Hyvetyrant Knits

Button for Rachael

I made a button to show support of Rachael's running in the Aids Marathon... please steal it!

posted by Melissa @ 4:40 PM

Great Knitting Weekend

I had a great knitting weekend - I got through another skein of Kersti on the baby blanket - see!



However, I am still bugged by the first skein change. Can anyone else see it?



On our trip to my hometown, I got a bunch of knitting done - both in the car and while playing Trivial Pursuit (at which I beat everyone :-) )
Saturday night we saw my mom play Aunt Eller in Oklahoma. She did a great job, as usual. It was nice to see my family. I retrieved the first Adult Duck Foot from my sister so I could note down how many stitches I picked up for the ankle, and so I could get the orange mattress stitch on the toes.

This week my older daughter had a great knitting week. Look what she cranked out in 2 days flat!



She's been on a bus for 30 - 45 minutes morning and noon this week - along with field trips today and yesterday that increased the bus time. I'm so proud of my knitter!

In non-knitting news....
Today was an interesting day. The summer school thing my older daughter is going to has a computer class as one of its sections. That class came to the office today. We showed the kids a bit about what software development is like. This is the 3rd year we've done this, we get better each time. 9-11 year olds are an interesting breed. I run a station that lets them mess with their faces in software - we take pictures of them as they come in, and then we let them loose in the Photoshop Liquefy filter. They have a great time. Another station consists of the kids helping take apart and rebuild a PC, one station talks about the Software Dev. process, and one walks the kids through some basic sorting algorithms. The last (new this year) was a short talk about the history of our company. Its great good fun.

posted by Melissa @ 9:10 PM

Got It!

I removed the quiz from a couple posts back... and my sidebar came back! cool! I'll leave it out for now - it was cool, but not so cool I'm interested in not seeing my blog correctly!

posted by Melissa @ 10:49 PM

Finally....

I got my comments back working... now if I can only figure out why my sidebar is showing up at the bottom of my posts... It not the buttons in the sidebar, because when I switch to a new template it does the SAME THING! It wasn't doing this last week... GRRRR

In other news, I'm down to 73 more rows on the blanket. As I seem to get through 4-6 rows a night, I should get done with it just in time to start the Kersti sweater the beginning of July. Fortunately, I've already done a HUGE swatch :-)


I'm starting to not like the purse I'm also working on... (see pic below). I think its turning out too pink. I'm just not a pink person... I may have to dig up other yarn from my stash to try.

This weekend I'm going to go back to my hometown to see my Mom play Aunt Eller in "Oklahoma!". Should be fun - she's a very good actress, and the director is good as well - there's a very healthy community theater group in my hometown. I grew up on stage - I was in my first play when I was 3. Added bonus - we'll be there for Father's Day as well. Not that I wouldn't see him anyway - he drives up Sunday nights to live with my family for the week, but my youngest sister will be there, and my mom. Nice family gathering.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. Hug your dad - in person if you can, in spirit if you can't.

posted by Melissa @ 10:40 PM

Tigers!

Couple links that I wanted to share:

The Minnesota Zoo has baby Tigers! They are soooo cute - watching them has become my new desktop distratction. If you want to watch them too, click here. (The high bandwith link requires Real player, the lower bandwith is a Java applet that reloads every 30 seconds. The high bandwith one is better :-) )

Since the whole book thing is passing around the blogosphere, I thought I'd post this link to Project Apollonia. (You can read the blog about it here)The link comes from Bookslut (not a knitting blog - a book blog), and is set up to send English books to Costa Rican children. They've even set up an Amazon Wishlist. But, if any of you are following Pioneer Melissa and Stephanie's lead and destashing your house, or just know you have good-condition used kids books, or want to send new - they are sending books at the beginning of July.


And, in knitting... well - I've got the purse body done, and have 4 more rows on the first half of the Kersti Blanket. I started skein 3 a couple rows back, so I'll probably just start skein 5 as I wrap up the blanket. I'll have to come up with something to do with 2.5 skeins of Kersti - I could probabaly send it back, but its SO pretty I want to keep it! Maybe a nice scarf? Hat? Hmmm....

I'm going to be looking into Typepad. My DH is going away for a week the end of June, so I might do a changeover then. I can't deal with Blogger comments, and if I'm going to put a bunch of work into getting a template set up, I might as well look into a Typead one. I think Blogger's policy of requiring you to register before being able to put your name on a comment SUCKS! I've been getting a lot of anonmous comments the last few days. I also like to be able to send commenters private emails, which I can't do anymore either. Unless you leave your email in the comment. For now, please sign your name and if you want me to answer a question in email instead of a following post, put your email in their as well (please de-spam it one way or another. I'll figure it out...) Thanks!

posted by Melissa @ 2:34 PM

Literary

Courtesy of WoolFlowers and Knitti-me.

Hmmm... I did better than I thought I had. I have read other works by some of these authors as well ... I am puzzled some by the list.

Oh... the italics? Those are the books I read in their original French while I was studying that language. (Yes, I'm bragging. I don't care.)


Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard

Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

posted by Melissa @ 7:39 AM

Questions...

Answering some questions:

The duck booties are from Zoe Mellor's 50 Baby Booties to Knit. Very cute book.

The color of Kersti I'm making the Raglan Body Hugger from is K624x (the other Kersti is K117).


I want to state that I hate the Blogger comments. I'm either going to have to find a different template that I can figure out how to add my old commenting service into, or I'm moving to typepad. Granted, since I already pay for the hosting here, it seems a bit silly to move elsewhere - but I wouldn't be paying for commenting then either.

Knitting Update

I'm almost hald-way done with the Kersti blanket - finished the second skein of yarn. (just imaging the below picture with a few more rows on it). I also knit some on the bag (ditto). Nothing terribly worthy of having pics taken.

I'm itching to start the Raglan. Or Charlotte...

The weekend here was beautiful. My DH and I put the kids in the back of the convertible and hit the town. Saturday (after a brief stop at the mall - why do I end up at the mall on beautiful days?) we went down to Como Zoo. Its a great place to wander and see animals - and its free! What more could you want! There are also carnival rides there, so the kids had to go on a couple. Both of them are bigger thrill seekers than I ever was.... fortuanely I now have the 10 yr. old to take the 2 yr old on things as they get older!

Sunday we wandered around downtown St. Paul and looked at the Snoopy Statues. St. Paul has had 4 other tributes to Charles Schultz over the last years, and this one is the last. They are wonderful to look at - lots of fun.

All this enjoying the outdoors cut into my knitting time... and doesn't make me want to settle in to work this morning... :-) Ah, well.

posted by Melissa @ 10:04 AM

pics

Thanks again on the feedback about the blog - we'll see how the Blogger comments work for now - or I'll finally figure out how to get the BackBlog comments working in this template.

And...

Some quick pics of what I've been up to lately...

Here's the Kersti baby blanket:



It's looking pretty good - I can see the line where the skein changes, but I'm not sure how many others will see it... I love this yarn - so I bought:



The bluer one is for a project to be named later (possibly a short-sleeved top, or another blanket... we'll see) The khaki-based one is for my Raglan Body Hugger sweater from the Purl Stitch. Isn't it wonderful! :-)

Also from the Boys... my Charlotte combo. It was called Lucian, and I love it! (And, Rob sent out the pattern so I'll get it early next week....)


That was my order from the Boys... I got this from Yarnmarket.com (really quick shipping... and a site with good feedback on availablity)

These two yarns together are going to be something - the hank is Noro Hana Silk that Wendy has just finished a scarf from. I'm still on the fence on whether these two yarns look good together - but am leaning toward them looking good. I think this will be either a cardigan with the silk on the body, and the Pansies for sleeves and trim, or a short-sleeved top with the Pansies as the yoke and the silk as the body. Or vice versa...

And this:

I picked up at my LYS. I'm knitting the Joanna bag from "Two Old Bags" It looks like the Lucy bag, but not felted. The yarn is pretty cool, it looks like this close up:


And, the Big One is knitting this scarf:



Whew.

posted by Melissa @ 9:41 PM

Trying something new...

I'm trying a different blog style - moved over to Blogger comments... so lost all old comments for now. I don't know how to integrate my old comments into the new template - I'll keep trying. Am SO tempted to move to typepad... Again, let me know if you have issues with this template...

posted by Melissa @ 1:32 PM

Help

Not that I have a ton of people visiting... but - If you have problems reading my blog, please leave me a comment. Let me know a couple things:

What OS you are using (i.e. Windows XP)
What browser and version you are using (i.e. IE 6)

I know Annie has some issues - but I can't repro them on my Windows boxes here... I made one change that _might_ fix it, but... (see before)

Also, if anyone has integrated BackBlog with any of the new Blogger templates - help?

Thanks!

posted by Melissa @ 9:41 PM

Arg

I feel old today.

I'm not, mind you (33 is by no stretch old) - but I just realized how long I've been hanging around this internet thing...

I read Marilyn's page today. On there, she mentions joining the big KnitList in 1996. I did some math, and I know I joined it when we moved to CA - possibly before, when we lived in Seattle. We moved to CA in 1995. I remember when Marylin created her first Knitting Curmudgeon site... I never posted much, didn't have anything to add - but I learned a lot. I'm pretty sure I subscribed through my AOL address at that point - I've had so many net accounts I've lost track. In fact, in tracking down some history, I found one I had forgotten about...

I did some more thinking, going back, and realized that I got my first internet account in 1992. My first college was not technologically cutting edge, and didn't have net access - execpt on a couple terminals in the basement of the math building. I switched colleges in 1992, and got my first real net access. (Zterm, anyone?) I used Lynx to navigate the web - I remember how amazing the first web pages with pictures was. And the first real browsers. Just before we were married, my husband went to work for an ISP - remember, this was 1993! It folded early 1994, but I have long held that it was just before its time... I was active on Usenet... I have the dubious honor of being part of the old "Future Disney Cabinet" - waltz-around Briar Rose - from rec.arts.disney. (I found references to that on the internet STILL. Which is how I found the email account I had forgotten ever having.) The net (usenet and MUCKs and MUDs) was a lifesaver when I was on bedrest with the Big One - who turned 10 this year.

I think I've had 9 different email addresses - addresses in heavy use, mind you. I-link in Iowa, halcyon.net in WA, AOL the whole time (IA through MN ), Earthlink in CA and MN, mac.com now. 3 for jobs (helps that I've worked for my current employer for 7 years) I have spent most of my married life working on computer software - which helps explain the whole longterm net thing.

I haven't been subscribed to the Knit List in years. I unsubbed back when we first moved back to MN. I resubbed a year or two later, but couldn't keep up, and had less interest in doing so. I subscribed to KnitU when it started - I haven't read an email there in months either. I keep up on the internet knit community through blogs these days - I find them much more interesting than the lists are... the lists are so full of repetition and have too many people.


So... I'm feeling kinda old today.

posted by Melissa @ 5:47 PM

Cats

Stop me... stop me now. I keep buying yarn.

Last Wednesday the Big One was sick with Pink Eye. Took her to the doctor, got the eye drops - doctor said she could go back to school. Well... after-school care didn't want her until she had had medicine for 24 hours, so we hung out for the day. Took her to get b-day present for the party she went to on Friday - her friend is a knitter too, so we got this CUTE basket filled with yarn, a pair of needles, and a crochet hook at the toy store. It is a great gift! Then, we wandered down to the yarn store 'cause I had to buy more yarn for the second big duck foot. And, I bought some yarn to make a purse - I'll take pics tomorrow. And, she bought some Trendsetter (x) to make a garter stitch scarf. My 10 year old... she makes me so proud :-)

On top of this yarn, I saw that Wendy was knitting with Noro silk ribbon... I've been looking for good ribbon to go with the Pansies yarn I bought a while back, so I picked up some in purple... I think it'll work. I need to look closer in the daylight.

In addition to this, I got more Kersti - 10 skeins for a project yet to be determined, and a bunch to make a sweater from the Purl Stitch - and a kit for Charlotte!! Finally... I keep missing colorways by minutes. I did forget to have Rob send me a pattern, so I can't start yet. Soon, hopefully...

This is a lot of yarn in a week. I need to stop.

I did finish the first big duck foot - sent it over for my sis to try on, and it fits. I'll start the next one soonish.

I've finished the first skein of the Kersti baby blanket. I'm still LOVING it. And, I've got the first little duck foot all knit, just finishing left to do.

The Big One is out of school now - had her Piano recital on Sunday - it was wonderful. She has a good lyric sense... its come along quite well in the last year. She was playing music instead of just playing the notes. I was so proud. And, she looked beautiful!

Now.. things I have pics of...

On Saturday we saw KITTENS. I love kittens - I love cats, too, but kittens hold a special place in my heart. These kittens are at my friend D_'s house. D_ volunteers with Feline Rescue, and houses cats until they can get adopted. Granted, some 9 of them have stayed... she has 11 cats in permanent residence now. So, the Mama Cat, Greta, was a barn cat that got pregnant, and somehow got to Feline Rescue. The kittens are about 6 weeks old now, born at D_'s house. There are 5... here are 3 of them. There's another orange cat, and a white one....



The mama cat is SO calm and friendly. A bit ragged, but a sweet cat.



Adorable kittens... the Big One was ready to take the black one home. However, no more cats. Really. I mean it - 2 is tricky enough to clean up after.

And, my rosebush is blooming! Finally! You see, I picked up a mini rose tree, planted it right in front of my porch where in the original landscape plan called for a decorative tree. (I nixed the tree - it would have grown to be 6-8 feet tall, and blocked the view from my front porch.) When we picked it out, it had a set of buds that were almost ready to pop. Well... those broke off in the transport to the house. Then, another bud got to the ready-to-pop-point... when it was broken off in a storm. (MN has had its usual volitile weather this spring). So, finally getting a flower to bud is pretty darn cool. It looks like this:



Hopefully tomorrow will be a sunnier day than today, and I can get some pics of the works underway. ...and the purchases...

posted by Melissa @ 9:39 PM

Personality Test

M	Mushy
E	Easy
L	Luxurious
I	Intelligent
S	Serious
S	Smart
A	Adventurous

Name / Username:

Name Acronym Generator
From Go-Quiz.com

Hmmm... Pretty close to accurate.

(from links on what seems like EVERYONE's blogs today)

posted by Melissa @ 4:30 PM

No pics today...

I had a very nice weekend - more domestic than usual. (Domestic is an in joke with my DH - when my next younger sister heard I had started knitting, her first exclamation was "How Domestic" - not usually a word I think of when describing myself).

I was gifted last week with a bunch of rhubarb. I love rhubarb... especially fresh cut with salt on it. (mmmm). In obtaining rhubarb, I am following a blogosphere pattern.. - The Dye Pot (a blog I came across recently refered to rhubarb goodies recipies posted by Ann at the Purling Swine. Then, I saw that Lynn at ColorJoy! also made rhubarb goodies...

So.. I made strawberry rhubarb pie. I love this kind of pie. My DH loves this pie... however I had never made it before. So, armed with a recipie from AllRecipies (Here is the recipie) I picked up ingredients and went to town. Well... the pie turned out great, but I had seriously overestimated the amount of strawberries I needed. I had bought 4 times the strawberries I needed.

Oops.

Fortunately, I had been planning on making strawberry jam this spring - as soon as it was true berry season in Minnesota (not till the end of June). But, I had planned ahead. I had already asked the wonderful Annie for her jam recipie - and she sent it with canning tips! Armed with this, and a couple recipie books, and the internet, I bought canning supplies (mason jars and lids :-) ) and, Saturday night AFTER making pie, made jam.

I used Annie's recipe, but added in a cup of rhubarb (since I had a bunch on hand). It adds a hint of tangyness that I quite like. I think I'll add more next time... The Big One had a great time helping - she likes to mash strawberries! And, she stirs well. It went _very_ smoothly and I now have 7 half-pints of jam. Wonderful jam. Before I make more, though, I need a better pair of tongs. Barbeque tongs just don't work as well as one would like, and I felt odd using the salad tongs (scissor-style tongs) :-)

I had never made jam before (by myself). My parents had a grape vine in the backyard - Concord grapes - made great jelly, but lousy eating. I helped many years making jelly - I remember straining the grape mash through cheesecloth to get rid of the seeds and skins. Those jars were sealed with paraffin wax - that was always fun. I clearly remember the year we added apples - grape-apple jelly is wonderful as well!

That's as close as I come to "pioneer" melissa. (sorry - couldn't resist :-) )

Sunday my cold relapsed, and we did some cleaning. (After eating toast and home-made strawberry jam, of course!) And, set up the computer for the 2 year old... she hadn't gotten to play on one yet. This is a large change from when the Big One was a baby... she made the mouse to cursor connection at around 20 months old or so.

Monday was a difficult day. My grandmother is doing an amazing thing - she is packing up and moving from Minnesota to San Diego. Her younger daughter lives there, and she's moving into a retirement community about 6 blocks from my aunt. The hard part is the goodbye's and sorting through decades of stuff. I asked for (and was graciously granted) her Spode dishes. These were her everyday dishes, and I grew up eating off of them. I love them... and now own them. But, saying goodbye at her house for the last time was rough. She flew out today. This was the best thing for her to do (for many reasons)... and I am very proud of her. There are many inpiring things about my grandmothers - they are great role models for me and my daughters.

Then, the Timberwolves lost. Not on the same level, but depressing nonetheless.

And, I knit. I finished the first skein of Kersti on one baby blanket, I finished the second bottom of the little duck feet, and I finished the first bottom of the big duck feet. I still need to wash and block the waves blanket.. maybe tonight.

posted by Melissa @ 5:58 PM