It's Been Awhile

So, I'm home sick today. I feel all around gross and my back hurts. I thought it might be a good day to catch up.

There hasn't been a whole lot going on in my life. There has, however, been a serious lack of knitting. I haven't knit a stitch in probably 2+ months! It seems like forever, but I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it. I'm not the most prolific knitter to begin with, it's almost to the point of ridiculous at this point.

What have I been doing instead? Nothing. Terrible. Though, on November 8 I did go hiking. Surprisingly I felt better that day than I have in MONTHS. That was the only day I felt that good, but the days have had a general betterness to them.

This was the next installment of our (my friend Dan and I with the dogs) quest to become members of the Appalachian Trail 2000 mile club. The previous hike was a 2-day, and my legs hurt so much the second day, I didn't do the second day. At some point I'll have to make that up.

We did 4.5 miles from car to car. It was mostly flat, there was a decent uphill at the start and the walk to the car was a Steep downhill with LOTS of rocks. I almost fell on my ass a number of times. That was my least favorite spot....I cursed....a lot.

Today's plan is to update Ravelry. Put up pictures of knitting I had previously taken of my progress. Working with knitting pictures is almost like knitting right?

Some hiking eye candy:

So when do you decide that outside help is really going to help? When does "down in the dumps" become more?

Frustration

So, what does it take for one to throw up there hands, declare loudly that they are totally being screwed and do something about it?

Off to a Bad Start

So, have you ever had one of THOSE projects? You know, where things constantly go wrong. Added stitch here, extra row there and you don't realize it until you're past a complicated section of repeats?

Well, this isn't like that, but it COULD be.....

I saw that the Central Maryland Knitting Guild was doing a KAL of the Central Park Hoodie. Not sure what flipped, but I have to make it. I have some Lion Brand Wool-Ease in my stash and I had all intentions of going to the meeting, but totally chickened out. Yes, I'm weird, I get funny about social events sometimes.

So, I cast-on and began the ribbing. Problem 1, I pulled a little too hard and ripped the plastic wire out of my circular needles. Wow, that was a new one. So I shoved it back in and it's been holding ok. Need to get some glue. I haven't gotten terribly far, but today I noticed something...














Maybe not so noticeable....but if you look close, the left side is smaller than the right. Yup, that's right, somehow I ended up with more rows on the right than the left. Definitely an interesting problem.

I have decided to rip it back and restart the whole thing. I also decided to go down a size. I was debating. Since it seems a lot was going wrong with the large size, I'll try the smaller and see how it goes.

On a different note...
The hubby and I went kayaking for our 5 year anniversary. He fell in and I missed it! Wish I could've gotten pictures. I turned around and he was on his way out of the water already. I did get this very nice picture of a family of geese. Hope you enjoy.

Interesting Meme

This looked kind of fun. Some of the pictures on Flickr are amazing.






















Here are the rules:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page of results, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

The Great Outdoors

Recently, I went hiking. Specifically, my friend Dan and I (and our pups) are working towards hiking the Appalachian Trail.....in pieces of course, in no way would I consider doing a hike through. This was supposed to be a "Two-Day" hike.

Day One:
Here we are on the trail....notice Emmy (my dog) checking to see if I'm ok and then everyone leaving me behind. Because, I'm slow.



We also saw many of these plants. I don't know what they are, but they are very pretty and surprising considering how much tree cover there is on this part of the trail.



The weather that day was rather humid. They were predicting rain, but they predicted rain every time we've gone. We hadn't gotten more than a sprinkling in the past. Here is one of the views when we first started to hear thunder.



10 minutes later, it totally poured. Actually, not only poured, but thunder and lightning also. It was quite thrilling. The trail turned into a mini creek (pronounced crick of course). Thank goodness for ponchos. Though they didn't help much with the mud I kicked up from the trail onto my legs.

15 minutes after that it stopped and most of the rest of the hike was incident free. Until.....we reached the camp ground. Then it really started to pour. Dan and I (and the pups) took shelter at the camp ground bathroom. Lovely place to wait out a storm. We ended up waiting an hour for the rain to let up, so we could hike out and meet the rest of our camping crew. After 7.2 miles standing for an hour, was not my cup of tea.

The bright side was hearing a bunch of young kids (I think part of a youth group) freaking out because their tents flooded. We then set up camp and went to dinner. Dinner was tasty.

The best part was the fire. The hubby is excellent at starting fires and he got a nice one going. We all sat around roasting marshmallows and trying to not get bitten by mosquitoes. We had a few other hikes stop by to steal some smoke as bug repellent. A nice gentleman named Dave who specifically does these hikes for the climbing.

Sleeping.....that did not go well. Achy legs, barking and growling dogs, giggling kids and full bladder all prevented sleepage. Ugh! Sum total, maybe 1-3 hrs of sleep.

I gave up on the second day, 5 mile hike! Packed up and went home! Yay to sleep in my own bed. Unfortunately, now I have to make up that piece of the hike.....

MDS&W and FOs

So, how was my first MD Sheep & Wool? It was actually pretty good! I was very surprised at how many non-wool product vendors were there. I was also very surprised at how many vendors were actually there. There were tons of booths. I would definitely recommend it as a place to go. Though, I am biased, I have a soft spot for this type of thing.

So I left early to drive over, just not early enough. There was a line of cars to go into parking. And of course when I get just to turn into the grassy parking area the police open up both lanes in. That might have made it faster 30 min earlier....

Anywho, I walked around and bought stuff....specifically this stuff:


So, the yarn across the top is Blue Moon Fibers, Sock that Rock, Medium Weight, in Sherbet. This was actually my last purchase of the day because the line early was ridiculous! I picked it up and wanted it, but not badly enough to stand in line. So I happened by at the end of the day and it was the very last skein of that colorway!

I decided that I wanted to try spinning, so I bought some roving and a spindle. I can't remember what the name of the vendor for the spindle was. However, the blue/red/green roving is Gale's Art, Fabulous 4 for Five (fiber is Merino Wool). The other roving is from Break Lose Farm and is 1/2 Cotswold, 1/4 Llama and 1/4 Mohair. I much prefer the Gale's Art stuff, but I wanted to try some different, yet cheap stuff (didn't want to spend a lot if I was going to hate it). We will have to see how this experiment goes.

I saw one of the Sheep Dog Demonstrations. Definitely discipline to aspire to for my dog. I went into the barns and visited the sheep, one snarky sheep tried to bite me. Otherwise most kept to themselves or accepted a scratch. Ate corn dogs and funnel cake (no, no lamb).

Over all a very good time!

Onto the FOs:
I finished my projects for January and February! Remember the one project a month thing? Well, obviously that's not working out so well, but I'm still starting one a month.

January's project was the Hooray for Me Gloves, which were modified to be full finger length gloves. These should be very good for car gloves in the winter. The yarn is Jitterbug in Gauguin.



February's project was the Ring of Cables hat from Knit Picks. The yarn is Knit Picks Swish Superwash in Truffle and Capri. The brim is great and fits very well. I ended up picking up extra stitches, but the top is still kind of tight. It fits nicely, but the fabric is kind of stretched. I think it'll work well for snowboarding season.