FiberTribe

More Precioussss + Waiting...

I sound like Stevie Wonder, but isn't she lovely?  You can't see her best feature, a 6 CD player with excellent sound system. Not why I bought her but O MY. I haven't had a CD player in my car for several years. Got tired of idiot junkies hacking my dashboard in half to get a faceplate-less CD player out of it.  So I'm playing early live Bonnie Raitt, just her and her guitar, Over the Rhine (Neena? I found Movies for Radio and will bring it with me),  Madeleine Peyreaux's latest, and my boy Lyle.  Guess I've got my western groove on already.

Speaking of the which, I am still waiting for the title to arrive so that tags can be bought. Can't go nowhere without tax and tags, not in this century, anyway.  And there has been much knitting. Remember this ? (excuse blurriness):

I put the first piece on stitch holders and began the second piece to see which one will look best for the front. I've used the Katia Mexico yarn called for in the pattern, but in a brown, brick red, dark orange and gold marl colorway.  It does stripe and differently in each ball of yarn (a bit). Hence the experimentation. The yarn is 50-50 wool and acrylic. It's loosely spun and sometimes feels like you're knitting with lightly drafted roving. But in a good way.  I'd normally avoid acrylic like the plague, but this is very nice and does not so far demonstrate any tendency to pill or snag.  I'm loving the random color progression and it is a very fast knit at 15 stitches to 4 in/10 cm.  I hope to finish this by the time I get to Utah. No, I won't be knitting and driving but I will be spending 4+ nights in hotels enroute. Got to do something while watching bad tv, heh.   Of f to the races again, more errands. Will I EVER get out of here? argh...

My New (to me) Precioussssss

My sole quibble is the odd, dusky mint green (?) color and the twee famous-catalogue-from-Maine brand name applied all over her. I don't wear anyone's name on my person and will have to figure out how to remove it from the Precioussss without trashing the paint job and trim.  What-ev-ah. I can live with it for now.  She has All Wheel Drive (not 4WD, but close) and 2 sunroofs, 6 cylinders, and a 6-CD changer which will be awesome for the road trip. And leather seats (ooooh, yessss) and most importantly room for the vast mounds of gear and winter clothing, camping gear, food and drink, and massage table and gear that I'll be carting cross-country.  AWD and the new all-season tires I'm buying will be the most important part for getting around in the Escalante (washboard dirt roads, no guardrails, 1,000 foot drops, hehe) and getting back out of there in November over snow and ice-coated roads.

I heard from Blake (co-owner of Hell's Backbone Grill) today that they've already had a killing frost in Boulder. The earliest frost in years. So the garden is done.  Here's a nifty little map that shows where Boulder, Utah is (from an article in the Detroit News about the BOSS wilderness trip).  Not a booming metropolis, tiny but cherce.

And now I better start earning some money. Because Precioussss has damned near cleaned out the cupboard.  Wish us luck...

Squeeeeee-able News

First the Eat Local goodness. Alas, for the last week of the Eat Local Challenge I am back to avocado and eggs with local honey in my tea.  Not all at the same time, ew. November is when the Community Supported Agriculture subscription kicks in (our growing season in So. Florida is Nov. to April). I'll make up for the sparseness of my Eat Local posts now by posting a bit then.  All props to Liz for making this challenge so much fun.  I've 'met' great folks and added a treasure trove of new recipes to the repertoire.  Will have to think of news ways to get my foodie fix now.  edited later to add links.

So what's the news, eh?  Weeeellll... Later this week I'm driving back out to Boulder, Utah, scene of the recent survival course (August 2006 posts), to work at  HELL'S BACKBONE GRILL till the end of the season in November...SQUEEEEEE!!!  Go peek at this amazingly wonderful restaurant here.

I screwed up my courage and called one of the owners and asked for a job. She said yes!!    So this past 10 days have been filled with the logistics of setting everything up for me to be gone for 2 months in the middle of hurricane season, arranging for a house/cat sitter, all that stuff.  It's not done yet.  What? I have 4 whole days left.   

The most fraught part of it all has been trying to find a good second-hand Subie Outback. Not just for the trip. I have been dragging my feet on the task of replacing my elderly 1986 H*nda with 193,000 miles under her belt. (Yes, she's a she. She is reliable, what other gender could she be? heh. present male company, if any, excepted)   But the Honda, she is a 4-door front wheel drive. I used to have a 1983 4WD (not AWD, but whatever) Subie wagon and loved, loved that car. After driving ye olde H*nda and putting waaay too much money into it, contrary to the H*nda rep, I have sworn never to have another and especially never again anything that's not  AWD/4WD.  So wish me luck for I go to see the last possible one tomorrow morning.   The color is not my favorite but if it's in as good a shape as the owners report and I can get them to come down a bit in price, we may have a deal. 

So where's the knitting, you say?  Why right here piled up to the ceiling in the guest bedroom. Now I have to sort out what to take along.  Early hint:  It will be WOOL. Dude. The temps have already dropped to 36 degrees two nights ago.   Did I mention that I am just SQUEEEEEEEEED!!!???!!!  ahem. Well, I am.

PEACE

Let's make it a verb.

(from the side of the wall of a social services organization on Queen West in Toronto)

Trying to Correct a Problem with Bloglines

Hi, there. Posting some miscellaneous stuff to try to correct a problem with bloglines feeds. For some reason unknown to me and with no response from Bloglines, am trying to get Bloglines to recognize my favicon in the blogroll. So please bear with me on this nonsense.
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Not Holding Out on You

I'm just somehow not into taking pictures of yarn right now. Bleah. I did get the Mexico yarn in the colorway I wanted (after a second trip to the LYS on a calmer day, not Saturday afternoon sale frenzy) and have begun knitting the big cowl sweater blurrily displayed in the last post.  The colorway is shades of brown and rust and gold.  Lovely, but you'll have to take my word for it for now.  It's knitting up quickly despite the size 5 needles. Got gauge on the first try. Now that's a good omen. 

In Eating Local News, I spent the entire day eating AND drinking locally.  The local chapter of the Slow Food Convivia sponsored a Ramble at Wilson's Grove Farm, the Food and Spice Park, Bee Heaven Farm, and Schnebly's Winery. Plus brunch at Bee Heaven, a tour and tasting at Schnebly's followed by a potluck supper. And dude, these Slow Food people can cook.   

Schnebly's makes wine from tropical fruit like carambola (star fruit), mango, lychee, and guava.  The Carambola aged in Oak actually is quite like a dry chardonnay. Decent. The others are good dessert wines or ingredients for, say, a lychee martini. Lychee martinis are quite happening here in martini-land.   I think the guava wine would be great for a cosmo.   Pictures sometime soon. no, really.
mwah.

Rain + A Yarn Shop Raid

It continues to rain here like day 30 of 40 days and 40 nights.  So?  I take myself off to the LYS (first time in a VERY long time). It's only fair since I've been haunting everyone else's LYSs all over the country (see the spike in the GNP in the states of Maine and Utah and the province of Ontario lately). 
I set out with best intentions of buying only a magazine or three. Which I did including Rowan 40, the newest Katia adult, a beautiful Rowan kids' book called Little Treasures, and the latest Colinette Parisienne Mohair.  The latest Rowan is still a bit on the strange side, I mean, what is with that weird medieval tabard-type thingy? At least the models this time are down to one hat at a time. And would someone please tell them that the Victorian era has been over for a long, long time?  Thank you.  But much of the rest was quite nice and wearable. Affordable? Well, I'll have to wait and see the price on the new Tapestry yarn. I do like the colorways. though.

But oh, my peeps, the Colinette mohair has the same yardage and the same price ($14 at my LYS) as Kidsilk Haze but all the luscious Colinette colors.  I came home with two Jay and two Fire, soon to be 3 each when Jeannie (LYS owner) locates the rest of the shipment. 3 skeins will make a loosely knitted pullover. I'm sayin'. And now if I can find all my oddments of KSH I may be able to eke out a few more lovely sweaters without further expense. The Fire colorway is destined for BFF Gomez for, close your eyes NOW, Christmas.  The Jay is mineminemine. Ahem.

And I picked up most of the Inca Alpaca yarn for the cover sweater on the latest IK. That was going to be for Gomez also, since she is very allergic to wool.  I'm going to sub various Knitp*cks yarns for the remaining colors. Or not. I'm telling you that the purply-brown heathered yarn for the body of the sweater is really beautiful in person. The slightly blurry cover image does not do it justice.  I also fell for a couple of sweaters in the new Katia book here.

More specifically this sweater in Mexico yarn and one other not pictured on their website (www.katia.es) in a new aran weight yarn called Tundra. 

Tundra is reminiscent of Noro but with several colors twined together going through color changes. 
Here's a look.

Any way, there's an overdue DVD with my name on it for the rest of the evening and some swatches to be made to keep the hands out of the refrigerator. 

Ah, but before I forget, here's my Eat Local contribution for the week.  More Florida-grown avocado. But this time with a lovely balsamic vinegar infused with fig and meyer lemon. Seriously delicious.  This coming Saturday there is a ramble put on by the local chapter of the Slow Food society. Big sponsors of eating local, getting local food programs into the schools etc.  We'll be eating local the entire day while touring the local tropical food and spice park, Schnebly Winery which makes drinkable wine out of tropical fruits, and then having a brunch at the local Community Supported Agriculture farm, Bee Haven. We'll finish the day with a potluck supper.  Good people, good food, what could be better?  Pray for no rain, eh?   Mwah.