Autumn Sweater

Travel: Behind the Scenes

So, in the past few months, I traveled to:
*Chicago
*Honduras
*El Salvador
*Los Angeles
*Tokyo
*Shanghai
*Hong Kong

This all sounds nice and glamorous, but in reality, I spent a whole lot of time in shopping malls and in garment factories.  And of course, I spent a whole lot of time on planes.

On the planes, I slept, read a bit, listened to some audiobooks, and did some knitting.  I worked on a non-bloggable Trekking project, some boring socks, and some more interesting socks.

Here are the boring socks.  2x1 rib, completely mindless. I got the yarn at Rhinebeck in 2005.  Geez, I have enough sock yarn to last me 10 years.  It's Lana Grossa Meilenweit Multieffekt in the most non-colorful color possible.

And here are the more interesting ones.  This yarn is a mystery to me.  I think Cari gave it to me?  (If so, thanks lady!  I love it!)  The pattern is an old one from Knitty called Straight-laced.

Since I've been back, I seem to have cast on for yet ANOTHER pair of socks, this time in Koigu.  I got this yarn as a birthday gift last year from Cynthia.  Thanks darlin'! 

The other thing I've been doing is re-photographing the stash for Ravelry.  I have a new camera, and boy does it make a world of difference.  Currently half the stash pics are new and half are old.  Perhaps in a year or so I'll get to the other half...  In the meantime, feel free to take a look at my sock yarn and tell me what socks I should knit.

On a totally different note, I just finished two audio books... Freakonomics and Middlemarch.  Interesting, because despite being completely different, both deal quite a bit with the circumstances people are born into versus the choices we are able to make for ourselves.

Travel

Why haven't I been posting?  There have been a few things working against my best intentions.  For starters, work has been sending me all over the place.  Here's some examples...

Maybe sometime soon I'll take pictures of the KNITTING for a change.

Time Time Time...

The socks from the last entry are now in the 'FInished' album with all the pertinent details, if you're interested.  This made me realize that I have barely finished anything in the past year.  I know this is probably evident through my sad lack of blogging.  Where has the time gone?

I'm still working on getting the new place presentable enough to photograph.  What the hell is taking me so long?  Believe me, I'm sick of being in limbo.  There's two key things that still need to be built, and hopefully I'm no more than 6 weeks away from completion.  Here's one little pic... the best part of the new fridge is in fact the freezer.

Take that, evil moth things!

On the knitting front, the current project is ...well... secret.  I can tell you that it's Trekking.   Mmmmmmm....I love me some Trekking.   Here's a little tiny peek.

The last bit of news is that I simply MUST have a new camera.  In addition to the blurry mess that is the sneak peek, I photographed the entire stash this weekend.  All the pictures came out simply atrocious.  My old 3.2 megapixel Exilim from 4 years ago is about to be retired!  Woot!

Finished socks!

One:

And two:

 

Turquoise and Blue

Rainy Weekend Trip, a  Photo Recap.

Sock Progress, Day One.

The view.

Sock Progress, Day Two.

Lonely Kitten, waiting at home.

Heroes and Villians

And the winner of 'What should my costume be?" is Nathania.  Wanna see?

In other news, the move into the non-finished apartment began yesterday.  My furniture is now there.  However, an unexpected issue with the walls in the bedroom (Semigloss used to touch up the satin finish walls!  Yikes!) has set things back a bit.  Also, the toilet is still in the center of the living room.  Kitchen countertops aren't expected for at least 2 weeks. Sigh.

It also seems that repeated climbs to the 5th floor walk-up are changing the shape of my ass.  Who knew.

Please Help!

My mom is dealing with a severe moth infestation, and she just emailed me asking for advice.  I am not the expert, having dealt with my moth problem by ...um... moving to another borough.  So, I'm posting her email here.  Does anyone have any advice for my mom?

Dearest,

Spring has sprung...a thing I can tell cuz there are now moths flying around my bedroom. This after totally gutting the room since last moth season, not to mention removing and packing in mothballs/lavender the clothes I just recently brought back in...and freezing anything with any evidence of moth presence.

I would like your advice:

1) Obviously this would be a good time to bring the stuff out of the freezer, trick the little devils into hatching, and then throw it all back in the freezer to deep six them. However, can't this result in their eating said stuff prior to their demise? Clearly timing is critical; exactly how long should I leave all this stuff out of the freezer?

2) In all my research I've never found this, but do you know of ANYTHING that can be done by an exterminator to seriously get rid of moths? When I've got a bit more spending money than I have right now I would be happy to sleep elsewhere for a week just so they could give the house the smoke bomb treatment or some such.

Thanks for any advice you can provide.  I haven't yet found answers to these specific questions on the internet.

XOXOXOXO
The Mothed Mom

Strange Effects

Last week I was in LA for work.  Work work work.  I'm not sure if this bizarre cloud effect stems from the LA smog or some other atmospheric phenomenon...

but it sure made for interesting photos.

I'm home now, and seem to have come down with the plague.  I stayed home from work today, and have been sleeping and (gasp) knitting!  Between the plane time and today, I actually finished something!

My sister's scarf!  The double helix effect didn't stay as consistent as I had hoped, but it still looks pretty neat, I think.

Progress.

Okay, still no appliances, only part of the floor installed, and a few wall cabinets... yet, somewhat more kitchen-like...

And the bedroom is finished (!!), except for installing the light fixture.  Yes, the ceilings are stupidly high.  I'm on the top floor, and the guys were able to raise the ceiling about a foot in this room.  Yippee!

Loose Ends and Leftovers

Back when Wasabi was sick, I was knitting lace to distract myself.  Yet, I never quite got around to posting a picture of the finished piece.

Well, here it is.  Melissa shot this picture on October 1st.  Better late than never.

And, just for kicks, the pattern can be found here in the 'Finished' album.  My goal had been to put this up before the holidays, but hey, it's always a good time to give a gift...

Edited to add some Yeti!