Holly Doyne – Page 168 – words, wool, and travel

Vancouver – Monday

Posted on 2007-05-21 by Holly Doyne2007-05-21

The convention center in Vancouver is right on the Harbour. In fact, the Coral Princess is tied up at dock right next door. With all the private balconies on the upper deck, it makes me want to just get on board, sit with my feet up right out from my room and knit my way up the inland water ways to the coast.

The architecture of the Convention Center itself is built like a ship. There may be sails, but the rest is pure cruise ship. It is wonderful. The views from the upper deck, a plaque with the history of the Two Sisters, and the inside Totem. Too bad I had to spend most of the day inside, not being able to see the sunshine that finally arrived.

With all but one speaker today being absolutely excellent, I really enjoyed the meeting.

Knitting

The Horcrux pattern is an auto pilot knit once past the upper portion. I have the pair now finished and Monkey started. In the same yarn because the DH really liked the yarn and I should knit something for him. But it is really busy. And the truth is I forgot the ball of yarn that I wanted. Tomorrow, LimenViolet for Monkeys.

Totems

Posted on 2007-05-20 by Holly Doyne2007-05-20

Travel

Being awake really early is not at all surprising, so we will just skip that.

Besides getting registered for the conference and visiting a few souvenir shops, what was important was seeing a bit of Vancouver. This is the Pacific North West. It rains. Not to be amazed that it was raining here. And occasionally coming down hard enough to get us wet, even with the new umbrella we purchased having not remembered to bring one along. I did bring a rain jacket. But putting it on makes me feel like a wimp. So instead it stays in my bag while I get damp.

But anyway….

We drove around Stanley Park which is at the very end of the peninsula that has the “old city.” (This is Old in a Northern American Continent kind of old. – not European old.) Just for your general interest, Vancouver believes in charging for parking, a lot. At least I think $2/hour for street parking or pull over parking in a park is a excessive. But it does make money for the city and prevent commuters from using it as a parking lot.

Then there is the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology with an incredible collection of First Nation Artefacts. The most prominent of which are house totems as well as other Salish and Haida works, both old and contemporary.

Since the purpose of being in town was to attend CISTM10, it seemed to make sense to attend the opening of the conference (along with the included reception). Because of unexpected road construction not there this morning, we missed the Bagpipers. But heard some short, very entertaining greetings and saw the Chinese Dragon Dancers.

The only issue for me was the number of people crowding around the snack tables. It was much nicer watching from the balcony above than being in the press.

Knitting

In the middle (between registration and museum), we had headed to Grey’s Point. I checked out Urban Yarns. Other than carrying a complete like of Fleece Artist, they had some other lines, all higher end and good quality. The store is quite small, but good use is made of the space. Their sock yarns were limited to Fleece Artist, Lorna’s Laces, Koigu, and three different colorways of Regia. Not lines, mind you, but three individual color patterns. But the women working there were lovely. I did pick up some Seawool, but the guy colours were pretty limited.

According to the clock on this system, it is 0752 on the 21st. Since it is not that where I am, it explains why I feel so tired.

-Holly

Long Flight

Posted on 2007-05-19 by Holly Doyne2007-05-19

Travel

The train was at 0605. And there is no way you should believe that I got to bed prior to 0230. That makes for a short night.

It is over 8 hours to Montreal from Frankfurt, a scramble through customs, luggage re-check and a run to the gate to make the 5+ hour flight to Vancouver. Air Canada is nice, polite and acting American as far as service on the in-country flights. I am still not used to paying for food on flights. My bags of trail mix went a long way to keeping the DH and I fed for that leg.

With a window seat on the first leg, I kept my self entertained with socks, the camera, and the MP3 player.

For that second leg, middle seat, the MP3 player was running down (did I mention that there was actually a USB port in the panel in front of me which worked for chargeing?) and getting a crick in my neck from difting off in weird position.

Socks

Half way down the first sock – the Lava Spiral out of Lisa Souza’s Earth Birth were finished by the time we got off the plane in Montreal except for the minor issue of closing the toes and dealing with the strings.

This gave me time, before I wiped out completely to start Horcrux (6 Sock KAL) out of Opal Herbst Melodie.

Audio Books

MP3 players are great, that is once you finally get to the menu that lets you cancel “shuffle.” I mean really, how do you list to a book with a device that insists that all your tracks be scrambled. I intensely dislike not knowing what comes next anyway, so it is not an option for which I see any use. Given the time frame, I was able to listen through two of the three books in Nora Robert’s Key Trilogy and start on the third. Dead Run and D is for Dead Beat did not get ripped completely. Argh!

Meeting registration is in the morning and the opening ceremonies and reception are tomorrow night. Time zones are striking.

-Holly

Packing up

Posted on 2007-05-18 by Holly Doyne2007-05-18

The day before I go anywhere it seems like everything falls apart. At work there are meetings, crabby people, and emergency deadlines. I suddenly remember a number of items that really do have to be completed prior to going out the door. I won’t bother to mention the email box that keeps filling up as fast as I emptied it out. Since I will be gone over a week, this is not a small consideration.

And we will not discuss the idiots on the road. Passing streams of lumbering trucks grinding their way up Grünstadt Hill there is always someone who does not believe in speed cameras until after they go flashing past and get blitzed. This is followed by the sudden slamming of breaks and accident near misses. Did I mention this is also a construction zone? And that the fog was so dense this morning than 60 km was pushing it?

No crash, so I suppose that the fool in the Mercedes thinks that there was no foul.

Socks

I started a new sock. I was looking at RPM, and then looked at the ball of yarn. I really didn’t want to have to count. I also like Bohus. This pair will be a spiral variation. I simply purled when ever either the yellow or a transition orange was in the row below.

Packing

The most important part of the packing has been completed. I have identified and made center pull balls out of Opal, Fleece Artists, Monarch, Lisa Souza, and Ellen’s Half Pint Farm to take along.

I also have knitting needles, tape measure, patterns. Camera and charging cords.
Clothes? Oh, yes, I probably should pack some of those, shouldn’t I? Not as important as yarn.

Audio Books

Rescuing an MP3 player back from the teens, I still have to load books on CD. I think I am going with Agatha Christies’ The Mystery of the Spanish Chest and Return to Baghdad, PJ Tracey’s Dead Run, and Richard North Patterson’s Exile. It is similar to yarn. By far better to have too many books loaded in case one of them is just not what you want to hear.

Arches

Should I run a contest to identify this location?
-Holly

Grasshopped

Posted on 2007-05-17 by Holly Doyne2007-05-17

Knitting

Totally and completely amazing. The only sock on needles is the sockapalooza. The grasshoppers are complete. Not knit by the pattern completely (one sock is a sampler of various 2tog/yo combinations, with the second a bit closer to the real pattern.

Yarn= STR Silky in colorway “Walking on the Wild Tide”
Pattern= variation on Knee High to a Grasshopper, the April Rocking Sock Club Pattern. The key change was knitting the back of the sock in 1×1 ribbing. It may not be as pretty as the mesh, but the socks are staying up after a couple of hours. All the yarn overs were done front to back, which made the p2tog a snap.
Needles = 2,5 Colonial Rosewood dps over 56 stitches.

The yarn was lovely to knit, I will have to see how it wears. I find foot length much harder to estimate with toe up socks., perhaps in part because I am never in the situation where I can try them on in process. And moving stitches from my beloved dps to something else and back is a pain. Since I have never run out of sock yarn, I have proved that I can knit toe-up and will go back to knitting my top down socks. There is a lot of room for personal preference.

So what do I do for simpler project when Sockapalooza kntting is too much? Something out of More Sensational Knits? Certainly I should knit a fingering weight pair of Hocrux for 6Sox KAL and March Madness Monkeys for my spongemonkeys (be warned, the song is horrible) as part of the running family joke since they started singing “We like the moon” at World Con [LA CON IV] last summer.

Sockapalooz4

Only a couple more rows tonight. I have to decide whether I am going to take them along to Vancouver, or just go with simple patterns on the trip. The pattern, which I created by pulling various twisted patterns from a couple volumes of Strickmuster aus dem Steirischen Ennstal, has two panels which are quite complicated with side panels that are less so. It takes concentration. Unlike the twisted stitch patterns that wind up in most popular pattern books, these panels include a lot of knit/purl swaps. Since I wanted to make my pal something that was going to be unique, I think I have succeeded, unless I go insane in the process.

Audio Books

Finished Dead Wrong by J A Jance tonight. In plenty of time to return it prior to leaving town. Now to decide what to load onto the MP3 player for the trip. My cassette recorder is not cooperating. That might be good in that it takes up a whole lot more space.

-Holly

Small Sheep

Posted on 2007-05-16 by Holly Doyne2007-05-16

Before I forget – is there anyone out there from Vancouver? We head that way on Saturday [Conference time] and I am hoping to get in a couple of yarn stores or see if anyone is willing to have me treat them to tea or coffee.

Sockapalooza

Blowing up the pattern with the xerox helped. Should I admit my eyes are getting older? Or that knitting sometimes is neither the right focal length for either my distance or the bifocal portion of my lenses? Unlike stockinette – this was more like 10 rows in a couple of hours. Might have something to do with a dropped stitch or two, but I would rather not talk about the fun of chasing a lost ~~pearl~~purl down a number of rows. This is a full repeat on the front: which means a double repeat on the back and x6 on the side panels. I think it looks ok.

Knitting

See what came in the mail today from Ann K

Isn’t it such fun? It was a prize from her blog and I was a random winner. I now who is going to be marking the center of Cottonwood when I get it back on the needles.

The Blue and Grey Stripes are done.

And I am making progress on the Grasshopper, only the leg left on the second sock. So I need to choose my next project so that I am not completely insane. A pair of Monkey’s perhaps?

-Holly

Well, it did not really rain.

Posted on 2007-05-15 by Holly Doyne2007-05-15

To be honest, this was one of those days at work best put out of mind as soon as possible. Long meeting in the morning followed by commute with car (I am so glad the CD player was willing to play today without skips, fits, stops and starts) followed by work, acrimonious meeting and more work. I didn’t get in the door at home until after 2000.

So you can imagine what this did to my knitting. I brought home my Sockapalooza pattern, and turned the heel on the stockinette sock.

That is it. The grasshopper is only six rows farther up the gusset.

I took pictures of both, but felt too stupid to post them. Six rows? Give me a break, the progress is not visible from the last update pix. And a standard heel turn – you have all seen that before.

The best I can offer is the yarn basket (which seems to be the home for cords and chocolate as well as knitting paraphenalia) and the dog, ever patient as she waits for me to drop food within her reach.

Oh, and then there are the sponge monkeys on their way to school.

-Holly

Training, not meeting

Posted on 2007-05-14 by Holly Doyne2007-05-14

Moving right along, you don’t want to hear about my morning of meeting (that is right – 3+ hours long) anymore than I want to think about it. Nor do you want to know that I then had to hitch a ride to Landstuhl for a 30 minute meeting late in the day.

And how did I get home, you might wonder. Assuming that I successfully made it home tonight without wheels.

Well, I gained knitting time. I had a chance to work on the grasshoppers for part of the midday blast down the autobahn. At least till I got to the part where I needed the pattern which was in the trunk. Should have suffered through being uncomfortable in the front seat of the sports car with large bag under my legs than have 20 minutes unable to knit. I will know better next time.

No dummy, I am taking the xx07 after the hour S-1 as it passes through Landstuhl on its way across four states to arrive at Osterburken. I was sitting there in time to see the new Trans-regio pull in. And see that orange sign? It represents a remarkable change for Germany.

A No Smoking sign. In an outdoor public place. The train stations are now to be smoke free.

One hour, 42 minutes later, the S-1 passes through Heidelberg. Allowing for boarding and exiting, I figured a good 95 minutes of knitting at the minium. Executing complicated patterns requires concentration – I elected train knitting. Plain, ordinary stockinette can be absolutely wonderful.

Socks

I finished up the first sock of this pair quite a bit earler, the second was cast on after boarding – and this is 16 cm of sock cuff wrapped up as we pulled into Heidelberg. Really not bad for what turned out to be 100 minutes of knitting time.

I should be thrilled to accomplish even 20% of that speed on my sockapalooza. There I made absolutely no progress: I forgot the yarn at home and the pattern at work. Phooey.

While we are all at it – have you seen Summer of Socks 2007?

Books

I have both the India Ink and Yasmine Galenorn cozies just returned from the eldest to read. All these sock projects are really interferring with my reading. I have gone from a book/day normally down to maybe 2 a week.

-Holly

Terrace Knitting

Posted on 2007-05-13 by Holly Doyne2007-05-13

By rumour, today is Mother’s Day. We had absolutely nothing scheduled. Once the basic errands were finished (getting some groceries in the house) the rest of the day was mine to sit and play. The cheese cake was baked by the eldest just for me. The dog just decided to stay with me in case I was willing to share my food [not].

Sockapalooza4

If you think these socks are for you – you might be right. But then again, with so many of us involved, the odds are not high. I don’t know if my “victim” has ever been here to look. Not posting would take a lot of fun out of the process.

After working out as much as I wanted with my sample yarn – I discovered the following: using 2,0 mm needles made too stiff a fabric with a gauge around 4 sitches per cm. Plus if I want to stay with this gauge, I will have to expand the number of stitches. Hitting the stash, I found a skein of J-Knits in colorway Newbury Port. which I had purchased from theYarnGrove.. The best I can describe it is as a semi-solid falling between rose and lilac. I have been to my pal’s blog. She has pink, she has purple, she has red socks on the pages. I think this color is going to work out better than my previous choice.

Starting on 2,25 mm needles, I went with a long tail cast on and knit a cuff in twisted rib that I think is long enough. It measures 4 cm. Which led me to a bit of research and a curiosity – how long a cuff is long enough? Is it a standard length, which seems to be common for most German patterns, or is it more reasonable to be proprotional either to the length or the pattern? I have noticed that I seem to knit about the same length cuff, and it is related to how much cuff is needed to hold up the sock. And that means that it may very with the receipient. What do you think?

After 13 rounds the patterns are coming clear. I am quite pleased with how well the colour, stitch definition and pattern combination came together. The front and the back. I can see right now that this is not mindless knitting. The side panel repeats are only four rows long, but the back pattern is 13 and the front is 15 for the center and 8 for the side. Once I am completely done, I should properly write out this pattern in case anyone else is interested. Working from xeroxed sheets cut and taped together is fun [I have some shore front property in the desert].

Knitting

The second grasshopper is progressing. It is my break knitting when my eyes are too crossed from the Trautenfels Tulip. Going toe up again (my consession to the pattern) I even decided to do the mesh stitch. We will not talk about the one stitch that jumped off the needle and made a break for freedom down four rows before I could blink. Rather than reknit, I picked it up as best I could and kept on going. Since the other sock became a stitch sampler, one irregular hole in the mesh is not going to bother me.

Audio, Visual, etc

The winner of the Eurovsion was Marija from Serbia. And if you have any interest in listening – all the songs can be heard over the internet by following the links to each of the participants pages and hitting audio or video.

-Holly
going back to her knitting.

Eurovision is Cracked

Posted on 2007-05-12 by Holly Doyne2007-05-12

In what is a rare event for us, we are sitting in the living room and watching the Eurovision finals. If you are not familiar with Eurovision, let me give you a quick explanation: each country through popular vote from TV broadcasted competition choses a music performance to enter the International competition. The entries vary from solo jazz singers, through weird home language performances to totally wacked out rock groups. The winner is decided through popular International vote (phone and SMS). This whole thing is accomplished through TV Programs. Started in 1956 – it predates American Idol by decades.

Some of the entries are totally insane – Ukraine metal group in mylar costumes – UK sappy pop in flight attendants uniforms – incredible drumming from Bulgaria. 24 in all. An amazing number of gorgeous women’s voices and performances this year. Moldova, Slovakia, and Finland come to mind.

Of course, evey act was followed by commentary out of the teens plus the DH.

It interferred with my knitting.

Military

Of course, most of my evening had already been blown by the Annual AMEDD Ball. George got off the train from Frankfurt in time to put on his tux and we headed to the Village Pavillion.

The color guards were in the tradition of wearing uniforms from across the wars.

[You can fill in the middle here – opening remarks, welcomes, buffet dinner, various award announcements and presentations, closing remarks]

Once the colors were retired, there was supposed to be dancing. After talking to a few people, we hung it and came home.

Knitting

Ready to bind off the first Grasshopper, with notes taken on changes for the second. Still going toe up, and I like this heel version. Once I picked up the trick of doing the yarn over from front to back, I might just mesh the second sock. What is also making a difference is that I am making the back side of the leg in 1×1 ribbing so that it does not sag.

Sockapalooza4

I have found the componets for my pattern, knit a twisted stitch cuff and am five rows down the sock. Because of the bright red, it is hard to see at this point. Mostly I am making sure this is doable, checking gauge, and keeping this pair for myself. I will get daylight shots tomorrow.
Since there are 2000 participants out there, even if my pal stops by this blog, I have no reason to suspect that she would ever guess these are for her.

—
The votes are now being announced. It is a hoot, Serbia, Ukraine, and Russia are in the lead. What can I say? Next year this program will be hosted out of somewhere in the former Soviet Block. Should I stay awake, or crash? Humm, knit is best.
-Holly

Friday – 11 May 2007

Posted on 2007-05-11 by Holly Doyne2007-05-11

[No clue – the post along with the comments just vanished. I think it may be to do with my editing methods. In any case, this is an approximate repost].

It was a long week and I was ready for a break. The Challah was baked by Nina to be taken along for services tonight. I would have photo’d the cake, but the dog got a piece of it when her back was turned.

Knitting

More progress on the Grasshopper: beyond the heel and starting up the leg. I am still treating it as a sampler, so the stitches do vary here and there. After trying out the front-> back yarn over, I might just knit the second one by the pattern.

Sockapalooza

I doing a sample pair (which I likely will keep for me) to double check gauge and pattern prior to making the one’s for my pal, the Lisa Souza yarn is really pretty bright. I like the way the twisted stitch rib is coming out. This was just a regular cable cast on. I am contemplating a chanel isle cast on for the second sock to see how it looks.

Arches

The time was August 2005, the location-Glasgow, Scotland. The SS Armadillo.

Audio Books

Checked out from the library – Dead Wrong by J A Jance and Fiddler by Ed McBain.
-Holly

We are up!

Posted on 2007-05-10 by Holly Doyne2007-05-10

It was all worthwhile, the fussing and the fretting and the guy from Telekom who insisted that our equipment was old and fried. Admittedly the router has been in continous use since 2001 and the Frtiz! box almost as long. It also meant at trip to Telekom for new equipment. But we have DSL up and running once again with one combi box replacing three pieces of electronic equipment.

Wollpiraten!

Hermes followed instructions. When I got home today, there was a treasure chest waiting for me in the garage. It had come from Nala. The Pirate trove included yarn to keep me busy while underway, cream for hard worked hands, shells, candy and a log book. I have found some fun things to restock and will get it on its way Saturday.

Knitting

The Grasshopper is started (STR April). I promised myself that I would just knit it per the pattern. I even started it toe up. Then added a few extra rounds because I wanted more solid on my toes. After doing a few rounds of the P2tog, yo followed by yo p2tog, my fingers felt like they were bleeding and I felt nuts. On this kind of project I am not obsessive. I did not frog, I just changed the pattern to alternate rows of k2tog yo with yo k2tog back loop. It gives a nice mesh pattern with a lot of give as well. I have finished the heel of the first one and have just the leg to go. No fake hem in the back (why prove that my legs are weird?).

To balance out the concentration needed for Grasshopper, I needed a mindless knit. Digging out a standard guy yarn, I have made great progress on a pair for DH in the last couple of days.

A New Button for those who just want to watch people try and knit 52 pairs in a year’s time. We started with about a hundred of us on 1 April; completely insane beings. I know how long it takes me to knit a pair that are uncomplicated. And I really have no babies or small children to score rapid progress. I am ahead of where I need to be for the present (those are sock pairs 14 & 15 noted above), kind of banking socks for those months when I am unlikely to be knitting socks.

I have rescued all the comments out of the hold bin, I am not sure why Akimet caught a couple of them. I have no idea why the snail body is so white, perhaps he was just washed by the rain. She had moved on this morning, which is good considering how awake I am not when plowing down the stairs at a dead run with the dog before coffee.

-Holly

Wet out

Posted on 2007-05-09 by Holly Doyne2007-05-09

It seemed like a really good idea at the time. I could never find a laundry basket that did not have strange things in it when I needed one. Weeks ago I bought two more laundry baskets. That way I had one for my clean clothes and one for the dirty.

George did the laundry this past weekend. The kids also did their laundry, except for Nina who flew from Barcelona straight back to school. I had not been in the laundry room for several days.
It was not as bad as I have seen it; all members of the family had a few items here and there. But then I counted the laundry baskets: standing on the floor and piled on each other, several with only one or two items flung on the bottom. There was no place to set down the basket I had just brought down from upstairs. Disgusted, I dumped everything together and sorted out the first load so that I would have a clean uniform to wear this morning. An hour later (mind you, all of this is before 0730), I came down, dropped the first load in the dryer and just dumped the remainer of my basket in the washer. Taking the basket with me, I headed back upstair.

Then it hits me, uniform shirts. Uniform shirts have various patches with Velcro. I have three tops, two of which are in the washer and one in the dryer. I have two sets of patches. I have an almost dry bare shirt. The patches are securely fastend to the shirts currently in the middle of a wash cycle.

The digital display says 35 minutes remaining. You do realize that I have the standard German front load washer. I have to wait for a spin cycle, kill the process and turn everything off for at least five minutes in order to get the front door to unlock. And there is no way to restart it mid cycle. This is not a fun choice.

I could go and dig out a set of BDUs, find and polish a set of black boots. Right. Not. Some of the above accomplished, I zipped up my dry shift with the soaking wet patches, restarted the washing machine, gathered up everything and headed out the door.

Knitting.

They are done. Finished. Complete. The Shadow Socks – on feet, on blockers and up close. The shadow part was interesting, and I have proved that I can wind up with actually a sock from a rather weird construction. It will be a while before I even think about repeating this.

Audio

No, Lime & Violet is not good for me. I would up making a trip to Lisa Souza’s website.

It is late, and I am still wandering over to the hospital to post. We will not talk about WordPress giving me fits.

-Holly

Slow Progress

Posted on 2007-05-08 by Holly Doyne2007-05-08

No DSL. No camera hook-up and no way to edit pix down to a reasonable size even if I could upload them.

Bleh.

Knitting

The last 8 rows on the foot, then it is on to the toe on Shadow sock. It feels like it is taking forever. The yarn is wound for my STR pair of Grasshoppers which I hope to be able to start tonight. That just leaves me with my Sockapalooza Pal. The yarn is from Lisa Souza who has such lovely yarns and colors. As well as generous yardage. The pattern? Well, I am just about done with it. I am going to test drive it on some of Lisa’s Sock! in Denim, but will knit a lighter color for my pal.

I need some denim coloured socks; this is a two-fer.

The weather is cool, blowy, with spritzes of rain. It could be worse- I am leaving the office before dark.

And listening to Lime & Violet on the way home.

-Holly

Still down

Posted on 2007-05-07 by Holly Doyne2007-05-07

It took this little snail longer to make it across the one step than it did for me to make it the flight of 60 to the house.

It is not like I am in a hurry or need to access the Internet in the evening. Cruising knitting blogs or similiar sites is optional, right? So why would I care that the phone started working again this morning but the DSL quit? And Telekom will not be able to come until Thursday. Of course, I have not a clue as to how we are going to manage that, given that some of us (not Telekom) seem to work for a living.

Wollpiraten

Now, given a chance to stay home and wait for the post, in case the Schatz Kiste comes my way in the next couple of days – why that would be of far more interest that to wait on someone who once again will tell us they have no clue as to why the DSL does not work. Oh – the Treasure Chest? A round robin of wool treasures, where each sucessive Pirat adds to the packet before removing anything, then sends it on to the next ~~victim~~ participant on the list. Not leftovers, no, this is for treasure.

Shadow Socks

Ok, this way of knitting is almost as fiddly as the original, since I wanted the colours on the foot to match the original. After completing the leg, I used the cherry for a standard German heel. Then it became fun (not). Knitting all the way around twice with the moss, followed by the instep over with the cherry, backwards around the foot with the moss, interlock the two yarns then backwards with the cherry while the moss returns around the heel. It means that every fourth round is a real pain. I also noticed that I have stripes in the top; something that was not really evident in the sock, but shows clearly in the picture. Only 1/2 a foot and the toe to go.

Mai in den Tanz

Completed as ankle socks per request of the younger teen. Knit on 3,75 mm needles over 42 stitches, it was a quick knit.

Off to finish up two documents for work, and not from the comfort of my own chair.
-Holly

On the wall

Posted on 2007-05-06 by Holly Doyne2007-05-06

You have to understand that it sometimes takes us a while to get anything accomplished. Like the jungle on the property cut back, the house cleaned, or objects mounted on the walls. Years as a matter of fact in the case of hanging pictures back on the walls. We relocated from München in summer of 2001; still with work to do on the house when we moved in.

Everything that had been up on the wall prior to the move wound up stacked against the wall in the living room, placed in the wall cupboard below the stereo, or tucked up on a shelf.

And there it all sat till last weekend. I am not good with hammer and nails. Plus we have German wall construction with finishing over block. It can make hanging things extremely challenging. The teens had sorted out everything over their vacation. I enlisted the oldest’s finacé on the principle that if he can store and work on a VW bug in our garage, he might know how to hang things.
And it has happened. After being here 5 1/2 years, we now have art work back up on the walls, the mirrow hanging over sideboard in the dining room and family pictures up in the kitchen. It looks pretty impressive.

Computers and Comms

Last night was nuts, the DSL was out, and I posted from elsewhere. In the process, some updates to shared blogs did not make it through and others were duplicated. It came back on this morning, then went out again an hour ago. Checking on the set up, there was a wire that seemed to be kinked. Restarting everything plus unkinking the wire has worked for the present. Who knows how long it will hold.

Knitting

The Tanz in den Mai is almost complete, with just the toe to the second sock to complete. (I obviously managed a few cm more after taking the picture, but it is too dark outside for another photograph.

Making it just a little bit farther on the second shadow sock – I should be to the heel and the heel turned tomorrow. I am actually liking how the pattern is appearing in this method. I am thinking now about the foot construction and whether it is going to wind up being stripes, or if I have enough energy to work back and forth on the sole of the foot with the equilivant of short rows to complete it in the solid color.

Which means that I can wind the STR skein tomoorw for the April pattern. It has been interesting seeing all the pictures of these socks in progress across knitting blogs. They appear to be various shades of purple, pinks and greys. When I look at my skein, it mostly seems to be greens and pale browns. Ah well, I am having fun with this. I also need to work up some swatches for my Sockapalooza pal’s socks, as I am not going to knit any pattern at 11-12 stitches per inch.

Audio Books

Ten Big Ones is finished, as is Loyalty in Death. I just picked up Diane Mott Davidson’s Dying for Chocolate at the library on Friday for the CD player, while I am back with One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie on the cassette player. Said player which is now making weird grinding noises. I am hoping that it is not dying; I really don’t want to have an go buy another one. There are few cheap ones in Germany, only expensive. And I want something mid-range. Perhaps I will go hunting when in Vancouver later this month.
-Holly

Thank you, Telekom

Posted on 2007-05-05 by Holly Doyne2007-05-05

Once more we are having DSL problems. This time around the phone is working, so there is a connection into the house. And all of the computers connect just fine with the router. But the Fritz-box says that there is no DSL coming in. And it is right. Since I had to go over to Heidelberg Hospital and check something for work, figured to maximize the use of the medical library computer.

Knitting

May Day, pattern by Anni of Sockamania

They are knit in STR. This particular colorway is Lemon Grass. As is common for many of my sock pairs, they are fraternal rather than identical. The leg and instep were knit on 2,75mm needles, the heel, sole and foot after the first repeat on 2,5mm needles.
Remember I was thinking about alternatives to lengthwise knit for the second sock? Top on the list was a fairisle method so that the columns would run vertically, just like the other sock. After a provisional cast-on and some calculations about numbers of stitches I had a sample.

And then had the blinding flash of the obvious. Rows of purls and columns of purls are different. If I stack them in fairisle, all they are going to do is disappear into the fabric. They are not going to stand out. Why we use purl stitches to frame cables and to make the elements around them stand out. Short frog later, I restarted with the younger sib version. The direction of the pattern is 90 degrees from the other sock, but the integrity of the shadow is preserved.

Since this is going to still be a somewhat fussy knit, I decided that I needed something quick. Out came a skein of Claudia’s Handpainted in Roasted Chilli. Since the ball winder seemed to be somewhere else, the nostepinde that I purchased from Jim Childs of Hatchtown Farms came out of the basket. After winding the yarn, I started with Mai in der Tanz from my SKL. Given that I am knitting on 3,75 mm needles, I would be making rapid progress even if it were not being turned into an ankle length sock.

Audio Books

Detouring off from JD Robb for the moment, Stephanie Plum is starring on the car CD for the last couple of days. Funny is good when you are caught in traffic. And I do prefer the CD to wearing a head set while driving.
-Holly

How do you say..

Posted on 2007-05-04 by Holly Doyne2007-05-04

Do you remember ages 5-10 (especially boys) and their fascination with bathroom humour? Take two teens, ages 14 & 16, turn them loose with the built in Mac translation program and they can get extremely weird. After going through mixing and matching between English, German, Spanish and French, they wandered further. Not being able to read the Japanese or Chinese, they put it aside in favor of “guess what this Dutch phrase is.” Not satisified with simple declarative sentences, they moved on to such challenges as “I like to play in the road as a car hurtles around the corner,” “Are sheep allowed to drive cars?” and “I will dance a polka on your grave.” Noah listened to Miriam read Nederlandisch and tried to guess what words she had entered. Of course they had to test out the extent of the vocabulary present, concluding that Bablefish has a great fund of words.

For Elena, it was just too much.

Knitting

Today I was once again startled when a coworker commented on multi-tasking. “I am no longer amazed that you knit, talk, and seem to know everything that is going on, I am just looking for you to be able to knit and type on the computer at the same time.”

I could do that, I thought, using voice recognition software…..

Meanwhile, May Day 1 is complete except for grafting the toe; the leg on the second sock is complete. As previously mentioned, the yarn is STR Lemon Grass. The leg is knit on 2,75mm Sox Stix, then I dropped to 2,5mm rosewood dps for the heel and the foot. Two full repeats of the pattern on the leg, one on the instep, then two more on the foot top, but only the center section. When I get to the foot on the second sock, I will move the pattern over so as to have a complete leaf type structure in the middle for the last two repeats.

Arches

Interior arches, stairs, and layered openings off the cental courtyard open to the night sky.
-Holly

Today it was Butzbach

Posted on 2007-05-03 by Holly Doyne2007-05-03

Military

And today it was Butzbach retiring their flag. Outdoors on a beautiful day, the clinic is located in Roman Way housing area. The clnic will actually cease operations end of June or so, but the commander and his family fly tomorrow. Since the PAO took only a few shots and I took a lot, I promised to send off a disk.
According to the Public Affairs officer for the area, there are two deactivation ceremonies a day on the line unit side for the next couple of weeks. The whole area will be Ammie Frei by August.

Knitting

Besides riding with great people who actually have a sense of humor, the trip offered me almost 90 minutes each way of knitting time. That little bit of cuff turned into most of a sock, with little less than half the foot to go. I started the small size with 2,75 needles, then dropped down to 2,5mm when I hit the heel. The pattern is a really fun knit. Normally not a yellow or green person at all, I had this yarn in the stash. It just said “Spring leaves” to me.

And then there is Shadow sock. I did the grafting. And if anyone is afraid of grafting, you will be a pro after doing 85 stitches (half of which had to be done in alternating knit and purl sections.

From there, I picked up around the end and added in the toe, once again experiencing the thrill of grafting the end closed.

Then, a partial sock, and an after thought heel. Und noch mal…

And, as I am sure you noticed, I was running short of needles in the right size (due to MayDay on needles). This reminded me of how much I do not like to knit socks on circulars. The cord just drives me nuts. I know that it has some really great points, but just not my thing. Once I finished up the picot bind off, I had the first sock done.

It fits fine.It was interesting to knit, but really fiddly. Lots of interupts on one of the colours meant numerous ends to be woven in. And I really don’t like afterthought heels. Now I have to decide among several choices: do I knit the second sock by the pattern anyway, or make a completely fraternal sock by changing the pattern to horizontal (allowing me to knit it in the round – I will just have to fiddle the foot), or do I still make the stripes vertical but knit in the round which means a faux fairisle and floats on the inside. I weighed the yarn and have enough for any of the options.

-Holly

Green is for more than yarn

Posted on 2007-05-02 by Holly Doyne2007-05-02

My teenage offspring cut seriously into my knitting time tonight. I walked into the kitchen and was stunned.

Half jokingly, the DH and I made this deal when we got married – or he accomodated me – but I normally do not do either kitchens or bathrooms. I hate dusting and vacuuming as well and always avoid them whenever possible, but that was not part of the original deal. I don’t eat much at home – glass of juice in the morning on the way out the door – then cook my noodles at work. So I spend little time in the kitchen and hardly notice it at all.

Tonight there was no choice when I realized that all three of teens had escaped (Monday and Tuesday) without cleaning up after themselves. And no, I am not grateful that they can cook. Any person in my house who is tall enough to reach the fridge and doesn’t, well I am not really excited if they stay hungry. Especially since the teens had a lot more hours off than I.

They left me a sink full of dishes, two frying pans and the cookie sheets. The cookie container was empty. Sheesh, at least they could have left me a bribe. I can’t blame the DH, he left early Monday, well ahead of the messy crew. It is amazing how fast you can clean up while waiting for the microwave to go off.

I had plans for this coming weekend, a Space-A trip. The KC-3 crew decided that they did not want passengers on their turnaround to New Hampshire. Depriving me of a weekend visiting friends in Portsmouth and yarn shopping, it has given me the gift of 2 days at home free to knit and drive the kids bonkers with chores.

Knitting

If you haven’t seen The Last Knitter on YouTube, it is hilarious. I found the reference on Rosie’s Knits.

I am making progress on the shadow lengthwise socks. Not as much as planned, very little knitting time today (see above, plus work, plus dog). Following directions, I am now at the point where I need to do the long graft for the back. I am going to do that tomorrow afternoon, even though I had really wanted to finish this sock tonight. Daylight seems like the best idea. The detail shot is of the back leg gusset. It was really fiddly – with a lot of short pieces of yarn.

Instead, I decided on Lemon Grass (STR) for the May Day Socks. It seemed to be reserved in the skein, but brightened up considerably in the hank. A few minutes with the ball winder and I was ready to go. Trying my new 2,75mm (US 2) Sox Stix. They feel nice and are a great length, but the points are really blunt. Don’t you just love the difference between outdoor photos with natural light and what one gets indoors, without a flash but with a halogen spotlight.

Since I am off to Butzbach in the morning, the dog and I are headed to bed.

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