The Further Adventures of Ms. Bumble

If you've been following my misadventures with the Celtic sweater, you know I've done an extraordinary amount of frogging!

Last night, I got to the bottom of the pocket shaping, and I was having so much fun with the knot I was putting on the side of the sweater that I didn't notice right away that somehow, I managed to wind up with one front that was considerably wider than the other front.

I blame it on the arithmetic. I was always bad at arithmetic. 

So, now I have to analyze it and figure out where I went wrong. After that, there will be some more frogging!

This is what distracted me. I kept holding it up to admire every few rows, while not looking at the fronts at all.

I suspect I'm going to have to frog the back section and one front section. Possibly everything back to the waist.

But the yarn for some Christmas presents will distract me from all this with it's arrival soon. I can show some of what I'll be making because the person already knows about it (he picked the color).

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In other news, the new needle case for my Options needles is done and will be mailed out sometime today. I'm very excited about this!

LunaStitch has some great needle cases if you have Options needles, and knitting bags, etc., plus a few other kinds of cases. She's gotten very popular lately, so if you see something you want, grab it right away, because if you don't, it'll be gone when you go back for it.

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We're having our usual crammed full of SF Monday tonight. As usual, SciFi is showing four episodes of Lost, and NBC is showing Chuck, Heroes, and My Own Worst Enemy.

Have a great Monday!

Quiet Saturday

I've only taken a few photos with my new camera to test it out, but I thought you might like to see some of them.

Here's a photo of a gargoyle that Steve gave me for Christmas in 1999. I really love this little gargoyle.



We've had cloudy, rainy days most of this week. I was hoping to get a chance to take some photos of the full moon because my camera has a long lens and I should be able to get some good shots. But we've had complete cloud cover all the time that it's been near full. Last night, the ceiling was at zero feet.

But things started to clear late in the afternoon, and the sky looked like this.

Right after that  picture was taken, the TV started displaying tornado warnings for my area. Actually, the warning expired at 7:20 local time, and they were still showing warnings at 9:30. You know Comcast. Anything to make a problem for viewers. They can take a public service (like announcing a storm warning) and turn it into a public nuisance.

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I still haven't gotten to the bottom of the pocket openings on the Celtic Sweater, but I decided to put another Saint John's cross on each side in the shaping instead of the generic knotwork I put there the first time. Photos tomorrow when I get some daylight to work with. I have a flash, but natural light is so much better.

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The BBC in America showed a rerun of the first episode of Primeval. They'll be showing it again tomorrow in case you missed it the first time around.

They also showed a rerun of the latest Christmas episode of Doctor Who, and the first episode with Donna Noble, Partners in Crime.

Hope you're having a great weekend!

Fun Day!

I woke up later than I intended yesterday, and scrambled out of here to get to the dentist.

Once I was in the chair, he said it was going to be a "fun day." What he meant by that was that he was going to clean my teeth.

Well, maybe I missed something along the way, but tooth cleaning was never very high on my list of fun things to do. I can never imagine myself saying "Hey, guys, let's cancel that tour or Europe! My dentist has agreed to clean my teeth!"

The other fun thing he had in store was letting me in on his plan for getting my teeth in shape. This will take four visits. He'll start with fixing all the teeth on one side. Then it's time for all the teeth on the other side. Finally, he's going to get around to doing the work that's going to be more and more unlikely to be successful the longer it gets put off. This doesn't seem very logical to me. It seems to me that it would be more constructive to do it in the opposite order.

He will be taking out some (but not all) of my metal fillings and replacing them with a composite material. This may turn out to be a really good thing. The dentist keeps insisting that the metal fillings (including mercury) could not possibly have a negative impact on my health. I really don't understand why dentists do that. It seems to me that putting something toxic in your mouth isn't a good idea, and I don't need an "expert" telling me that it's OK to realize that it's got to be bad for me.

So, anyway, I got a flu shot on Wednesday, then followed it up by getting up early, going to the dentist (after taking a Valium plus some antibiotic) and getting my teeth cleaned. By the time I got home on the bus, it was about the time that I usually wake up. I was in a daze. I went back to sleep.

I still feel like I'm dazed from it all.

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But I do have some more photos from last weekend's trip to Baltimore, courtesy of my sister, Lynn.

Here I am at the train museum.

And another photo of me on the water taxi.

 Holly's turn for a photo at the train museum.

Holly and I on the dock, waiting for the water taxi.

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I've gotten back to the Celtic sweater, and am now down to the bottom of the pockets on the front. I still have to do the back and sides to catch up to the front. The pockets are diagonal, and the two front sections are knit, followed by the pocket linings, sides and back in one piece. When I get all three pieces to the bottom of the pockets, it will be joined again, and then all I'll have is to knit down to the bottom. Well, and then the pocket linings, which won't be knit below the join. Sewing involved will include sewing down the pocket linings and tacking the button loops down. The way it's knit, the loop crosses itself, which makes it want to pop up three dimensionally rather than lay flat. There will be a few stitches to flatten it. Then there will be only blocking and sewing the buttons on. If I do actually sew them on. I'm thinking that I might prefer to sew them to backer buttons and put them through the knit. Then they'll be removable for washing. 

It'll be good to have this finished. Finally.

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I got a call from John last night, and helped him make decisions about the appearance of the menus for the DVD. It was fun.

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Tonight we have a new Ghost Whisperer, Stargate Atlantis, and Sanctuary. The last two are on SciFi. Check your local listings!

Have a great weekend!

It's Here! It's Here!

The extra printer cartridges came the other day, but the printer and camera all arrived today.

Well, that's not exactly true. The camera arrived at the building I live in, but they wouldn't give it to me because I checked for it after 4:30. If you get a package, you have to pick it up at their convenience or wait until the next day (at their convenience).

So, I already knew the camera was there (no mail yesterday because it was Veterans Day, and this was shipped via courier), and went down early to pick it up.

Which turned out to be a good thing because they were doing flu shots this morning, and I forgot about it. So, because I was up and out, I got my flu shot today.

None of it is completely operational yet. I put an SD card in it from my little camera and tested it. It works. It comes with a book to read, and I've just skimmed the beginning, so there's a lot to do there.

The printer will involve lots of moving things around and rearranging furniture, so it may not be up and running for a couple of days. Maybe three days. I have a dental appointment tomorrow. I suspect that between the length of time of the work the dentist is doing and the bus rides, plus time to lay down and take a nap when the Novocaine wears off, it's going to take up the whole day.

I may just set it on the floor and plug it in to test it, and then move it where I want it later.

I kept thinking of it as a bulky commercial Xerox machine, but it's actually much smaller. The listing said that there was only one set of ink cartridges included, but I thought I saw two when I started to unpack. It's not completely out of the box yet, so I should wait until I get it running before I say anything about it.

I also have to go to the library. I wanted to get that done, and went yesterday. I didn't remember that the library is closed on Veterans Day until I got there. So, I still have to go today.

I'm currently reading Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones, and it's very good! It's a modern retelling of the ancient story of Tam Lin, who is captured by the fairies, who later plan to sacrifice him to hell, and how he's saved by his girlfriend, Janet (or in this case, Polly).

The story starts with Polly at the age of 19, remembering things that happened to her when she was 10 years old. She meets a man named Thomas Lynn, and they become friends and start inventing fantasies together. Things get a bit more stressed-out when the fantasies start coming true, causing some scary moments. I read this book a while ago, and loved it. I'm loving it all over again this time.

I have to go. There's so much to do today!

Have a great evening!

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RED ALERT! RED ALERT!

This post has been modified to add this information:

There's a cool article about the new Steve Canyon DVD that John and I have been working on!

See the new art large, here!

I'm so excited!

Happy Veterans Day!

Happy Veterans Day!

For some reason, when I went to sleep last night, I really checked out. Usually I wake up at least three times and get a drink/run to the bathroom/whatever, and then go back to sleep. I barely woke up at 7 am, and then was out cold until 1 pm. But I feel much better than I have for a while. It really helped me get over all the walking this past weekend.

When I woke, I checked my phone and found a message from John. There was one more tiny change on the DVD art. Apparently, when you have something round and flat, it's called a disK. Unless it's a DVD. Then, it's called a disC. So all the PDFs had to be done over again and uploaded again, which is very time consuming, even though the actual change only took a couple of minutes.

But it's really done! 

And if you've been able to keep track of how many times I've said that and been wrong, you're better than me.

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Now, to get back to the topic of yesterday which was the Stitches East trip!

Actually, the part that's left, Sunday, didn't include Stitches, but the first photo is from Saturday, of a ship in dock next to the Tourist Center.

Spiffy, huh?

After a big breakfast, we went to the B&O Railroad Museum,  as you can easily see from the photo below.

We had a ride on one of the trains, and walked around the museum, which is mostly in the old roundhouse.

After the train ride, we stopped to check out the model railroad in back of the roundhouse.

And here's Lynn walking around the grounds.

I think mostly that we just didn't want to say goodbye to each other, but we did.

So, all in all, it was a wonderful trip!

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Wow! As usual on Monday night, there was a boatload of good stuff on TV! There's still stuff on my DVR that I haven't watched.

Tonight, we have Fringe (it's NEW!) and The Mentalist (naturally, on at the same time), followed by Eli Stone! Check your TV guide.

Have a great Tuesday!

Stitches Was a Blast!

What a trip!

I'll start from the beginning, and only cover Saturday because I have so many photos! You'll get more photos tomorrow.

Holly and I were severely delayed by traffic on Friday afternoon and evening. Lynn waited for us before having dinner, and was starving. Sorry, Lynn!

But we had delicious food and, best of all, great company for dinner. Holly just got a new G1 phone, and showed it off to both of us. She handed it to me when I got in the car, and made me get it to give her directions to the hotel (with some stiff help from Lynn, who said that we really wanted to drive to the parking garage, not the hotel). The garage entrance was on the other side of the building, and with so many one-way streets, it involved some driving to get there.

I got to show off the new set of Options needles that Holly bought me for my birthday, too.

We went back to our suite, which was really a small apartment, complete with kitchen! A great place to stay! We watched some TV and talked a bit, and generally had a good time.

Saturday morning, we had breakfast, and caught the water taxi.


This was just so much fun, and a wonderful way to see the inner harbor!

Here are some photos of Holly and Lynn on the water taxi:





And here is a photo of one of  the sights we saw and took photos of:

Blogger is being stingy with letting me upload photos, so there will be more later.

When we arrived at Stitches Marketplace, we sat and watched the fashion show witch was just beginning, and then wandered the market and saw the sights. Wow! So many neat things to buy. I could've spent $1,000 there, if I'd had it.

There were so many places that had great shawl pins (penannulars), I would have loved to buy several. And I finally got to see and feel some Malabrigo yarn up close. I'm in love! I loved all their yarns, but couldn't walk away from the silky merino. More on that coming up.

As it was, my loot was much more modest. I lost my ugly pink counter, and replaced it from the Mannings. 

Holly bought some square single point wooden needles last year at Stitches and some at the Sheep and Wool Festival, and reported that she liked them. I don't really seem to like wooden needles, and all the ones I'd seen were in larger sizes than I usually knit with. Although the square shape intrigued me, and I wanted to try them, the wood and size discouraged me. At Stitches, I saw some small, square, metal, sock needles, and thought about buying them, but thought it was a shame that they didn't have them in circular needles. Well, a few shops later, I found them in circular needles! I bought a pair of size three needles in the 24 inch length. They have a copper finish, and the cables are absolutely floppy! I haven't tried them yet. The points don't look like they're a sharp as I usually like, but I'm reserving judgement until I try them.


And I just couldn't resist the silky wool. The color is called London Sky, and is not quite as bright as the photo makes it look on my screen. It's a softer color, a bit grayer and more lavender than it looks on the screen. I have several ideas for what I might want to make with it, and haven't decided yet.

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I'll leave Sunday during the day for tomorrow, but I finally finished all the art for volume one of the Complete Steve Canyon on TV DVD last night, and got it all sent off to John.

I expect to start on volume two real soon, now, but for just a few breaths, it's done and caught up. John is getting the last little bit of the extras finished, and will be scrambling to get it all to the printer, but as soon as he gets a moment to catch his breath, he'll be putting up a post with more information. Check for it at the above link later.

This is so exciting!

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There will be the usual four hours of Lost on the SciFi Channel tonight, and Chuck, Heroes and My Own Worst Enemy on NBC tonight.

Have a great day!

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PS-- John just called and said we forgot something on the cover. It's not over!