And the Big News is ....

I have signed up with Team in Training to walk a marathon!! That's right, 26.2 miles in lord only knows how many hours. Those who know me personally will probably realize just how out of the ordinary this is for me. I prefer to knit and read, and if I am going to go any distance without a wheeled vehicle, I prefer it to be on the back of a horse, not on my own two feet. However, I received the Team in Training brochure at a time when I had just lost my second family member in two months along with at least 3 other friends in that time. It seemed like a good time to change my ways and get in shape while raising money for a really good cause. Team in Training raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society which is a cause dear to my heart since my aunt Patricia died from leukemia back in 1996. Tricia was the person who got me involved with horses which became a lifelong love.

I will be posting updates here on how the training is going (just started last week) and also how the fundraising is going. I need to raise $4900 in order to participate in the Mayor's Marathon in Anchorage, Alaska on June 20, 2009. It's an awful lot of money but I am hoping to be able to reach this goal. The breakdown for donations to Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is 75% goes to research, patient services,etc while only 25% goes to expenses.

Let's see now, how about some starting statistics. As of yesterday, January 26, I weighed 231 lbs and my measurements are ... well, let's not go there. I will let you know how many inches I lose as I go along, okay? We had our first official meeting last Wednesday but didn't walk cuz it was pouring and our walking coach didn't want to. Thank god I am not a runner cuz they had to go out and do 3 miles! I walked 30 minutes Thursday and Friday, then 4 miles on Sunday in about 1 hr 15 minutes. Mondays are our day off so I am getting ready to head out for 30 minutes right now. Oh yes, I have also been working out 3 days a week at Unlimited Physiques, a 40 minute circuit training set up with about 20 minutes cardio beforehand. Thanks to that workout, I am down 11 lbs since the first of December! Maybe this time, I am finally going to get down somewhere near my so-called optimum weight. If not, so what? I am feeling good, proud of myself for doing well so far and raising money for a great group.

Maybe the next time I post, I will finally have some knitting pictures to put up. In the meantime, here is the link to my fundraising page: Deb's Fundraising Please feel free to make a donation. Everyone who donates over $50 (limited to US residents I am afraid) will receive a gourmet candy apple, covered in chocolate, caramel, nuts, etc. I am working on a special drawing for knitters, more details to follow. Talk to you soon. Take care of yourselves!

I'm Baa-aack

Well, kinda sorta. I can't believe how long it has been since I posted here. I guess that's what you call falling off the bandwagon in a big way. I have still been knitting (tons of hats for both Kristy and to send back to my daughter in Jersey) and staying busy at work. Had a wonderful time in Louisiana, New York and New Jersey in October visiting my friend JoAnn for her 70th birthday and then up to see my daughter for her 24th.

One of these days I will get my Ravelry projects pages updated and hopefully post some pictures here as well. I really do have pictures, just have never managed to download them from the camera yet.

Anyway, I have some really big news but I need to get to sleep right now (been up over 18 hours already). Some of you may already know the news depending on how you got here but I promise, I will try to get all details up this weekend. For now, take care and I will talk to you soon.

The Incredible Kindness of Knitters!

I have been meaning to get a post up for days but I had hoped to have pictures to go with it. Since that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon, I figured I had better just go ahead and post. Hopefully, I will get some pictures next week.

If you have been a part of the knitting community, either in real life or online, for any length of time, you know that knitters are incredibly generous when it comes to charity. Just look at Kristy's Hat Quest for example. Kristy came in to our LYS Hooks & Needles in very early May and mentioned she was going to the Ukraine in September and needed (gasp!) 300 hats for the orphanage she was going to visit. It seemed nearly impossible at the time but between blogging and Ravelry, she already has over 260 hats in hand and more to come! Then, of course, there is the Yarn Harlot's campaign to raise money for Doctors without Borders through her group Tricoteuses Sans Frontières (Knitters without Borders). They have raised nearly half a million dollars since the start of the group! There are many other examples all over the web of knitters raising incredible amounts of money in rides to cure Aids, Breast Cancer Walks, and many other charities.

What you may not know about knitters is how incredibly generous they are among themselves. Of course, if your friend is short of yarn, or needs to borrow a stitch marker, or a darning needle, or someone has a deadline to finish umpty-jillion water bottle cozies, you are going to help out however you can. It's part of the definition of friend, isn't it? Then there are the folks who will willingly help out someone they may have met at their local yarn store. But I am talking about total strangers, who out of the blue, are totally willing to help out a fellow knitter.

You may or may not know that the latest "hot" yarn, at least from what I can see with the Loopy Groupies et al, is Wollmeise. This gorgeous yarn is dyed by Claudia, who lives in Germany. The Loopy Ewe is the only distributor in the US and let me tell you, it is nearly impossible to get your hands on some. Last week, Sheri (proprietress of the Loopy Ewe) posted over 300 skeins for sale at 9 pm CST and it was all sold out in under 5 minutes! Here's a link if you want to see some of the gorgeous colors. (Hmm, looks like you will have to scroll down and search for Wollmeise. Trust me, it's worth the time.)

Anyway, I digress. I have tried multiple times to get my little paws on some Wollmeise. The crazy thing is, I had never even seen it in person but had read so much about it that I knew I just had to have some. However, it seemed as though that was going to be an impossibility. I just don't have time to sit in front of a computer screen for hours, refreshing the page to see exactly when this yarn comes up so I can attempt to get some. Apparently, I was not the only one feeling kind of low after missing out yet again. TracyinMichigan (Ravelry link), who is the "mom" on the F5ing thread of the Loopy Groupies on Ravelry, started a thread to share the Wollmeise love. Wollmeise "virgins" posted their requests for Wollmeise on this thread and would receive a PM if someone wanted to help them out. Long story short, I am now the proud owner of two skeins of gorgeous, luscious Wollmeise! I received my yarn from two different ladies in Colorado who sold it to me for exactly what they paid for it, plus shipping! I eventually found out that between the two of them, they helped out 11 different knitters, none of whom they had ever even heard of before this thread. I know that many other generous knitters did the same thing. Can you believe that? Like I said, knitters are the most generous of folks.

PS Hopefully, I will have pictures of this luscious yarn to post next week. Right now, I need to catch some zzz's. Tomorrow I head up to Oroville to help out a friend who was burned out in the Palermo fires about 6 weeks ago. They just got power yesterday, and we will be hauling stuff to the dump to make room for the new triple wide she hopes to have in place in the not too distant future.

Water Bottles Need Love Too!

Well, maybe not love exactly but ... A friend of mine ran across this picture in my photostream

and found it rather strange. Actually, Keith, there was a very good reason for knitting a water bottle cozy. One of the gals I knit with at the Escalon library every Monday has a daughter who is going to the Netherlands to play in a soccer tournament. Each player is responsible for bringing enough small gifts to exchange with each member of one of the teams they play. Joy's daughter is taking water bottle cozies. They are done in patriotic colors and they keep the bottle from "sweating" all over whatever they are set down upon. That being said, Joy needed to come up with 17 of them! I don't know about you but knitting 17 of anything can get a wee bit monotonous. I told her that if she had some extra yarn, I would be happy to knit up a cover or two. Of course, if you have read much of this blog at all, I very seldom knit anything in plain stockinette or garter. Thus, the lacy water bottle cozy as well as this one based on the Odessa Hat pattern by Grumperina.

I just love that swirl pattern and it is so amazingly easy to do.

The hat is naturally going to Kristy's Hat Quest. The last I heard, Kristy now has 177 hats in hand. I received 3 more on Monday to go along with the Odessa hat and the group in Santa Fe, NM has at least 21 hats ready to ship on August 1 with more coming in all the time. The new goal is 400 hats so that once each child at the orphanage receives a hat, there will still be some available for new children arriving long after Kristy makes her way back home. The generousity of knitters is just amazing!

I finally finished! ....(clue #2)

Well, it's not much but it is some progress. Sooo, I am only 5 clues behind (Moni posted clue 7 today). Oh, yes, guess I should mention that I am talking about the Slow Bee Mystery Shawl. I don't yet have a picture of it as it is rather difficult to lay out but I may try and get one this weekend. I am not sure why they call this a Slow Bee Shawl. I figured they would be small clues for those of us whose life interferes with our knitting but .... Last night it took me nearly an hour to knit just 3 rows! And those were rows without beads. At the end of clue 2, there are already 347 stitches per row and this increases by 12 every 4th row! I am scared to figure out what the count is for the end of clue 7 and I am hearing rumors that there are 12 clues in all! Oh lordy, what have I got myself into? On a positive note, it is going to be absolutely stunning when it is done. I am using a pale gray laceweight (might be cobweb, actually) by Lane Borgosesia and putting on clear, silver lined beads. They look like little raindrops suspended in the shawl.

Although I have not been making much progress on my shawl, I have been busy. Not only did I take my mule packing course, but I helped out at another combined driving event this past weekend and I have been making lots of hats! Can't remember how many I have finished exactly but I think I have given Kristy eight already with two more ready to go after I show them off to my Monday knitting group. Here are some pictures of the last ones.



This hat is called Foliage. It is done with bulky weight yarn on size 10 needles and only uses about 80 yards. I really like it although it is naturally much too warm to wear here in California. Terrible picture of me but I wanted to show you what the lace looks like when it is stretched out.



How do you like my two versions of the Fake Isle hat? Hat #2 is the negative of Hat #1. Number two is now finished but I don't have a photo yet. I used Cascade Yarns for these hats: Cascade Heathers in a light mauve and Cascade Paints for the darker color. Both skeins had 220 yards on them and I still have tons left of each. Will have to figure out what new pattern I can make with these yarns.

For now though, I think I am done with hats for a while. I really need to make some progress on my shawl and I am still waiting for Jen to send back the sample I sent her of the Marvelous Mitts so I can make the second one in time for the Stanislaus County Fair. I finished the first Ankle Biter sock and need to get to the second one before second sock syndrome sets in. I am putting it off at the moment since the sock uses the same needles as the Marvellous Mitt and I reaaallly don't need to be buying any more needles!

I guess that's all for now. This Sunday, I will be trekking over to Lavender Hollow Farm in Escalon and meeting some of my knitting friends for tea and scones followed by knitting under the "Chicken Tree". No, there are no chickens roosting in it now but I guess they used to. It is a lovely big fruitless mulberry kind of tree whose outer branches hang down to the ground leaving a lovely shaded alcove underneath. The folks at Lavender Hollow have furnished this with chairs and a couple of love seats and we have reserved it for the knitters on Sunday afternoon. Ummm, lovely location, good friends, knitting and fantabulous lavender lemonade! What could be better?

ETA: Woo hoo! I have finished the first 5 rows of Clue 3 already. The rows go so much quicker when it is straight knitting with no beads. The only problem is I have to get up in about 6 hours to go to work and I haven't been to sleep yet. I'm blaming it on the heat. It has nothing to do with the knitting .... really.

Mystery Yarn

I bought some yarn a couple of weeks ago that I do not know very much about other than the fact that it is soft and very beautiful. Here is a picture of the two skeins that I purchased.



Isn't it gorgeous? I do have to admit that I do know a little about the yarn, just not the yardage or what might be blended with the main fiber. Can't remember, did I tell you about the Packing Class I was taking? as in mule packing? like in the old westerns? Anyway, it was a great class and, while I did not get to go on a trail ride with a pack string since I no longer own a horse, I can tie a pretty mean box hitch! Anyway, one of the classes was about dealing with other folks we might find on the trail. We had a backpacker talk to us about his perception of horses on the trail and then we met this fine fellow.



His name is Rubicon and he is a 3 yr old male llama. His owner, Lora Crawford, brought him along to tell us about using llamas as pack animals. Rubicon has never been out as a pack animal but he did condescend to wear his training saddle to show us how it fit.



Notice the mini van behind him? That is how he travels. I had the privilege of playing with Ruby while Lora answered numerous questions from the class and when it was time for him to go home, I got to load him. Just took him to the open door, told him to get in and voila! Up he stepped, bending his head down low and he was set. He travels in the back with no problems at all. Lora had just got back from a show in southern California the day before and they went in the mini van. Would love to see the looks they get on the highway.

Finally, I just have to show you his beautiful face. Don't you just love those eyebrows? That is Bernadette in the picture with him. She was a classmate of mine and it is her camera that provided these pictures.



Oh yeah, this post started out to be about the yarn, didn't it? Well, a couple of days after meeting Lora and Rubicon, I travelled down to her ranch in Turlock. Lora has 40 llamas there! The little guys who were 6 months old were just adorable! Anyway, each year she shears her llamas and sends the fleece off to a co-op who then combines the colors with fleeces from other llama ranches and spins it up. Then, after paying many dollars, she gets the yarn back in equal proportions to the amount of fleece she sent. Unfortunately, she doesn't know anything about yarn. She thinks it might be combined with another fiber to give it more elasticity but she doesn't know what and she doesn't know how much yardage is in a skein. Oh well, it will be an adventure to knit with it and see what I come up with. And, after all, we do want to support our local farmers, don't we?

And the winner is .... !

This is about to be the world's shortest blogpost since I have been up 22 hours already but I did promise to do the drawing on May 31 so here goes. After entering all the comment leavers (is that a word?) into a spreadsheet and using a random number generator plucked randomly off the web, the winner is .... Danielle!!! also known on her blog as GrannyDani. Danielle, please drop me a line at stlwatrs "at" hotmail "dot" com. You know the drill, replace the words in parentheses with the appropriate symbols. You now have your choice of either Mountain Colors Bearfoot, Muskat mercerized cotton or a skein of Lane Borgosesia Cashwool. Let me know which one you want and how we can connect and I will be glad to get that out to you.

Thank you everyone for not only leaving comments on my blog but for doing such a good job on the Hat Quest. We already have over 70 hats!! We are going to make the goal for sure. That is just too cool!

G'night for now. More to report soon, just need to get some pics for the post.