I am looking forward to knitting during the Winter Olympics this year. I love the fact that the games are in Vancouver, which is just a stone’s throw from here – even though we aren’t going in person, it is neat to know that all that is taking place just a few hours from us.

Keeping in mind the incredible work load upon me this month with our office move, I tried to choose relatively simple patterns. We’ll see how successful I am. The nice thing is, this is a personal challenge – as long as I feel good about my own progress that’s the only jury I need to answer to.

I’m going to try my first cowl -  Pretty Thing (ravelry link) by The Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (non-rav link). This should be fairly fast and I’m going to take it as my commuter knitting. There are three yarns I am trying to decide between: my hand spun gray alpaca, a blue-green silk tweed, and a deep purple sock yarn… Choices, choices.

I am also going to try an aptly-named sweater – February Lady Sweater (ravelry link). It is rather ambitious to expect to knit an entire sweater in two weeks but I’m going to try because A) it’s chunky yarn and B) the pattern is pretty straight forward, no cables to deal with and C) as I discovered on Wednesday, I’m a blazing-fast knitter and should be capable.   I do need to make a swatch or two before I dive in. The yarn is all picked out and wound into balls.

And, in order to avoid utter boredom and/or to fill in as commuter knitting when I blaze right through the cowl, I have a Vintage Baby Set lined up as part of a knit-along. (non-rav link here) There are lots of babies in my life right now so finding a recipient will not be difficult. Lots of yarns to choose from in my stash.

At knit night a question was raised as I worked an increase round on the rose shawl that brought my stitch count up to 576: how fast do I knit?
I had no idea. Never occured to me to time my knitting, but someone said it might be handy when determining how long a pattern would take. Another knitter pointed out the stopwatch feature on my phone, and so I timed a round.
10 minutes and 20 seconds to do 576 stitches at a regular pace (not trying to race). That’s almost a stitch a second, working plain stockinette.
So now I’m curious: how fast do others knit?

Before I found my new wheel, I purchased a few bags of beautiful fiber – hoarding it for the day I had a spinning wheel worthy of their silky awesomeness. (ok, my old wheel was worthy, too – but it was also horribly inconsistent and a real bear to treadle!) I have spun a bit on the lovely Wendy, breaking it in and getting used to how she runs, and today felt like I was ready to grab one of the special fibers.

This is what I have to show so far. It’s a merino wool / viscose blend in wonderful shades of greed, purple, and blueish green. The white viscose is blended throughout, keeping the overall color lighter than it would otherwise be. That is a horrid picture (camera phone), but perhaps you get the idea. I’m spinning this rather fine (as fine as I am able to, at any rate) and will make it 2-ply. No idea of yardage yet of course, but I’m hoping to have enough for a lacy wrap. If not, a couple of cowls would be nice.

Big hair is alive and well, it seems. I see this fellow around downtown, and he is always coiffed thusly.

Making good progress on the Sitka Rose Pi Shawl – it now serves at its own yarn bag.

Here it is with the lace spread out a little bit:

It’s late January, which means it’s time for thinking about several things: pulling together papers for filing our taxes, Chris’ birthday, Valentine’s Day, and this year’s garden. Since nobody likes to think about taxes, I’m skipping right over that one for today and both the birthday and holiday are things that I can’t reach a decision on, so I’m leaping right to the last item: the garden.

I pulled out my jar of seeds from the fridge today and went through them, determining which I need to get started indoors. I’ve got two kinds of tomatoes, cucumber, basil, sweet peppers, and torpedo onions that need an early start. Yesterday I bought a grow-light for them; we don’t have a good place to put seedlings in the house to get enough light. The rest of my seeds will be sown directly outside come March or April, depending on how this winter & spring shakes out. It’s mighty warm right now which is spurring some things to put out blooms already – that will prove disastrous, I’m afraid, because the bees (what’s left of them, anyway) are still sleeping so there won’t be any pollinators around.

Speaking of bees, I’m seriously considering setting up a hive of my own – more research & education needed first, though. I don’t want to be playing with hundreds or thousands of little lives before I feel confident that I know what to do.

Speaking of little lives, my worm bin is doing quite well! We had a cold snap a few weeks ago so I brought the bin into the carport to protect it from freezing winds, but now that it’s warmed back up the bin is back in its spot behind my soap room. I feed them a little less right now because they are less active, but they are making a gorgeous pile of nutritious compost for my garden.

And, since this post has veered towards the fauna side, it looks like J will be gaining a Chinese Water Dragon sometime very soon. He’s in the process of making space for a terrarium in his room and researching how to take care of one. I’m going to do similar research so that I’m prepared to nag him. Actually, I’m reasonably happy with the choice of a reptile as a pet – his first pick was a tarantula and that was a little more difficult to accept with grace. Not that I’m afraid of spiders, because I’m not, but there’s something creepy about having a large spider as a “pet”. It’s just a bit too unconventional for me, I suppose.

What is it about the smell of toast that is so alluring? From across the house, I can smell toast – and it draws me to the kitchen where I inhale that lovely aroma and drool in anticipation of the first crunchy, buttery bite. Or perhaps there will be peanut butter. Or honey, like I just ate for dessert.

(photo stolen from http://toastalicious.com)

I jumped aboard the Pi Shawl Bandwagon and have this to show so far:

Yeah, it’s not much yet (barely bigger than a dinner plate) but it’s a great commuter project. I just increased to 288 stitches, which means tons of plain ol’ stockinette knitting every other row and sometimes for several rows. The yarn was purchased in Alaska during our cruise a couple years back; technically, it’s sold as sock yarn but it’s not putting up a fight about becoming a shawl.  The yarn works up beautifully (I’m using size 5 needles, several sizes larger than what the yarn would need for socks) and I like the fact that it is superwash.

My only concern is yardage – I have two skeins, totaling about 800 yards. Veteran knitters just gasped and clucked their tongues but I am a true optimist and I am forging ahead with this somewhat scanty yardage anyway. I’ll make it as big as I can.  If things get truly dire, I can try to find a coordinating solid for the edging. Or something. (it’s lovely shades of rose and gray; I can envision a solid gray border, cant’ you?)

I have one dog and one cat. (some would argue that I have one HORSE and one cat, but that would hurt Chloe’s feelings. It’s not her fault she’s so big.)

They get along just fine and sometimes they even play together – though this doesn’t last long because of the dramatic size differential… Chloe the dog is quite fond of cats (ours, that is – not so much the neighbor’s cats) and grew up with my “old” cat who was equally fond of dogs. Unfortunately for Chloe, our current cat isn’t quite as enamored with the larger, stinkier variety of house pet. The cat usually keeps a bit of a distance from the dog, though she has been known to swat playfully at Chloe’s tail and/or ears when the opportunity arises. Mostly, though, she kind of ignores the dog. Chloe mostly ignores the cat in return.  It’s sort of a love/hate relationship.

The funniest thing about this is that they are both incredibly jealous of any affection given to the other. It’s absolutely hilarious. If you pet the cat, expect the dog to barge right in for her fair share. Pet the dog, and the cat is likely to wander by with a nonchalant air but determined look in her eyes as she weaves through the forest of legs to distribute some cat hair upon your pants. Seriously, they will come from the opposite side of the house at the slightest possibility that the other pet is getting some love.

We got another funny round of this “pet me, not her” routine the other night, when my daughter was giving a belly rub to Chloe. The cat wanted to get in on the action, but was keeping a wary distance from Chloe’s gigantic feet. It’s impressive how far a cat can stretch when she is properly motivated.

I get a physical every year as part of my take-care-of-myself-and-live-a-good-long-time plan, and I just got the results back from my blood tests. I must admit, I was a bit leery about opening the envelope… after all, I try to eat decently but I’m far from perfect and my family history is not exactly encouraging. Plus, I’m overweight and closing in rapidly on the big 4-0.

My blood pressure has always been good (about 110/72) and that hasn’t changed. Of all the tests they run (it’s quite a list, from Vitamin D levels to nitrogen percentage), there were only two that my score was above the normal range: HDL and glucose.

The glucose, well, that is something I need to pay attention to. It was a fasting blood test, so high glucose at that point is a red flag for diabetes / prediabetes. Now, my number was only a few points outside the normal range, but it was elevated —- and I’m suspicious that the excess weight I’m carrying is the biggest factor behind it. (also, to be fair: a slight elevation in blood glucose level is common when a person is sick or has an infection. I do have an upper respiratory infection right now, but even if I take that into account my glucose level is in the danger area).  Getting this number safely down into the normal range is part of my Get Healthier plan for this year.

I don’t know what to make of the elevated HDL number… That’s the ‘good’ cholesterol (the ‘bad’ cholesterol is LDL and I was smack-dab average on that score). Wouldn’t having more of the good stuff be a good thing? Again, the number was just a little above the average range, not sky-high. I’ll have to follow up with my doctor to get a debriefing on the results, but overall I was quite pleased.