Pouty Puppy

Tee knew the rain was coming yesterday afternoon – so she was practicing her sad/pouty face for getting her paws wet this morning.

 

Share the Road

I’ve noticed new signs along my routes to and from work.  Either the city has noticed a lone cyclist along these roads (unlikely) or more cyclists than I use these roads and a need for better signage was noted.

 

The sky Monday afternoon was particularly breath-taking.

Erhm. The angles on these are not quite what I would have done if I had the dslr on hand instead of the point-and-shoot, plus I was pulling the camera out of my pocket at stoplights and not even looking at the screen.

 

P.s.  just to prove to you that I was not making up the weather last Friday afternoon, here is a shot of my bike thermometer on the way home.

 

Tricked Out Bike

I had a hiatus from riding my bike to work for the past month – the week before I left for Christmas in Indiana I felt overwhelmed by things that needed doing and errands that needed running.  Of course, while I was in Indiana I did not ride to work.  The following week we had our End-of-Year sale which always entails longer hours, lots of energy and total exhaustion at the end of the day.  This was all capped by a dreadful cold which kept me home for 3.5 days.  I was itching to get back to riding, especially because I added lots of things to make the commute nicer.

Item #1) A rear rack for saddle bags (or panniers, if you will).  Naturally, once I had the rack, I had to get bags to go on it.  I wish timbuk2 would make their panniers available in the highly reflective fabrics like my giant-ass messenger bag. Instead I have some basic black bags from REI and blinky lights clipped onto loops.  The balance on the bike felt a little odd this morning, but the fact that I didn’t have a bag on my back was enough to counter that effect.  I’m sure that once I’m accustomed to the bags, the balance will feel more natural.

The rack is from Topeak and works with their quick-release bag system -  perhaps a future purchase.  The height of the rack is just low enough that  my Burley Travoy Trailer clears the rack to attach to the seatpost. If my legs could manage it, I could probably make a full grocery store run with the saddlebags and the trailer.  I’m not sure what the weight limit for my bike frame is though. Both the rack and the trailer have weight limits of 55 – 60 lbs.

Items #2 and #3) A new computer and a thermometer.  My old computer decided to work only intermittently and the cadence sensor/wires were completely ka-put.  The guys at Richardson BikeMart were incredibly helpful with figuring out what model I needed wanted, so it is wireless which made for a relatively painless installation.  And since I got really excited about another computer that offered temperature (but they didn’t have a wireless model or the model with both cadence and temperature in stock), they gave me a thermometer that fits in place of my stem cap (from a company called StemCaptain).   I have this thing with knowing what time and temperature it is.  When I was younger, I had the phone number memorized for calling in to get the temperature from our local station.  Sadly, my personal weather stations with temperature don’t have sensors that work anymore (and I don’t really need one).

Item #4) Klean Kanteen water bottle cages.  I actually got these and installed them pretty early on for my commute, but I haven’t shown them to you (since mid-October,  I think).  The Klean Kanteen bottles rattled around in my old cages and nothing drives me crazy faster than a rattling noise I can’t correct.  They fit my 27 and 18 oz bottles, plus I know my (brand spankin’ new and totally awesome) 12 oz insulated bottle fits.  I have not tried the 16 oz insulated bottle yet.

I’m slowly converting this road bike into my Commuter Beast, so I’ve not been too concerned with the weight of anything.  I’m hoping to get a triathlon bike for racing and training by October.  I had to keep my hands in my pockets and my mouth from drooling over the latest Specialized models at the store.   In May, I’ll have had my road bike for 9 years, which seems a pretty decent amount of time (even considering I didn’t really ride it for 4 of those years) and thusly, time for an upgrade.

 

Garlic in the Garden

As usual, I’m late to the game with the garden.  I ordered garlic bulbs a while ago.  Burpee told me the bulbs wouldn’t ship until February, so I ordered bulbs from Turtle Creek and then the next week, I received two boxes of garlic in the mail. One from Turtle Creek and one from Burpee. I threw my hands up and left the boxes untouched on the dining room table.  The next weekend, it rained and kept on raining and despite my best intentions, I kept never quite getting out to the garden to pull up all the basil skeletons and the dessicated tomato vines.  Last week, instead of standing there staring at the sky while Tee gave the yard a good sniff, I made myself pull down the tomato cages and pull out some of the plants.

Today’s goal was just to turn over the area where I planned to get the garlic in the ground. Once I got going, digging in the earth was pretty relaxing and then suddenly I came back to myself standing there with my boxes of garlic to be sown.

I have four different varieties, mostly due to double ordering. This garlic better grow damn well so that I don’t have to buy any for a whole year!  I had to label the pictures because my goal (besides growing something edible) is to keep the varieties straight so I can figure out which ones do well and which ones I like better than others.  Presuming they grow at all.  The Inchium Red cloves had already begun to grow something that looked like it might be a scape.  I wasn’t sure if they should be planted or not, so I did half with scapes and half without.  I must say that I have better hopes for the bulbs from Turtle Creek than those from Burpee.

And now, due to my unplanned foray into pretending to be an actual gardener, dinner is going to be quite late. But, homemade cream of mushroom soup and turkey paninis sound delicious regardless of when they will be served.

 

FO: Goldfish Hat in Calypso

For whatever reason, I’ve knit more hats in the past six months than in my whole knitting career put together.  So, I’m at a count of five hats for the year; previously I’d only knit three hats ever.  Most of them I’ve knit as a way to try a yarn or try a pattern and I end up putting most of them out in the shop as samples.  If I’m cold in the office, I’ll just borrow one of them from the display for the day. I’d planned to put this most recent one up on the floor, but it is the perfect office hat – lightweight, with a lace pattern, but still keeping my head warm.  So, I’ll stop using my hats from the displays and just keep this one on my desk.

I have a lot of Spud and Chloe Fine. By “a lot” I mean there should probably be an intervention soon – I know that I have minimum two skeins of each color (for socks, people. solid color socks. a complete rainbow sock wardrobe in the future).  This particular colorway I had three skeins, and this hat pattern called for one skein, so it was ideal.

When the store receives shipments from the folks at Spud and Chloe, a few of their “On the Run” patterns are tucked in and I snagged this pattern the minute I opened the box.  Perks of working at a yarn store, right?

I’d wound the yarn, pulled the needles and placed the pattern in a project bag a few months ago but hadn’t gotten around to starting it.  Last week I was staring aimlessly around all the yarn in the Yarnery, looking for a quick project and I found this project bag. Two evenings of knitting resulted in tight shoulder and tricep muscles (16″ circular needles are killer on my arms) and a finished hat.

Pattern: Golfdish Hat by Colleen Powley from Spud and Chloe

Needle: US 3 16″ circular and dpns

Yarn: Spud and Chloe Fine, one skein, color 7806 Calypso

Size: 17″ rib unstretched.  I had some debate about which of the three sizes to choose – the finished measurements were given in terms of the unstretched ribbing, which doesn’t help much because how does one know how stretchy the ribbing is?  Since I have a small head, I opted for the middle size which turned out to be just right.

 

FO: Christmas Stockings

Knitting Christmas stockings for someone else makes me want to create my own Christmas stockings.  That idea might wait until 2012 to see any action, but I’m thinking argyle, colorwork, Norwegian snowflakes, cream and maroon or cream and navy.   The stockings I just finished are very clear that they are Christmas stockings, but I think I’d like something that might reasonably be left out as a decoration until February (because I’m that lazy).

Sewing on embellishments was my least favorite part of these stockings, but those little extras really make these stockings into something special.  The knitting is pretty basic – started at the cuff, knit flat with intarsia until the heel is reached, joined to work in the round and then finished off the foot of the stocking. Hey Presto! One stocking took me a full day of knitting – in that I didn’t make an elaborate dinner and took a relatively fast lunch.  Probably, uhm, 10 hours?

The names I put on using duplicate stitch before seaming up the back of the leg.  The embellishments on each stocking probably took 3 or 4 hours – mostly because I feel terribly inept with beads and needles and things. The second stocking’s embellishments went much quicker, having had the first stocking sink into my brain as practice.

I enjoyed knitting these stockings and I hope their new owners have a joyful stocking-stuffed Christmas.

 

FO: Anyklosaurus

Between all the backstage knitting that goes on, I usually fit in a handknit toy for Jamie’s nephew, Gregory.  He turned a whopping three years old (after being “Two and free quarters years old”) in November and we celebrated that grand event with a dinosaur.

An ankylosaurus, to be exact.  I handed Jamie a stack of knitting books with toys in them and told him to pick something out. Since he chose from the top book on the stack,  a newly acquired Knitted Dinosaurs, I am not completely convinced that he actually looked through any of the other books. C’est la vie. For the most part, this green guy was fun to make – except when it came to sewing him all up.  I had a great deal of difficulty figuring out how to best sandwich the spikes between the top and bottom layer.

 

The clubs on his tail look rather ferocious and the bobbles on his back were a feature of every conversation about the dino while I was knitting.

 

 

 

 

Pattern: Anyklosaurus from Knitted Dinosaurs by Tina Barrett

Yarn: Spud and Chloe Sweater in 7502 Grass, 7506 Toast and 7500 Ice Cream (the horns)

Needles: US 5

Mods:  I used a light worsted weight instead of DK weight yarn, so I had to adjust some of the instructions where you knit a certain length.  However, he came out to be almost the same measurements as those listed: 14″ from head to tip of clubs.

 

Excuse Me, Tree – you know it is Fall, right?

Not that I’m complaining about your lovely blossoms showing up this week, but…. I’m not sure it is the right time of year, yaknowhattameanjellybean?  Also – those dead leaves you shed in September?  Well, that was only two months ago which is not really long enough for it be winter even here in Texas, so you might want to be judicious in how many of these new little green leaves you grow right now.

You might also want to mention our conversation to your friend the Bell Pepper plant.  I know – the rabbits kept eating all the leaves it could grow this summer, but now that it is coming on to cold weather, I doubt any peppers produced could grow to maturation.   Although it would be nice to know if this is the Midnight Purple Bell Pepper or just a plain Red Bell Pepper plant.  Next year, I’ll be better at labeling the different varieties.

 

And, finally, this little beastie knows that cooler weather might be here to stay and she is wiggle-butt excited about it every time we go on a walk.

 

 

The Two Year Socks

oh yeah.  You read that correctly.  This pair of socks took me two years to knit.  Oh not literally, of course.  It had time off hiding in corners and assorted other delays, but the fact still remains that according to my ravelry project page, I started these December 5, 2009.

Part of the delay was that I lost the notebook where I wrote down what I did on the first sock. I think it took me a year to reconcile the fact that I wasn’t going to quickly locate that notebook.

So Sock #2′s toe (red) is slightly different than Sock #1 (brown).  My feet can’t tell the difference. They are just happy that they are warm and toasty inside well-fitting handknit sockeroos.

The heel on Sock #2 is slightly narrower than Sock #1.  Again – on my feet, I can’t feel it. Proving that sock numbers can always be fudged.

Tee only wishes there was actually still a sheep attached to the wool for more interesting smells.

Yarn: Fame Trend by Marks and Kattens

Needle: US 1 DPNs

Pattern: Jenn’s Made Up Plain Ol’ Sock

 

Something is hiding near the creek

 

I think there is a winged unicorn molting near the UTD campus – these feathers were all over the multi-use trail on the east side of campus, near the creek bed.