Britt's Blog

I am supposed to wash my sheets in hot water weekly on account of I am allergic to dust mites. (We will not discuss the actual frequency with which the sheets are washed.)

Usually Susan just runs away when the sheets-changing process begins, but not today.

Okay, this was done a while ago, but I wasn’t happy with the pictures I took, but i’m too lazy to take new ones, so here they are.

Here you can see our new bench, and the very attractive pillows we used as the inspiration for our color palette.

And here you have the best feature in our whole house, the awesome woodwork by the staircase. The new paint is much brighter than the gray that was previously on the back wall. And I think the cool color of the paint really makes the warm color of the woodwork pop.

So, the net result is that the woodwork stands out more and the foyer is a lot brighter, in a kinda chilled out aquatic way. Worth the effort, for sure.

My sister-in-law requested a hat and scarf for Christmas. Yes, I know this is rather late; see Grandma’s Shawl. In order to assuage my guilt, and also because I’m a big believer in overkill in general, I decided to make some mittens, too.

She has a silver coat and a black coat, so I thought some nice wintery blue or green would look good with both. I acquired some of my favorite yarn, Paton’s Classic, in Faded Denim.

I thought the Wavy Scarf designed by Sarah Smith and published at knitty.com would do nicely: very interesting but not too fancy for everyday.

A few tweaks: I was concerned what the edges would look like, so I added a stitch at either end, knit the last stitch of each row, and slipped the first stitch of each row. I also did a tubular cast on and tubular cast off, which took quite a bit of squinting and fiddling to work with a K3-P3 rib, but was well worth it. It looks awesome. Next time you do any project with a ribbed edge, try it!

After finishing the scarf, I was an expert at the Wavy Pattern, so the next logical step was to try it in the round, on the hat. Again, I did a tubular cast on (since it is awesome.) The decreasing at the top took some careful planning.

Finally, we come to the mittens. Again with the tubular cast-on (at which I am now an expert.) The wavy K3-P3 rib makes for a fine cuff. Because the merino isn’t superwash, it will felt up a bit when you get the wet and wear them and stuff. (Shoveling snow is an excellent mitten-felting activity.) As a result they’ll actually take on some shape and develop handedness (i.e. the left mitten will fit funny on your right hand.) That being the case, I decided to give them a distinct palm and back, and ergo a distinct handedness, by continuing the wavy pattern up the back of the hand only. (Doing it all the way around would start to get a little crazy in the thumb gussets, anyway.) I did a 180° phase shift between the left and right so they’d be symmetrical. (For non-math-nerds, that means I started in the middle of the wave pattern on the right-hand mitten.) They look a little flat and goofy without a hand in them, but very nice on:

The smell of wet sheep… about a hundred rust-free T pins… It can only mean one thing: a blocking is afoot.

Or under foot, as the case may be.

Yes, it’s that magical moment when the ruffly, lumpy, entirely dubious-looking object becomes flat, and smooth, and geometrical.

Of course, Susan was on hand to help with the unpinning.

The basic pattern is the famous Elizabeth Zimmerman Pi Shawl from Knitting Workshop. I pretty much winged the eyelet patterns as I went along, and the edging is the “Openwork Edging” from the inimitable Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

The light pink wool is hand-painted 100% merino. (The saleswoman at Unique Yarns said brightly “We usually use it for socks!” but who makes socks they have to hand wash???) I ran out of the pink, and since I had bought every single skein that Unique Yarns had, and since we were headed for Janesville anyway, I dragged J into Dragonfly Yarn to procure the dark pink angora and the cream Cascade Heritage (which as a 75/25 superwash merino/nylon would make a perfectly sensible sock). Jason as always gets props for his eagle-eye for perfect color combos.

Tomorrow the shawl becomes a Christmas present for my grandma.

I think I might have left my camera cable in Ohio. That’s the last time I remember using it, anyway. But we were at CompUSA yesterday, because Jason had to send in his laptop for some repairs, and I found a nice retractable 5-pin-to-USB cable, by Belkin, for $12.99 or something. As you can see, it works pretty good. I haven’t hardly used my camera since we got out here, so I’m going to have to go around and take some pictures, both arty ones and just some picks of the apartment, and where I work, so you guys can get the full Britt-and-J-in-Beloit experience, visually, at least.

First things first: HUGE THANKS to Dan, Scott & Laurie, Howard, and John & JP Hayes for help moving! You guys all rock, and we are so very grateful for your help and good spirits.

The Pod departed this morning.

We got things cleaned up and packed the car, and John and JP carted unspeakable amounts of crap to the Tompkins County Solid Waste Center.

We doped up the cat, and jumped into the car and took off around 3. We then proceeded to impliment our Clever Plan, which was to get to Ohio, and find a pet-friendly hotel to check into for the night. I had already done my research, consulting petswelcome.com to find pet-friendly chains.

The Clever Plan got off to a moderately rocky start when we crossed the border to Ohio, and realized that the list was packed underneath some stuff. (Everything in the car is packed underneath other stuff. It seems topologically impossible, but I assure you, it is true.) So we stopped a the first Ohio rest stop to dig the list out. While visiting the facilities, I found a handy-dandy Ohio Travel Coupon Guide, which, awesomely enough, had hotels listed by interstate. Based on petswelcome’s libelous insinuation that Comfort Inn & Suites was pet-friendly, I pulled out ye olde trusty cell phone and tried the first Comfort Inn, which a) Did not allow pets and b) Was full.

Bastards!

However, in the handy-dandy OTCG (as I like to call it), we found an ad for a Super 8 that said Pets Welcome! Yee haw, we’re in business. We called for a reservation, and we were all set.

Then we approached the exit. Which was, naturally, in the middle of a construction zone. In about the right place, we saw signs for an exit to some highway… but the highway number meant nothing to us, and there was no actual exit number and we thought, surely if this was our exit, there would have to be an exit number on the signage, right? But as we blew past at 70 mph, we saw, that as the temporary exit wound off off in the hazy distance, it did eventually connect up with our exit number.

Frustrating, but a minor problem, right? As we were taught by our driver’s ed instructors in high school, we went on to the next exit so we could turn around and head back and catch the exit from the other direction. But, as we exited the freeway we found…

*drumroll*

A huge ugly accident. Firetrucks, police cars, the K-9 unit, flares, and a small car filled with circus clowns. The whole nine yards.

We asked an officer on the scene for directions, and this is where we get down on our knees and thanked the Powers That Be for placing the Global Positioning System in the sky, because the detour was scary, long, dark, and, of course, unmarked.

But, by the grace of GPS, we found our way back onto the highway and back to the right exit and found our hotel.

Despite having been so plastered that she lay down in the small water bowl we put in her cat carrier and got her tummy all wet, Susan has come down off the drugs, and after hiding in the recliner (trust our cat, Feline Genius, to find the least safe place in the room to hide in) she has finaly begun to slink about. Remember, Susan’s Rule of New Places #1: If your belly is never more than 1.5 inches off the floor, nothing bad can possibly happen to you.