I’ve been tagged for a meme by Gudrun of the Shetland Trader, who I’ve really enjoyed getting to know through her blog, and a couple of these questions inspired a slew of happy memories and dreaming (actually… I have a couple more meme’s waiting in the wings from the Rooster and one of my other friends named Mel - I haven’t forgotten you two, this one just came more easily for some reason!) SO here goes, more about me, my day, my dreams and my eating habits than you ever wanted to know.

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

Ten years ago almost today…. I had just finished final exams for college graduation (has it really been 10 years?!) I graduated on the same day as Tad - the last event in each other’s lives we had to do separately! We were planning our wedding, looking for jobs and inspiring bloodlust in every driver in town as we struggled through the first week in our new (standard transmission) car because we’d never driven a stick before the day we brought it home (come to think of it - who drove the car home? Who test drove it?? Mom? Scott or Kel? Josh or Amy? Hrmph. It bugs me that I can’t remember that.)

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

(I actually wrote this yesterday afternoon!)

• Transplant seedlings (didn’t get done, moved to the list for today)
• Spend time with the kids (pups & middy - on the list everyday)
• Finish winding yarn for swatching new design ideas (check!)
• Rescue our little diesel from the shop (Got moved to Monday, it’s not done yet)
• See a good show tonight (check, they were great, but the opener blew us away)
  

None of this includes the actual day job work that absorbs the bulk of my day - but you really don’t want to hear about that!

Today’s list has some additions:

• Drop packages off at the Post Office
• Hair appointment
• Belvedere FO post
• Swatching

3) Snacks I enjoy:

I love snacks!! My hunger clock sets off alarm bells every 3-4 hours in the form of an inability to make decisions, often accompanied by severe grumpiness brought on by the fact that I need to eat NOW and I can’t decide what to do about it or what to have! I love snacks in (almost) all forms and attempt to keep some close by to avoid scaring anyone who might be around me… Lately big favorites have been - Olives, hummus & whole grain bread, fruit, guacamole & tortilla chips, chocolate (of course). When I’m at work and in a bind, nuts or peanut butter crackers from the vending machine.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Wow, hrm… This questions completely feeds my pipe dreaming mentality. Pay off all remaining debt and invest enough so that we could work for ourselves or others as volunteer labor. Hike the AT, Buy a small plot of land for fiber animals and chickens and growing food - preferably abutting mountainous state or national land for easy access to hiking. Maybe purchase industrial spinning equipment & create a fiber co-op. Convert our diesel VW Golf to run on waste veggie oil or build one of these to make our own biodiesel…. Give the rest to good causes - preventing and curing cancer, addressing food supply issues, supporting alternative fuel & power initiatives…. As Meghan said earlier this week, Is my idealism showing? This question makes me think of one of my favorite recent lyrics (by one of my favorite bands) “It’s ok if this world had a billion saviors, because there’s so many things to be saved…”

5) Places I have lived:

Not very many! I have spent most of my life in New Hampshire. I grew up in a small town called North Haverhill and went to school across the river from an even smaller town called Ryegate, VT, where Tad spent his adolescence. We met, I moved to Laconia, NH for my last year of high school - Spent the next five years in Keene, NH in college, then married Tad and moved to beautiful Peterborough, NH (sometime home of one of my knitting idols - except I didn’t even knit then - sigh!) lived in bliss for the next few years before moving outside of Raleigh, North Carolina when I was 25. Been here ever since - will be here for a few more before the next move.

I’ll refrain from tagging anyone - but if you’re reading and would like to play along, please do. It’s always fun to learn more about you all!

Now, it’s a BEAUTIFUL day, and I’m going to add getting outside to my to-do list! Have a great day!

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Now playing: Tyler Ramsey - A Long Dream
via FoxyTunes

In the absence of knitting, blogging, photographing of messes (or knitting), working on Summer Sky, keeping up with online friends & their activities, and possibly most disappointing - a trip to one of my favorite annual activities, MDSW - there has instead been coughing, aching, sniffling and general yuck. I am almost never sick, but when I do come down with something I am a big old baby (must work on that)! I’m finally resuming normal activities and fortunately, there have been some consolations!

While I was mourning the missed trip to MD, I won Connie’s contest for her brother’s T-shirt! I rarely enter blog contests anymore in an effort to minimize the stuff coming into the house - there is a stream of “stuff” going out as we continue to pare down and filter out the unwanted or unused so that we can actually find the useful and valued, including yarn without a set purpose - so even potential free yarn or other contest swag feels like a burden sometimes - weird huh? Somehow this hasn’t stopped the book acquisitions though. I wish my public library had a better knitting collection. I digress, I digress!! I loved her brother’s illustration so much that I caved on this one. And who would have thought? I won! Check it out here! Talented family, no? Have you seen Connie’s latest IK design yet? Thank you so much Connie (and your brother too! It’s a beautiful design!) I look forward to wearing it!

Other bright spots have been Mathias’ returning strength (funny, I thought it would be the dogs that required us to stay home, not me!), and a resulting brief trip to VT a week ago to join Tad in seeing Tim & Martha and our sweet niece AB, and our little vegetable seedlings taking off in their new bed (built by Tad!) and flourishing with the recent rain and collected rainwater from our growing collection of barrels (the goal is to support the entire water needs of the garden this year with rainwater if we can). Oh, and it’s primary day in NC! We walked to our precinct’s polling place this evening, conveniently located at the edge of our neighborhood. I was very excited to go vote!

So how about a Messy Tuesday pic (taken a week or more ago now!)?

Sad closet shelf with hidden WIPs - Go to Flickr to see the detailed notes.

This is not usually where I store my WIPs - an as you can see, they’re suffering for it - That’s my Festjakke and Riata Tweed Jacket, which looks like it needs some detangling. Ouch. I think these got stuffed here in a quick “cleanup” for company weeks ago - and strangely enough, they haven’t been touched since! But! Belvedere the second has been progressing though slowly, and I’ll have a pair of finished socks to show in a couple days. Some work has been done on Summer Sky, my brain finally felt up to tackling some of the math on Sunday and I think that I’m on target for an end of May/early June release. Taking this step back to rework and revise has been very valuable, if time consuming. Which makes me even more excited for some of the other designs I have on the brain! I hope you’ve all been well and doing fun stuff, knitting and making messes!

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Now playing: The Weepies - Can’t Go Back Now
via FoxyTunes

Everyone, meet Sylvia!

Sylvia, this is…… Everyone!

She was a bit of an impulse - the need for a body double coupled with the not-flattering thought of myself wrapped in duct tape, added to a good buy equals a new friend for me! Sylvia was so dubbed by her former owner’s spouse -so Sylvia she will stay - She comes with excellent karma from the years she spent modeling for my spinning teacher. As a re-purchase, she nicely fits into the Wardrobe Refashion initiative and will be helpful with it to boot. She does need a little ah…. enhancement in some key areas to be a true double, however - but that too will be a fun “refashioning”!

There have been some tough times with our Little Man over the last couple of weeks, but as of now he is improving (mel emits a huge sigh of relief), and we’ve had a lovely weekend, spending QT with him and the Sweeter, enjoying some mild weather and looking ahead to the warmer months. We’ve been planning for this year’s garden:

And I’ve been imagining the colors and details of a summer project:

I hope that your weekend has been just as hopeful!
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Now playing: Cloud Cult - Living on the Outside of Your Skin
via FoxyTunes

Who are coming to Local 506 in April - and somehow, the tickets are only $8. This is one of the most under-appreciated bands out there, IMO. Great music, lyrics, themes - and they’re out to make the world a better place. What’s not to love?

Shirley May (Beasley) Remington

Linda May (Remington) Chase

Melinda (Chase) Hunt

I love how our names are tied to one another. I love how my knitting ties me to them. Though the exact history of this sweater has been lost over time, it holds no less importance or sentimental worth. It came to me nearly complete, having been knit and partially seamed by one of the first two women. I do not remember Mom working on this particular sweater, so it seems more likely to me that it was Nana’s, but it’s not certain. What is certain, by the look and feel of it - the condition of the yarn and style of the stitch holders, is that it was left unfinished for years. It could have been something that was worked on when I was a child or even before I was born. I wonder why it was never finished, but at the same time I’m rather glad that it wasn’t, so that I could. I took my time with the finishing, seaming it carefully, knitting a collar, picking the perfect buttons. My guess is that this was knit for herself - as the fit of this sweater would have been perfect on either Nana or Mom. And it’s perfect for me. Wearing it, I feel warm, strong, capable, and loved.

I’m calling it Remington.

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Now playing: The Cinematic Orchestra - To Build a Home
via FoxyTunes

Saturday is for sleeping in after a very satisfying concert Friday night (Bright Eyes at the Millenium Center in Winston-Salem - I was very much looking forward to it, but they were better than I anticipated!)

Bad cell pic of Heather, Tess & I (Tad’s the photographer) grabbing a bite and a drink before the show.

Saturday is for Sunshine….

Courtesy of both the real thing and of Cosy, who I’ve just found recently, but is such a gem. Thank you Cosy, the feeling is completely mutual. Your blog never fails to make me smile!

Saturday is for Spinning (and slightly obsessive predrafting)….

Sunday is for sleeping in again (this is rare for us!) after our 2nd annual horror fest with a few friends, incredible hospitality provided by our friends Peter and Martha (We watched Bug and Severance - I’m sure Tad will share more details!)

Sunday is for Starting (I know it doesn’t look like much, but that’s the first three rows of the Festjakket - all 300+ stitches/row! Must make a note to update the progress bar to .02975% complete….)

And Sunday is for the Sweeter…. Who is a little under the weather & is catching some z’s. I think she needs a snug!

I hope you all had a great weekend!!

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Now playing: Bright Eyes - Bowl Of Oranges
via FoxyTunes

Sorry folks, this is a picture-light post, if you’re looking for the meat, scroll down to where it says “announcement!”

I am math challenged. Don’t tell my boss (she’s an engineer). I would be lost without Excel and Access in my worklife, and sometimes my daily life as well. I would certainly be lost without the excellent resources on the internets when it comes to this little project that I’ve been working on (lest you think that I haven’t been knitting - I have more swatches than you can shake a stick at right now!) One of my recent quandries forced me to work through an online geometry tutorial in which I had flashbacks to Mrs. Lindsay’s 10th grade class. I can’t believe it - she was right when she said I’d need this someday!

A fortuitous email conversation awhile back with Ruth resulted in an invitation to join her and some other fine folks on a small design blog that we are hiding from the general public - it allows us to bounce ideas off one another and get feedback in a safe place, where it would not exclude us from submitting for publication later on. It has been a great experience, and very positive.

As a result I’m working on a few specific things (actually just one right now, though there are a couple more on deck with more yarn on order for more swatching). I do have some goals, but for now I just think of this as testing my limits - the limits of what I think I’m capable of knitting-wise, and of my confidence to put myself out there creatively. I’m learning a ton, and thinking with a creative focus, which is fun. And flexing my problem solving skills - every time I figure out how to make something work (no matter how seemingly little) I am just thrilled. Waking up with an idea in the morning is so cool - so is waking up with a possible solution to a design complication. Every little victory is pretty hard won at this point, and so each one propels me forward - what fun! I’m still a little afraid that it will turn out to be a colossal powder blue yarny mess, but I will have learned a ton in the process and either way you have a good story to look forward to when all is said and done!

ANNOUNCEMENT: I wrote that post last week and was just waiting for a good time to put it up, and now seems like a great time.

SO, I interrupt this broadcast to tell you….. I decided to submit this little project that I mentioned above to MagKnits for consideration - I thought that it would be a great experience and working with the design group really bolstered my confidence. Kerrie Allman has accepted my design proposal and my very first design will appear in the August issue! I am slightly stunned and overwhelmed because I like the idea - but, well, it’s my idea - ofcourse I like it - but I don’t expect that everyone else will like it too. I had to read her email about 5 times over - I’ve been reading Magknits ever since I started knitting and I am so thrilled to have a chance to be included in it. I have so much admiration for some of the designers that have appeared in the magazine, and I have butterflies just thinking about it! I hope that you do like it, and I hope that you check it out, since all I can do now is give you this tiny tidbit. I can’t wait to hear all the critiques (positive and negative)! I am really a relatively new knitter, so I have much to learn about both knitting and design, and feedback is so important to that process. Now I’ve got to get cracking - I’ve got a knit to finish up and a pattern to write!

Today was a very good day:

A sure sign of Spring - my Carolina Jessamine is getting ready for the party, along with the early blooming trees budding all over the place:

A near-completed project at work (or at least the light at the end of the tunnel for phase 1, each phase is so time consuming, it’s like it’s own project!)

A long awaited announcement from my father that he will be officially retiring on April 1, although there’s a possibility that he may stay on part time for awhile. I couldn’t be more pleased for this man that has worked so hard for so long, has given so much to me and to our family, and is so deserving of the freedom that it will bring him. He’s a do-er, and I wasn’t sure he would actually be able to stop working (even though he’ll have no shortage of things to keep him busy)! Go Dad!!

A lunch date with a dear friend, and a decent possibility that I have pressured cajoled convinced said friend to embark on a pretty difficult training schedule for an event that’s very near to my and Tad’s hearts (which you’ll certainly be hearing about here in the near future). Just the thought that she MIGHT do it with us is so exciting to me - she’s one of those lifelong friends, very dear to me, and it would just be something to share it with her and to see her experience it and all the positive take-aways.

And finally, another WIP - I had to take a break from the Chuck’s Socks and get a little instant, well, almost instant gratification. While searching for picture material for my banner amongst my stash and FO’s a couple of weeks ago, I found this forgotten little project in the corner of a drawer. When I needed a pick-me-up after my latest sizing debacle, it’s colors called to me. I was surprised to find that I had left it (in December, ‘05, after an ill-fated and half-hearted attempt to make a couple Christmas gifts) a little over halfway complete, and put it on the list to pick up sometime in the near future. Sometime is now! There is an FO in my future, quite possibly in the next couple of days. Any idea what it is? Hint - it’s size-less!  I can’t mess this one up