The Scottish Lamb

Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

I am WAY behind in blog reading and emails but I have a good excuse.  I've been travel bargain hunting on the computer and phone for two solid days .

We are last minute travelers.  We purchased our trip to Egypt (click here - Nov 10 post) a week before we left.  You might remember that I went to a Knitting & Spinning retreat last July on the Island of Mull in Scotland (click here and scroll down to Oct 3rd).  That group is meeting again in the Summer of '06 on the island of Orkney.   We were planning on going as a family.  The problem is we're moving back to the States around that time also.  We have no idea exactly when and won't until about six months before.  Dan and I were talking about it the other morning and we just didn't want to bank it all on the Orkney trip and then not be able to go.  So we decided to plan a trip to Scotland for this year.  Dan knew I felt miserable about it so as soon as he got to work that morning he made sure he could take leave and called me to start planning for Spring Break!  Yikes!  That's 2 1/2 weeks away!  So I got busy doing my thing.  Budget travel.  Thank God for the internet.  We got round trip tickets for all four of us Frankfurt/Glasgow for $200!!

We'll get there at about 8:30 pm so I got a hotel room next to the train station where we'll leave in the morning to spend the day in Stirling with a little side trip to Bridge of Allan (part of my heritage).  We'll head back to Glasgow that afternoon, pick up our luggage from the hotel (that's why I picked one close to the train station) and head up to the B&B on the north shore of Loch Lomond.  From there we'll take day trips.  The first day it's up to Glencoe (the other part of my heritage is Campbell - I won't be advertising that little fact) to enjoy the scenery.  Second day is back to Mull and Iona via Oban.  I'm hoping we'll have time to visit the Ardalanish sheep farm we went to as a knitting group last summer. Then the next day it's back to check out Glasgow and the Science Center before flying back home that night.  Quick trip but better than not going at all.

I don't know if it's my Scottish blood or if I lived there in another life, but there's something about Scotland that draws me to it like no other place I've ever been (and I've been to a lot of places).  I cry tears of joy when I arrive and I cry when I have to leave and I always swear I'll come back again.  The boys are out-of-their-minds excited about the whole plane, train and ferry thing.  I was really hoping to get back to Shetland again (Dec. 6th post), but I'm not complaining.  Someday....

Knitting?? I've decided to keep the V-neck on the Must Have as is.  I knit a few rows last night but that's about it.

As for the Take a Soldier to the Movies Operation, we had to reschedule moving everything to this Friday.  Pam got to have lunch with Laura Bush during her visit here in Germany on Tuesday.  I can't wait to hear all about it on Friday over lunch.

Joe's class is on the letter "S" this week.  So for the sake of spinning and sheep, I'll be doing a little demo for 21 five-year olds this afternoon.  I love how excited kids get about it all.   Hope I remember my camera.

Back to ferry and train schedules....

Must Have Woes

I'm the kind of cook that never follows a recipe exactly.  And then when someone wants to know how I made a dish, I can't tell them... and I usually can't duplicate it exactly because even when I remember I can't avoid the urge to add something else or do something a little different.   Evidently... I'm that way with knitting too.  If you look over my archives, you'll see that I change everything I knit from the way the pattern says to do it.  Even the Hardangervidda....  Left out the extra bits before the ribbings on the bottom and sleeve.  Well.... I've struck again and it's come back to bite me in the arse.

Ladies and Gentlemen, if I could direct your attention to Exhibit #1:

Here you see it looks like the underarm shaping start even with the bottom of a diamond pattern.  So... when I knit the back that's what I did.  No, I couldn't go by the pattern measurement-wise, because I'm making mine longer.   Now, in the pattern, the V-neck shaping starts on the next right-side row after the initial underarm decreases.  Note that the V-neck follows the TOP slant of the diamond?!  Argh!

Obviously, I've been conned by a photo.  I present to you Exhibit #2:

If I start the V-neck shaping now, it will obviously look all screwed up because it won't follow the natural path of the slant of the diamond pattern.  So... I have two choices.  I can rip the back out down to the armhole shaping and bring it up a few rows or I can just live with the V-neck being a little less deep (I figure it'll be about an inch higher).  I won't be showing off any cleavage in this thing anyway, so I vote for the higher V-neck.  Luckily, I'm the judge and jury on this case because there is no way that I'm ripping the back out that far. 

In closing... Paton's tried to make the pattern easy by making the decreases all on the same rows, but noooo... that wasn't good enough for me.  Now I have to pull out the calculator (have I mentioned that Daniel did *not* get his math skills from me?) and figure out where I'll be stopping the armhole shaping and my changed V-neck shaping.  We should know by the end of the day how this little saga will turn out.

In the meantime... it just keeps snowing and snowing here... This has to be at least a week and a half now that it has snowed every day.  In the 10+ years I've spent in Germany, I've never seen it snow this much.  I took this photo from Joseph's balcony looking down on the bus stop where Daniel and Joe catch the bus each morning.  I don't think I need to tell you how nice it is to have the stop right out our back door.  Yes, there's a balcony off of a five-year old's bedroom.  Our house is really two German apartments.  German homes are not at all what we Americans are used to.  They put their own kitchens in and there are no closets.  Because our house (apartments) are leased from the landlord by the government, they put in a kitchen downstairs and "closets" (think big wall lockers with shelving inside) in all the bedrooms.  Our best guess is that Joe's room is really the living room.  The big walk-in "closet" upstairs is probably really the kitchen space.  One of the biggest reasons I'm looking forward to our move back to the States is to have a real house again.

Le Petit Est Arrivé

Are you impressed, Nilda?  Don't be, I cheated.  lol.  The Petite finally arrived!!  Guess what I've been doing all day!

In the left cooooorner,  looong and strong yearling mohair, in the right coooorner crimmmpy silver romney....  Are you reaaaaadddaaaayyyyy to start caaaaarrrddding?!  I think I spent to much time turning the crank today.

I did approx 20% mohair to 80% romney but who's counting?  This big huge puff of batts:

will end up being a pair of socks for my Gramps in New Hampshire.  I hope I blended it all enough.  I carded the fibers seperately then scrunched it all together over and over and carded a couple more times.  I might card it all one more time before I spin it but my shoulder just couldn't take any more today.

I had to take out the facing of the Hardangervidda for Dan.   I reduced the number of sts by about 10% and reknit it in 1x1 rib on smaller needles to bring it in some.   Worked like a charm. 

Daniel's Factoid:  Daniel's tired of doing the factoids already! lol.  Seriously... that's his factoid for today.  He'd rather be a guest speaker when the urge hits him.  Okee dokee, buddy.  Too much pressure I guess.

Snow Day

I realize that those of you in the Northeast will snort, but this is a lot of snow to us.  Even friends here that know we're going to Ft. Drum, NY next year are laughing at us.  Since the boys had the day off from school we went sledding with some friends and will probably go back out before dinner.  It's supposed to keep up for the next week.  What fun!

I'm really excited about Operation: Take A Soldier To The Movies and really appreciate the comments and emails I got from everyone.   Don't worry... you'll be hearing a lot about this program once we get things moved over to Dan's office and I get more information.  We're moving all the stuff over to Dan's office on Tuesday and meeting for lunch.

A fun package arrived from Copper Moose yesterday!  Full of fiber samples to play with when my drum carder arrives.  There's angora, camel, cashmere, alpaca and kid mohair.  The wait for the carder is killing me but probably for the best until I get the Must Have finished.                                    

Speaking of...  I'm just a few rows shy of finishing the back.  Had to frog back the same column again.  I should have taken a photo this time.  Not to worry, I'm sure I'll screw up again.  There'll be plenty more photo ops.  I made it a little longer than the directions call for so that it fall right about mid-hip.  As soon as I finish the last triangle, the back is finished.

I pulled my embroidery machine out yesterday to make a Christening bib for some friends who go to our Parish.  This is their fifth child.  I found an embroidery design at Stitchery Mall that does the bib all in the hoop and I found a free Chi Rho pattern to stitch onto the bib in a metallic gold and silver thread.  It came out really pretty I think.

Daniel's Factoid:  Fossil fuels are called that because over many millions of years, heat from teh Earth's core and pressure from rock and soil have reacted with the fossils of dead plants and animals to form fuel.

Take a Soldier to the Movies

  I didn't get any knitting done today but I did have a good time helping pack popcorn boxes full of goodies for soldiers in Iraq.  It's an awesome program called, "Take A Soldier To The Movies".  There's a dvd, popcorn (microwave), candy, drink mix and letter to a soldier from people who donated dvds all packed up in a real movie popcorn box.  I think the letter is the best part.  Jeremy will be a popular guy in his unit when the three huge boxes make their way to him in Mosul.  It just about brought tears to my eyes to see how many people donated items for this project.  If you want to help out, click here.

The woman who oversees the program, Pam Lindenmeyer, called to make sure Jeremy's unit gets taken care of before she passes on the baton to another volunteer.  Over 4,000 boxes have been sent downrange in the last year by Pam and her volunteers.  It was so amazing to me that I wanted to do more.  I offered to take over the operation for Pam.  It actually works out perfectly.  Dan has a HUGE conference room (think football field) at the office.  The conference room is right over the Post Office and Mail Room.  So when supplies come in, we can just take them right up the stairs.  We'll have the huge conference table to pack up the popcorn boxes and then we just carry the packages right back downstairs to the Post Office to ship downrange.  Ser-en-dipity, my friends, Ser-en-dipity.

The son of the man that started the program is in Pam's husband's unit.  They had a family tradition of going to the movies every Thanksgiving.  When his son was in Iraq and that wasn't possible, he "took" his son's whole unit to the movies by sending them DVDs and popcorn.  How awesome is that?!

For Valentine's Day, my Valentine came home with roses, a card and he'd printed out and framed my very first blog post from October.  Cute, huh?

Daniel's Factoid:  April 15th, 1912 :  The day the "unsinkable" British luxury ship Titanic collided with a massive iceberg.  Less than three hours later, the 883-foot-long ship sank to the floor of the ocean.  More than 1,500 people died.  (mom's note:  the Titanic is Daniel's speciality)

A' Cabling We Go

Finally got to start on the Must Have yesterday.  I have no idea why the color is all funky on the picture. It's a deep cranberry.

I gotta tell ya.  Cables kick my arse until I get used to them.  It wasn't until I got about three inches into the pattern that I finally started to feel like it was clicking along and the cussing pretty much stopped.

Though I ended up making up my own, a huge help for me was the "cheat" sheet that Kate made available to those of us on the Must Have KAL page.  When I first saw it I had one of those slap-myself-upside- the-head moments.  Duh.  Why didn't I think of that.  Keeping track of different row changes in different cables is what has always deterred me from texture knitting before.  I'm feeling pretty good about this one.  I might just be a cabler after all!  Speaking of "cheat sheets" you have to see the masterpiece that Nathania made!  All in color and everything.  Click here.  I'm not worthy!

I did find an error about halfway down the cable on the left side.  It was a pretty easy fix though.   I just dropped those nine stitches down to the mistake and knit them back up on double points.  I almost like doing that.  Makes me feel powerful.  Like *I'm* the one in charge of the knitting and not the other way around.

Happy Valentine's Day!  I greeted my guys with heart-shaped pancakes this morning.  Daniel thought I should try tree pancakes at Christmas next year.  What am I?  Pancake Picasso? 

Daniel's at school so I don't have a factoid for today.  I forgot to get one from him this morning.  I was kind of thinking they'd get a snow day today because we got dumped on all night and it's not supposed to stop for a couple of days.

On My Honor

Just a quickie post since the only knitting I've done in the past couple of days is for a surprise gift so I can't even show it....

I did a spinning demo for one of the local Girl Scout troops yesterday afternoon.   It was a lot of fun.  They're studying Australia so it fit right in.  The girls loved the CD spindle.  They were fooled by the "granite" clay one too.  I think the thing they loved most was the handcards.   Oh sure... now I find cheap labor.... now that my drumcarder is on the way.  ;-)

The Must Have pattern finally showed up in last night's mail.  I already have the ribbings done, so it's time to get started on that.  Should have plenty of time this weekend.

Daniel's Factoid of the day:  NASA scientists have discovered a "planetoid" in our solar system.  They've named it "Sedna", after an Inuit goddess who created sea creatures of the Arctic.

Fun With Clay

It's not that I have a shortage of spindles.  I actually have a nice little collection.  The thing is, I'm bored out of my gourd waiting for the Must Have pattern to arrive.  I'm being very stubborn good about not starting a new project so that I am free to be totally committed to the Must Have. 

So what does one do with itchy fingers and some free time....  play with FIMO of course.  That there is a spindle that I made with some granite colored clay.  I do have New Hampshire roots... GO PATRIOTS!!!  Don't tell Dan... he's still crying because the Patriots met the Cowboys Superbowl record.  HA!

I'm happy to report that it spins pretty well.  This is something I'm definitely going to be playing around with more in the future.  Already have more clay on the way.  Yippee!!  Another hobby!

Daniel would like to participate in the blog so... introducing Daniel's Factoid of the Day:  Do you know what a googolplex is?  It's one (1) followed by a googol of zeros.  What's a googol of zeros?  Find out here:  http://www.fpx.de/fp/Fun/Googolplex/

Homecoming....

 

More than 400 soldiers came home to their families in Ansbach throughout the day yesterday.  In the Army we can releate to the saying, "Home is where your heart is. "

Here's some of the photos I took last night as the last wave came in at about 10:20 PM.  You can click on the smaller ones to see them better.  Most are blurry.  It was dark and the photographer was a little emotional.....  You can still see the joy.

Waiting:    Joe and Alex

Caitlyn

Mariana and Alex

WELCOME HOME 2/1 Aviation Fighting Eagles!

End of a long day:

End of a very long year....

Michelle, James, Amanda and Michael

Rich and Alex

LeeAnn and Brook (Caitlyn's in there somewhere)

Daniel saying hello to James

James, Michael and Amanda

It was a fantastic ending to a long and anxious day.  They came in about eight hours later than they were supposed to.  At about 4pm, I found out that Joseph misunderstood and thought Jeremy was also coming home .  He was devasted when I told him that Jeremy wouldn't be with all his friends' dads.   It took about an hour to console him but he was happy for his friends in the end.

Secrets

I'm full of secrets today.  I can't show what I'm knitting right now because it's a surprise for someone and I'm not sure if she reads the blog or not.  I got some great stuff for my Secret Pal today, but can't show that for obvious reasons and then there's this:

Can you guess what's going on around here tonight?  Yellow roses and patriotic ribbon....  these are a little gift for my three best friends here, LeeAnn, Mariana and Michelle.  I feel safe in posting the picture because checking out my blog is the last thing on their minds today.  I'll give you another hint... I'm not wearing mascara today.  The entire community is buzzing with excitement.  I'll have awesome pics for you tomorrow.

Still working on the last Fluted Banister sock.  I was pretty vague on that in my last post.   The pattern is here.  I only used the pattern for the stich pattern.  I used Priscilla Gibson-Robert's Dreamsocks from the Fall 2000 issue of Interweave Knits.  It's also available to IK subscribers on their "Subscriber Only" section.  This is my very favorite fit in socks and I just like they way they knit.  Can't explain it.

My friend, Dodie, brought this to my attention.  There's a bill called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act which will require  insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy.  It's about eliminating the "drive-through mastectomy" where women are forced to go home hours after surgery against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached.  Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a petition drive to show your support. Last year over half the House signed on. PLEASE!!!! Sign the petition by clicking here. You only need to give your name and zip code number.  I just did it and it took less than five seconds.  Literally. PLEASE PASS THIS ON to your friends

I ordered my drumcarder today from Copper Moose.  Bill is awesome.  I went with the Fricke Finest Petite.  I can't wait!