yarn tootin'

Bob's Lakers Jersey

     My husband Bob has seen this commercial a few too many times...
     

     He's decided that I should knit him a Lakers jersey and I don't even know where to begin.  Every time I talk about yarn or knitting or going to a yarn store, he asks me when I'm going to get started on his jersey.  At first I thought he was kidding, but now I'm pretty sure he actually wants me to knit him a Lakers jersey.  I tried to explain that while I love the color purple, the techniques involved in knitting a garment that says "Lakers" on it, not to mention the great big number 32 that he has requested are tricky and don't interest me.  Unfortunately, I don't think he's going to shut up about it until I knit the thing and he sees how ridiculous a knitted basketball jersey is in real life.  If anyone has a pattern for a great big man sized basketball jersey, let me know.

GPS Knit

     Bob got a GPS for Christmas and it's proven to be quite useful.  Look what happens if you're out and about  and you do a shopping search and type in "yarn"...

     It was still searching when I took the picture and it eventually came up with four screens of LYS.  When I tried the same search using "knit" it also did quite well...

     Now I want one too. 

Happy Halloween

My Husband Bob as Mighty Mouse, circa 1976.  He still makes this face.

B is for...

     B is for my husband Bob, Big Texas, and Big Love.  I meant to post this a couple of days ago on our 3rd anniversary (we've now been married for three years and two days), but I didn't get to it.  Bob and I have had a busy and stressful week with regards to our jobs and their fate which is one of the drawbacks of working for a performing arts organization.  The good news is that now it looks like everything is going to work out, so we're free to relax and celebrate. 
     Now that we know we'll be staying in Big Texas for awhile, I'm sure we will do some shopping this weekend.  One thing we really need is a new Bed.  We'll also probably watch many episodes of House which is Bob's new favorite show, and at least a few episodes of Big Love which I'm really loving right now.  I can't watch Big Love too late at night though, because I end up having dreams about polygamy and that's just not good.  Happy Anniversary Bob!  It has been a most excellent three years and two days.   

Me, Bob, and two inner tubes.

Bob's Big Day

      Today is Bob's birthday.  Happy Birthday Bob!  This picture was taken last weekend at Joe Don's retirement party.  Yes, Bob is wearing a halo.  The entire viola section wore either halos or gold reindeer antlers for a good portion of the party.  Every year, the viola section does something like this for the holiday pops concert and for some reason,  our principal violist decided that it would be a good idea to break out the halos and the antlers for the party.  Joe was presented with his own set of antlers to keep.  I'm new to this tradition, but I'm all for it.  Apparently, so is Bob.

     We have to go to a wedding tonight, so we did most of our celebrating last night.  We went to The Melting Pot for dinner and we're both still recovering.  It was a delicious meal, and I'd highly recommend the place, but it was a ton of food.  We got one of their feasts for two and  after the cheese fondue, the salads, the assorted meat, fish, shrimp and lobster fondue and then the chocolate fondue, our abdomens were most definitely distended.  I still feel a little full. 

     One of Bob's birthday presents will be these socks.  They are the two at a time socks I started for my sockpal.  After knitting several rounds of the plain part, I realized that they were going to be way too big for my sockpal.  They're way to big for me and my feet are a little bigger than hers.  One evening, I was lamenting this fact and Bob said that he wanted them, so I'm trying to finish them before we go to Arcata for Sequoia.  It never gets over 65 degrees up there, so he may even get to wear them a couple of times.  I don't think my yarn is going to hold out for the entire pair, so the toes will probably be done in either green or brown KnitPicks Essential. 
     So far, I'm not sold on knitting socks two at a time.  It does ensure that the socks are the same, but I found getting past the heel to be quite tricky.  It's also taking forever to finish them.  When I knit socks one at a time, I usually take a break between the two socks and work on something else.  The fact that Bob has big old feet isn't helping.  I also have no idea how to effectively divide a skein of yarn.  I know I could use a food scale, but I don't have a food scale.  Eyeballing it doesn't seem to be working that well for me and I'm going to run out of one ball of yarn before the other.  Oh well, at least I will have knit some socks for Bob and he will never be able to say that I never knit him socks ever again.

     Now I'm left to figure out something else for my sockpal.  She gave me very little in the way of color preferences, so the other night I just emptied my sock yarn drawer and chose the skein I felt like knitting the most.  I decided to use the Hill Country Yarns Sweet Feet in Chocolate Covered Kisses that I got in Dallas in March.  I love this colorway and I'm looking forward to knitting it.  I'm either going to knit the Central Air pattern from BMFA or a beaded rib pattern from Charlene's latest book.  I just need to get Bob's socks off of my US 1's so I can get started.

     We're off to get a pet carrier for the kittens.  We found an independent kitty rescue that's willing to take them.  I'm not sure that we'll be able to catch them, but we're going to get a carrier and a couple of cans of tuna and do our best.  The woman at the kitty rescue seemed to think that if we put the tuna in the cage, they'd go right in.   They're out there right now drinking the water we put out, so I think we're on the right track. 

Cookies

     If you ever find yourself in a situation  where you feel the need to send someone a gift, say flowers or something of that nature, but you're looking for something more delicious than flowers, I can highly reccommend sending cookies from Dancing Deer Baking Company.  Last week I spoke to my Oberlin freshman (and sophomore and junior year) roommate, Megan for the first time in months.  I contacted her because I wanted to find out what kind of baby she's having so that I could knit accordingly. She's having a boy which is good because that's the direction I was going.  Anyhow, we ended up talking about Bob's surgery and then yesterday, this box of cookies arrived from Megan via Dancing Bear.  When I emailed her to thank her, she responded by saying that she thought we'd appreciate the cookies more than flowers and she was right.  These cookies are great and unlike Bob, I'm not really someone who's super into cookies.  So far, I've tried the Sugar Cane Lime flavor and the Chocolate Tangerine flavor and they are both exteremely delicious.  The next time I'm stumped for a gift idea, I'm going to head directly to the Dancing Bear website.  Really, who doesn't enjoy a good cookie?

It's Not Knitting, but It's Still Crafty!

     My husband, Bob, is so crafty.  He can sort of knit, but he's not good at it.  He is good at making musical instruments out of household items.  Bob's first IFC (interactive family concert) was on Sunday.  My parents were in town for the weekend, so we had an IFS (interactive family Saturday) helping him with various projects.   It started with our hose horn assembly line on Saturday afternoon.  My dad cut the lengths of hose while watching football, my mom glued funnels on the ends of the hoses with a hot glue gun, and I put PVC "mouth pieces" on the other end of each hose.  These homemade horns were then tied into a circular shape with Lion Brand Jiffy (donated by me) and given to the kids who came to the IFC concert.
     One of the other homemade instruments featured at the IFC was a wine bottle xylophone.  This seems like it should be easy, but it's harder than it looks.  We'd been saving wine bottles for awhile, but we'd forgotten to save all of the corks.  If you're ever in need of a wine bottle xylophone, be sure to save the corks, and be aware that only natural corks work.  The plastic "corks" aren't as resonant and the bottles that have them don't sound as good as the ones that have real corks.  My dad saved the day with this one.  He bought us several bottles of St. Genevieve Texas White, which have real corks.  Texas White sells for around $3.50 a bottle at the local HEB and it tastes a little bit like alcoholic Sprite.  Texas Red, on the other hand, is not bad.  Both colors have natural corks and work equally well when building a xylophone.   An empty Shiner bottle served as the highest note.  This was a very Texan xylophone.
     The third and final instrument was constructed very late on Saturday night, and it was a bucket bass.  This last instrument wasn't finished until close to 2 A.M., at which point, we were very easily amused.  We took several pictures and a couple of videos of one another playing this bass.  Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to make typepad display the video, but here I am playing the bucket bass wearing concert black on top and sweatpants on the bottom, as is often the case after late night shows.
     Between the parents visiting, various concerts, and the construction of so many homemade musical instruments, my knitting has gone by the wayside.  I'm currently knitting the same four items I've been working on for the last couple of months.  I do have plans to do some knitting and I even bought some yarn on eBay the other day.  The 10 skeins of Noro Kureyon in colorway #188 that I won should arrive sometime in the next week or so, and I plan to have Klaralund in time to wear it in Minnesota over the holidays.

Bobs

     Bob and I have been married for two whole years today.   We recently bought a house and are living together, in the very same place, for the first time since 2003.  I realize that most people live together as soon as they are married, and these days, a lot of people live together before they are married.  Some folks even buy houses before they are married, but Bob and I are a little bit backwards and we like it that way.  Good job Bob, we did it!  Now you're really stuck with me. 
     Things have been a little bit busy chez Bobs.  For those of you who are new to this blog, my husband's name isn't really Bob.  It's David, but for reasons that aren't interesting to anyone but us, I call him Bob and he calls me Bob too.  We're Bobs.  We're actually Babs, but we pronounce it Bob.  I spell it phonetically to avoid confusion.  I would hate for folks to be reading along and thinking that Bab rhymes with Tab.  That would be bad.  Now I've digressed...as I was saying, things are busy around here.  We're trying to get our house organized which is going very slowly.  I've been to Austin and back three times in the last four days, and sadly, I had to miss stitch 'n bitch on Sunday in order to attend my first Austin Symphony rehearsal.  Two weeks ago, I went to my first S'nB ever here in San Antonio.  I met some excellent ladies and I'd love to go back, but I will be in Austin again this Sunday.  I'll definitely make it back at some point.
     To celebrate our anniversary, Bob and I are going to head over to Sears to pick up our new lawnmover (how romantic!) and then we're going to go somewhere nice for dinner.  Maybe I will get around to knitting a row or two one of these days.  I certainly hope so, because I have a lot of yarn.

Homeowners

     Look what Bob and I bought this morning...

     I saw the inside for the first time an hour before the closing.  Bob chose a good one.  I'm off to Sears and Home Depot to look at major appliances and paint.  No knitting today.

Weekend Update

      I know it's Tuesday, but the musician weekend is typically either Sunday and Monday, or Monday and Tuesday, so to me, it feels like the weekend just ended.  Bob was here for a visit over the actual weekend.  Before crossing over to a real job in orchestra management, Bob played in the orchestra here for six years.  We have a lot of old friends here, so it was sort of like having a rock star for a husband because everyone wanted a piece of him.  When we walked into the post-concert gathering at the brew pub on Friday night, all activity pretty much stopped and there was an enthusiastic chorus of "Filner!" (Bob's real name).  It was sort of like "Norm!" on Cheers.  Here are a few pictures of me and Bob with some of our favorite drunken musicians.  Bob looks a little scary in the one on the right, but that's what makes it such an excellent picture.
   

   

    

    

   

     I have been knitting quite a little bit, but I don't have any good progress to report.  I started a pair of Yarrow Ribbed socks from Knitting Vintage Socks with the Fleece Artist yarn I got from my sockpal, Cynthia.  Bob brought me the yarn from San Antonio.  I tried to wind it the night before I left, but I made a huge knotty mess, and I was too tired to fix it, so I shoved it in a ziplock bag.  I was missing that yarn the other day, so I asked Bob bring it to me, which he did, and it didn't even take that long to undo the mess.  I now have three pairs of socks on the needles and I'm doing nothing about the massive amount of baby knitting that needs to happen before October.  The nice thing about babies born in October is that the holiday is just around the corner, so if I don't finish things in time, there is always the potential for a lovely handknit holiday gift.
    The only other knitting related item that I have to report is that thanks to Brenda Dayne's awesome podcast, Cast On, I have discovered another excellent knitting podcast.  The new one is called Lime & Violet, and I like it as much as Cast On.  I've listened to several knitting podcasts and this one is the first one I've enjoyed as much as Cast On.  Lime and Violet are two ladies who basically sit around talking about yarn and knitting and they are a hoot.  If you're into knitting podcasts, check this one out.