The impetus behind item #19 – knitting a pair of socks – was to force myself to do something I hadn’t done before in knitting, something that I found daunting, and something that I’d be really happy I knew how to do once I finished and would want to do again. Socks fit that bill. But you know what else fits that bill? LACE!

As Christmas approached, I realized that I wanted to make something for my niece, Celeste. I’d received a skein of Malabrigo Silky Merino in a swap earlier in the year, with the colorway name of “Celeste”, which meant that of course it was destined to be made into something for her. She’s a teenager, so I knew a hat was probably not going to work (what teenager do you know who would willingly wear a handknit hat and risk crushing her hair?) So I poked around on Ravelry and found a really awesome scarf that several people had made from this yarn and decided to give it a whirl.

Finished scarf

Getting ready to block

As you might imagine, I’m really excited about how it turned out! The yarn was a dream to work with. The new knitting needles I was using were wonderful (the interchangeable set from WEBS). The pattern was relatively simple to learn – only 5 rows. I did most of the stitches one might need in any other lace pattern. I threw in lifelines here and there (thank goodness, because I had one major goof during a weird power outage that I had to recover from). I blocked the daylights out of the thing – it grew from 37″ to 50″ after blocking! And you know what? It was so fun to do that I turned around and made another one for my mom out of a completely different kind of yarn. I haven’t mailed that to her quite yet (sorry Mom!) but I’m equally happy with how that one turned out.

These gloves are going to be hockey-themed, thanks to Brynna, who recently opened a shop on Etsy called Draygone Yarnes. I bought a skein of fingering-weight wool in the “Boston Bruins” colorway.

I’ve never knit with such fine yarn, but now have about 2 inches of ribbing done on the first glove. So far, so good!

Stay tuned for more progress photos next week.

The goal of the knit-along? Knit three hats in the month of January. Since I’ve made a few hats, I know the amount of work that most of them would take and it seemed like a reasonable commitment. Besides, looking over all the other fantastic hats was pretty inspiring!

So without further ado, here are my three (so far) hats for the month of January.

Goal 1: Not the Carolina Hurricanes Hat, finished between two hockey games at a tournament we played in a couple of weeks ago. I’m a little nervous about taking photos of myself in hockey gear and a knitted hat, in case you can’t tell. AKA the Hurricane Hat.

Me, vaguely thuggish, in my extremely large shoulder pads, before playing a game

Amy and me, at dinner with the team on Saturday night

Goal 2: SCORE! Turn a Square – finished last weekend, knit on needles that were a little too small for the yarn (but the hat is thick, so it did what I wanted it to do). AKA Turn a Square.

Me, modeling the slightly-too-small-for-me hat

Amy, hat recipient, shoveling and not knowing I was taking her photo (aside: we’ve gotten a LOAD of snow this year!)

Goal 3: Kind of an Avs Hat (But Not Quite) – finished today, right before I headed to hockey practice. This yarn was a gift from my mom a few years ago and it’s 95% cashmere/5% lycra. I LOVE it! Of all three hats, this one is my favorite. AKA Robin’s Egg Blue Hat.

Traditional hat modeling self-portraits

Post-practice photo, no longer feeling as awkward about posing in hockey gear with knitting

Why did I do this? Well, given the way I play, combined with the position I play, it’s unlikely that I’ll get a HOCKEY hat trick anytime soon! I’m getting my hat tricks any way I can, and if I’m wearing hockey gear to get some laughs from the knitters when I take photos of the hats, I’m going to do it. It was fun and accomplishable. And it got me knitting again. Who can argue with that?

Some small nothings for your entertainment this fine weekend:

Work: This semester has been a doozy – lots of stuff going on at work (mostly good) and lots of stuff going on at home (hockey, mostly). It’s kept me busy and exhausted most nights. I’m looking forward to the December break and January’s wintersession on campus. Our group has a bunch of mini-workshops lined up, the first time we’ve taught most of them. Wintersession gives us some time to test-run courses to see if they should go into regular rotation. We’ll see – I’m hopeful.

Married life: Amy and I have been horribly lazy last night and tonight. The sofa has buttprints in it.

Food: On Thursday night we went to eat at Ka Carlos, a Cape Verdean restaurant in Dorchester with our friends Lib and Steph!TP. The service was definitely on island time, but the food was good. We all shared sauteed octopus and friend yuca. Lib got a spicy shrimp and veggie dinner, Amy got a spicy cajun-like chicken dinner, Steph!TP got conch, and I somehow managed to order a Denny’s Grand Slam (without pancakes). It claimed to be Portuguese beef with eggs. I guess I didn’t read the menu very carefully because there were some words next to the English description which apparently meant “with a heart-attack sauce and french fries too.” Ah well, it was still pretty tasty, my arteries notwithstanding.

Dogs: Maggie and Otter are funny. Ever since their Thanksgiving kennel trip, Maggie’s been all chow-houndy. Normally she’s happy to sit back while Otter inhales his meals, eating only when she’s good and ready. He probably snarfed up all her food in the kennel, causing this backlash on her part. Whatever it is, I love watching the two of them eating at the same time. Otter’s so tall that when his tail wags it completely clears Maggie’s back.

Knitting: I started knitting again, on my Janda sweater. Finally did some frogging on the front piece, which I made too long. Finished that and cast on for both sleeves last night. The easiest way to make sure your sleeves are the same length? Knit them at the same time. No photos this time – alas – but perhaps in the morning when the light is better.

Speaking of knitting, I’d like to get back to it, maybe finish the cuffs tonight and start in on the actual sleeves themselves. It would be nice to finish this before 2008, given that I started it in 2006… Ack!

And then… then today I got an email from Ravelry.com inviting me to participate in their beta test (okay, me and about 2000 other knitters out there.)

Oh wow oh wow oh wow. What a fabulous amazing incredible site! They’ve really thought about how to create a site that will help knitters manage their projects, connect to other people who are making the same projects, and find inspiration for new projects.

This is an example of the “notebook” area (click to see it larger) which includes projects and all the other things you see listed on the left side. More screenshots are here.

If you’re a knitter or crocheter and want to find a good web-based management tool, go on and sign up for an invitation. Eventually you’ll get an invitation, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. If and when you do, add me as a friend – my user name is librarygrrrl.

I made this poster today in the Wellesley College Library’s Book Arts Lab. It makes me laugh.  Click through to the photo for more detail about the printing and reasoning behind the quote.

On Friday Amy, the beasts, and I headed to Maine for the celebration with her family there. Everyone showed up on Friday – sister and her family (including 2 dogs and the 2-week-old new niece), brother and his dog, cousin and wife (from California, so no dogs), and us (with two dogs) added to the two humans and 2 dogs who already lived there. For those keeping count, that makes 7 dogs, 3 kids under 4 years old, and 9 adults. Needless to say, we had a blast – much better than last year when brother didn’t come and one kid was exceedingly sick and moaned for 4 days solid.

The only real disaster this year happened at the very beginning of the annual Christmas Tree Hunt on Christmas Eve. (To set the background here, keep in mind that global warming is doing its best to keep Maine from getting any snow this year, and as a result it is extremely muddy in the woods.) We were about 30 yards into the woods when all of a sudden the dogs (all 7 of them) got into a game of chase. Our big galumphous, Otter, ended up being the chaser, while the others were the chased. So he’s flying by everyone at a dead sprint, which for a 90-pound dog, is pretty fast. Unfortunately for the 3-year-old, he’s also not very good with knowing exactly WHERE in space he is, and the hip-checking flying-child mud-puddle disaster was about as awful (and awfully funny) as you can imagine. After a trip back to the house (yes, I carried her the whole way out of a horrible sense of guilt), a change into clean clothes, and a mad dash back into the woods, all was better in the world. It’s neat to see her figure out a lot of self-control – she was done crying by the time I hauled her to the road, was laughing halfway back to the house, and was 100% sure she wanted to go help get the tree about 3 steps after that. Last year… well, 2 and 3 are very different ages. That’s all.

The rest of our time in Maine was great. We played card games, we ate lots of food, we went to a caroling party, I helped Amy’s brother finish his Christmas shopping, we went to a Christmas Eve honest-to-goodness smorgasbord dinner, and we slept a lot. Christmas morning was fun – Smartwools (cute ones!) in the stockings from Santa, books and DVDs and other nice presents from the family… And this year I finally figured out that how Amy’s family opens presents (all at once, en masse) and the way my family opens presents (one at a time, with oooohing and ahhhing) are just different – neither is better or worse, they’re just different. What a dumb thing to realize, I know, but how much more fun both present-opening experiences were for me after having the realization!

Christmas afternoon we left the dogs in Maine and drove back home to prep for our flight to MN the next day. I finished wrapping out-of-town presents (Amy mailed them the next morning), we did laundry, and we packed. Our flights to Minneapolis were good – I’m a huge fan of Midwest Airlines now, thanks to their incredibly comfortable seats! When we fly back here, we’ll definitely try them first, even if we do have to change planes, simply because they’re not as …. wretched? overpacked? dreadful? … as the other airlines who fly direct.

So we got here and an hour later my brother and his family showed up. We had our traditional meal of chili and fixins’ for dinner, then opened stockings and one present. Big stocking score: hand-dyed cashmere yarn, enough for a scarf, from School Products! Go Santa! And the present is wonderful – a print by Katsuyuki Nishijima of several umbrellas outside a shop. Today we opened the rest of our presents, which was a lot of fun. I think everyone liked the presents Amy and I got for them; my dad’s been reading the bird feeding books Amy got for him non-stop, and my mom already put in the earrings from Lawrence Nelson of Global Odyssey Designs. The big hit present of today from my folks was a red hooded sweatshirt from the Duluth Pack company. I’ve had it on since I opened it. Who knew? My other favorite gift is Domiknitrix: Whip Your Knitting Into Shape. As soon as I finish the very wholesome Janda I’m going to make something a little more on the wild side!

The very exciting event of the afternoon was meeting my godcousin’s new daughter (he’s my godparents’ son, so “godcousin” is the term I use to describe him and his sister). He and his wife adopted a little girl from Colombia and they only came home a few days before Christmas. She is one cute kid, and I can’t wait to get to know her as she grows up!
We’ve also played lots of games – Littlest Pet Shop, spoons, and pool are among the big winners this year. Tomorrow I’ve got a few errands to run, but think the rest of the day should be more of the same as today (without all the opening of gifts and meeting of new kids).

So to those of you who celebrate it, a belated Merry Christmas to you all. My wish to all of you this season (besides SNOW) is for good health, family and friends by your side, and love in your hearts.

I finished both the wristlets and the hat. Love them. Wear them almost every day, even though it’s not quite winter weather yet. I am a dork, I know it. But I really like them.

I started a sweater – for me! It’s Janda from an older issue of Knitty. I got the yarn (Peruvian Highland Wool) a couple of years ago from Elann.com, and thought it felt like the right time to jump in. So far I’ve finished the back and have begun the front. I think sleeve island is going to be a lot longer than normal on this one, since the sleeves are raglan. But so far it’s a pretty easy, mindless knit, and I like that. The body is the lighter color, and the sleeves are the darker. I’m using a light tan/off-white for the racing stripes up the sleeves.

My folks came to visit Amy and me at our new house. We had a very nice time – ate a few great meals (Chiara, Oga’s, Union Oyster House), toured campus, drug them to our hockey game (we won!), and watched a bit of baseball in the down times. Just lovely. Can’t wait to see them again at Thanksgiving.Work has been really interesting lately. We’re down a couple of people in my department, which always makes things interesting. Plus there are some interesting division-wide conversations happening that excite me, and that have the potential to make my job a lot more interesting. The decision to come here? Get a thumbs-up. (Although I still my my friends in Philly and at Swat.)

I’m quite sad that I’m missing this year’s Internet Librarian conference. The blog posts I’m reading have me green with envy. Maybe next year (along with ALA Midwinter and Annual, ACRL, and whatever other cool, fun, relevant conferences I can rustle up.)

Things that have caught my eye for one reason or another lately:

• LibStats
• Katha Pollitt
• BostonChefs.com

That’s all for now. Happy Halloween!

That’s all.

P.S. Maggie (the dog) is insanely cute sometimes. This morning she managed to do this: