Behind, too tired and busy for a real post.

I have lots of things I could be posting, but I am very busy and tired, so I will stick with this:

You *can* check a stand mixer if you are flying (Don't look at me like that--*of course* I didn't pay full price for it. Why do you think I was trying to get the damn thing from Philly to Minneapolis on a plane?). Just expect the TSA to thoroughly inspect it. (I think they were jealous.)

Learning something new

I can post this now, because my friend M. has received her birthday present.



I learned how to knit toe-up socks! The pattern is Oktoberfest, knit on US1 DPNs. I did fewer leg repeats than the pattern calls for because I was running out of yarn. Next time I might go up a needle size for the ribbing--it is a little bit inflexible. It is fine once the sock is on, but it is hard to get the sock on.



I like this pattern because it is a visual joke, but not so novelty that they are not practical to wear.

Happy Brithday, M.!

A Milestone

So, a little over a month ago I *may* have turned 30. On Easter, in fact. Matter-Eater Lad and I took the new car and drove up to Duluth, since we never had before. It was cold, but lovely and sunny, which made for a nice drive up there.

We saw the lift bridge:



Sand dunes:


Lake Superior, which was still frozen for quite a distance out from shore:


Elmo joined us.


He pensively regarded the surf:


Mugged for the camera:


And tried to eat the lighthouse:


(Shut up. *We* were *very* amused.)

Matter-Eater Lad also got me this for my birthday. It is absolutely *beautiful*. The artwork alone makes this edition worth it.

My family got together and sent me the money to pick out my very own kayak. I finally chose it and bought it last night (I'll tell y'all about the fun of trying to find a place to put the front strap hooks of a kayak car carrier on a Mazda 3 for a trip that *must* include a high-speed highway another time):



Please note that Elmo helped test out the kayak:

(And let us pause to note how great the grass looks. That part of the lawn was a sand pit and landscaping rocks when we bought the house 3 1/2 years ago--the previous owners had an above-ground pool. Getting rid of the rocks and getting topsoil and seeding the grass was just *so much* work.)


It was a good birthday. And being 30 is really exactly like being 29 so far.

More on the Dragon Socks.

So, I feel that I should post better pictures of the Dragon socks. The yarn is Fleece Artist sock in Moss. I used US size 0 DPNs (oh, how I love the Knit Picks DPNs). The pattern is more or less Child' First Sock (I disagreed with the heel. Stridently. So I changed it.) from Knitting Vintage Socks.

Socks in progress:




At this point in the construction, Matter-Eater Lad decided that these socks look very much like something Aquaman would wear. I was amused, but not as much as he was. He proceeded to ask for an orange sweater in this stitch pattern so that he could look like Aquaman. I said no, because I am not doing that much work for something I know he would never wear.

Finished socks:



I very much like how they came out. I will have to knit some for myself once I finish my sister's wedding veil. Which will go faster once I have started knitting my sister's wedding veil. I may have started a simple pair of stockinette socks while I am waiting . . . .

Actually, I would like to start a subscription.

Bush apologist James Lileks' inane Star Tribune column about nothing (seriously, it is always vague commentary about Target ads or some such thing, and referred to as "humor") was cancelled recently, because the paper wants him to report actual news. Please note that his actual column is not political, and it is a kind of humor column that is horribly outdated. There is a huge uproar in the right-wing portion in the blogosphere about how horrible this is. They are encouraging people to cancel their Strib subscriptions.

My reaction? I have lived in Minneapolis for five years, and I have never paid for home delivery. I get most of my news online. I picked up the phone and ordered home delivery.

I told everyone that I spoke to that it was because they cancelled Lileks' column.

The column itself was a waste of space, but more than that, the ten seconds a day it took him to write the column and get paid for it allowed him the leisure to write here (look to past posts for political stuff). And that is what the right-wing blogosphere is upset about; the Strib is not going to be subsidizing Lileks' political commentary any more. If he were a political columnist, I might understand the uproar. Lileks is free to write anything he wants on his website if he has the free time once he has a real job, just like anyone else in America.

I also sent this email to the Reader's Rep:

Ms. Parry—

I want to congratulate the Star Tribune for getting rid of some dead weight. James Lileks' column should have been cancelled years ago.

Upon hearing the news, I subscribed to home delivery.

Regards,

Kate

************Edited to add************

Please note that I don't think this is some sort of wonderful journalistic advance on the part of the Strib. Getting rid of all of the columnists isn't good journalism, it's just cheaper for them. Lileks is far from the only one that this is happening to--and that is part of my point. That, and the right-wing gnashing of teeth, along with Lileks' asking people to contact the reader's rep on his part just annoyed me enough that it was worth less than $20 of my money to make a point of doing exactly the opposite thing.

SOCKS!

So, I am not so much with the posting lately. I have a ton of photos and stories, but I have just been completely swamped at work, and when I don't take lunch, I don't get to post. I have been knitting, though. I knit these lovelies out of Sweet Georgia in Summer Skin for my Mother-in-Law for her birthday (the color is a little bit off, and I couldn't try them on because my MIL has *tiny* feet):




The pattern is, I believe, the beaded rib from Knit Sensational Socks (no time to get all linky today).

I also picked up some Fleece Artist that The Yarnery brought by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's talk. One skein was the moss or fern colorway (too busy to look it up), very pretty, kind of what I think of as dragon green. Then my friend, who has a dragon thing, got sick, and I discovered that Child's First Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks looks very much like scales. I therefore made my friend dragon socks. For various reasons I had to frog the first sock twice before I liked how it turned out:




I haven't uploaded the finished pix yet, but you get the idea.

You know how I was bemoaning the lack of cherry blossoms in my vicinity? Sundara (search for Sundara yarns, she comes up) dyed this as a limited edition in April:


Cherry Blossom yarn!

It made me very happy.