The Yarn Fairy has been very good to me!

The yarn on the left is for the Hogwarts Scarf for the Library Fund Raiser and for M’s Georgia Tech scarf. I think you can figure out which colors are for which scarf. The yarn on the right is for the Fund Raiser Hat and Scarf. This stuff is delightful! It is soft as anything and a little fuzzy and silky and has a great drape and I will certainly use it again! I’ve already started on the FRH&S.

I’ll post the pattern when I’ve finished the scarf. I think they’re pretty. There is nothing more fun to make than a cabled scarf. Now I have to go, Betty insists that it’s time for lunch. I think her watch is fast.

PS I got to the arms on M’s Cardigan! Work on that project is temporarily suspended due to the Library Knitting Time Crunch.

I sat up a while last night and knit until the pattern got too complicated (or rather, I was too tired for the pattern). Which means that I am about 10 inches from the cast on edge. Armholes and neck shaping don’t happen until 16 3/4.

Lucy has developed a love of yarn. She takes whole balls (about half her size) and carries them down the hall to hide under the bed. I guess she’s making a stash. Last night, she grabbed the one attached to M’s Cardigan (which, incidentally, was hidden underneath an afghan) and took off down the hall. Since Lamb’s Pride comes in pull skeins, my knitting stayed in the chair and the ball of yarn made a long trail down the hall and into the bedroom. When Lucy discovered that it was still attached to something, she chewed through the offending trail and placed the rest of the ball under the bed with three others. All the yarn has been recovered and I have been rethinking my knitting bag arrangements. Perhaps I should switch to bags with zippers.

Now I am off to watch a little more television and knit. Maybe I’ll make it to the armholes by tonight.

How many more days ’til November?

Here are some knit bloggers on the Texas Gulf Coast. Just to keep y’all informed.

• One Stitch Short
• Fruitcakes Here a-Knititn’
• Elvis Knits (Elvis is the cat)
• Off the Kuff
• Texas is sooo big… (How big is it?) Texas is so big that the knitters have their own blog ring!
• If you are in the Houston-Galveston area and you are planning to ride it out, why not experiment with a little citizen journalism?

As for me, I’m waiting to see how quickly this thing turns north (and how big it gets) to decide if I need to bring in the hanging plants. I’ve also been wishing (as usual) for a down-grade. To pass the time, I’ve been working on M’s cardigan. The pattern is titled “Men’s V-Neck Cardigan” and is by Mari. You can take a peek at the promised results here. As I was looking for the v-neck, I had to scroll through a whole bunch of intriguing patterns!

I ordered Great Gran some yarn which I thought was the right yarn but it turns out I was wrong. She shouldn’t have thrown away the yarn bands. Knowing that the yarn came in a doughnut shape with a pale band is just not enough to go on! I did get the brand right (Rowan). I’ll be calling in the morning to see if the nice folks at Yarn Market can figure out where I went wrong.

I seamed Elspeth, tried her on (she fits, but looks weird, thus no pictures) and packed her up to mail to Mom.

After my visit to the post office, I started work on the The Fund Raiser Scarf and Hat. I developed a Prototype Scarf fairly quickly.

It wasn’t far to a completed Prototype Hat.

Before you get too excited about the speed of development of these items, just remember that there are only so many ways to decrease the top of a hat.

When I placed the order with Knit Picks (seriously have you seen their prices?) I had yet to put three cables in the scarf. So now I’m all worried that I didn’t get enough yarn. I am going to work around this little difficulty by making the hat first, reviewing my yarn supply and determining if I should make the scarf with just two cables. Knitting is always an adventure!

I finished the sleeves as promised.

Here is a more artistic version of Elspeth Blocking.

I couldn’t leave her on the table to dry (I used the pin and spray method to stop the curling with out squashing the texture): pulling out all the pins and chewing on them is a Fun Project for the cats. Apparently, pin heads look like tiny pieces of delicious cat candy.* Who wants to explain that to her vet? My solution is to stow my blocking board on top of the baker’s cabinet and hope that no one comes to the front door (”Gee, why is that giant piece of cardboard suspended so precariously near your ceiling?”). Some things just take too much energy to explain.

I also swatched for Michael’s Cardigan.

Someday I will remember to look at the pattern and figure out who wrote it and what the cardigan’s proper name is. Until that day, Dear Reader, you will just have to cope.

I’ve been exploring several options for the Library’s Fund-Raiser, and thanks to a comment suggestion from Karin, discovered these Hogwarts Scarves. Karin was actually suggesting Hermione’s cable-and-bobble hat which makes me think fondly of Dobby cleaning the Gryffindor common room all by himself. . . but I ended up settling on the scarf. I think it would be a wonderful Halloween Costume Accessory and Ideal for a Library. Lauren (the designer) has given me permission to make one for the auction (thanks a bunch and the books thank you, too). I’ve already ordered the yarn. For those of you who haven’t taken a look at the selection over at Knit Picks, I really encourage you to do so. Their prices just can’t be beat.

Unfortunately, Harry’s Scarf doesn’t solve the Hat and Scarf Ensemble Difficulty. I’m just going to have to make it up myself. I’ve been working on scarf patterns today and attempting to incoorporate all the basic elements of Give Away To A Stranger Design: nothing too complex, nothing too plain, nothing too boring to make. This is complicated by my project-specific requirement: elements that can be translated into a matching hat. I’ll let you know how it goes.

*Speaking of candy, the little heathens ate most of a Blow Pop last night. They didn’t make it to the gum in the center but they gave it the Old College Try. Is it bad that the part of this that bothered me the most was not the theft itself, but the Sticky that they left all over the floor? I have moved the rest of the Blow Pops to an undisclosed, secure location.

By now everyone knows that the Fall Knitty is up. I am particularly interested in Josephine as an everyday sweater (my shoulders get cold before the rest of me) and these:

Bubbies!

They are going out to the Farm tonight to try on neckwear.

My cousin just had a new baby and Great Gran sent a knit hat and booties from her stockpile. I had to come up with something else. Luckily Knitty (and Vanessa) saved the day. There are three of them because the new baby has a couple of sisters. I am trying to decide if I should pick which girl gets wich bear or if I should just let them duke out the color selection in the Fine Tradition of sisters every where.

Because of the Bubbies, and because I left my knitting at Great Gran’s for 48 hours, I am only half-way through the first Elspeth sleeve. I’ll have two sleeves for you the next time I blog. Mom’s conference is next weekend so she’ll have time to crochet for me soon. Not that I’ll be able to wear Elspeth before next Spring. My End of Season projects never get finished on time. Serves me right for trying to squeeze them in like that.

The yarn that was on hold (due to Disrupted Mail Service) from Lorien has arrived! Brown Sheep Company’s Lamb’s Pride Superwash (worsted) in Sable.

That’s Lady Bird in the window.

The little bit of color variation within the yarn gives it a depth and movement that is pleasing. This batch destined to be a cardigan for Michael. He insists that it be completed by November so that he can take it to a conference in Boulder, CO. I think I can manage that even though I have to make a cabled hat and scarf ensemble for the Silent Auction at the Friends of the Library Shin-Dig in October. The making of the hat and scarf is no problem, it’s just that I have to design it - unless somebody knows of someone who would be willing to lend me their pattern if it benefits the Library. Know what? I WILL design them myself! And then I will put the patterns on the internet for everyone who needs a Fund Raiser Scarf. Unless of course someone has already done that…I will google before I begin.

One of the benefits of disrupted mail service is that Jean (the Alpaca Lady) had to hang on to my Lamb’s Pride for so long that she started to add things to the box! One of the delicious treats was this:

It’s alpaca! She wrote me which kind it was but I seem to have deleted the email and can’t remember. I’m thinking about making some socks. Maybe a sweater made from the yummy stuff.

Jean also sent me some Little Lehigh (from Kraemer Yarns). Which I also like - and it’s machine washable. I’d show you a picture but it seems to have dissappeared. I’m sure I’ll find it when I find my scissors. The cats have gotten the blue handled ones too.

In other news, Lucy has lost her bottom teeth and Angus has asked to go out 97 times today. When we get outside, he just wants to stand around.

The other side of Elspeth’s front is finished.

I’m not really obsessed with the place mats. It just looks that way.

I had made good progress with one sleeve when I consulted the picture in the book. It seems that the Rowan folks made their decreases right on the edge instead of with a one stitch selvage. Theirs looks better. So I pulled out the sleeve and started over. Now I am wondering if I should pull out the body sections to the armholes and work the decreases on the edges. *sigh* I think I will finish a sleeve and seam a tiny bit of the shoulder to see how it looks and then go from there. Of course, all of this could have been prevented if I had just looked at the stupid picture. But no. Emily had to make a copy of the pattern instead of lugging that massive Rowan magazine around. Except for boring y’all, there isn’t any sort of Time Crunch on this project - Mom doesn’t have time to put the crochet edgings on until October. Essentially, I could work on Elspeth forever. If anybody’s wondering, Calmer is a great yarn for anyone who is prone to re-do. It has proven incredibly sturdy and I haven’t noticed any ill effects.

I’ve still got plenty of time before M’s cardigan yarn gets here - mail service was suspended because of the lack of power and substantial amount of water in the sorting facility in Mobile. Jean has been holding on to it for me.

Oh! Oh! I have to say that Knitting on the Edge is a wooooonderful book! I finally got it from the library and I think I think I am going to change up the band and cuffs of Empire Dreams with lacey yummy embellishment somethings. My plain little sweater may not end up all that plain.

There’s no knitting in this entry.

We got our lights back last night. Tree on the line (it seems to be our Hurricane Destiny). I am impressed that we got ours back so quickly, since we were an individual outage and we don’t have lots of crews working. For obvious reasons. And yes, there are the usual gasoline issues.

We lost some trees.

But whatever. I’ve got a house to attach my electricity to.

I’ve also got a whole lot of shock and dismay and outrage about the situation in Louisiana which looks to me like it derives from Poor Planning, one of the greater sins in my worldview. Poor Planning all the way from “Let’s Build a City on a Flood Plain without consulting Holland!” to “Well, y’all just start walking and hope for the best.” I could go on, I’ve got lots to say about the situation. But I won’t. And someone needs to shoot the looters. And shoot whoever is shooting at the people evacuating (what possible good could that do?!). Two days of deplorable conditions (and rest assured: conditions are atrocious) is no excuse for acting like terrorists. Situations like this are a call for Americans to rise to the occasion with dignity and with a respect for the inherent dignity of others. We need to see the best in people not the worst. It’s not the natural part of this disaster that is the most horrifying.

If you want to help - and I sincerely hope you do:

• Red Cross Disaster Services
• Noah’s Wish
• Southern Baptist Convention Diasaster Relief
• The Salvation Army
• The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Disaster Response
• Red Cross Gulf Coast Blood Services
• Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund
• This is FEMA’s master list of legitimate charities with links. Don’t be duped by solicitous emails.

And there are a bunch of sites that are offering coverage of the situation. WKRG is one of our local stations out of Mobile. They’ve got streaming video if you’re interested.

Check (and report) rumors at Snopes.