Adventures in Paradise

Trying Again

My sewing mojo has been fairly strong, though I admit there are a dozen + half-finished string blocks waiting for attention. My knitting mojo, aside from a spate of mini sweaters in the days leading to Christmas, has been non-existant for a while. I think I may have found the answer...

Hanami. My friend Lorri has decided to dive into lack knitting with Hanami and it's been on my list of things to knit since I saw it a few years ago. So, I decided to join her in the process. It's good to have someone to commiserate with over the pain of having to move stitch markers and moving lifelines.

I'm adding silver lined beads throughout the shawl because I had to break them out for the cast on and it seemed silly to put them back after I'd seen a few on Ravelry that were accented well with beads.

I've just started the second repeat of the initial pattern and am not hating it, so hopefully this project will stick. If not, Lorri will probably stick me and that's good enough motivation to continue!

Developments

So...Moose has settled back into being a house cat pretty completely.

I only manage to take pictures of him in the evenings these days, but I'll try again tomorrow. He's a rich, deep gray with a white patch of fur on his tummy. I've got him separated from Stormy by a set of french doors with glass panes, so they see each other daily. He seems curious and she's furious. I'm feeding her tuna next to the door to let her associate his smell with a treat she rarely ever gets, but I'm not sure it will work. I really want to find a new home for this little man, but there's no way I'll send him away if I can't, so I need them to at least share me.

Right now I'm splitting my time between the living room with Moose and the TV room (aka spare bedroom) and my bedroom with Stormy. She sulks on the bed when I'm in the front of the house and he cries pitifully when I'm in the back of the house. And the splitting of time means I've made no progress on wrap I thought I'd wear to tomorrow night's Crew's Christmas Party.

Oh well.  Kitty cuddles are nice, too.

Seeing Red

Well, I'm still struggling to get my ship out of the shipyard, but every day is one step closer to heading back to sea.

In the meantime, I'm doing lots of training at the local flying trapeze rig and the circus arts studio, and it feels like I'm making real progress. I skipped my usual Sunday afternoon at the rig this past weekend to go to the drag races in Las Vegas. And to drag my mom off to a couple of Cirque Du Soleil shows, which was really what convinced me to fly out there. We saw Ka at the MGM Grand and Mystere at Treasure Island. Ka has an actual plot, though not so much of one that you don't have to think about what's going on between scenes. And the massive hydraulic lift sometimes steals the show, at least if you're a mechanically inclined person. Definitely an amazing experience; I was surprised that the show wasn't sold out. I'd go see it again and ask for different seats so I could see it from another angle. Mystere was a much more traditional Cirque and circus-style show, with individual acts divided by bits of clowing to distract you. Weird and beautiful and captivating. Mom really loved the Chinese Pole act and thinks it's cool that my circus school teaches that.

At the races, and on the plane, I actually knit. Not only that but more surprising since I have been afflicted with a complete lack of ability to pay attention to anything crafty lately, I finished something.

It's a pretty simple wide ribbed hat that I will send off for the Hat for Sailors drive. This one needs a good soak and it will be ready to go. I might even have another one done before the due date (7 November!), though that might be a stretch given that it's still not cast on yet.

Yarn Break

I finished my scarf on Thursday night.

I used up all but about 6 inches of the yarn because I didn't want leftovers. It's about 65 - 70 inches long, though it might grow with a better blocking. I soaked it and pinned it out flat, but it still needs a true blocking.

I'm thinking this may go to my real estate agent in San Diego, even if she won't need it by the time I return home. I've been looking for a place to live, hooked up with her a few times so she could get my taste and then looked at stuff she sent me online. At just about the time I'd given up and started looking at rentals instead, my dream house popped up at a fairly reasonable price (it's San Diego and a newly renovated 1922 Craftsman, so "reasonable" is a completely relative term.) About the time I found it she delivered her son by C-section after a difficult labor. She's been working with my mom to get me this house instead of staying home - I know it's a big commission for her, but really, it would have been easy for her to pass us off to a new agent.

There will, of course, be something for the little boy who is sharing his mommy right now.

Yarn

 

This is the yarn I ordered from The Loopy Ewe a few weeks ago - it's lovely stuff, but the purple isn't as dark as I'd hoped. It's still a pretty color, so I'll just use it for something other than the socks I had planned.

And this is the scarf I've been working on since I finished those socks a few months ago. It's a simple feather and fan pattern that could be boring except that the Dream in Color yarn has some lovely varigation. The sparkle helps, too.

Both pictures taken with my 50mm macro lens, and I think it's the first time I've actually published photos taken with this lens even though I bought it before we deployed. The top photo is also my first real experiment with High Dynamic Range photography, although it's deeply unambitious as compared to the stuff you'll see through that link. But...it's late at night, the sky is cloudy and there have been no sunsets to watch in days. So, you're stuck with what I can do in my cabin. Still, it made the color of the purple yarn WAY more accurate than it was in nearly any combination of exposure or saturation.

I Do Knit!

Just not a whole lot. I finally finished my Ravenclaw socks
(yarn from Dani at Sunshine Yarns) a couple of nights ago. The only problem is
that I can tell exactly where I shifted to sea duty and deployment on the
second sock because my tension ratcheted up significantly. I can barely get
the second sock over my foot. I’m hoping it will block bigger when I get
home because I am not ripping them out to the heel to re-knit them. I’ve
decided that anything more complicated than a scarf is probably out of my range
right now, so the lace shawl and wool sweater I started have been set aside in
favor of a feather and fan scarf made from Dream in Color Starry – it’s
a nice chocolate brown shot through with silver threads. I think it will turn
out quite pretty. If I ever finish it, of course.