I don't have to be anywhere today until 1 pm (you gotta love off-site meetings); when the alarm went off at 5:30 I got up with Mr. Ken in a show of solidarity (OK, it was 5:45 when I rolled out of bed - I indulged in a little bit of the sports report first) and figured I'd get a couple of things done around the house before heading out.

It's 8 am now and I'm exhausted!

So far today this is what I've done:

• Planted an apple tree
  
• Dug up six blackberry roots
• Folded a load of laundry, and put it away
• Changed the sheets on our bed
• Washed a load of black laundry
• Scooped all 4 litter boxes
• Moved 2 boxes of decluttered items into the front room, ready for delivery
• Made breakfast and a pot of tea
  
• Sat with Sweetie to watch Perry Mason, which was pre-empted by some religious show

I still need to fold another load of laundry, put the final load in the washer, pack my work bag and get myself ready and out the door, but I should be able to manage those items in 3 or 4 hours!

Seen at Dr. Steph's and Erica's today... 

 

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.  The ones that are just waiting on my shelves are asterisked*.

Here are the ones I've read/not read/have on my shelves, with comments as appropriate.

 
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell *
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel *
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin *
The Kite Runner *
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations (I had to read this 3 times for school:  junior high, high school and college – and  I absolutely despised it every time!)
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books *
Memoirs of a Geisha *
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera *
Brave New World
The Fountainhead

Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir *
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved *
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas

The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything *
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit (my college roommate loved this book; I forced myself to read it.)
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I read a lot, mostly to relax now.  That means mysteries; science fiction and fantasy have never held my attention.  I cannot properly suspend dis-belief (at least that's what my deceased first husband told me, and he was a college English literature professor). 

 

Let's take a break from detailing the long list of UFOs and WIPs, and look at an actual Finished Knitted Object

 

 

This unassuming pile of unblocked knitting is the beginning section of Dramatic Drape, a shawl pattern designed by Lily Chin and published in the wonderful Fall 2000 issue of Knitter's magazine.  This is, by far, my favorite issue ever of Knitter's; this is the 4th item knitted from that issue and there are several more on my list.

 

 

I started this project about April 5 and completed it (including blocking) April 28, however, this was at least my 3rd attempt to follow the incredibly easy pattern and count!  See the notepad?  That was how I finally managed to keep track of the increases -- and then it was easy.

 

 

The yarn is long-discontinued, very well-aged stash, probably bought before 2000 at Straw Into Gold in Berkeley.  It's Crystal Palace "Martinique", made in Italy in 40 gram (1.4 oz) balls of approximately 110 yards.  It's a blend of 48% super kid mohair, 20% silk, 17% nylon, 8% linen and 7% viscose rayon.  It's as light as a feather, and should be perfect for San Francisco summers, cool evenings and layering over a sweater or jacket.

 

 

My version blocked out to about 80"  by 31"; the pattern measurements were 72" x 31".  The color is a mix of bright red, creamy white and a bit of sunflower yellow.  I didn't add the fringe as the pattern suggested (I'm so NOT a fringe person) but might change my mind.  It would add a bit of heft to the lower edge of the shawl.  And there's plenty of yarn left over: I had 1100 yards and used about 550.

I'll enlist Mr. Ken's assistance to get a decent photo - I'm not very good at the old "photo in the mirror" trick!

To answer Dez's question: the sweaters in the previous post are not all the current WIPs.  I have sock WIPs, which will be revealed today, and scarf and shawls WIPs, and even afghan WIPs.

And Dez, I have Plantation Cotton in deep coral that I'd be willing to trade for handspun.  Plantation Cotton does come up on eBay fairly often, and if the colors and quantities are right, it eventually arrives in my mail box.

Now for the Sock WIPs:

  I resisted the lure of the Monkey sock for as long as possible, but am really enjoying this pattern.  It's  not intuitive for me yet, but I can knit it without making errors while listening to music and even conversing a bit.  The yarn may not show the pattern off as well as it might, but I like it.

Standard sock - 2 x 2 rib for 12 rows, 3 x 1 rib until it's 6 or 7 inches long...the yarn is lovely, and I'll post a better photo soon.   This sock did docent duty with me, and is now much longer.

For the record, this is peach with dashes of coral and slate blue.  It's in the early stages of sockdom, and I don't yet know if the leg will be anything other than ribbing of some sort.  We'll see.

At the bottom there are Wildfoote Jaywalkers (2nd sock started) and Ditto standard ribbed socks (2nd sock almost to the heel).  The rest were started in a couple of sock-starting-frenzies:  there are 2 Socks That Rock (Red River Canyon and something else), some Opal handpaint (yes, it's the same colorway I traded to Fillyjonk a couple of years ago - I've  now bought this colorway 3 times so I must wants socks from it), Crystal Palace Maizy in Indian Corn, Opal Rosehips (I don't remember the German name), eBay hand-dye from (I think) Twinkletoes in Coffee, and something else in red, purple, orange and pink stripes.

The special added bonus to this review?  Now I know where 2 of my precious 3 8" metal circular needles have been hiding!  (No, I don't know who makes them or anything; I bought them at an estate sale inside a Denise needle set.)

Startitis is creeping up on me again (there are at least 5 sweaters I want to start - and I have yarn for them), and in an attempt to keep it at bay I took inventory of my current projects.  All are WIPs, with the exception of socks which are mostly UFOs.  I'm fine with that. 

These sweaters are on the needles today:

Gold Mohair                                                            

Fronts and backs done to armhole start; I want to convert to set-in sleeves.

 

Serape Sweater

Left half complete, right half just started              

  

Wonderful Wallaby                                                   

I'm working on this one...            

Debbie Bliss pullover    

One sleeve done, 1 half done.  The body will be the easy part.

Angelina    

I love the yarn,  I love the pattern, but it seems like miles of ribbing to knit before  the interesting lace parts!                                                        

There are also 4 sweaters that are in various stages of finishing:

Sensational Shirttail

Pieces all complete and accounted for (since cleaning the closet this week).   Now  to block and assemble, and learn to crochet in order to complete! 

 

Kenobi

Completely knitted, already blocked, shoulder seams and 1 side seam mattress stitched.  What am I waiting for? 

Cable Eights

This has been completed and blocked for 2 summers now.   See above.  I need to learn to crochet to complete assembly. 

Shapely  T

I'm not happy with the sleeves, but the tank portion is great.  Modify the sleeves and get on with it already! 

Whew!  Documenting this is exhausting!  While I'm thinking of it, this weekend I'm going to add these to my Ravelry WIPs list.  Might as well track them somewhere. 

It's been a good and productive week.  Of course I didn't do everything on my list, and I did do things that weren't on the original list.  I also realized that I need to sssssssllllllllooooooooowwwwwwww ddddddddoooooooowwwwwwwnnnnnnnn.  The world will not come to an end if I write a letter instead of an email or if we sit outside and do nothing except listen to quiet music and crickets until it's too cold and the mosquitos start buzzing around.   More on this as I think it through.

                                        

Updated the list.  I'm starting  to resent the list, which doesn't surprise me.  If all the list items were fun, they probably wouldn't need to be on a list, now would they?

I decided to take photos of the current WIPs  for  Ravelry, and that was a real eye-opener!  There are a lot of them.  And  even scarier, there are a couple that were missing.  They're probably in the closet I need to organize.  

I found all the pieces of Sensational Shirttail, so  it can now be washed and blocked before finishing.  I also found the entrelac tote (from KnitPicks)  which has  been finished for months - just needs felting.  My felted hat also needs refelting, so that may be another Thursday project.  And I found the KnitPicks undyed yarn; it was ordered more than a year ago because I wanted to  play  around with various household items as dyes.  Maybe Thursday...

Even the numbers of WIPs are not keeping me from swatching for new projects.  That's the next photo shoot!  There are times when I  think I must be a process knitter because I just love to swatch;  other times I cannot stand the thought  of making a swatch.  

Wednesday is my day out: the housekeepers come, and I don't want to be in their way.  I need to go to Costco for cat litter (another 150 pounds!) and Target for a couple of  storage boxes.   I might get a bag or 2 of potting soil to start filling the last 2 horse troughs.  Or not.  

It hasn't rained yet, but it's cloudy and the humidity is oppressive.   

Tuesday To Do List

It's supposed to rain today - after weeks of sunny days - so  gardening is first priority this morning.  Here's the list for today:

• finish laundry (3, no 4 loads left - a cat threw up on a bathroom rug - yuck!)
• email stuff
• mail birthday cards
• weed front beds
• plant veggies in raised bed
• declutter makeup drawer
• build drawer for desk
• watch TV with Sweetie
• put ads on  CraigsList and FreeCycle
• KNIT!

More later!

 

 

 Here's how I did on my list:  (red for completed before 1 pm,  green for completed between 1 and  5, and blue for completed before 9 pm)

• start seeds for veggies and  flowers I can't find at any nursery (I started 72 pots - more tomorrow)
  
• Flylady's weekly house blessing hour (sheets,  dust,  vacuum, sweep, clean smudges)
• laundry and last of the dishes from Saturday's seder
• mail birthday cards
• water the raised bed veggies, repair 2 soaker hoses
• plant 1 raised bed
• weed front flower beds
• on-line items  (orders, email, etc.)
• organize top of vanity in master bath
• organize makeup
• start dinner  (dinner was lamb shanks braised with tomatoes and veggies)
• quick grocery run (cranberries, eggs, etc.)
• watch TV with Sweetie (the orange tabby cat - she likes Perry Mason, and it's on at noon!)
• KNIT! (a couple of rounds on a new sock while Perry Mason saved his client)

I made good progress today!  There's more to do, but there's always more to do!   As part of my fitness time today I followed exercise routines on  FIT-TV.  Shimmy was fun, largely because I once was part of  a belly dance troupe -- it's amazing how much you can forget!