the thing itself and not the myth

…am wearing these shoes

…am already this far on my February Lady sweater

…cast this vote for President

…and am on my way to Ballard, where I saw this last week on the new release whiteboard at Sonic Boom

Have I really not posted knitting pictures here since March? That is flat-out ridiculous.

Since then I’ve finished three (nearly four) sweaters that I haven’t managed to photograph, but there is still plenty of knitting spam after the jump. (more…)

This weekend I went to the Rat City bout, which was enough social action to get me through the rest of the weekend.

Rat Bastard, at halftime:

For actual bout photos, watch Adam’s Flickr page, because I am sure it’s just a matter of time before he has some up. And his will actually be good, whereas mine suck.

The good change from last season was that the food was provided by Skillet. I’ve been hearing about them for ages, but I’ve never been able to get to a location. All that changed this weekend and I got to have POUTINE and ROLLER DERBY both. *Awesome*.

The bad change is that the bout was at Hangar 30, which some of you might know as the location of the library book sale. It’s fine for that purpose, but for derby? WAY TOO SMALL. They used to bout at Hangar 27, but the city wants to turn that into a private facility, basically, screwing over all the community groups who use it. RCRG did a fantastic job maximizing the space in Hangar 30, but it’s really horribly small, and the loss in particular of the majority of the floor seating is tragic. It also means that the bout sold out wicked fast, and that the league lost a lot of money on the missing seats. It totally blows.

So, I did that, and then I spent the rest of the weekend knitting. I was supposed to go to Honk Fest on Sunday, but it rained. Boo. Anyway. Knitting & general yarn porn after the jump.

(more…)

I haven’t posted about knitting since December! Can you believe it? Ridiculous.

Part of that is because December and half of January were taken up with finishing a crocheted afghan. You don’t get to see that, though, because there is no sunlight in Seattle in January, and so the few pictures I remembered to take were terrible. Seriously.

I do have pictures of a lot of other stuff, though, and they live after the jump. (more…)

(Why, there you are, blog!)

I got eaten by the holidays. This is my busiest time at work, so much so that I can’t take the time to visit family for Christmas. I suspect they had a better time that way anyway, particularly as at this point in December I am super-cranky from being tired.

I took a break from working mid-month to attend our first Posada celebration. The families had been working hard in the weeks leading up to it, making decorations, like these angel centerpieces…

…and some pretty amazing pinatas, including Dora the Explorer.

&

Then it was back to holiday business. We run an adopt-a-family program as well as a gift closet. This year we served 200 children between the two programs.

&

After the jump, more holidays, a little Seattle, and a side of knitting.

(more…)

Oh man, it’s been ages. I finally uploaded a whole whack of pictures, though, so let’s get started. I’m going to do this in two parts, knitting & everything else. As usual, click through to Flickr to embiggen.

Knitting first! I’ve been spending WAY TOO MUCH MONEY on yarn these days. I am now not allowed to buy any more sock yarn in particular. Why, you might ask? I provide for you visual aids.

First up, three skeins of Socks that Rock, from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. Aw, man, now that I clicked through that page I see that their Raven series is up. I hope they still have Pallas Athena at Madrona in February.

Then last weekend there was a sale at Weaving Works. I scored some Jitterbug & some Claudia Handpainted. (I had expected to come back from that shelf with Koigu and surprised myself.)

Plus I joined the Yarn Sale group on Ravelry. BAD IDEA. Now I also have all of this Cherry Tree Hill. But it is pretty and lovely to knit with and was on sale! Ah well.

(More — including actual knitted items — after the jump)

(more…)

…I don’t have pictures for this stuff yet, but I can’t resist posting. Pictures will come later this week.

So! This weekend I finished Samus! Huzzah! I have been working on it since January (!!!) but the bulk of that was the tedium of the cable. The stockinette & finishing flew by, and the finished cardigan is so cozy!

Sunday night I reknitted Ron’s Animal Crackers hat (from the third Harry Potter movie). I had wanted to make it for some time, and then I had a skein of green leftover from the Irish Hiking Scarf. Perfect! The first time it knitted up beautifully, but a bit too small, so I frogged it and added another repeat, and now it is awesome.

Then I took the leftover dark red and cast on Rose’s Wristwarmers (from the “Doomsday” episode of “Doctor Who”). If I have enough yarn & they turn out well and everything, I will have a sweet little winter set, with the bonus that it’ll be fannish without being obviously so.

If I wasn’t hoarding all my vacation for silly little things like trips to England, I would be sorely tempted to take some time off to plow through some crafts. I have a big crochet project I’m working on, plus I need to add the buttons to the three sweatshirt pillows, plus I want to redecorate/finish decorating my bedroom, including riffing on this crocheted headboard idea & getting some prints off of Etsy, plus I need to generally reorganize so I can spread out a t-shirt quilt (which includes taking a trip to Ikea to get shelving for my craft area), and then I saw this on ikeahacker and thought it would be super fun to do that with the shelves, as the ones I’m planning to get are not exactly beautiful.

*falls over*

Speaking of England, that’s where I was a year ago, so if you feel like looking at pictures, you can look at those. Click through to the Flickr set.

In blog news, I installed the plugin for threaded comments, which appears to be working quite well. I also (a while back) installed the one for comment reply notification, but as far as I can tell it’s not working. Woe.

Peace out.

First off, I’m getting ready to purge my friends list at Livejournal, and the last information gathering stage on that is this blog. If anyone reads this via a feedreader or bookmark or something else that is NOT Livejournal’s syndication feature, *and* has never commented here, please comment on this entry or email me at not the myth at gmail dot com (no spaces, etc.) You can go back to lurking, I promise. I just want to know who’s here.

Now, on to the business of blog. This weekend I took a much-needed trip out of the country …more or less. (I just went to Abbotsford, and from there you can practically spit and hit the States.) There are pictures, and, as always, click through to Flickr to embiggen.

The drive up on Friday was slow but pretty…

…and there was the reward of poutine at the end.

I had gone up for my friend’s birthday. Here she is introducing Harry Potter (by way of book 7 on CD) to her dog:

I gave her a Slytherin scarf. God willing I will never have to knit one of those things again. (This was my third.)

Sunday we went to sushi. Mine came on a bridge.

It was also exceedingly tasty, especially since they were kind enough to make it ‘nude’, that is, without seaweed, to which I am allergic. Basically, I go up to Canada to eat. I also may have bought some chocolate, but only enough to get me through til I go up again at Thanksgiving.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Spring Awakening & The Secret Garden lately. I think it’s out of winter denial. Last year when I went up for Thanksgiving it snowed, which is fine by me. I’d rather deal with snow than endless drizzle.

Oh, the perils of the Pacific Northwest!

This week I was okayed to add Ravelry progress bars to my sidebar. It has wee thumbnails of everything I’m actively working on — super cool! Ravelry’s not open to the public yet, but if you’re on it you can click through to project pages. It is pretty awesome.

I do need to go in and change the status on the Samus cardigan, though, because I have FINISHED THE KNITTING. Oh yes. There is still a lot of finishing work to do, but the knitting! It is done done done!

Now I’m carrying around socks (Cabletini & Jaywalker) until I get reorganized on my big crochet project. Also, I need to do some math so I can order yarn for NaKniSweMo. I am thinking of doing Alice, though not in those colors. For Ravelers, I am really in love with the colorway of the featured photo on the project page. And I like how another knitter reversed the wristbands, doing the detail in the secondary color.

It calls for Knitpicks Merino Style, but the Ravelers are complaining about it pilling, and so I am considering Swish, which sounds like it wears better, especially if washed inside-out. I’m thinking I will wind up copying that colorway — Moss as the main color and Nutmeg as the secondary. I considered Storm, but I’m trying to not buy everything blue. I’d like Cinnamon if it had more red in it. Maple Leaf is too orange, Terracotta too pink, and Hollyberry too the color I just did Samus in. I hate to be a copycat, but seriously. Moss & Nutmeg came out *gorgeous* together.

…now I have bored all non-knitters to death. Sorry! Here are three pictures-of-the-day, all from around Capitol Hill.

On the sidewalk on the corner of Roy & Belmont. Taken with my phone:

There are a few of these around the neighborhood. This one’s on the side of the trash can at the Bellevue & Republican bus stop:

Finally, it’s definitely autumn.

Autumn’s my favorite season, but every year the threat of winter gets worse. Wah.

Thursday afternoon I went to the Lake City Farmers Market to take pictures of the Zucchini Races. Our office generally has a table promoting the Center & literacy projects at the market, but Thursday there was no time for reading, only time for zucchini.

Making cars:

On your mark, get set, go!

The Family Center is the clear winner, creaming the Farmer’s Market!

Friday after work I went up to Third Place Books to see the Yarn Harlot. Because she is awesome. I got there a little (okay, a lot) early, on purpose. They have a nice little commons there with free wifi and a few restaurants. I hung out and knitted and watched some TV on the laptop, as all the knitters filtered in.

The Harlot is always funny, of course, but I tend to find her pretty empowering as well. I’m really a star at demeaning my own work, and she puts forth a pretty strong argument against that.

Speaking of my own work, I made it to the armholes on Samus last night. Here’s a shot from Saturday night:

And the other productive thing I did this weekend:

The package calls these “Danishes”, which is generous. If you take them as Danishes you’re in for disappointment, but if you call them scones they’re downright tasty. Oh, gluten free. It can be tough.

(Hey! Ben Lee has a new album coming out tomorrow! Score.)