Sunday, January 22, 2006
Long live the Queen!

Last night I was granted a royal audience.


HRH Jill Conner Browne, Boss Queen of the Sweet Potato Queens, graced us with her presence at Malaprop's for a reading of her newest book. Those of you familiar with the SPQ phenomenon might wonder why she is dressed like a normal person instead of her royal persona; she explained that she had a sequined suit for the book tour, but when The Cutest Boy in the World packed her suitcase, he forgot to include the suit. (The plastic bag on the lectern contains a tray of deviled eggs someone made for her - she immediately declared that woman to be her most favorite person in the room.)

The reading and Q&A were a lot of fun. The room was packed with women in tiaras and feather boas, and one gentleman in an outstanding gold lamé suit. The Cabbage Queens were also in attendance; they graciously allowed me to photograph them.


Crushed velvet tops, fur stoles, tiaras, and a sequined cabbage. All hail the Queens!

Queen Jill also handed out her business card. She says no one has ever lost one of her cards, although a few have been worn out.

She advised us to make sure we get the dime up front.


::Posted by Bliss at 4:11 PM :: (5 comments) ::

Friday, January 20, 2006
Finished socks!


Ballet Dancer socks are done! I finished them last night and wore them around the house until I went to bed. The photo actually turned out pretty good (except for the yarn end on my right calf - I swear I wove that in right after the picture was taken). They're really comfy - I haven't road-tested them with shoes yet, though. All of the other socks I've knitted leave rows of v-shaped indentations on the tops of my feet when I wear shoes. I read somewhere that knitting at a finer gauge would help, which is why I used a size 0 needle for this pair.

I've been doing some brainstorming for my Olympic Event. I'm planning to use a glove pattern from Ann Budd's book so that I can pick my own gauge; nearly all of the other patterns I've found call for much larger needles, and I want to use my zero again. Also, I think I will dress them up a bit by adding some cables to the cuffs - they'll be the easy part, and I should be able to knock those out pretty quickly. Jen & La have made several cool team buttons; I'll be requesting a Team Glove button, but until then, I'll display this one, since my event will include some cabling.


::Posted by Bliss at 5:18 PM :: (0 comments) ::

Thursday, January 19, 2006
Winter games.


Although I'm not usually big on watching sports on television, I do love the Winter Olympics. Most people I know prefer the Summer games; not me. Give me ski jumping and hockey any day!

This year, I will be knitting like a crazy woman while I'm watching the games... because I have signed up for the Knitting Olympics. The challenge is to choose a project, cast on during the Opening Ceremonies, and be finished by the time the flame goes out. This will be an especially daunting task for me, as I will only be able to knit on 8 of the 16 days. I've chosen to knit my first-ever pair of gloves as my event. And, since I'm apparently a masochist, I'm going to use size 0 needles for the hand and possibly size 000 needles for the cuff. Fortunately, we are allowed to swatch before the games start (that's considered "training") so I'll be able to figure out my game plan then. (What have I gotten myself into?)



16 days, many knitters, one dream.


::Posted by Bliss at 12:05 PM :: (0 comments) ::

Saturday, January 14, 2006
Red sweaters.

I took a break from working on my socks to knit these:

Left: Turtleneck. Right: Cable.
These are miniature red sweaters (the bodies are each about 3" wide), and the yarn tails coming from the sleeves are there for a reason. I will be contributing them to Nina Rosenberg's Red Sweater project, which is an art installation inspired by the war in Iraq; each sweater represents one American soldier who was killed. (Her original plan was to have enough sweaters for all the deaths in the war, but since that would be over 30,000, she made the decision to represent U.S. military casualties only.)

Nina has made a garland of sorts out of the sweaters (hence the yarn tails, so they can be tied together) and has hung them in a tree in her front yard. As of today, she has received enough sweaters to equal the number of deaths, but I am not enough of an optimist to believe that she won't be needing more.

::Posted by Bliss at 8:46 PM :: (3 comments) ::

Saturday, January 07, 2006
I survived Holidailies!

Woo-de-frickin'-hoo! I am extremely proud of myself for actually keeping up with Holidailies this year. Maybe I'll be able to keep some of that momentum and actually blog regularly! Perhaps next December I'll take it a step further and sign up for the portal.

Today I beheld the true power of blog suggestion. In yesterday's meme entry I wrote that one of my favorite foods is pizza from Circle in the Square. This afternoon, Syntax went out and got one for me while I was in the shower. (Love you, honey!) Going to work tonight seems marginally less awful now that I am full of kick-ass pizza.

::Posted by Bliss at 6:11 PM :: (6 comments) ::

Friday, January 06, 2006
I'm it!

I've been tagged by Sweet Tea! So here we go:

Four jobs I've had in my life:
1. Fast-food counter monkey
2. Library clerk
3. Tour guide for model homes
4. Classical musician

Four movies I could watch over and over:
1. The Princess Bride
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Amadeus
4. Shakespeare in Love

Four places I've lived:
1. Cincinnati
2. Fish Creek, Wisconsin
3. Honolulu
4. Las Vegas

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Arrested Development
2. My Name Is Earl
3. Lost
4. Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Four places I've been on vacation:
1. The Grand Canyon
2. Charleston
3. New York City
4. Russia

Four websites I visit daily:
1. Google
2. 3WA
3. The Syntax of Things
4. You Knit What?

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Mashed potatoes
2. Pizza from Circle in the Square
3. Eastern NC-style barbeque
4. Vanilla ice cream

Four places I'd rather be:
1. New York
2. In bed
3. In the bathtub with a good book
4. Anywhere but work

Four albums I can't live without:
1. Prolonging the Magic (Cake)
2. Time Between Trains (Susan Werner)
3. The Tom Lehrer Boxed Set
4. The Avenue Q Soundtrack

Four people who are now tagged, if they chose to accept:
Well, the people I know who enjoy these sorts of things aren't bloggers, so I will have to give this one some thought. I'll tag them later by e-mail.

::Posted by Bliss at 5:01 PM :: (2 comments) ::

Thursday, January 05, 2006
More yarn.

One of the area LYSs is having its annual pre-inventory sale, so I splurged on some Koigu. In the photo it looks like red. And it is red. But it's not just one red - it's a whole bunch of different reds, which when knitted should create some depth. I'm looking forward to see how it turns out. I'm not sure what this yarn will decide what it wants to be - probably either socks or gloves.

I've made a ton of progress on my sock - it's almost done! I'm going to keep going on the cuff until I'm almost out of yarn, so even though I could bind off now and have a decent length, I'd like to see how much further I can go.

::Posted by Bliss at 10:28 PM :: (1 comments) ::

Wednesday, January 04, 2006
S&B & SSS.

Stitch & Bitch tonight, hooray! It was a small group, but a good one. I made a lot of progress on my sock - finished the foot and heel, and began the cuff. I am loving that short-row heel! So much faster and easier than the way I've turned heels before. I may be able to finish it tomorrow. I'm hoping I'll maintain the momentum so I can finish the second one before SSS* sets in.

* SSS = Second Sock Syndrome, an all-too-common ailment among knitters. It happens when one completes a sock, then realizes one has to knit a mate for said sock, and the prospect of doing so fills one with such dread that one starts a new project and the mate never gets made.

::Posted by Bliss at 11:30 PM :: (0 comments) ::

Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Short rows.

No time to write much today - I have to go to work early for a meeting. So I'll just post a photo of the sock's progress. I'm almost done with the short-row heel.



::Posted by Bliss at 4:54 PM :: (0 comments) ::

Monday, January 02, 2006
I love socks. Socky sock socks.


I've made quite a bit of progress on my toe-up sock, as you can see:


This is actually attempt #2; I got almost this far on my first try before putting it on and realizing it was a bit too big; also, the toe was made with short rows and I didn't pick up the wrapped stitches very well (there were double wraps involved, and I think I only picked up one instead of two) so there was a row of holes on the purl side. So I frogged it and started over. That toe looks a little strange now, but I think it will be fine when I'm actually wearing it; the cool part is that it's completely seamless!

The yarn I'm using for this project is called Dancing, and the color is Ballet. So of course these will be called the Ballet Dancer socks. Of course, when I think of actual ballet, the colors that come to mind are black (leotards) and that weird flesh-tone pink (shoes). I'm using a size 0 needle, which means I will be knitting lots of little teeny-tiny stitches.


::Posted by Bliss at 3:37 AM :: (0 comments) ::

Sunday, January 01, 2006
Day one.

It's been a good, though uneventful, first day of 2006. We slept late, ran a quick errand to the hardware store, ate Chinese food, and spent the rest of the day at home. The bellinis last night were quite good, but we only drank one bottle of champagne between us so no hangovers here. We watched a little of the Dick Clark special last night - I was so glad to see him on TV again. He still looks good, although the stroke has affected his speech. It was really great to see him.

Today is a good day to start a new project; I think I'd like a new challenge so I'm going to attempt to learn to knit socks from the toes up. I've made a few from the cuff down and it'll be interesting to see how these are different.

::Posted by Bliss at 10:24 PM :: (0 comments) ::