Thou Shalt Buy Yarn

Ahem. I can explain.

I fell down hard. I was swearing up and down that I didn't need any more yarn and that no more yarn was going to enter the stash... but then the holiday themed yarn started to show up. I've been looking for the perfect Halloween self striping yarn and when I visited Wei Siew, I saw her knitting it (see the bottom image), and I broke the 10th commandment. But it was too late, the yarn wasn't on sale anymore. So I waited a year... and forgot about it until it was too late again! (We moved to a different apartment. After moving everything I was convinced that I didn't need to own any more things ever again.) This year the yarn showed up again.

The color formerly known as All Hallows Eve, now known as Trick Or Treat

Unfortunately for my wallet, so did a bunch of its friends. Shipping from New Zealand isn't cheap, so it made sense just to purchase all the yarn I could ever want in one go. And that is just what I did.

Center: Kiwi Christmas. Top center then moving clockwise: Trick Or Treat, Lilah, Joyeux Noel, Pohutukawa Tree, Goth Socks, Dusk

I also bought a complementary color for the Joyeux Noel ball. I want to recreate my Vintage Christmas socks. I still love those socks, but the red moved into the white and they don't look quite like they used to. Since I know how to fix the color better in my socks now, I'm hoping this pair's colors remains crisp. (There is something about our water that makes dye come out of socks. Especially yarns that have been dyed in the Pacific Northwest. I've had different yarn by different dyers all lose their color or bleed badly.) Plus, I've found Stray Cat Socks color stays quite bright after many washings.

I asked Tracy to dye up a good chocolatey brown to go with Joyeux Noel. I also sent her a picture of my Vintage Christmas socks. I think she did a lovely job.

I'm excited to cast on one of my 8 new wooly friends. Which which ball should I knit first?

Now Over To Our Correspondent In Japan

Hello all. It's been a hard week in the Bear Ears household. Connor's grandfather passed away, so he made a quick trip out to Kentucky for the funeral before coming back, spending a day with me, then jetting out to Japan for a three week business trip. His brother Mason is joining him out there, which I am thankful for. Mason has been diligently studying Japanese, which is helping Connor out a bunch. Meanwhile, I'm holding the fort down, seeing the occasional doctor, and also helping Scooter out after he had his surgery to remove several troublesome fatty tumors. (It turned out one was wrapped around his jugular vein, so it is good he got the surgery.)

Connor and I have been able to talk over the phone, which is great. We were actually speaking to each other during the big earthquake that hit Japan. (Somewhere between a 6.9 to 7.4 depending who is reporting.) He wasn't too close to the epicenter, but he was in his tall hotel building at the time and the swaying really worried him. Luckily he is safe. He sent me this amusing email and has given me permission to share. So today's post comes from Connor in Japan.

Connor:
This is our hotel, one of the tallest building in Japan, and certainly the tallest in Yokohama. Our room is on the 54th floor, which puts us in the top “thirdrant” (a new Masonism; think quadrant). We were swaying pretty hard during the earthquake, but Mason wasn’t worried because he read that our hotel was equipped with “tuned mass dampers” just for this kind of thing.

These are 1 yen pieces, worth less than a penny. They are so light weight, they have to be hollow and probably float on water. Mason went on for a good 5 minutes boasting about how he would never pick one up off the street. Later in the evening one of these fell out of his pocket and he panicked in case it had been a 5 yen piece.

Our bathroom is very weird. See exhibits A, B and C.

Exhibit A: There is an area of the bathroom mirror that never fogs after a shower.

Exhibit B: Our high-tech toilet.

The controls of our high-tech toilet. The seat temperature is regulated, so it always has the feel that someone just used it right before you.

Exhibit C: Our bathroom’s volume dial. What does this go to?! The toilet? Mason’s answer: "The speakers, of course.” Why does our bathroom need speakers?!

We found a noodle shop where we didn’t have to speak to anyone to order. You put your money in the machine and push a button that corresponds to your order, and out pops a ticket that you hand to the waitress.

Mason is looking forward to this snack he found at 7/11. We call it the “noodle dog”.

Thanks for your observations of Japan, Connor.!I'm looking forward to hearing more about it.

Sweater, Sweater, Sock, Sock, Now I've Got The Knitting Shot

I have been dreaming of knitting sweaters, especially sweaters for me. The problem I've encountered is that my weight has been all over the place because of the mystery GI problems. In the last 8 months I've lost 20 pounds (9kg), but managed to gain back almost 5 (2kg). This has left me a little unsure as to where I'll ultimately land, so making an especially fitted sweater is out. I have, however, been eyeing the Iceland pattern from Rowan 42. I even started it once way back in 2010. (That yarn turned into the Fireside Sweater instead, which fit my wrong in the shoulders and now belongs to my Mum.) The only problem is that it either looks good on you or it doesn't. I checked out many different projects on ravelry, and I'm hoping that if I can make the waist hit higher, it will look flattering on me.

Meanwhile, since Connor is remaining the same size (and also I love him), I've also been wanting to make him a sweater. Wei Siew generously gifted me 5 balls of Mythral I needed when I was in New Zealand last. I wanted to do my best to honor her by not letting the yarn sit in stash for too long. I had envisioned a Walter Mitty style sweater, but something kept me from recreating it. I just didn't like how there were cables on the arms, but none on the body. It just seemed unbalanced. But recently Christina Danaee made a sweater that looked much more like what I wanted to make. And what do you know, she was also inspired by Walter Mitty.

I very conveniently own the same magazine that she used to make the sweater

As I agonize over sweater decisions, I have been plodding along on my socks. The Concrete and Tulip socks have gone pretty well so far, but still have some decisions attached to them. I got to the top of the cuff of the first sock and realized that I might want to make the ribbing a bit longer. Also, I've never done a tubular bind off, but that might be more appropriate for these socks since they are knee-high. I haven't quite worked out what I want to do, so I went ahead and started the second sock. I think I'll knit the second sock with the adjustments I want to make. If it doesn't work out, then I only have to rip out one sock to make them match... in theory.

The Hieroglyphic Socks are also being knit at a good pace. I find doing two handed color makes my hands sore after a certain number of rounds, so I just make sure to put a few rounds into them every day. They will get done slowly and steadily.

Veteran's Day

Today the neighbor kids are home and they have been making cookies. I could hear their laughter and I started to wonder if they knew why they had the day off from school. Then I started to think about my cousin, a veteran, and how I could maybe brighten his day. I felt a little silly sending a card. "Is it even worthwhile?" I wondered. I called up my Mum and she told me that no one has ever hated being told that they are appreciated. So I sat down, painted a flag on a thank-you card, and wrote what I admired about him and his commitment to our country.

It is only a small thing to do, but if you have a veteran in your life, I hope you all might be inspired to let them know that they are valued.

Pumpkin Farm, Haystack Maze, and The Ill Advised Haunted House

I hadn't really been more than 15 minutes from our apartment for nearly a month. My buddy Jackie had asked us way back in May if we wanted to go to her favorite pumpkin patch when the time came. I still wasn't feeling great, but I was also getting a bit stir crazy from being homebound for so long. So two days before Halloween, we drove over to the farm.

I'd never been to a pumpkin farm before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. It turns out that this farm had a bunch of things to do. There was a haunted house... which I got talked into. I'll admit that at the first sign of a spooky person saying they would "come and get" us, I told them that they could have Jackie. There was also a corn maze. When Connor saw that he announced decisively, "I want to do the maze." It was a really good one, too. They had six entrances to get in and more than one worked. There were also false doors, which would influence the correct path to the end.

We made it out alive, which was good, since we still needed to pick out our pumpkins.

Jackie told us that she had always wanted to carve Burt and Ernie from Sesame Street into a pair of pumpkins, but never had. I was all for it, so we searched for the correct Burt and Ernie shaped pumpkins.

Jackie decided she also wanted an Oscar the Grouch pumpkin. Finding the right pumpkin took some serious thought.

We were so tired from all the fun we had that we didn't carve our pumpkins until the next day. We drew our own renditions of each character. I think they came out pretty great. 

Left to right: Oscar the Grouch, Ernie, and Burt

Jackie took her pumpkin home while Connor and I took ours to my parents' house. The trick-or-treaters really got a kick out of our pumpkins. I'm glad Jackie shared her fun idea with us.