Cat and Yarn

Since, the camera was out, I thought I would take pictures of my last yarn purchase. The yarn inspector showed up and thoroughly checked the yarn as you can see. Trinka is fond of rolling in any yarn or fiber that smells a bit like the animal it came off of.

The turquoise yarn is Super Due Merino, 1531 yards and 3.53 ounces. It is destine to be a shawl after some careful aging in the closet.

The bright blue is Punto Su Punto Filati Bamboo. Each ball has 137 yards for 1.75 ounces. It will be become a scarf.
This is the first bamboo, I have purchased. So, I am curious how it knits up.

The grey is Lace Mohair by Karabella yarns. It is 61% kid mohair, 8% wool, and 31% polymidic fiber (whatever that is). The ball has 540 yards for 1.75 ounces. I am thinking one of the scarfs out of Victorian Lace Today. The final decision will be made after checking yardages.

As you can see, the yarn inspector thinks the turquoise yarn is the best. She has to be watch. Really good yarn and fiber needs to be nipped which isn't permitted.

Rails and Dinosaurs, Oh My

Or our trip to Canon City, Colorado. We did not take many pictures. The planned event was a trip on the Royal Gorge Train. We chose the deluxe lunch trip in the domed car.

The dome cars use to roam Alaska before coming to Colorado. The one we were on had a Holland logo covered up. The cruise lines have been having a contest on who has the fanciest dome cars. Looks like the Royal Gorge Train got to pick these up as a result. Because of the curve of the windows and reflections, we didn't try to take any pictures while riding.


The depot is picture perfect. The brick work and roof look new. You pick your tickets up inside after strolling past the gift shop. We did look around and it turns out we have childish tastes. All the t-shirts, we like only come in children's sizes. It definitely saved us money.

The trip itself was about two and half hours long at an easy pace with salad, entree, and desert being served. The Cornish game hen and pork dish were delicious. We split a desert rather than both getting a full piece of cheese cake.

The next stop was Dinosaur Depot. Definitely, talk to the staff about the exhibits. It really adds to visit.

Dinosaur Depot is associated with the fossil bed where the Smithsonian and a couple of other museums got their big skeletons. You can look into the curator lab which is really neat.

Just one warning, the man eating dinosaur hangs out upstairs in the interactive, hands on area. Or should we say teeth on.

There are no photos for the fishing stop. You will just have to take Rudy's word that he caught and released ten, 7 inch to 11 inch, Brown trout.

On the way back via the road past Cripple Creek to Woodlawn Park, we saw some of the local wild life. The deer were feeding at 10 am. Usually, they are out at either dawn or dusk. It was nice to see them near the road. The ones closest to the road were spooked by the bright red car that zipped around. Guess deer viewing wasn't on their list of things to do.

Definitely, a pleasant weekend.

So, I Exagerated

I got around to reading the cookbook, "A Man, A Can, A Plan" and looking at all of the recipes. The highest calorie count is 841. Obviously, not over 1000 but it is still about half of my calories for a day. The winner on sodium was 2,613 mg of sodium. A quick check with American Heart Association mentions 2,400 mg limit for a healthy adult.

There are several recipes that are much more reasonable. There is one with 75 calories and 17o mg of sodium. I suspect a lot of the sodium is from the canned food and if frozen vegetables were used.

I still think we might try a couple of the recipes.

Sunday Shopping Spree

For some reason, we went on a shopping spree today. Maybe spending yesterday at home caused it. It was going to be simple expedition, Home Depot and a photo art show. We end up with five stops.

The first stop was Home Depot. This was required because the plastic nuts on the faucet we put in last September cracked the plastic nuts that tighten it down. One of them fell of while I was washing the Pie R Square shawl for blocking. We checked both nuts were cracked. We now have nylon nuts with washers to put on. These should last until the faucet breaks. While we were at Home Depot the gas grills were eyed. There is discussion about going back for one.

Stop number two was Black and Read, I was very restrained but could resist a cookbook. With a title like 'A Man, A Can, A Plan', I had to look at it. There actually are a couple of recipes suitable for us, low calorie, low fat, and not high in sodium. And then there are the crazy recipes with over 1000 calories per serving. At least you know what you are doing to yourself ahead of time. Since it is a used book, it was about half price and what's not to like about that.

Stop number three was the Fifth Annual Lone Tree Photographic Art Show & Sale. As art shows go we would be willing to have any number of the pictures in our house. The limiting factor is price. We did pick up a couple of prints that were matted but not framed.

The Strawberry Tree was stop number four. I haven't been there for years. I am not sure if it is two or three. Of course some yarn followed me home, two balls of bright blue bamboo, 1 grey ball of Karbella's Lace yarn, and an aqua blue skein of lace weight (~1500 yards). Got to chat with a couple of knitters I have seen for several months.

The last stop was supper at a new seafood restaurant, Bonefish Grill. We tried to go yesterday but it was an hour wait. By arriving at four, we were seated promptly and had a delicious meal.

Completed Stone Wall

It is a slight exaggeration, I haven't blocked the vest yet. The knitting is done and the ends are tucked in. So, here are a couple of pictures and the details. The pattern is out of Folk Vests with a couple of minor adjustments. The first adjustment was the gauge to hit the middle of large and extra large. It feels like it should work fine when blocked.

The picture here shows the back knit to the neck and the armholes at 17 inches rather than 16.5 inches. Right now this is the right length for tummy coverage.

The second picture shows the completed vest. It is just waiting for me to block it. The sweater dryer is free. I didn't want to block it today with the Dish guy running in and out of the basement which is where sweaters get to dry.

Amazingly enough, I actually used the yarn called for in the pattern. This rarely happens. The yarn is a dark blue Black Water Abbey yarn. I ended up with an extra skein. I recall buying an extra one years ago at the creative festival because I thought I might adjust the length a little.

Rudy has tried the vest on and thought it was alright. Always need to check these things before blocking and possibly fulling the yarn a bit.

And today while waiting for the Dish guy and then waiting around for him to complete the install, I dugout some bargain bin yarn. Three skeins of Bird of Paradise from France and one skein of Plymouth Yarn electra Italian Collection to be precise. They both call for size 7 needles so I put the size 15 tips on the 50 inch cable from my Denise Needles. Then I followed the Snuggler pattern out of Magical Knitting. It was done before the installation was complete. Turns out, it is a lot of work to install a satellite dish for TVs.

Since, I was rather pleased about how it turned out, I thought I would toss a picture of it on the post.

Pie R Done

I finished my Pie R Squared shawl. It is now drying which will take some time since the yarn is so thick and it is doubled.

The yarn is handspun from some fiber I bought at Brown Sheep a couple of years ago. I believe it is the top of the lamb and is mostly wool with some mohair. This is what happens you buy from 'the bulk bin' of fiber. I have heard they don't have boxes of fiber consisting of all the bits and parts they couldn't process because of some machine hiccup any more. Which is a shame because it is great stuff for learning.

The two ply yarn turned out bulky and I knit it on size 15 needles. The shawl is about 28 inches in length and used approximately 850 - 900 yards of the 1000 - 1150 yards of yarn. I didn't get a perfect count when winding the skeins into balls and lost some of my slips when knitting. I had tucked a slip of paper with the approximate yardage in each ball.

Rather than using a knit-on edge for the bind off I used a really loose bind off method from Stahman's Scarves and Shawls. It is also on a Elizabeth Zimmerman video and really easy. It is started by knitting two stitches, slide them back to the other needle, and knit together. Then knit one stitch, slide the two stitches back, knit two together. Repeat the last part until you are out of stitches. Pull the yarn through the last stitch. It is really stretchy and if I am not careful can look a little sloppy.

I believe the slight rippling on the edges is caused by the variations in the handspun.

My other recently finished item is a Christmas apron. I am not going to confess how long it was cut out. It is done now. There was bit more hand stitching than I had anticipated. The pocket hem and hem along the top are sewn by hand. The binding was interesting. It is cut as one piece, the ends are sewn together with with about 2 inches hanging out either end of the seam, and then it is cut with one long cut that spirals. Pictures would probably help but I didn't take any.

A DSL Day

We signed up for a bundle of T.V., high speed internet, and phone service. So far it has been a good reminder to get all the details ahead of time.

Things are definitely being setup piece by piece. Right now, I am trying to get all of the pieces for e-mail and a home page for our browser. The browser cheerfully hooks to the old service's customized home page which will be going away soon. If they don't have anything, I may set it my blog or google.

I definitely have all sorts of things hooked to e-mail. Looks like I will be switching for a long time. The only fly in the ointment so far is that we are going from 100 MBytes of storage to 10 MBytes of storage for each e-mail. I maybe making some adjustments such as getting a free e-mail address for managing some of the group mail I get or hogging a second mailbox.

Hooking the DSL up was fun. There were two sets of directions. I, of course, followed the wrong set and put the dual line conditioner on with the modem. The modem does its own line conditioning and just gets hooked to the phone jack and the phone gets connected to it. It only took a few hours for me to think of this. The phone line actually connects to our wire nest which involves a switch box. I still need to figure out if the answering machine picks up or not.

Other fun things will happen next weekend. Next weekend the dish gets installed. This was scheduled for last weekend but weather prevent it. Turns out, employees are not allowed on wet roofs. So, we are hoping for a dry day.

Also, we seem to have a bundle of features on our phone line now. Guess, I should try and figure them out. Who knows maybe the answering machine is out of a job for the next 12 months.