Fall Fiber Fest Aftermath

I'll bet you're all ready to see all the beautiful things I got at the Fall Fiber Fest.

Well, we didn't go.

It was a combination of a lot of things. The bad economy, Holly being low on money due to the new Hummer, the current cost of gas combined with the distance to the Festival, and the torrential rains that happened earlier in the week coupled with our vivid memories of the muddy mess that ensued a few years ago after two days of light rain.

But, in an effort to make up for it all, the universe managed to time my brand new Herrshner's Fall Yarn Sale catalog to arrive on Saturday. So, I had a lot of great yarn to look at! I'd gotten Herrshner's catalogs a few years ago, and thought they only had a poor selection of yucky acrylic yarns, but two years ago, they sent me their Fall Yarn Sale catalog, and I discovered they have lots of wool, alpaca, and many other yarns with natural fibers in them. Not to mention some acrylic yarns that are really nice!

I got my order in today, and if you're interested, check it out. I ordered some Bernat Mosaic yarn, and they're already sold out of some of the colors. I thought I'd have a tough time deciding between their ambrosia colorway and mosaic, but the ambrosia is sold out, so there wasn't much of a choice.

This is the ambrosia colorway:

This is what it looks like made up.

Here's Mosaic, the color I did order:

Here's how it looks made up:

I think I'm going to like it. The only problem with it will be trying to let go of it so that I can give it to someone else as a Christmas present!

They had some yarn I bought to trim Christmas stockings, too.

I got some in the lavender (shown), black and white.

I also, finally, ordered the 16 inch size 7 Addi lace needles! The listing on Herrshner's says the size of the needles, but doesn't say the length. I called up the store and asked them, and the guy I talked to was reading the listing, and assured me that they are 16 inches. Then he said "Holy cow! Those are almost 17 dollars!" I told him that was why I wanted to be sure!

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Holly had surgery on her leg today, and planned to go to work afterward. She just called to tell me that it had gone well, and that afterwards she was so stressed out that she decided to call in sick today. She was at a restaurant with Robin when she called and planned to go home and start the cowl that she's supposed to make for the retreat in. The one she hasn't started yet! Oh, and she planned to watch a football game, too. That should be relaxing.

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An all new Chuck will be on tonight! And a new Castle!

I apologize for saying that there was an episode of Human Target on Friday. My digital TV Guide said that there was up until it recorded House on Friday evening. I hate it when they do that!

Have a fun evening tonight!

Belated Oscar Notes

I watched the Oscars on Sunday, and noticed something very interesting. There was a woman nominated for best actress, and she looked so familiar, but I couldn't place her. Neil Gaiman tweeted about her, and things finally clicked. His daughter, Maddy was the one who put it all together. Carey Mulligan is the actress who played Sally Sparrow in the Doctor Who episode, Blink, one of my all-time favorite Doctor Whos!

Below, you can see how she looked in Blink, before she got her head mowed.

I love Sandra Bullock, and I'm glad she got an Oscar, but by the time they announced the winner, I was rooting for Carey.

Being a ground-breaking woman's rights person who campaigned by living a life full of things women supposedly weren't able to do, I was also happy to see that a woman got an Oscar for directing.

Some of the other awards seemed to go to the picture rather than the person, though. Maybe that's just me, and I can't really say that I could judge fairly because I didn't see most of the movies that had people nominated for working on them.

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The Legend of the Seeker will be back for a third season, although where it will be shown is still up in the air. Locally, I can watch it on the CW on Sunday nights, but if you're local, or watch it on the CW, you should know that they frequently list a different episode than they actually show (at least on the Comcast digital TV guide).

In the new show that was on last week (and, due to a mix-up, again this week), Zed has frozen some people and is describing them so that his crew can impersonate them. He describes the man as being "formidable." Richard says "He doesn't look like a fighter." and Zed says he's not, he's got a way with the ladies and describes him as "his reputation is not the only thing that preceeds him into a room!"

Lost is on again tonight! As usual, a recap of last week, and then the new episode. The recaps are excellent, because they add notes about things you might have missed.

The season finale for White Collar is also on tonight! It promises to be the best yet, which is saying something!

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Back near the end of last month, I ordered some great yarn from Herrshners. Everything seemed to go through just fine, and I've been running downstairs to check to see if it's arrived every day lately. Well, it's been a while, and I was starting to wonder what happened to the yarn.

At this point, I still don't know what happened, but it apparently didn't go through, and I'm very disappointed! It seemed to go through, and I got a confirmation email from Herrshners (which has since disappeared), and now that I go back and check for the charge from my checking account, it's not there.

I am very, very disappointed!

The worst part of all this is that I had a ball of it left from another project, and started knitting a project which will be a present for someone who reads this blog, so I can't talk about it here. But I've knit all the yarn I have, and have been waiting for the additional yarn.

This particular yarn has been discontinued, and I love the yarn, so I'm sad about that, but it is possible to find it here and there on line. I ordered some today, but it's not as inexpensive as what I originally ordered.

Back to waiting for it!

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I found a fabulous infrared photo of Cassiopeia on line today! You have to check this out!

Please click the link and go to NASAs website to find lots of other neat photos!

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I think today is the warmest day we've had here so far this year. I really need to get off the internet and get outside!

I hope things are going as well for you as they are for me!

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Addition:

Read about the knitting soldiers! His blog is here.

And the most important news of all: the second chapter of Jim Butcher's book Changes is out today! Changes is the latest book in the Dresden Files series and is due out in April.

New Knitting Product!

Yesterday, while I was out, I picked up my mail. Tuesday, the mailbox was full of trash. I sorted through it and it all went in the trash can. But yesterday, I got a pile of catalogs, including a special sale yarn catalog from Herrshners!

Now, I used to get some catalogs from them in the mail, and they had a lot of stuff for cross stitchers, paint-by-numbers, and a few, junky acrylic yarns. Well, asking for their catalog is a good deal because from time to time, they have big yarn sales and those catalogs have some really nice yarn, and some of it at amazing prices!

Well, I paged through it quickly last night, but then looked at it again today, which is when I noticed that they had a new product for sale. As it turns out, they've sold out of most of it, but Jimmy Beans Wool has the same thing at the same price.

The new product is Regia ABS Latex, which is intended to go on the soles of slipper socks or the palms of knitted mittens, gloves and mitts! It's available in black, blue and red, and there is a stencil to create interesting and decorative designs with it. The drop down menu has the other colors and the stencil, which also has some flower designs that you can't see in the photo.

The hearts and the star are great, and the cat paws are just too cute. The flowers are very pretty, but I have no idea why someone would want to put a car on the bottom of their sock or palm of a mitten. I suspect that if this works, I'll want to make a whole stencil that has several shapes with overall dimensions that are perfect for a mitten/glove/mitt palm. A group of stars for me, hearts for Holly, Kyle and Malaia, and maybe rows of dots or wavy lines for other traction situations.

There is a pamphlet available that comes with it on other sites, but that wasn't mentioned at Jimmy Beans. I ordered it anyway, because that was the only place that had it. I desperately wanted to order one each of the colors, but since it's approximately $12 each, that would have been $36 plus shipping. Also, the frugal part of me wants to try it out before ordering two more colors. So, since I'm about to make some red mitts for a friend, and am almost finished the stigmata mittens for Robin (which have a red mark on the palm) I opted for the red latex, even though I may not have anything else to use it on. By the way, the stigmata mittens have a matching crown of thorns hat, both of which are threatening to turn into WIPs in the bad sense.

So, anyway, the order is in, and I can't wait for it to arrive! I'll let you know how it goes.

I tried the puff paint that was suggested to the Yarn Harlot for the bottoms of her felted shoes, but it didn't seem to provide much traction. It's chief feature was the texture that it provided, but I can't imagine it actually would prevent you from sliding on a slippery floor or help you grip a steering wheel.

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More knitting news about an episode of NCIS. The person who wrote the article is (obviously) a knitter and has gone ballistic (I would, too) about an episode which has someone killed using a knitting needle on a plane!

First of all, as any knitter who has flown would know, they won't let you take those kinds of knitting needles on a plane! And (I didn't see the episode) the killer is apparently not a knitter. So where did he get the needle? How did he know a knitter would be on board?

I can understand that the show might not want to keep a knitter on as a consultant, but you would think that they might ask a knitter before considering putting on a show like this.

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January is Thyroid Awareness Month. You may be getting tired about hearing about this, unless you have read the list of symptoms. It's estimated that over 40% of Americans have hypothyroidism. If you've been having strange, nebulous symptoms or have been told by a doctor that there's nothing wrong with you, you should read the symptoms. Then go to your doctor with a list of the symptoms you have and demand a (T3 and T4) test (if you have many of the symptoms).

Apparently, there was something on TV today about it. They didn't cover the subject fairly, but they did a better job than most, from what I heard. I missed the actual broadcast.

But you can read about it here!

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While we're on the subject of health, check out this post about drugs you might not need! OK, I can understand that a pre-disease might not be a disease, but it does seem to be common sense to try to prevent it from becoming worse and developing into a disease. However, taking Fosamax is very counterproductive!

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Now that I've gotten completely off my usual track, I'm going skipping off into the sunset, while wishing you a wonderful evening! Have fun!

Catch-Up

I'm sorry I haven't posted much lately. There's been so much happening.

I went to the Fall Fiber Fest on Saturday, and I'll have to write about that in another post because I have had so much happening and not enough time to write about it.

The apartment complex I live in ripped out my whole kitchen yesterday (that's right, nothing but walls left at one point) and put in a whole new one. That means that I had to remove everything from the entire kitchen on Monday! There was a lot more in that kitchen than I had thought there was! It took me hours to package everything and drag it into the living room on Monday! I didn't want to start the moving project early because then the kitchen would have been unusable for making or finding food, and since I had grossly underestimated how much was actually there, it was almost 5 am before I got a chance to get to sleep.

Lucky for me, I woke up at a bit before 8 am (after a generous three hours of sleep) to let the workmen in. Then I had to get ready to get out of here at 9 to catch the bus. Well, I missed it, but I caught the next one and got to my dentist's appointment precisely, on the dot on time rather than a bit early.

Once I got there, I was disappointed to discover that they planned to clean my teeth rather than start on fixing the two that have a problem in the front.

I've had my teeth cleaned before, and usually wind up with the area where the teeth and gums meet being a little irritated by the process, but this time, I went out of there with my whole mouth sore. Most of the damage seems to have been done by the back of the tool pressing or rubbing on other parts of my mouth. I have a big sore spot next to my tongue!

Then, I used my day pass for the bus to go to WalMart to get a lot of stuff, but especially the calcium and mineral pills I need. Well, they had all the other stuff, but not the calcium, which is what I really needed right away, and what I have to find somewhere else immediately. I'm disappointed!

Oh, and I noticed that they don't carry Simply Soft Eco yarn anymore! I'm really disappointed with that, too! They do have Simply Soft back again (at a significantly higher price than they did have), but this particular WalMart never had a good selection of either, and the situation has only gotten worse.

I was thinking about knitting a scarf with some beads on it, and checked their selection, and found some very interesting beads there. I may ultimately buy the beads for the scarf from them.

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When I got home from the FFF, I found a catalog from Herrshners in the mail! That wouldn't usually be cause for rejoicing, but this is their special Annual Fall Yarn Sale issue, and they have some wonderful yarns! Yes, yes, I know that their usual catalog shows lots of Red Heart Super Saver and other such junk, but (previously unknown to me) they actually carry a lot of yarn that's made of wool, silk, and other wonderful fibers! I had no idea!

They had Moda Dea Silk'n Wool for $1.99 per ball! Unfortunately, with the stuff going on with the kitchen, I didn't call them right away to order, and they sold out of all the colors except pink by the time I called today. But there's so much stuff in the catalog I want at great prices that I'm going to have to rethink and regroup and place an order for something else.

I just looked at the yarn sale page that I put a link for above, and found the Moda Dea Sassy Stripes (I want some in the color Swish) yarn I wanted on sale for about $3 per ball instead of $5 (I'm rounding off). Which reduces the cost of the yarn for a whole sweater from about $75 to about $45! The shipping for that would be $11. I'm really tempted! The question is: can I afford it?

This is the yarn (in the same color) that I used to make the hat/scarf/mittens/boot topper set shown here:

I love this set! And I would really love to have a sweater from the same yarn. Yes, I know it's acrylic, but it's so pretty! And it would look so good with the Celtic knot sweater that is almost finished that I did last Winter! Here's a detail photo of that sweater:

The yarn is actually an off white color with tweedy neps in light and dark blue. I really have to finish this!

Soon!

I'd like to Knit the Sassy Stripes yarn in the pattern from Custom Knits that looks like this:

I would want to make the neckline much higher, with a little less negative ease, and make it a bit longer and add pockets, but this is the basic idea.

I'm also interested in the Red Heart Heart & Sole yarn in the color Rustica. I'd like to make a scarf (with beads), hat and mitts out of this. The Faded Jeans color is pretty, too, and I even like the Antique Rose colorway, in spite of the fact that I'm not really into pink. Enough of it to make all that would be about $28, plus about $10 shipping.

Decisions, decisions.

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Warning: Spoilers! Do not proceed unless you have already seen Stargate Universe!

I did get to see Stargate Universe on Friday, and I said I'm going to do a review of it, so here goes:

On Friday, SyFy aired the premiere two hours of Stargate Universe. The episode was titled Air, and was intended to be broken into two one-hour episodes (even though they were shown back-to-back as if it was one episode), so it was actually Air, Part 1 and Air Part 2. We'll be getting to see Air, Part 3 on Friday. I was beginning to wonder if they'd all be titled Air, but looking ahead on the schedule, I find that, no, they will have other titles.

The two episodes were very different. In the case of the second one, this was a relief.

Part 1 looks like it was probably a dynamite story when it was written and performed! Then it looks like a network executive got hold of it and decided that it wasn't exciting enough, so they butchered it.

I was timing some of this, and discovered that the commercials were only lasting about three or four minutes, but that the show in between was lasting for about five minutes before the next commercial. Which means that they really crammed every minute of commercials into it that they possibly could. I'm guessing that there was between 20 and 25 minutes of commercials in that hour. Possibly more.

If it had started with Eli Wallace solving the puzzle in the video game and then having General O'Neil show up on his doorstep, it would have been the best opening I've ever seen of a new show!

But I'm sure some network exec (and in this context, "exec" means "blithering idiot") thought that it didn't have enough action in the beginning, so they put people flying out of a Stargate and landing on each other and sustaining injury without any idea of why or how.

To begin with, ever since 1998 (that's eleven years, people), we've been seeing people walk into the Stargate on one end, and then walk out of it on the other end. Suddenly, people are walking into the Stargate, and flying out of it as if they'd been shot from a canon!

Reality check: have the execs even ever seen any Stargate episode?

OK, so to get there they had to dial nine symbols, rather than seven or even eight, so maybe this is different. Not likely, but possible. Putting all this "action" in the beginning with no explanation makes it eminently forgettable, though.

After viewing it all once, I forgot it entirely, and the memorable beginning came when Eli won the computer game. I almost fell off my chair laughing when Eli asked "If I don't sign it, what are you going to do to me?" and O'Neil said "We'll beam you up to our spaceship!" Eli laughed, too, but he was laughing because he thought they couldn't do it, while I was laughing because I knew they could and would!

Providing a flashback was, in my opinion, not a good move in this case, but part of the reason I say that is that the whole first hour was entirely flashbacks and flashforwards. Considering that the times between commercials didn't seem to be much longer than five minutes, on average, and that during each segment they showed at least three different time periods, no single scene was longer than about two minutes, and it was chopped up to the point that it lacked coherency.

It was so chopped up that it was impossible to follow the action!

In one scene, we see a man standing in his (or somebody else's?) kitchen having a conversation. He passes out (why?), and lands, not on the floor, but on a space ship!

Eli is on a ship. Then, inexplicably, there are explosions and they say they're under attack and have to escape. They escape, but the planet they're on explodes. What happened? Planet?

Air, Part 1 was so chopped up and schizophrenic that I found it very difficult to follow. Even after five viewings!

It looked to me (on first viewing) like they went through the Stargate at least five times! And traveled on an assortment of about 7 ships!

After ten more views, I think what happened is that they traveled on a human-made ship to a planet and then traveled from there through a Stargate to a ship.

But I couldn't swear to it.

I think that if it had been shown in time sequence, rather than crazy-nightmare-insanity sequence it would have probably been the best premier of a show that I've ever seen. The acting was great, the actual story was (I think, if I've pieced it together correctly) probably fabulous and the characters seem interesting.

I simply can't believe that anyone could take such great actors, and such a fabulous story, and manage to mangle it as badly as they did! I think they actually did us a favor by including so many commercials because they really only mangled a bit more than a half hour instead of the the more usual 3/4 of an hour.

Air, Part 2 settled down and told it's story in a logical, workmanlike, comprehensible way, so it was much better than the first part!

I won't give away the overall story (which would be difficult, even if I really wanted to do that), but it looks like the series will have great characters, good stories, drama and humor, just like the original series, which is still some of my favorite TV ever.

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Wednesday evenings have turned into a barren wilderness of nothing for science fiction and fantasy fans with one huge, enormous exception.

Eastwick is shaping up to be one of the best fantasy shows on television, ever. The best part of all this is that it is a type of story that will appeal to a much larger audience than the typical fantasy show, and maybe get some new people interested!

I can't wait to see what they're up to tonight!