Knitting Olympics 2010

The last time I posted it was the beginning of the Olympics and the parallel events of Knitting Olympics and Ravelympics. In past years I've been an enthusiastic participant but this year I've had a few challenges. A deadline for a project kept me from pulling two weeks out of the knitting schedule and illness in various forms interfered in other ways. So consider me the knitting athlete whose medal dreams are sidelined by the vagaries of nature and time. There will be other opportunities.

This year's broadcast of the Olympics disappointed me. There were too many commercials, too many cuts from one sport to another, and too much commentary during the events. I was glad to be able to watch the curling but at one point I was so annoyed with the commentary I turned the sound off. There is word that ESPN is vying for the next contract for broadcasting the Olympics. I hope that if they succeed they do a better job of broadcasting. NBC was awful this year.

Last weekend the NorthWest Regional Spinners Association had their board meeting at the Aloha Grange so there were vendors and a spin-in. I had a good time meeting up with a number of my spinning buddies and partake of the wares of local vendors. I found some beautiful fiber for future batts; silk hankies and a bell; angelina fiber in copper, red, and purple; targhee and merino/silk blends in warm browns and gold.

Last weekend was also a time for getting together with friends. Saturday morning I met up with a friend I hadn't seen in a couple of years for coffee. He was dealing with the aftermath of an accident where he had been struck by a car while crossing the street. It was great to see him though I missed seeing his wife who was ill with the crud. We had spent many fun times together camping and partying so it will be great to be back in contact with them. Sunday was my monthly pinochle group which started with a potluck of nummy roast, root vegetables, salad, and fresh bread from Grand Central. While it was marred with a last minute catastrophe in the basement when a pipe clog forced our hosts to shoo us out of the house, the pinochle gods were in my and my partner's favor, granting us three sets won.

Update: I finished the pattern write up I needed to do including the charts just before the closing ceremony began. It hasn't been tested but that it's completely written and charted was one goal I wanted to meet during the Knitting Olympics. Ooorah!!

An afternoon on the mountain

Today I took a jaunt east to Welches and Deb and Mark Accuardi's farm. Welches is west of Government Camp, the gateway to the ski resorts of Mt Hood. Deb invited me for a day of spinning with friends and if the weather was cooperative some fiber dyeing but rain came in. It wasn't bad though -- just a drizzle -- but it was enough that we couldn't do any dyeing. It was a pleasant gathering though of just the four of us with our wheels.

The Accuardis raise angora rabbits, pygora goats, and chickens. Mark took me on a tour of the farm so I got to see their set up. The goats were not happy about the rain so had to be coaxed out but the chickens didn't care. Some of the bunnies had been clipped but others still had their coats. They have a very nice group of furries, including their gray cat Julian who made the rounds of the spinners for scratching.

On the way back from Welches, I opted to avoid Sandy, which was in the middle of their annual Sandy Mountain Days, and Gresham, which in my opnion is the commercial armpit of the Portland Metropolitan area. During the summers when I was in high school I'd visit the house of my best friend's dad who lived out in the country between Sandy and Troutdale. It was an idyllic place and when I have the opportunity I take the back roads to revisit the area. I did that today and in the soft grey of the day the forests and hills were beautiful to see. It made for a very peaceful ending of the day.

Tour De Fleece

Today I finished off one bobbin and spun up another of the lighter fiber. They will rest while I fill up more bobbins with fiber. To clear them up, I plied off the remainder of the dark fiber on the Louet. This week will most likely be that routine: fill bobbins, ply the singles, start again. So the next update will be next week. Spin on!

Sad news

I just heard that Witt Pratt, a good friend from the GLBT Knit list and wonderful sweet man, passed away last night. My thoughts are with Gary and his family. Whipknee will be greatly missed by many.

Fiber to Scarf Backatcha!

I have been keeping my fingers crossed these last few days, hoping that Canada Post would be nice and push a package my way. Back in January, I had sent off a bundle of merino/shetland wool from Spor Farm in The Dalles. It was for the Fiber To Scarf exchange that Ted organized. The fiber was a reddish rusty brown that I thought would be nice for someone to spin up, especially since I had no idea who was going to be the recipient and their skill level.

This is what I received in return. The real treat is that the spinner and knitter was Lorraine Smith of Spinner's Quarterly. She confessed to me that she couldn't leave it by itself to be spun so she blended in red merino with a hint of angelina in one stripe, white angora in another stripe, and white ramie in the third. It's nummy!

When she emailed me last week that the scarf was done and on its way, I voiced my hope that it would arrive before I took off for the GALA Festival 8 in Miami. So the neighbors must have heard my squeal of glee when I saw a white plastic mailbag in my mailbox. Just in time to be modeled before I had my hair all cut off in preparation for the tropical sauna that is Miami.

Thanks Lorraine!

I'm here

If you're a regular reader and notice that I blog mostly on the weekends and saw that I hadn't posted last weekend, well don't worry. I'm fine. I was out on a trip over the weekend to surprise a great group of folks who thought they would be hearing my voice over the tinny speaker of a cellphone and got a live performance instead. More to come when I have a few hours to post.

Fifteen minutes of fame

Last night was the book signing at the Oregon Forestry Center for Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's latest book, "Things I Learned From Knitting". The place was packed with Yarn Harlot fans so Jayme the Wonder Publicist and Tina of Blue Moon Fiber Arts deserve kudos for doing a fabulous job of arranging for a venue. There wasn't the frantic looking for spare chairs like at Powell's Books.

The PDX Knitbloggers planned for having folks save seats for those who could not leave early from work, so the group had a good place near the front to see and hear Stephanie talk. Of course if you're working on something a little complex it's mostly hearing. I took the Kauni sweater with me to work on so most of the time I was knitting and counting stitches so that the pattern wasn't messed up. Prizes were awarded to the Scavenger Hunt participants with a grand prize given to the winner who succeeded in getting 88 points worth of items. Stephanie was quite impressed. The pictures will eventually be on Flickr with the link on Stephanie's blog, so when her post is up you'll have to go check it out.

It ended up being a long evening for me as I waited until the line got short before going in. I didn't get home until nearly midnight. But Stephanie was very pleased to receive not only the DiCentra roving I purchased at the Aurora Fiber Faire but also a serenade from me that brought down the house. When 400 knitters stand up and applause your performance in the same venue as the Harlot one is a bit knocked over. And Tina gifted me with a skein of STR Heavyweight in Space Dust for my performance. Gawrsh! Thanks!

Here are a few pics from the event.

Update: Here's a video of the song: http://www.vimeo.com/931254/ . Enjoy!

A jaunt in the valley

I received an email from a friend who asked if I had done business with Fantasy Fibers. He was interested in their mystery batts. I had seen Fantasy Fibers at OFFF (it's in their back yard practically) but had not investigated their mystery batts. Further investigation indicated that the shop was not open on Saturdays but if an appointment was made someone would be there. I arranged to be there this Saturday to check them out.

A fiber jaunt is fun but it's more fun with a buddy. I emailed Bobbie to see if she would be interested and sure enough she was. There was an alternative reason to meet up with Bobbie: her Toolman was done making a floor lazy kate for me and at the time I learned about it I wasn't sure if I was going to meet up with her at Wednesday night knitting. It turned out well. I met her downtown then we headed for Canby.

Fantasy Fibers is a processing mill. Their main business is processing fiber for people to specification; even spinning it if desired. The drive out to Canby was wet and cold with some of the raindrops looking like melted snowflakes. I had no idea what to expect when we got there but it would be mounds and mounds of fiber.

We did find mystery batts and at first glance they look like a blended carded mess of fibers. Wool, alpaca, mohair, bits of tencel and angelina, you name it. There were faint streaks of dyed fiber in the batts with some more than others. It would make one wary but Bobbie was enthusiastic about the adventure of what may come out of one of these things. At $1.35 an ounce it wasn't like we were spending a fortune on what may end up being cat bed lining. I took home a couple of pounds. We opened Bobbie's batts at her house and there's quite a bit of variety of color in them so they promise to be an interesting spin.

The same batt turned over

Her second batt

We made a side trip to Woodland Woolworks via the Canby Ferry, one of the few river ferries still operating in Oregon. I had never been on it so it was a bit of touristy fun. The storm waters that were filling the creeks and rivers made the Willamette high and full. We could feel its power as we crossed but we were safe in a matter of minutes. As we drove past farms and fields we saw downed trees and limbs from the recent storms. There's still a bit of a mess out there that is being cleaned up and the winter storms are far from over.

It's hard to walk away from Woodland Woolworks emptyhanded. Even more so when you want to get something from them and can't pull yourself away from other goodies. I did find a treasure of Dale of Norway sweater patterns with traditional motifs that I couldn't walk away from. Some Mountain Colors targhee also ended up in my basket. And all I wanted was a set of ultra short dpns for working the fingers of the gloves I'm making. I'm such a pushover.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at Bobbie's and Toolman's home. Toolman had made up a scrumptious batch of pasta with Italian sausage, bell pepper, and other goodies. He unveiled the lazy kate which is just the way I wanted it (see pic above). Bobbie and I knitted while Toolman puttered with his tools before I headed back to the barn with my load. Tomorrow when the light is better I'll investigate my batts and see what I came home with.

Peaknuckle

Once a month I get together with friends to go out to eat and play pinochle. Don used to sing with the chorus and was part of our carpool. His partner Bo didn't sing but helped out at chorus functions such as retreat and concerts. When I started playing pinochle, I didn't have a venue in Portland (outside of the computer) to practice. It was a dinner with Don and Bo and Reid a couple of years ago that started our monthly pinochle gatherings. It's a fun evening of food and laughter as we try to push the other to higher bids.

Pinochle isn't difficult to play. For four-hand partnership pinochle, you deal out a special deck of 48 cards so that all the players have 12 cards. You look over the hand you've been dealt and see if you have any particular groupings of cards. Based on what you have in your hand, you then bid for the chance to call the trump suit and trade with your partner to improve your hand. After you have won the bid, you trade 4 cards with your partner, then lay down the groupings for counting the points. Everyone lays down their groupings to be counted and the points noted. Everyone then picks up their cards and starting with the person who won the bid, you go around laying one card down to get more points. High cards outplay low cards and the suit that was bid outplays cards of other suits. If the bidder and his partner pick up enough points to match or exceed the amount of the bid, they get the points. If not, they have to subtract the amount of the bid from their total points and can't count count the points of the hand.

The deck of pinochle cards is composed of the four suits with doubled sets of Ace, Ten, King, Queen, Jack, and Nine (in pinochle, Tens are higher in rank than Kings -- don't ask me why). Pointed groupings include marriages (King and Queen in same suit), four of each suit of Aces, Kings, Queens, or Jacks, or a set Ace, Ten, King, Queen, and Jack. A particular grouping is the Queen of Spades and Jack of Diamonds, called a pinochle. The four of each suit item is not common; eight of an item is even rarer. The points are ten times more when it's eight of an item. Four Aces are 100 points. Eight Aces are 1000 points.

Of all of us who play, Bo is the expert. He helped Reid and I learn how to play and has taught us points of strategy. It's not a guarantee that he'll be the winner -- after all, there is the luck of the draw of the cards and all the skill in the world can't win with a crappy hand -- but it's nice to have him as a partner. We were partners last night and both of us were having very nice hands. But the crowning point of the evening was this.

Bo had won the bid. I passed him four cards. When he lifted the third card, his eyes got huge and his jaw dropped. "I can't believe it," he said. I had helped him complete eight Aces, or in the parlance of the game, a thousand Aces. It was sweet.

Don's hand wasn't too shabby either.

I'll take this over any video game any day.