I spent the entire day sitting at home, waiting for the phone guy to show up. Anyone wanna guess what time he got here? Just before 5pm. And the problem was outside, as I suspected, so there was no need for me to take a day off and sit home all day. Oh well.

This is what Lucy does all day:

Me? I cleaned up, did laundry, did some work, and did some knitting. Here’s the tennis sweater as of mid-afternoon:

And I took photos of what I bought at Knit Happens yesterday:

This is Kaalund Nimbus, in the “Moss” colorway. It’s a mohair boucle, and I got two skeins (132 meters each). I plan to use it for a shawl, along with some heathered green alpaca.

This is Debbie Bliss Cathay — her new cotton/viscose/silk blend. I bought enough for a lacy summer cardi, the design for which is brewing in my head.

By the way, Kristine has some wonderful yarns for the online store. Boxes and boxes and boxes of it. I can’t wait!

Questions

From the comments, a question about what cast-on I use. Usually a long-tail cast-on, unless there’s some particular reason to use something else.

Another question about whether I’m spinning anything right now. I’m not — I’ve got too much back pain at the present to be able to sit comfortably at the wheel and spin. (Note that this is not pain caused by spinning, it’s pain that’s preventing spinning.) Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to it soon.

The 80s Contest

I’ve really enjoyed all the entries in the contest! It’s going to be hard to pick a winner, but I will do just that, at 5pm EST tomorrow (Friday). Winner announced Sunday!

There’ll be another contest next week — stay tuned!

Today I got a sneak peek at the warehouse that is the home of the soon-to-be Knit Happens online store.

All these boxes (and many more!) contain yarn. I peeked inside some of them, and I might have attempted to make off with some particularly yummy yarn, but I didn’t get very far.

Kristine is showing off her shelves here.

Thank you!

I need to say thank you to some people whose email addys I don’t have handy, so here we go:

Thank you, Thuy!

Thank you, Katie!

And thank you, Linda, for the Knit Happens gift certificate! There’s no photo of it here because I . . . um . . . already spent it.

Here’s the day’s tennis sweater progress pic.

And of course, Lucy.

Okay, I gotta go. I’m old and tired. But I’ve been immensely entertained by all the contest entries so far. Yikes!

I got home from work today to find my cable modem dead. It is former. It is an ex-modem.

So I call tech support (from my cell phone, of course, because my home phone is dead) to see how to get a new one. The tech support guy, bless his heart, asks:

“Do you have electricity?”

Um. Well, I suppose there are people THAT stupid.

So clutching my dead modem, I go to the nearest cable service center, which is luckily very close to my home. I wait in line for less than five minutes, then exchange my dead modem for a brand spanking new one.

I come home, plug everything in, and power the modem up. Miraculously, it cycles and then shows connectivity, in a fraction of the time that the old modem took. Feeling reckless, I power up the wireless router, thinking “Oh yeah, right, like this is gonna work without any hassles.”

You know what? It did. I was up and running on my wireless network within five minutes of walking through the door. Color me gobsmacked.

I hope this cable modem has a long and happy life!

Deli Debut

I actually wore something I knit! I actually wore something I knit!

Okay, I wear stuff that I’ve knit all the time, but it seems like it’s been a while, because lately I’ve been knitting a lot of the stuff for my book, so those knits are still virgin, waiting to be photographed.

I wore Deli to work today and am quite happy with it. When I tried it on Saturday morning for the blog photo, I thought “Eh.” Definitely not thrilled with how it looked with jeans and a t-shirt. But it looks much better over a silk dress. Very very comfy to wear, and virtually no shedding, either.

And for the cowboy boot aficionados, please note that I wore my mauve Justins, which almost matched. Stylin’!

(P.S. to Susan: I’ve actually not bought any cowboy boots in years, so don’t have a favorite source for them to share.)

Wouldn’t You Like To Be a Preppie Too?

I finished the back of the tennis sweater last night, with my eyelids propped open by toothpicks, as my mother used to say. (Yup, yesterday was a sleepy day.)

And on the train this morning, I got started on the front.

The unabashed preppiness of the color combo makes me smile.

This morning I was having an email conversation with the Divine Ms. Em, in which I divulged the following deep dirty secret:

Back in the 1980s I had Ralph Lauren argyle kneesocks. With the little Polo logo embroidered on them. I wore them with “dress shorts.”

. . . the horror . . . the horror . . .

Okay, this gave birth to an idea for a contest. Presenting . . .

The “How Hideous Were You in the ’80s?” Contest

Leave a comment to this blog entry describing your most hideous 1980s outfit. If you have a photo online, you are encouraged to link to it. I’ll choose a winner 5pm EST Friday (April 8) to win a yarn-fabulous prize.

Usually I ask for email entries, but let’s put them in the comments this time. Because we wanna share all the visions with everyone. Don’t we?

Sleep . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I did manage considerably more sleep last night. That is, until a certain somebody:

tapped me gently on the shoulder with one chubby paw so that I would turn over so she could climb up on me and purr rapturously into my face with her Fancy Feast breath. Oh, she has me well trained. I obey her in my sleep.

It does warm my heart to read that I am not alone in my hatred of Daylight Savings Time. But I gotta say, I loved this comment from Elena:

Am I the only one who’s too lazy to break out the manual for the car clock? I just know that, for half the year, it’s one hour off. I’m so glad it’s back to being right!

Elena, I’ll admit that it crossed my mind to do just that. But my car clock was a few minutes slow, so I was already making the mental adjustment to speed it up a couple of minutes when I looked at it. Having to mentally add an hour and two minutes into the clock every time I looked at it? More than my little pea-brain wants to deal with.

Except that now it seems to be a minute fast. What? Am I obsessed with time? Why do you ask?

Oh, and I have to look at the manual for my everyday watch (Citizen Ladies Corso Eco-drive with day/date display, in case you care) on how to advance the date every single month that doesn’t have 31 days.

Despite the fact that I spent way too much time last night troubleshooting why the heck my home phone is not working* and not enough time knitting, I’ve made some progress on the back of the tennis sweater. See?

And a close-up:

This is a fun, easy knit, and I am a fan of the Cotton Cashmere, so we are amused. It’s quite a short sweater, so I added an inch to the length of the body before starting the armhole decreases.

The only pattern anomaly that I see so far is that there are places where you are not told to swtich back to the main color after knitting with the contrast color, but it’s pretty easy to figure out that you are supposed to. So it’s no big whoop.

Reminder: I Hate the Time Change

And from reading knitting blogs I have ascertained that I am not the only one. My usual Sunday night insomnia coupled with trying to fall asleep an hour earlier resulted in a grand total of under two hours of sleep last night. Yawn along with me, if you like.

But I did manage to change all my clocks, including the one in my car (which always requires a look in the owner’s manual to figure out exactly how), so hopefully it’s downhill from here.

Lucy is not amused that I kept her up most of the night. This is what she looks like right now.

*So why the heck is my home phone not working? Beats me. The phone company is unable to ascertain whether it’s an inside or outside problem, so I had to schedule a service call (earliest one being Thursday) and will have to be at home between 8am and 6pm for said call. Knitting time!

I very rarely use my home phone (yay cellphone!) so who knows how long it’s been out of order? The last entry on my Caller ID is March 17!

In the “Alert the Media” Department

I plan to wear Deli tomorrow. Wheee! But not with the dress I pictured earlier in the blog — that seems a little too summery for early April. I’ve got a long navy silk dress Deli will look quite nice. I’ve also got . . . um . . . pink lizard Tony Lamas.

But the mauve Justins might match Deli better.

Thanks for all the nice comments about Deli, y’all!

Thank you for all the kind comments and email about my third blog-i-versary. I appreciate them all very much.

Yep, I sucked it up and sewed miles of lace edging on to Deli Friday night. This process was aided by several margaritas and half a chocolate bunny. It is my experience that tequila and chocolate ease any boring task.

I mentioned last week that I used mattress stitch to sew the lace on. We did attempt to take a couple of photos of the process.

On the right side, I slide the needle under a stitch, right above the cast on edge at the bottom edge of the sweater.

Then I slide the needle under a stitch at the straight edge of the edging.

Pull the yarn tight. Repeat forever.

When I make my way up the side front of the sweater, I slide the needle in-between the first and second stitch of the edge of the sweater. Doing so makes the edges turn to the inside, so you always get a smooth seam.

After sewing on the lace I knitted the two i-cord ties and sewed them to the fronts of the sweater.

Here’s the completed Deli.

And a close-up of the sleeve.

It was late Friday night when I was done, but I did cast on for the Debbie Bliss Tennis Sweater (Design number 18 in the new Vogue Knitting). As I mentioned last week, I’m using Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere, in pale pink with pale green as the accent color.

How very preppie of me.

Here’s the progress on the back so far.

By the way, I hate the time change. So does Lucy.

And this is for Kim: