January, you are such a hater.

I love how we all start these resolutions in January, which happens to be a total love/happiness/energy killer. It sneaks up all stealth on people too. Right after the holidays, you have this sense of awesome new beginning with New Years or maybe you’re thinking good riddance- still, there’s all that newness to look forward to. Then the cold sucks. The snow happens. Your car breaks down and if your cat is anything like mine then January is a total cat vomit extravaganza. Gross.

Still, I’m trying to stay strong and keep up with my resolution of knitting from my stash. So here’s my FO for this hater of a month:

Kalajoki [rav link]. I knit these with some beautiful Lorna’s Laces. According to that blog entry, I’ve had this yarn in my stash for three years and I honestly don’t know what I’ve been waiting for. Although it’s a surprisingly thin wool. These socks came out pretty light weight and sporty. I’d knit with the yarn before but I sent the finished project to my Granma.

This was my first time with a sock pattern that had an anatomical toe. Meaning I knit differently for the left and right sock and the toes are angled either to the left or right accordingly. While they look cool on…

They look really stupid off. They come to a really crappy point at the end of the toe and then sort of puff out at the foot giving it the same silhouette as a row boat that a kid would draw. I had some problems with the pattern. It wasn’t a bad pattern or anything and was definitely great for being free. However some things just weren’t spelled out enough for me. I was increasing wrong at first and it was making big holes. Then all the stitches fell off my needles (damn you double points!) and I had to rip back to the ribbing anyways. A sort of hidden blessing in the middle of my curses.

Eh, whatever. That’s how I’m feeling toward most things right now and these socks aren’t getting any special treatment. I’m trying to decide what socks to knit for February. Anyone have some that are must knits?

the house on the rock

To get to Minnesota we had to drive through a little (ha!) state called Wisconsin. We decided to stop at a place called “the house on the rock” in Spring Green. I didn’t know too much about it going in, just that it was architecturally unique and that there was a bunch of weird crap inside. We actually signed up for their first ever guided tour and I can now safely say that I know even less than I did before going in. *grumble* *humbug*

Still, I’m impressed with the house. At least, I’m impressed with the amount of weird crap in the house. The guy who built it was originally interested in the circus and instruments that play themselves. He collected and kept everything (ticket stubs, books, anything that interested him). The people who bought the house after him collected porcelain dolls and Fabergé eggs. The dolls mixed well with the circus theme (aka creepy things) but the eggs were a little weird. To be honest though, I’ve had a fascination with Fabergé since I was a kid and saw something on TV about them, so I was excited to see things that were connected to that.

A very large machine that played several instruments. Including jugs and bottles.

Random ornate clock on the Streets of Yesterday. The name of the street and orientation reminded me a lot of our local COSI.

My stepmom thought this was wild. She was like, oh, so all I need to lose some weight is a tapeworm, awesome. I took quite a few pictures while we were looking around. You can check them out, if you’re curious, here.

One of the coolest parts of the house architecturally is the Infinity Room. It juts out from the house and has no support beams. It reminded me of this, at about 3:10 in:

Why, having fun?

Granma’s house

It’s actually a house that was built by my great grandparents. They even built on a sauna. Although you almost need to have something like that, living in Minnesota. My Granma was getting rid of some of the things in her basement and just some of her things in general, so I made a video about the things that I brought back from her house.

She also showed me her most recently finished project. A scarf for a woman who mentioned wanting something with a zig-zag pattern. Granma actually whipped this scarf up off the top of her head, no pattern or anything!

I’m always so impressed with her knitting. Actually, I usually just so impressed with her.

She then took the leftover yarn and made a headband up, just to get the most out of the whole experience. When I told her I liked it she said, “of course you do, there’s a button on it.”

It got my ears zero to roasty-toasty in one minute flat.

In other news, I took a picture of my sock yarn and tried to get it all in once place.

It’s hard not to slip into denial. Say, oh that doesn’t look so bad. But then I remembered that I had two suitcases and my sock yarn used to reside in the smaller of the two cases. Now it’s in the bigger of the two and, to be honest,

the lid doesn’t even close anymore! It’s not like I can just take some of the sock yarn out and put it in the smaller case either. I’ve already filled the smaller one up with lace yarn. So, I really need to put my head down and commit to Stash Killers even more now. Guess I’ll go ahead and wrap this up with a picture of myself from the car.

Love ya!

-Lindsey

Home again, home again

Jiggity jig

So, a little over a week ago I posted this tweet:

The weird thing to me though, was that nobody responded. Since I had a 13-14 hour car ride to mull this over, I came up with a few thoughts/questions.

1) Do I say random crap like this so often that people are just like, oh Lindsey’s being crazy again…?

2) Maybe people are like, yeah, quick jaunt to Minnesota (in January), no biggie. Or you could assume I was just going to hop on a plane and go, living the jet-setter life that I tend to lead.

Actually, I used to go to Minnesota every summer growing up and my parents would send me there on a plane. They used to pin a little tag on my shirt so that the flight attendants would pay extra attention to me. Have they stopped doing this? Because if I were going to steal kids, I would totally target the ones with that paper on their shirts.

It was pretty sweet actually, I got extra peanuts and they would always give me those pilot’s wings. I have a notebook covered in them.

Let’s be honest it’s probably:

3) One tweet in many, getting lost. Or, people just honestly don’t care what you’re up to on twitter unless it somehow connects to them. You know, like in life.

So, it led me to reconsider twitter and also, reconsider some friends and the kinds of relationships that we have with people. Look, I had A LOT of time in the car. I told my close friends what was going on before I left because we talk often enough that it would just come up. Plus a lot of them aren’t actually on twitter anyways. I’ve had a lot of fun on facebook lately playing frontierville but I’m sure that will pass pretty quickly too. The internet isn’t holding my attention like it used to but I still find myself sitting in front of it all of the time. Why?

Anyways, these are the things that are on my mind lately. I’ve got pictures and stories to show and tell you though, so stay tuned!

New Year? Bringing the pain.

Okay, the new year means good things for you, blog town.

I am determined this year to get shit done. (Hopefully right but I’m not making any promises.) As I was reflecting over my past year of glory, I realized, sure, things have been swell but what about the knitting? You can only stray so far from your roots before remembering you have roots… and they don’t go anywhere. (That’s like essential roots theory there.)

So this year, I am making a solemn vow. If there were blood here, I’d make a blood oath. My stash is going to get knit the fuck up people. If it doesn’t, I’m going to burn it. (…or give it away like a sane person, or someone going into a monastery.) I’ve even started an internet campaign full of like-minded people to keep me honest. Heh. You can follow along if you’re interested: Stash Killers.

I also knit some crap for people for Christmas. All using stash yarn. I’m just a G like that.

First up, I knit my mom a shawl. She said she wanted a shawl and I figured, okay, if it’s something she specifically says she wants, she has to love it.

I think she kind of loved it.

It was the Simple Yet Effective Shawl and I’ve got to say, that sucker lives up to its name. I added some random yo’s to keep it interesting for myself but it ended up being relatively enjoyable. I used yarn that a lady gave me from my knitting group. It was an intense wool. Read as: real wool. It raked my hands over good. I really need to stop taking in any more wool, especially BFL. So yeah, noted.

I also made a coworker a hat. But because I’m a genius I didn’t get any pictures of him wearing said hat. So, you get my crazy face.

There are plenty of pictures where I’m not making such a disgusting face… but those pictures aren’t real enough and you know how I like to keep it real. [cough]

Anyways, the pattern is by my super awesome internet buddy: Teekay [rav link] and it’s her Fenced In hat. I freaking love it. I also had to do it freaking 3 times because

1) I am a moron.

2) You really need to print out any pattern that has charts. (See #1.)

Gorgeous, right?

I had goals for last year and I actually accomplished a lot of them. But I missed you, blog buddies and I think 2011 is going to be a good time for our reunion. So stay with me. We’re going to do this thing up. (Hopefully right. Like I said, I’m really not promising anything.)