Starting next Thursday, I’m about to embark on another crafty adventure. I signed up for Quilter’s University at my local quilt shop. It’s a series of four classes teaching the basics of quilting.

I’m excited about it for a couple of reasons… first of all, the class is at 5:30 pm on Thursday evenings. That means that I have to leave work at 5 to make it to class on time. It’s a sad state of affairs when I have to schedule an appointment in order to get myself out of the office at a reasonable hour, but that’s just how things are these days. I’ve been wanting to learn to quilt for quite a while too, and hopefully this will be a good way to get started. Ultimately, my goal is to make a modern quilt for my bedroom.

When I signed up for the class, I also bought The Quilter’s Ultimate Visual Guide.

I’ve been browsing through it, and it looks like a great book. Like the reviews on Amazon say, it seems to cover just about everything quilt related. I don’t really like that it doesn’t cover everything in the order that the quilting is actually done though. The book is organized alphabetically, which is a bit odd. Isn’t that what the index is for? I’d like to find more of a step-by-step guide to quilting as well. Any suggestions?

My first class is next Thursday, and I’ll be sure to post an update on how it goes.

There’s another new post up at what has become my favorite “technical” knitting blog - Jogless Stripes - A New Way. I’ve always avoided stripes simply because I hate the way they look at the color change… that darn jog! But now, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to knit pretty, jogless stripes! Yay!

This is great news, because I have a couple of mis-matched skeins of Louet Gems Opal that I was hoping to use to make striped socks. One skein isn’t enough for a pair of socks (as I learned the hard way), so stripes are going to be the answer. Jogless stripes!

Getting back to TECHknitting… it’s by far the best blog I’ve found for useful knitting tips & tricks with clear, concise explanations. Head on over and check it out!

Now… to finish Salina!

Can I finish these by Saturday morning?

I hope so! They are a belated Christmas gift for a friend who was overseas during the holidays. Like a good friend, she gave me her gift before she left, the Winter Knits Kit. (awesome, by the way - I should do a quick review of it on here sometime.) I, on the other hand, was not so prepared before the holidays, and have to finish these socks by the time I see her on Saturday.

In other news, I got some exciting mail yesterday:

Stitches confirmation and class homework! One month to go - I’m excited! Hopefully the class I’m taking (Norwegian Knitting) will be worthwhile. The homework for the class is extremely simple, but also kind of unclear:

“Part 1: With darker colored yarn and 4mm (US 6) 16″ circular needle, work back and forth as follows (do not join in the round). CO 76 stitches. [Knit rows 1-8 as instructed]”

Fairly straightforward, right? Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t EVER knit on 16″ circular needles! I don’t own a 16″ circular, and really see no need to use one. I’d use DPNs for anything that small in the round. The instructions say to work back and forth. So, theoretically I could use any length circular needle (or even straights) for the homework. But, they don’t say if we’ll be joining in the round later on during the class. My guess is that we might be doing some knitting in the round, since oftentimes colorwork is done in the round. And, 76 stitches could easily fit on a 16″ needle in the round at a gauge of about 4.5-5 st/inch or less. So, do I need to have a 16″ circular needle for this class or not? I’d much rather not purchase a 16″ circular just for this class, since I probably won’t ever use it again. What do you think?

Wow - it’s been a while since I’ve posted. It’s been a while since I’ve had anything worthy of posting! Needless to say, there has not been a lot of knitting happening lately.

I was hoping to wait and post when I finished Salina, but unfortunately, the end of that sweater is not yet in sight. Here’s where I’m at… about 1/3 of the way through the last sleeve. Sleeves take a loooong time to knit! Especially on size 4 needles. I’m not going to be knitting another sweater on size 4 needles any time soon!

Since Salina is one of those seemingly never ending projects, I thought I should start a quick-and-easy pair of socks so that I actually finish something sometime this winter.

This is a plain old 64 stitch stockinette sock on size 1 ebony needles. The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill, in Wild Cherry. It’s not quite as electric pink in person. I started this on Saturday night, and got just past the heel on Sunday. Hopefully I’ll be done with the pair in a week or so, and can get back to the dreaded sleeve.

I get an inordinate number of hits on my blog from people searching for “pins and needles foot” or “pins and needles leg.”  Even though this is meant to be a knitting and sewing focused blog, I feel a bit bad for misleading people into thinking they might find information on this condition here.

So, for that reason (and because I have nothing more interesting to write about), here is the Wikipedia page on pins and needles.  For those of you who arrive here after having suffered from this common malady, I hope you find it helpful!   And for the rest of you… go read it anyway - it’s kind of interesting!

Not sure if anyone noticed, but I’ve been having some serious site issues. I hadn’t looked at the blog since last week, and when I went to post on Monday morning, the entire blog was gone. Just not there anymore. In place of my blog was a lovely text message telling me to install WordPress. WTF!? I have no idea what the problem was, but I’m 99% sure it was a problem with my host’s WordPress installation. This is exactly what happened in October. So, bye bye crappy host!

After a bit of mucking around tonight, I’m all moved over to a new host. I lost a few comments in the transfer (note to self - back up once a week instead of once a month!), but otherwise all appears well. Hopefully. We shall see.

I also had my first unfortunate hotlinking episode today. I sent off a nice e-mail to the person who hotlinked to one of my images. I’m sure she didn’t mean to do it on purpose, but it’s annoying all the same. Just an FYI, in case anyone who reads this wants to use one of the images found on this site - please e-mail me for permission before you take the picture for your own use. All of the photos on this site were taken by me and I own the copyright to these images. I’m happy to let anyone use the images for non-commercial purposes, as long as you ask!

Update: Ah, my new host seems to have spam blocking software on my e-mail account that won’t let comments from my blog through to my e-mail.  A nice feature indeed, but hopefully I can change the sensitivity so that comments get through.  Sigh.

- Making sloooow progress on Salina. Less than one sleeve to go, plus finishing. Salina may see the light of day before spring arrives, if I’m lucky. I’d post pictures, but they wouldn’t be terribly interesting… red. stockinette. lots of red stockinette.
- I ran a mara-FUN on Sunday. 2.62 miles. Whee! And I felt like a total slacker at the end, because at that point, three of my friends were at about mile 11 of the California International Marathon. It was great to actually do the run and prove to myself that I could do it (and in a terrific-for-me time of 23:47), since I haven’t exactly been preparing for it. Now I’m having some crazy thoughts of training for a half-marathon in the spring and a full marathon in the fall. Apparently I have too much free time on my hands. Ha.
- Can’t believe it’s almost Christmas. Only 19 more shopping days. Yikes. Thank goodness I’m not knitting for anyone!
- Finally, in the “I can’t believe I’m putting this on my blog for everyone in the world to read, but I think it’s important enough to openly discuss” category - I had my annual womanly doctor appointment today, and the nurse practitioner recommended that an IUD might be something for me to consider. I’ve spent the last hour and a half googling it, with very mixed results. There are some scary stories out there, but I love the idea of not having to think about it every day, and not being reliant on hormones that give me horrible acne and affect my moods. Anyone out there have any first hand experiences (good or bad) they’d be willing to share? If so, please comment or send me an e-mail (link is above, in my header). Thanks!

- I’m going to Stitches West in February, and taking a Norwegian knitting class. Can someone tell me the difference between Norwegian knitting and Fair Isle knitting? Anyone? Even Google hasn’t been able to give me a good answer. Perhaps I will have to wait until February to find out.

- I started the sleeves (ok, one sleeve) for Salina. The front and back have been done since earlier this year (March?), and I really want to finish the sweater so I can wear it.

- The unfortunate truth is that Salina probably won’t be finished before the end of the year. Work is really busy right now, which leaves precious little time for things like sleeping and eating, much less knitting or blogging.

- Grumperina posted pictures from Victorian Lace Today, which looks like a fabulous book. So much lace, so little time! Anyway, Christmas is coming, and I know that Santa reads my blog. So, Santa? I’d love this book for Christmas!

First of all - thanks for all the comments on the socks. It blows me away how beauty really is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to hand knits. Personally, the socks aren’t my thing… but apparently some of you think they’re perfectly OK - perhaps even pretty. So, here’s the deal - I’m going to finish knitting the second sock, and give the pair away to someone who actually wants them. The only caveat is that you have to have feet that are similar in size to mine. I’d guess that these will fit feet that are between a size 7 & 9 (US women’s shoe sizes)… my feet are a size 8.5, but with the stretch of the ribbing, they can easily go up or down in size a bit without affecting the fit too much.

So, leave a comment and let me know if you want the pair when I’ve completed it.  On Wednesday, 11/15, I’ll pick someone at random to be the recipient of the socks.  Be forewarned, I’ll probably be sending them out after the first of the year because I still need to finish the second sock.

Now, if you’ll excuse me - I need to go soak my tired, aching muscles in a warm bath. I spent two and a half hours today on a jog/walk with a friend who is nearing the peak of her marathon training. She ran the whole time, and I lagged behind, meeting up with her on the way back. I probably did 10 or 11 miles (60%+ walking), to her 15. I’m fairly impressed that I was able to do as well as I did, given my general lack of fitness right now.  There’s something about doing a long run/walk along the ocean that makes the miles go by a lot faster than when you’re exercising in the ‘burbs!