The Husband drooled over the new Treo 700w had nothing to do with it.) This is my first camera with a phone. Combine that with Flickr’s ability to have photos emailed into my account may actually result in more photos in my blog.

So, I’m considering signing up for the insanity that Stephanie has spawned. The copy of Knitting Pure and Simple‘s Neck Down Shaped Cardigan #241 (pictured below) arrived in the mail the same afternoon I first heard of The Knitting Olympics.

The Rowan Felted Tweed I picked up in Mendocino a couple of weeks should work nicely. I think trying to get a sweater done in 16 days would be rather challenging (especially when you consider that the two sweaters I have made to date both took at least a month each).

My packet for Stitches West arrived a few days ago. I’m all signed up for Knitting Estonian Lace with Nancy Bush. I wish I could have taken her Vintage Sock class as well, but that Friday and Saturday I have to be at the univeristy from 10 am to 5 pm for an archives class (a class that only meets 2 weekends all semester… *bah*). I rather excited; this is the first time I’ll be taking a class at any sort of convention like this. I’m still not entirely sure what having signed up for a class gets me (beyond the class that is).

Anyone else out there planning on going to Stitches West? It might be nice to meet others out there in blogland. My Friday and Saturday evenings are free after class, and I’m free after class on Sunday as well (of course, somewhere in all this I have to have a few hours to hit the market).

In an effort to avoid finishing my mother’s afghan, I seem to have come down with startitis. I cast on a lace shawl back before New Year’s, I started a scarf with the Manos I got in Mendocino, and I started the baby blanket for a friend who is due in May. *sigh*

What’s really sad is I feel slightly uninspired by all of them. I think I’ve fallen into a rut I’ve been in before… all the projects I want to do have a certain level of complexity to them (Dublin Bay socks have some lace, baby blanket has some lace, scarf has a pattern I have to pay attention to, even my mother’s afghan requires attention). I have nothing going that is mindless… I think I’m beginning to understand that this is necessary for me. I can have five things on the needles, and as long as one of them is simpler than all the others, I’m fine. Once all the projects equal each other in concentration effort I feel blasé.

It certainly doesn’t help that I’ve felt overwhelmed in general of late. You know things have built up mentally when you find yourself bursting into tears because the treadmill in the complex’s fitness room is broken. Perhaps it’s time for a personal day… sadly, I can’t take the time off work, and Saturday I have an engagement I want to go to… but Sunday, Sunday it is highly likely I might be found in my PJs hiding in my bedroom under the covers… there may be hot beverages and silly movies involved as well. That does sound nice… now, to make it to Sunday.

This week my Dublin Bay socks were my take to work knitting. I had stalled with about 2.5 inches done and decided they needed some attention. You know your knitting’s been sitting a tad long when you can easily pick out the row that held the needles.

So, I slowly worked on my Dublin Bay socks during breaks or if my brain was feeling a bit too mushy. I even took it with me to the all hands meeting that was held at noon today cause they tend to run about an hour and a half. Halfway through the meeting I realize there is something wrong with my lace pattern… it’s off by about one stitch. I count… stitch count is all hunky-dory… wait… why are there 23 stitches on needle 3 and 25 stitches on needle 1?

This is when I remember that when the sock went to Monterey for Christmas some of the stitches came off the needles. I popped them back on without another thought. So, I ripped back to the last row I know is good (this would be when it’s good you can see the row that held the needles for weeks on end). I find what I belive to be the center stitch and put everything back on the needles, 24 stitches/needle. Start knitting again.

Okay, the lace pattern still looks odd. Crap, must have put the stitches on the needles wrong. So, I recheck the center stitch… yup, it’s on the wrong needle. Tink back the 5 rounds I have knitted. Rotate the stitches by one stitch. Start knitting again.

Okay, now it’s off by 2 stitches. WTF? I must have moved the stitches in the wrong direction. This would be my inability to vizualize 3D objects correctly coming to the suface (this is a bad trait for a knitter by the way *sigh*).

At least this time I had only gotten 2 rounds down when I found the problem. Now I just have to remember that after I get back to the starting point that I have to move 2 stitches in the opposite direction.

I think my avatar may not be fugly… just special.

Edit: Stupid thing isn’t saving right… *gah*

Edit the second: Apparently, Yahoo is having issues, not me… I think.

Christmas was a rather quiet affair with just my parents, The Husband, and myself. My sister was upset about not coming home for the holidays, but they went to spend it with her husband’s family in Ohio.

My dad left early Boxing Day morning to head down to Phoenix to help go through my grandfather’s things. I told him about wanting the violin, and also told him that I understood very well that I most likely wouldn’t get it, so I asked for old photos and letters and such.

Wednesday, The Husband and I drove up to Mendocino to spend a couple of nice quiet days on the foggy wet coast. Unfortunately, because there was not really any snow in Tahoe everyone decided to go to Mendocino as well. The place was full of people, so we stuck to our hotel room and those places we knew would be empty like the Botanical Gardens in Ft. Bragg (We hiked out on their ocean trail… the waves were wicked, heralding the storm to come). We had a delicious meal at the Rendevous Inn in Ft. Bragg. The foie gras starter was decadent and made me realize what all the fuss is about.

I stopped in at the Mendocino Yarn Store, which was having a yarn sale — all the yarn was 20% off. I picked up 10 balls of Rowan Felted Tweed in a purple color and 2 skeins of Manos.

Friday was the day we headed home, but first we stopped in at Lark in the Morning. I had half a mind to see what they had in the way of used violins. I’m still slightly uncertain as to how it is that I left with a harp — a 29 string floor harp with levers on the Cs and Fs to be exact.

The topic of harps came up while talking with the store lady (whose name I seemed to have missed), and she said they had some down in the back. I went and found them, and as I usually do when I find harps in musics stores, I began plucking at them. The nice store lady offered to play a tune on them if I wanted to hear what they sounded like. She started with the floor harp. The first note cause a gut reaction in me… it was beautiful. She went to help another customer, and I sat down to play with the lap harp. When she came back she told me that because the floor harp had been there awhile and had a couple dings she could give me a discount. I found myself unable to refuse. After everything was settled and we were on our way out the door with the harp, she told us that someone almost bought it just the day before. Now I have to see about finding a teacher. My LYS owner told me she knows a couple people in the area that teach Celtic harp, I just need to get the names and numbers from her.

The drive back down was crazy; we were right in the middle of the storm the slammed into Northern California last week. There were a couple times when the car in front of me disappeared in waves of rain. The Husband and I traded off driving duty a couple times to give the other a rest. It was good to get home.

That was definitely close. I finished the Clapotis for my mother-in-law last Friday with 2.5 yards left to spare. It felt like a race to the finish… thankfully, I won. It would have been a royal pain in the ass to have to rip back to reclaim yarn in order to finish. I spent a good deal of time during the decrease section glaring at the Clapotis then trying to gauge how much yarn I had left. There were even a few times when I tried to weight the increase section from the beginning against what was left of my yarn ball… one in each hand… doing that balancing scale hand action… geez, I must have looked like a freak.

This shot is just to show you the colors. The yarn was Laurel from Schaefer Yarns in their Empress Wu Zhao colorway. I still need to soak it and lay it out to get rid of the curling and to straighten out the dropped stitches a little. The advice I got at my LYS was to just add a glug of vinegar along with the wool wash stuff. (Rebecca, I have no idea if lemon juice would work… definitely acidic… something to look into.) I’m probably going to go with the vinegar since that’s what I have on hand at the moment. No way am I going out for a lemon tonight… it’s dark, wet, the day before a holiday in the San Francisco Bay Area, which means that people are wandering around in moronic hazes in their large SUVs. Nope, not going out tonight.

The Husband is beginning to set the table for dinner… he’s made crab and corn bisque… mmmm… crab. I helped pick the meat out of the two crabs we picked up earlier today. I love Dungeness crab season. Yum!

Public Service Announcement
I’m going to be switching the name I use to comment on other people’s blogs because there are a few other Lizs… Lizes… (what the hell is the plural of Liz?) out there in knitting blog land. So, if you see a Zardra posting comments there’s no need to wonder who the hell that is, for it is I! (Do you think that last bit needs a sword for added florish?) Um… yeah….

In other news
My grandfather died on Saturday. My dad is heading down to Arizona next week to help my uncle down there get things straightened out and generally get in the way (his words not mine). The funeral probably won’t be until after the new year because my grandmother is buried in South Dakota, so they need to arrange for transport as well as burial. So, I’m waiting to find out if I will be expected to go to South Dakota in a couple weeks.

Meanwhile, I am worried about a violin. My dad’s side of the family has a Stradivarius that came to America with my great-great-(great?)-grandfather in 1850-something. The last time I saw it, my grandparents had it in a display case on the wall… across from a window. *shudder* All I can think of is it really needs to be taken out of that stupid case and put in a proper violin case away from the sunlight and humidity that display case has/will expose it to. Even better… it needs to be played. I’d even almost be willing to try my hand at playing violin again so that it could be taken care of properly. Of course, I don’t know if it’s even in playable condition or even how it is secured in the case (I can only pray that it was at least put in the case without harming the violin). *sigh*

Boy, are my priorities screwed up or what?

Oh yeah… knitting
Clapotis was finished on Friday night. I’m slogging my way through the afghan for my mom.

The Clapotis decreases were begun yesterday and are progressing. Of course, now I find myself in a race against the yarn for the finish. I either will run just short or will have exactly enough. Part of me is already anticipating having to rip back the decreases as well as at least one straight row repeat. This makes me shudder to think about it… I’m not really on too much of a deadline on this, but it is taking time away from the afghan. I had just decided to try to finish the Clapotis first since it was closer to completion.

Finishing the Clapotis will also present a new dilemma — how to wash it. I’m making it out of Schaefer Yarn‘s Laurel, which is their hand-dyed 100% mercerized pima cotton. I know I need to do at least one rinse with vinegar added for color-fastness. I’m just not sure what order to do everything in. Wash, then vinegar rinse? Vinegar rinse, then wash? Vinegar in both wash and rinse? I don’t want to send it off reeking of vinegar.

I recovered from my trip over the end of the semester rather ungracefully because I feel like I have promptly fallen into the deep hole that is December and all that it brings.

My last paper was turned in at 4 pm on Sunday. I found out that I got a B in my XML class… could have gotten an A- but I made a stupid mistake. I think I have received an A in my collection development plan… but I won’t know for sure till I hear from the prof, which should be in the next week or so.

Now that we are entering the second half of the month, it feels as if the insanity is building. But when I look at my schedule it seems relatively empty (which is a good thing as I do have Christmas knitting to finish).

Saturday is The Husband’s company’s Christmas party. We will be meeting up for dinner in the city at Firenze by Night. After dinner, we will adjourn to Beach Blanket Babylon.

Sunday, we go back up to the city to have dinner with The Husband’s brother and his wife before they get in their car and move back to Toronto.

Next Friday, begins vacation. My work is giving us Friday and Monday off for Christmas as well as the 2nd. So, I decided to just take the four days inbetween off and catch my breath away from both work and school. The Husband is also taking this time off, and we have reservations for a couple nights in Mendocino. Mmmmm… nothing quite like the cold, foggy coastline of NorCal to relax me.

As for Christmas knitting, I may be doing alright, but I’m not going to make that claim. I just have the decrease section of my mother-in-law’s Clapotis to do, then it will get mailed off to Canada and hopefully make it through customs without too much trouble. My mother’s afghan is another story as I haven’t been working on it. I’d guesstimate that I have about a quarter of it done. I’m trying desperately trying to avoid the vision of being up late on the 24th wishing it done.