Saturday, November 7, 2015

From the Kitchen Corner

I am waiting on the tea kettle. This is a frequent occurrence at my house as I prefer a kettle on the stove over other water warming methods. The microwave or an electric kettle/water cooker would be faster but I like my purple kettle.

When I was in graduate school, waiting on the tea kettle was my dish washing time. Living in a house with four other girls and no dishwasher, there were always dishes. And in the five minutes or so of waiting for the water to warm, I could empty the dish drainer and refill it. It was part of my morning routine.

Now, the morning routine starts with feed the cats, turn on the kettle, and then continue getting ready for work. But sometimes in the evening or weekends the kettle is still dishes or loading/unloading dishwasher time.

It also works nicely as rubbing the cat's belly time. Gypsy likes to sprawl on the kitchen rug that I knit a couple of years ago and be adored.  The time for the kettle to boil is a good amount of cat adoration, though I am sure she would argue that all home time is cat time.

Not quite Prurock's coffee spoons, but a nice way to measure time.

Do you prefer a kettle?

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Sock Show Thursday: Color Issues

I've started a new pair of socks!

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That yarn color isn't right. I've fussed with it for a while but I really should be trying to take it in natural light and or with my light box.

Here's the yarn pic I took before winding, that's better
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But hey, meet the sock... umm..cuff

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Yeah, I know, I'm not very far along and that picture is much darker. The stripe is intentional! You can see that gray/green/black in the ball at the top and it is matched by the pops of yellow and periodic surprise orange.

It's almost like my high school colors if they had let us have some hints of interesting.  (Blue and Gold, ask me about our migraine inducing senior t-shirts sometime)

I cast these on earlier this week and have managed to have a couple of free minutes to work on them in phone meetings.

The yarn is Dragonfly Fibers Dragon Sock in the Van Gogh Sunflower's Colorway.

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And it's very pretty and I wish I could work on it more. Maybe on the commute home.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

11th Month or Hour

It's November and probably the official start of the panicking about the holidays season. Various retailers would have me believe said panicking should start in September and generally for knitters, panicking for next year starts somewhere between December 26-January 1. Presently though, there is belief is there that all deadlines can be met and those piles of knitwear planned for accomplishment in the next seven weeks (six really, one must plan to mail things too) will be completed. Also the sixteen other project that have been laying around waiting for my attention for the past couple of months.

It's not a heavy knitting year at Chez Hedgehog. I have 2 Loopy Academy projects to finish--one of which will probably double as a Christmas gift; a couple of baby presents to be thinking about; some requests that need to be skeined up and started.

Still, I need to be knitting a fair deal faster than I have been for the rest of the year if I'm going to make deadlines.  Which means less playing of Farm Heroes Saga on the train to and from work and more knitting from a chart and relistening to Terry Pratchett books for the umpteenth time.

I probably should go pull at least some yarn out and see what it is I'm planning to knit up. This weekend I've been browsing through patterns for gloves/mittens/mitts and that's been horrendous for the queue. I'll make EVERYONE I have ever met fingerless gloves, right? Uh huh, sure I will.  At least one pair will be out of sport weight or DK yarn, there's just not time otherwise.

Of course, it doesn't help to have a clingy gray lapcat every time I sit down with my knitting. She's a particular barrier, no one really wants to neglect the little cat with her big green hopeful eyes but at the same time, when she's sitting on the needles things get a little challenging.  Might work better if I would go and knit on the couch or bed, where it's easier for her to be a sidecat rather than a lapcat. We used to be good at that, she and I.  Watched a lot of TV in Wisconsin that way.  Hopefully a few knitting marathons will set us on the right path again.

What are you knitting for Christmas this year?


A Redo

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