Baseball & Green Gable

If you like reading my blog, you'll probably like Staci's too. We live parallel lives, I swear, except it's warm where she's at. Like Staci, I went to a baseball game a couple days ago. It was all of 40 degrees at the game and it rained throughout most of it. Luckily, I dressed for the weather and we brought a large blanket to cover us and our friends.



Aren't they fabu?! Olivia and Jason have been dating for about four months and I really hope it sticks for them because they are great people and I love them and I would love for them to be together for a long, long time. I brought my knitting with me to the game (in my Natalie Dee tote, for those of you who were worried it would be retired in the wake of the Della Q bag), but it was too damn cold to knit anything. I was wearing mittens and you can't knit with mittens on.

Luckily I found time yesterday and today to finish Green Gable for Mom. I doesn't fit me quite right, because it's not supposed to fit me frankly. I think it will be perfect for Mom.


GG blocking


GG artsy


GG on my deck

Yarn: Cascade Sierra in color no. 36.
Mods: I added waist shaping to this one and improved a bit over the shaping I put in my own GG. I started my decreases 3.5" from the underarm. I decreased two stitches every five rows four times. I did mirror increases starting at 9.5". I also made the sleeves longer. Instead of starting the ribbing immediately, I did 13 rows of stockinette before the ribbing.

Did I mention both Staci and I have needy Basenjis? Here's where Toby sits while I'm at my desk studying or blogging.

Sleepy Thursday

Today's weather is a not so subtle reminder that fall in Colorado lasts all of a minute before it's gone. The cooler weather makes it all the more difficult to get out of bed in the morning. Even the dogs can feel it. Here's where they were a good 45 minutes after I had gotten up this morning. They were both doing their best to stay covered without having to move.



(please ignore the bright Hawaiian quilt - ours is at the cleaners - this one's for the guest room)

Along with the cold weather comes thoughts about mugs of hot cider and the sound of rustling leaves. These thoughts are followed by thoughts about snowboarding and hot chocolate with Baileys. In fact, the money for our passes came out of the bank account today. I really just wish fall would stick around a little big longer though.

Treats in my mailbox

I got the best package in the mail this week. My mom and little brother sent me this wonderful package! Apparently my family has decided to take my knitting a bit more seriously seeing as how they're buying me knitting related gifts and all. Have you ever heard of Della Q? Well I hadn't. But they make beautiful silk knitting bags. I love the brown accents with the green silk.



Inside the bag was a set of rosewood knitting needles and a skein of Opal sock yarn. These are by far the fanciest needles I own. I've never knit with Opal yarn, probably because I've never made a sock. I now have sock yarn galore (including the yarn Jen sent me when she was my secret pal) and I should probably make some socks with all this beautiful yarn.




Thank you for the suggestions on a pattern for my Save-me-from-my-freezing-office sweater. I think I've settled on making Starsky from Knitty. I've spent way too much time hemming and hawing over which yarn to use and have settled on Webs' Valley Yarns Berkshire - probably in Oatmeal, but I may change my mind before I place my order tomorrow.

I also wanted to welcome my new readers!! I've noticed a few extra subscribers on Bloglines this week which is pretty neat-o. I suspect some of you wandered over after I visited your blogs. Many of you have also left me comments recently. I tried to respond to everyone, but some emails got bounced back or some of your email addresses don't show up in my Blogger comments so I didn't know how to reach you. In any event, I'm not ignoring you and I'm glad you're here. In attempt to keep you interested, I'm going to do my best to show actual knitting progress on this blog-o-mine. I've noticed recently that a lot of bloggers are good at flashing their swag, but not so great at showing their WIPs. So just for you new readers, here is my most recent proof that I do indeed knit things (like Green Gable. twice. dear God never again. it's getting boring).

Finally, a picture

Here she is, little Ella Mae. Isn't she gorgeous? I haven't received any pictures of her sporting her knitwear, but I'll fix that next month when they're here!

Looking for a pattern

I need your help, please. My office is freezing! The paralegal tells me that even in the winter, my office will be freezing. It has something to do with poor placement of our thermostat. I'd like to have a shawl collar cardigan to wrap around me while I'm at the office. I've looked for a pattern but haven't had much luck. Do you know of a pattern for a sweater similar to the one pictured below? (This is a cotton sweater from Lands End, but I'd make mine with wool) I'd love to hear from you!

Sandra and I are BFF

Yes, you read that right. I'm now SDOC's BFF (Sandra Day O'Connor's best friend forever). Okay, I may be exaggerating, but I did speak with her and get my picture taken with her. That's me on the right with my eyes completely closed. Law assures me that with some crafty photo shop editing you'll never be the wiser. I'm really hoping he's right because I'm not likely to have quality time with Sandra DOC in the near future. Even BFFs go awhile between visits. After we had our heart to heart, she spoke to all conference attendees in a question and answer session with two panelists posing questions. I was moved, impressed, awed, and anything else that would constitute me fawning all over the smart, sensible, and matter-of-fact Justice O'Connor. If you ever want to read a good book about growing up in the West, I highly recommend her memoirs about the Lazy B. Even non-law types will appreciate her succinct writing and ability to tell a story. Oh and I met Justice Breyer too. He was not as engaging as Sandra, but we did have a nice talk about how his mother was from Minnesota and grew up in St. Paul. Sometimes it's handy to hail from the Midwest.



I've also managed to get a decent start on my mom's sweater. I knit for a couple hours yesterday. This resulted in me not reading for class today - which then resulted in me having no clue what was going on in class. I hear that's ok though. It did leave me more time to send emails and scan the internet.

I'm an aunt!!

It's official, I am Aunt Kaitie!! Ella Mae (I love the name) was born yesterday at 12:30 in the afternoon. She's a little peanut weighing just over 4 pounds. I don't have pictures yet. My brother says to wait until next week. NEXT WEEK!!? C'mon, I wanna see the baby now! The whole family (mom, dad, baby, and dog) is coming to visit for two weeks in October so Law and I decided not to fly back to MN this weekend. I'll just wait to have the baby alone for two weeks!

As you may have assumed, my classes have started again. I have done absolutely no knitting in the last couple weeks, except for last night when I cast on a Green Gable for my mom. She wanted it before a trip she's taking in mid-October so I should probably get moving on it! Last year everyone kept telling me how 3rd year is not as busy as 2nd year. Well, they were lying! I'm much more busy now than I have ever been. I'm already looking forward to the end of the semester. That's terrible, isn't it?

My birthday is tomorrow. Law and I are going to the 10th Circuit Bench & Bar Conference. Not exactly an ideal birthday plan, but we get to see Sandra Day O'Connor tonight and Justices Breyer and Roberts on Friday & Saturday. I'm a nerd like that - I'm excited just to see them in person. We do have special plans for tomorrow night which include a French restaurant. Saturday night also looks promising. We're going to see Alejandro Escovedo in concert at the Bluebird Theatre. I've never been to the Bluebird so it will be nice to see if it's better than the Fillmore, of which I'm not a big fan.

I'll try to keep my posts more regular. Hopefully, I'll have some GG progress to show you soon.