Nerd Wars - October

I'm officially participating in Nerd Wars 3. Here's my favorite project so far, a Spock hat:



It's modeled by my DS2. And, you may notice that my son has his left eyebrow raised -- just as Spock often did.  The black hat itself is the "hairline".

edited to add:  The hat was a hit as my DS2 helped hand out Halloween candy.  Several kids commented on the great werewolf ears.

I've also designed and knit a dishcloth representing a trans warp human, knit a Guinan hat (which I've donated as a chemo hat), and knit a 47"-long scarf.  I'm also almost finished with a tank top, B-licious.  Then all that's left to do is a colorwork project -- a hat and mittens to donate to a local school.



(The dishcloth may look more like a possum than a trans warp human.)

fall trees

The street in front of the house looks particularly nice this fall. And so, I decided to share a picture of it. (Also, I've posted so many pics of snow around the house that I thought it might be good to post a pic with no snow.)

We're getting our basement finished. Here's a picture of the basement with some of the framing done. And, you'll notice that's it pretty much empty except for the pool table that came with the house -- and for the part in the shadows that won't be refinished. They started work on Friday, September 30th. The first day was just to mark where walls would be and to start building the soffits. This picture is after they finished work on the next Monday. You can see where the walls will be. (More pics of the construction are here.)

Four socks

I'm happy.  I've accomplished one of the goals I had for the year -- to design 4 socks, one for each season. And, it turned out that all I had to do to get the last of the four done was to wait until it was almost autumn. The first of these is a pair of Christmas socks. They feature fir trees and icicles/sleigh bells and candy canes.  I made it for my DH as a Christmas present.

The hardest part of the socks was figuring out a way to get candy canes that looked halfway nice. I redid the back a few times until deciding to try various ideas out on a dishcloth. Here's the dishcloth:

The spring and summer socks came along pretty quickly. Here are the spring socks (with snowdrops on the front and a tulip cable on the back):

Here are the summer socks (with a rose trellis on front and an iris cable in back);

The hardest one was fall. I tried acorns, oak trees, sheaves of grain. But, they just didn't look right. Finally, I tried cornstalks, as they would look after the first frost.  (The idea for the picot cuff came from a lady from the Lilac Cottage knitting group.)

All the socks are toe up. Three have a yo-yo heel, and the fourth a Widdershins heel.

After sitting out the previous edition of Nerd Wars on Ravelry, I've decided to get involved again in the competition (which starts this next month).  I'm hoping to be on Team Enterprise again.

Finally, I'm still inundated with cucumbers from the garden.  I tried making bread rolls using chopped cucumbers and green onions.  My DH liked them, but I didn't.  The best I've managed to do is pickle them.

August garden

I think I shouldn't have fertilized the garden.  :)

The plants are taking over the yard.  The cucumber plants, which were so small a month ago, are now growing over the short wall onto the path and even over the tomato plants.  The tomato plants, which were supposed to be bush tomatoes, are growing over the side of the taller wall and onto the lawn -- until I move the vines back to the top of the wall.

I'm glad that I got tomato plants with a shorter yield time than last year.  We've already harvested about 20 nice large tomatoes -- which I've made tomato sauce from.  I added some giant marconi (sweet) peppers from the garden to the sauce -- and don't think I'll need to add much in the way of other seasonings.  The sauce is delicious!

I have no idea where the sweet potatoes are.  (They're covered by cucumber vines.)  But, the cucumber plants have yielded some nice, large, tasty cucumbers.  And, we've also been able to harvest some habanero and jalapeno peppers.  Plus, I evidently didn't do a good job cleaning the garden last year.  I've also been able to harvest some volunteer cherry tomatoes.

The peaches look ready to harvest.  :)  They've small.  But, the tree is still small.  I'm looking forward to seeing just how good those peaches taste.

wind storm

We had a big wind storm Monday morning. I hadn't heard or seen the wind blow so strongly since when I lived in Colorado. The storm lasted less than half an hour but did a lot of damage.

The wind blew over the top of one of our trees, a shagbark hickory. Luckily, the top of the tree blew away from the house -- damaging only another smaller tree.

We, along with most of the county, were without power all day Monday. Luckily, power was restored to our part of the neighborhood Tuesday morning. It was nice to have air conditioning again! Thankfully, a neighbor had a generator which we used a outlet from to keep our refrigerator going.

My DD had her own experience with the storm. She had just boarded a train to travel to work in Chicago when the storm hit. The wind shook the train back and forth while it was still in the station. Then they started their journey. A large tree fell on the tracks. The engineer put on the brakes to stop the train just in time. However, because of safety regulations, the train was limited to a speed of 10 mph for its entire trip to Chicago. She got to work about 5 1/2 hours late.

Possibly peaches

a garden update....
It looks as though we may get some peaches this year.  The chipmunks and squirrels have left the peach tree alone, and some peaches have started to grow.  (To "help" the chipmunks and squirrels leave the tree alone, I placed an upside-down aluminum pie tin around the tree, just below the bottom of the pic.)

I don't think we'll have any apples this year.  The tree had only 3 blossoms on it, and none seem to be turning into apples.  The amount of fruit on an apple tree varies from year to year.

The vegetable garden is starting to take off.  The tomato plants have a few blossoms.  And a cucumber plant had its first blossom.  I've harvested a couple radishes -- and still haven't figured out why growing radishes here is so hard.  And, I think that a couple of broccoli plants are growing from seed.

a general update
I was going to leave it with just the garden update.  Then I remembered that I hadn't posted anything since before my birthday....

My DD's boyfriend (from England) came to visit her for a couple of weeks in early June.  And, my DS1 was here for a few days during his stay.  (My DS1 came here to help celebrate my birthday -- and also to go to a wedding in Ohio and also to help celebrate my DH's birthday early next month.)  The day before my birthday, we all went to a couple Gold Cup soccer games at Soldier Field.  Then, on my birthday, we all went to a baseball game at Wrigley Field.  (The Cubs won.)  It was the boyfriend's first time at a baseball game.  And, I think he enjoyed it.  He learned a lot about the game, as well.  He's probably the only one of his friends in England that knows what a suicide squeeze play is.

a late spring for my vegetable garden

This year we really didn't have a spring. As my DS2 noted -- May's weather just switched back and forth between summer and winter. So, the vegetable garden isn't as far along as last year's at this time of year.



Last year, I planted cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and a regular Big Boy tomato.  I discovered that only the Big Boy tomato had the taste I like in tomatoes.  However, it bore fruit fairly late.  So, this year I planted some early tomatoes (60-65 days) --  2 Early Girl bush and Park's Whopper.  They already have a few blossoms.

My DH loves hot peppers.  So, besides planting jalapeño and habanero peppers, I'm also trying out a tabasco one.  Then I decided that I'd plant a sweet pepper (giant marconi).  I hope that the flavor of sweet peppers has improved since I last grew them -- in the 80's in NC.  (The ones I grew then were pretty much flavorless.)

My big problem this year was finding broccoli plants.   I just couldn't find any plants for sale.  So, about the second time I went looking for broccoli, I bought cucumber plants.  After planting the cucumbers, I placed carrot seeds (Danvers Half Long), spinach seeds (Melody hybrid), and radishes (cherry bell) between the cucumber plants and also between the peppers.  Then later I added a few broccoli seeds between the cucumber plants.  (I'm not sure whether or nor they've germinated since I have no idea what the seedlings look like.)  On my final search for broccoli, I got some sweet potato plants (Beauregard).

My string beans (Burpee's Tenderpod bush) didn't do well last year.  So, this year I planted pea seeds (sugar snap).  But, I also planted the string beans again and added some Kentucky pole beans.

So, we'll see what happens this year.  The radishes didn't do well last year.  So, this year's garden has added peat moss.

It looks as if we might get some peaches this year (if I can figure out a way to keep the chipmunks and squirrels from eating the fruit when it's bite-sized -- for them).  It was loaded with blossoms and now has quite a few small peaches.  The spring weather was so damp that the peach tree has leaf curl (a fungus).  But, according to what I've read, that shouldn't affect the crop.  I'll just have to use a fungicide this fall.  The apple tree had just 3 blossoms on it.

The filbert nut trees that I got from Arbor Day are growing well this year.  They're growing so well that I'll have to move one of them to a better location.  Even the one that got broken off (or chewed off) near the base last year is doing well.

Tribbles

This was the month that the team I'm in for Nerd Wars on Ravelry (Team Enterprise) decided to knit a lot of tribbles. I think the last count was 61. Here's one from last month and another from this month "guarding" the cat food.



And, here are a few more... on the mantle where they can survey almost everything going on in the house. (I used this tribble pattern.)  They were all made with fun fur -- some with just fun fur, some with fun fur and Wool-Ease, some with fun fur and Homespun.  The ones with just fun fur are softer and squishier.  The ones with 2 types of yarn are easier to toss from person to person.



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As a side note: My DS2 is going to be participating in a charity speed demo marathon to benefit Doctors without Borders (and, in particular, their efforts in Japan). The marathon will run from April 7th to 10th.  Instead of having the marathon run from one central location, participants will be streaming their chosen video game from their home computers.  The marathon starts at 4:00pm EDT.

March 2011

Nerd Wars on Ravelry has gotten me to try things I probably wouldn't have -- at least not for a while.

I've done some double knitting -- which I'd never attempted before. I'll probably do more double knitting. I really like the feel of double knit.

I've done some serious crocheting -- and my first pineapple doily. (Pineapple doilies are a staple of crocheting -- though not nearly as popular as afghans. But, I'd never made one.) I still don't see the excitement for pineapple doilies, but I enjoyed crocheting with a size 10 steel hook and size 30 crochet thread again. I did hit a major snag. I just discovered that I didn't have enough thread to finish the doily. Luckily the edging is done in 12 separate sections. I'm doing every other section in a different thread -- a variegated purple instead of the variegated purple and yellow I'd used for the rest of the doily. (The link is to a tutorial on making the edging.)

I've designed and knitted a couple of dishcloths, Red Rectangle Nebula and Diamond Mosaic. And, I even designed and knitted a Star Trek hat.

It's gradually starting to get warm here. Here's a picture of the deck from March 6th. (The paw prints may be of our neighborhood coyote.) Now the deck is completely free of snow. Daffodils are coming up. And, the only snow left is from the large piles of snow left by last month's snowplowing.

Prometheus

As a result of the recent devastation in Japan, one of my favorite designers -- Monika Eckert (Wollklabauter) -- decided to create a shawl, Prometheus. Proceeds from the sale will go to either Wings of Hope or Doctors Without Borders.

a tribble for Nerd Wars on Ravelry

I'm making progress on my projects for Nerd Wars on Ravelry. Here's my entry into the category -- a tribble made from Fun Fur and Wool-Ease. The sides have been "sewn" together in a 3-needle bind-off. All that remains is to stuff it slightly and draw the top and bottom together.

As to snow..... It's completely melted off the back porch. We can even see some blades of grass in the lawn -- due to the warm weather we've been having. The big piles of snow are even half the size they were before!

snow, a week later

These pictures were taken a week after our big snowstorm. It's going to take quite a while for all that snow to melt.....

The roads are dry. But, the temperature hadn't been over freezing for about 2 weeks. That's supposed to change.

In fact, it did. ... Sunday, the temperature was above freezing and stayed above freezing overnight.

And, maybe, the groundhog was right. We're supposed to get our first 50 degree day this Thursday -- exactly 2 weeks after the prediction of an early spring. :)

We discovered an unusual danger from icicles on Saturday. An icicle turned on one of our outside spigots. We heard water running. After checking everywhere around the house, we finally checked outside. An icicle had turned a spigot on. My DH had to dig through the snow to get to the spigot and turn it off.


On Friday, I discovered that Wool-Ease is very durable. I had gotten out of the car in a parking lot that I often go to -- and discovered a scarf that I hadn't known I'd lost. It was just barely visible in the ice of the parking lot. So, I took it home, let it thaw out, and then washed it. It's as good as new!

My knitting projects so far this month have mostly been Star Trek and/or Nerd Wars related. Here is the Red Rectangle Nebula dishcloth that I (designed and) knit as part of the competition.

snow

I haven't done any blogging for quite a while, but today seemed like a good day to start again -- with some snow pics.

According to the weatherman, this was the third largest snowfall in 129 years of Chicago record-keeping. The first pic is my DH digging his way down the driveway to the road, in order to have enough room to use the snow-blower. The powdery snow goes past his knees.

The second pic is our back porch. It had a little snow on it from before. But, now the snow lies next to the patio door -- about 20" deep for the entire patio. Before this snow, the total for the season for Chicago was around 30".

I've started getting ideas for knitting projects -- and am about to have too much knitting to do (or that I'd like to do).

I've joined Nerd Wars on Ravelry. I've finished my first project -- a Red Rectangle Nebula dishcloth -- and am thinking about what to work on next. I've also got some ideas on socks and sweaters..... And, I'm thinking seriously about a big project, Moni's Windsbraut Pirat shawl.

end of fall

We've had our first hard frost here. We thought about covering sensitive plants. And, in fact, we did cover them for one of the freezes. But, the added week wasn't worth it. (The large bowl is filled with mostly green tomatoes. To the side are a couple eggplant and another tomato.)

So, all the members of the nightshade family are gone from the garden now -- tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. What's left is broccoli and Brussels sprouts. I'm amazed that the broccoli is still bearing. And, I'm told that sprouts shouldn't be harvested until after the first hard frost -- which may mean I should harvest them now --. But, since the broccoli is still bearing, I'll wait.

I haven't decided whether to turn the tree leaves over into the garden or rake them out. We did remove all the tomato vines and eggplant and pepper stems.

I think the only kind of tomatoes we'll plant next year will be Big Boy tomatoes or something similar. I found that I really don't care for cherry or roma tomatoes. And, we'll probably not plant Brussels sprouts. The plants sort of took over the garden. Maybe, we'll plant cauliflower instead. If cauliflower is even half as good as the brocolli we had this year, I'll be happy.

We went to see the "Lion King" in Chicago on Saturday. The play was fantastic! Somehow, we'd never gotten around to seeing it before. And, the theater is was playing in was fantastic, as well. The Cadillac Palace Theater was built in 1926 and still has a lot of the gorgeous ornateness of that period.

Halloween

We had 219 Trick-or-Treaters come to our house yesterday. (The official hours were from 2 to 6. The last 2 came at 6:05.) My DS2 wore his bunny hat, which he knit himself, to hand out candy. His hat was a hit with just about everyone who came to the door. (The only exception was one 2- or 3-yr-old who was scared of a tall bunny-like creature handing out candy.)

The bunny hat link (above) tells which patterns we combined to produce the hat and why he decided to knit it in the first place. (And, as you can see, it fits over his glasses. It would be pretty hard to play a video game in the mask if it didn't.)

edited (Jan 2011) to add link: speed demos charity marathon January 6 - 11.

We handed out candy from a multi-bag, actually several. The kids mostly liked Hershey's, Reese's, and KitKat -- but not Almond Joy or Whoppers -- which is all right with me. Almond Joy is my third favorite candy. (Snickers is my favorite. Hershey's is my second favorite.)

We were one of the least decorated places in the neighborhood. This is the most decorated place. At night, there's even a ghostly apparition in an upstairs window. It took them over a week to complete the display.

Destiny Fair Isle hat

Since the new season of StarGate Universe is about to begin, I thought I'd design a hat with the 9-chevron address to Destiny. It also has the word "Destiny" in Alteran. Here is a picture of the star at the top of the hat. And, here's a link to a side view of the hat.

I'd designed a hat with a couple addresses from Stargate SG-1 in March 2009 -- using the glyphs and addresses from RDAnderson.com as a guide. The new hat is a lot like the previous one but with a few changes, including a different star on top -- which took a while to design.

Getting the address and glyphs for Destiny required a little research. First of all, I rewatched "Air". Then I looked at the Stargate Wiki for the full address. Unfortunately, the first glyph, Libra, looked slightly different in "Air" than in the wiki. (After deciding to use the one from the episode, I "needed" to watch some SG-1 episodes to check out the other glyphs. "Prisoners" had the best selection of glyphs -- which meant comparing the addresses in "Prisoners" to the addresses from the Stargate Wiki to get the final version of the hat.)

trip to Ohio

We took a trip to Ohio this past weekend -- actually from Sunday to Tuesday. It was fun to travel by car. Our last car trip was to southern Wisconsin (and a tour of Jelly Belly).

On the trip, we saw our first wind farm (in Indiana). There were several miles of windmills on either side of the interstate. They were facing several different directions. Some were moving and some weren't. We assume that changing wind directions was the reason that the windmills were facing different directions. (We also made the obvious remarks about looking for someone tilting at windmills.)

We stayed at the house of a couple friends of ours. And, we, of course, went by to look at our old house -- which looked good except that the garage door needed staining.

The evening before we left for Ohio, we went to a performance of "Annie, Get Your Gun" at Ravinia. We got tickets at half price because of fallout from the only other performance we'd all been to at Ravinia -- a selection of Sondheim tunes that was cut short because the donors had a banquet prepared that might be getting cold. The first act of the play lasted longer than the whole Sondheim show! -- Now, if Ravinia could just get a better sound system.....

We're starting to get tomatoes from the garden now. The Romas were just so-so, but the Better Boys were as good as I remembered! And, we're still getting broccoli from the garden!

I'm knitting Kingsgate again, this time with Knit Picks Gloss DK and in a smaller size (the size my DD wears). Kingsgate has been tentatively accepted into Knit Picks independent designer program. (Gloss is a pleasure to work with.) And, I've seen what a difference advertising makes. Ivywild was featured by Knit Picks, and sales really took off.

Cardinal flower

My garden is doing well. The broccoli is bearing so well that I've frozen a lot of it. And it's still bearing a little. It's delicious! It's so delicious that I can't stand to eat broccoli from a store or restaurant. They're only a poor imitations.

The picture at the right is of some cardinal flowers planted outside the stone garden.

The Brussel sprouts haven't started to grow anything but the smallest of sprouts yet. The plants themselves are just getting bigger and bigger. (Sprouts grow at the base of leaves.) We'll probably grow cauliflower instead next year.

We won't get any fruit off our apple or peach trees this year. I think chipmunks ate them all while the fruit was small. Our neighborhood coyote has diminished the chipmunk and squirrel populations quite a bit, but there are still some around. (It's too bad that most people, including us, keep our pets inside or on leashes most of the time. Otherwise, we wouldn't need coyotes to keep down the rodent population.)

We haven't gotten much in the way of tomatoes yet.

My DH assures me that the jalapeño and habanero peppers are doing well. In fact, he says that the jalapeños are hotter than in previous years when I grew the plant in a planter.

Our first eggplant ripened. And, I realized that I have no idea how to cook eggplant. I muddled my way through cooking it -- and have no idea why people like eggplant. My best guess is the nicotine.

We went to Sam's Club on Saturday -- the first time we'd been to a Sam's Club since leaving Ohio. (They had a non-members weekend for back-to-schoolers.) It was so nice and the people so friendly that we got a membership. Our main purchase there was a new Kodak printer. The HP printer we got a couple years ago never really worked. We could never get it to print in color for more than half a sheet of paper. I'm really happy about the new "toy".

We went to Six Flags in Gurnee that evening. It wasn't our best visit. First of all, I couldn't take my small shoulder pack (containing just my pass, phone, glasses, and a book) on any roller coaster rides. I had to pay $1 to store it -- I guess so they could make extra money. It wouldn't have been so bad if there hadn't been a lady about 10 people ahead of us in line for one of the roller coasters with a bigger backpack -- and if we hadn't been bitten by mosquitoes while waiting in line.

I've got quite a bit of knitting and writing up of patterns done in the last few weeks. Here are some colorwork socks designed by Chrissy Gardiner for Ravelry's Sock Knitters Anonymous. And, yes, I know they're in reversed colors. I haven't decided which version I like better. In any event, they're warm and no one will see them inside boots.

And here's a link to my Diamond Spiral socks. I couldn't decide which version I liked better and so ended up making (and designing) both.

mid July

I've finally got back into knitting again -- thanks to this cute Ribbon Hat pattern by Brandee Fondren -- which I test knitted. I hadn't felt much like knitting or crocheting since mid April. But, now it's fun again.

Instead of knitting and crocheting, I read the complete Harry Potter series. My kids had all read the books when they came out, but I hadn't read them at all until now. The only one that I didn't like, which really isn't part of the series, is the Tales of Beetle the Bard. I generally like reading fairy tales, but the small book was simply boring.

In the last week, I was able to come up with a new crocheted daylily pattern -- which I like much better than the one I had posted earlier.

I'm working on a pair of socks for my DH -- which I need to finish soon since his birthday was earlier this month -- and a colorwork sock. The colorwork sock is from Ravelry's Sock Knitters Anonymous.

My garden is becoming a summer garden now. The tomatoes are taking over with pole beans not far behind. My broccoli is mostly done for the year. But it did produce so much that I'm beginning to get tired of broccoli even though it's really delicious and so much better than what one gets in stores. (I've frozen a lot of it.) I don't think I'll grow Brussel sprouts next year. They're just now starting to produce sprouts, and the mother plants are crowding out other plants. The peppers have started to produce peppers.

I've also planted some eggplant -- even though I have no idea what to do with eggplant. I do vaguely remember my BIL making some delicious eggplant curry. My family thinks my sudden gardening interest may have something to do with Farm Town and Farmville. My planting eggplant definitely has something to do with those Face Book games.

I have no idea why my radishes didn't do a thing. I didn't think there was any way radishes wouldn't do well.

a thermocouple

The internet saved us money Sunday. The pilot light on our gas water heater went out. So, we went to the internet, just as we did the last time that happened, and watched a couple of videos on how to relight a pilot light. This time the pilot light went out as soon as the water heater was turned on. So, we read further and discovered that the trouble might be the thermocouple.

We bought a new thermocouple (less than $10). Then after watching a thermocouple installation video a couple of times, we got it in place. The water heater works now!

My birthday was last Sunday. Here are the flowers my eldest sent. I also got some chocolates, another Dresden File book, a William Shatner book, and Bill Bryson's Made in America -- which I'm now reading. I never knew that Squanto had lived in London (mostly involuntarily) before meeting the Pilgrims.

On the knitting front, I've got two sweater patterns for sale now: Ivywild (on the Knit Picks website) and Kingsgate (on the Ravelry website). Ivywild is a very short sleeved summer yoked top. Kingsgate is a scoop-neck raglan pullover.

Ivywild is a long time in the making. I'd made a similar pullover for myself back in 2007 -- Festive. It has an i-cord edging. But, an i-cord edging proved too heavy for anything other than acrylic yarns. So, when I was redesigning Festive for a cottony yarn and for multiple sizes, I finally came upon the solution of using lace edgings.

Kingsgate was even longer in the making. I'd made Smocked out of some fingering weight yarn in 2006. I'd been thinking about redoing it in heavier yarn and in multiple sizes for a while. So, I started to knit up Kingsgate -- but didn't think the smocking would look as good in a DK weight yarn. So, I worked a different pattern on the sleeves and lower garment. Kingsgate has a double uneven rib on the center of the sleeves and on the skirt. It also has a fake waistband. Kingsgate and Smocked have the same neckline.

---- Kingsgate can be made up into Smocked with no adjustments in stitch counts for sizes S and L. For XS, M, and XL, one needs to increase (or decrease) 4 sts just after starting the lower garment to get to the multiple of 8 necessary for the smocking pattern.

On another note: My eldest has a blog on the World Cup in South Africa -- which I highly recommend.