Knitcircus giveaway!

Hey, I have something exciting to share with you, so lurkers, come on out of the woodwork! Jaala Spiro, editor of Knitcircus Magazine and fellow Madison knitter, offered me a number of Knitcircus freebies to give away.

If you’re not familiar with Knitcircus, it’s a Madison-based knitting magazine that recently transitioned from a paper magazine format to online distribution. They now have a model sort of similar to Twist Collective (but a lot cheaper!) where each issue features some free patterns and some patterns that are for-pay only–the current issue is $7.50 for the full collection of 20 patterns. I’m glad to see them move to the online format–although I loved having paper copies of the magazine to hold and leaf through, the potential audience is much larger for the online mag. I’d love to see this locally published knitting magazine become as well-known as Twist or Knitty, so if you like their patterns, spread the word.

If you’re interested, leave a comment telling me which Knitcircus design is your favorite, and next Sunday, April 11, I’ll do a random drawing to determine the winners. I have two full year’s magazine subscriptions (value: $23.50 each) and three individual pattern collections (value: $7.50 each) to give away. Please make sure to give me your email address so I can get in contact with you if you win–if I don’t hear back from you within a few days I’ll need to pick someone else.

To get you started on the pattern browsing, here are a few of the lovelies from the current issue, Issue 9:
The Twilight Shawl–combines Kauni yarn with a really interesting shape, and for once I think the name is actually a reference to a time of day. (You have to look at the modeled photo on Ravelry with this wrapped around the shoulders and neck–the one below shows the shape but doesn’t show how pretty the shawl looks with the layers of Kauni stripes when worn.)

Raveled Wristies–free! And named after Ravelry! Awww.

Seamless Slippers–another free pattern, this looks like a great quick gift!

Four Seasons Cardigan–the cardigan from the cover, meant for layering.

Check out the archives, too–some of my favorites from past issues are Kate’s Cardigan from Issue 5 (the photoshoot involves ice cream! More of my pattern photos need to involve ice cream in the future) and And All Things Nice, a girl’s dress from Issue 8.

The lion in winter

As planned, after posting about Eastlake, I put on my mittens and thermal underwear and headed off to the Vilas Zoo to look at penguins.

It was about 15 degrees out and snowing–big, loose, fluffy flakes. The surrounding park was empty and covered in deep drifts of snow. I couldn’t see a soul and wasn’t sure if the zoo was even open, but apparently it was:

I headed to the penguin exhibit, but they were nowhere to be seen. Same with the polar bear enclosure, and most of the other animal pens: empty, clean, silent.

The lion was gone, hidden away somewhere and dreaming of the savanna, so I had to settle for the stone sculpture at the gate.

It wasn’t clear where most of the animals had gone. A few of them were still out in the snow, or visible in their normal shelters: the Great Horned Owl was glowering out from its nest box, harbor seals were swimming in their pool, the camels and alpacas huddled in their barn so that only their snow-dusted rear ends were visible, and the Barbados sheep were milling around the door anxiously, waiting for food, perhaps.

Every so often I’d see someone else pass by, bundled in winter gear, but mostly the zoo was empty.

Some of the animals were in buildings right by their normal pens.

The giraffes normally have a big pen outside.

In the winter, though, they’re confined to a tiny concrete cage with acacias painted on the walls and artificial suns above.

Inside the aviary building, it’s as steamy and verdant as ever.

And inside the aquarium, as dark and cool as ever. Stingrays and arawannas swim endlessly through the dim light, unaware of the seasons changing.

The most surreal juxtaposition was probably the flamingos. I saw their cheerfully painted building through the blowing snow. It looked like a little piece of Florida.

Inside, the flamingos wander around on concrete painted to look vaguely like sand, wade in a shallow pool of water in a corner where the floor dips down, and strain their brine shrimp from black plastic buckets instead of silty shallows.

Oddly, they seem just as happy here as in their little lake outdoors, occupied with dabbling around in the various buckets and tubs, but since I’m not a flamingo, I can’t know what they’re really thinking, what makes a flamingo happy.

where are you all coming from?

I normally get somewhere between 300 and 400 hits a day. Yesterday I got 1,377 visitors and my stats aren’t showing where everyone’s coming from–an email newsletter or something, it looks like. If you’re one of the thousands who came by from that link and you’re reading this, would you mind leaving me a comment to let me know how you found my site? thank you in advance, I’m very curious!

So… I had started drafting a post earlier about the amazing time we had on Election Night, but I’ve just been way too busy this week to finish it. In the meantime, the short version: it was amazing, it was historic, and there was Much Rejoicing here in Madison: cheering, laughing, dancing, people playing drums in the street and high-fiving strangers and chanting as they marched down State Street under American flags, with fireworks exploding overhead. I cried when he gave his acceptance speech. Yes, I know Obama’s not going to solve everything or turn water to wine, but I feel happy and hopeful. Finally, for the first time in my entire life as a voter, I feel like democracy is alive and well and working.

Halloween weekend fun (and major fiber stash enhancement!)

This morning I woke up late to an empty house. The weather outside was classic autumn weather, cool, gray, drizzly. As I made my coffee, even with the windows closed, I could hear the lion at the zoo roaring from about half a mile away. Auuu–auuu–auuur. It was a strange, sad, peculiar sound, coming over the blazing yellow treetops, over the hills and houses and neatly raked leaves. Inside, the infestation of ladybugs continued, and the lion’s roaring was punctuated with the tinny tapping of ladybugs buzzing against the lightbulbs and windows.

It’s been a beautiful weekend so far. On Friday night, we headed out to the High Noon Saloon, where the Halloween concert was one of the best I’ve been to in the past few years, and the costumes made it even more fun.

Here are two of the winners of the costume contest. I love that Beaker outfit.


I started out in the beard hat, but eventually got too hot and put on the kitty hat instead. Rahul wore a ski mask topped with a trucker hat. Here we are with a couple of friends–they are dressed as a witch and what I thought must be some European soccer player but is in fact “a bunch of things I found at Walgreens.”


The lineup (local bands pretending to be other bands):

We arrived around 8:45, during the Low Czars’ set as The Kinks. They did a fantastic job–very tight, lots of energy, and they dressed up nicely. I was impressed with the fake gap the lead singer put between his front teeth to impersonate Ray Davies.

Next up were the appropriately nerdy band The Shabelles as Weezer clones “The Buddy Hollys.” They played lots of my favorites from the blue album, and their pigtailed female lead singer took the place of Rivers Cuomo.

Apparently Nothing played Nirvana. They were a kick! The lead singer had this ridiculous fake-looking shiny blond wig on to play Kurt Cobain, and the classic grunge outfit as well. They played 99% of Nevermind (skipping “Polly”) and their set featured some guest appearances from Courtney Love and a crowdsurfing Zombie Kurt Cobain.

Tangy played as “Manchester United,” covering songs from the Manchester 80s and 90s music scenes: The Stone Roses (I was thrilled by this, they’re one of my favorite bands) and Oasis. They claimed they’d play The Smiths, too, but I don’t remember hearing any Smiths songs. I was a bit distracted, though, because their guitarist thought it would be a great idea to toss soccer balls into the audience, so I ended up mainly paying attention to the rambunctious soccer game in front of the stage so I wouldn’t end up with a ball to the face, or with someone’s drink spilled all over me.

Last up were The Gomers as Spinal Tap. They set it up so their drummer “died” between the songs! I was kind of hoping they would lower themselves onto the stage in big pods, but I guess logistics didn’t allow for this. It was after 2 AM by this time, and I’d started the complaining-nonstop-about-my-feet portion of the evening, so we left partway through their set. Here are the Gomers. (Most of my other concert pictures didn’t come out very well.)

The next day, I was up bright and early (well, at 9 AM; that’s early considering I went to bed at 3) for OMG A FIBER FEST!!!11!!!!1

The Wisconsin Spin-In was nearly 2 hours away. Mary’s Hindi teacher kindly offered to drive, since he wanted to check out the charkha selection–we’d been teaching his daughter to spindle and wheel spin; being Indian, he had spun on a charkha in school, and was thinking of getting her one so she could try it as well. I guess the charkha thing didn’t work out (apparently even the best, top of the line charkhas in India top out around $75, while the cheapest one at the show was the Babe’s Fiber Garden Liten Spindle and cost around $120). They did get some other fun stuff, though, like some sparkly pink roving and lavender soap.

In a curious juxtaposition for a charkha-shopping trip, there was a gun show located next door. I was curious about it, but ultimately didn’t end up going.

Here’s the Spin-In marketplace:

My excellent companions:

Some stressed-out alpacas, who spent the whole show making urgent humming noises, biting each other, and putting their ears back:

And last but not least, an overview of my amazing haul. I thought I’d have kind of a remorseful shopping hangover this morning from buying too much, but when I woke up, I still felt really excited about each and every one of these purchases, and looking forward to using all of them. Click through to the Flickr page to see annotations of the photo listing what the various goodies are.

Particularly exciting finds (well, all of it is exciting, but a couple of things to call your attention to): the Spinner’s Control Card, which I balked a bit at first at paying money for (it’s just a little piece of acrylic, and I found out it’s $1 cheaper from the same vendor online!) but I love it already. It would be easy to make as a DIY project, if you’re willing to put some work into it. Basically, it’s a clear piece of plastic with lines on it corresponding to a wpi measurement. You can just lay your yarn over the card every so often as you’re spinning and compare it to the thickness of the lines to make sure your grist is consistent. It’s faster and easier than doing the WPI “the proper way,” so it’s really good for just checking quickly on your yarn every now and then.

And the Bosworth Mini spindle in the middle of the picture. It’s a lovely piece of work, rim-weighted, with the grain of the dark wood showing through clear and beautiful. It’s made from Morado, and weighs 22 grams/0.77 oz. I love spinning on the wheel, so I wouldn’t have bought this, except that I heard through the grapevine that Jonathan and Sheila Bosworth will be retiring soon, and their spindles (widely considered to be top of the line, the creme de la creme of spindles) will soon be very scarce in supply and high in demand. I told myself that if I ever did become a spindle spinner at some point in the future, I’d really kick myself for having the chance to buy a Bosworth spindle and not doing it–and with the quality and reputation of the product, I shouldn’t have any problems unloading it for retail or near-retail value in the future if I changed my mind.

As it turns out, this spindle may have converted me to spindling (at least for fine yarns). I’m having a great time spinning the lustrous raspberry-colored Corriedale-silk from Handspun by Stefania. Spinning on this spindle is a wonderful, a real pleasure–it spins fast and stabilizes quickly, and it cheers me up just to look at the beautiful wood as I wind on the singles. I wonder if I should have bought more of them. Maybe three of them. (What do you think, Mary?)

Sooo… fiber fest over, I headed home and Rahul and I went out to the Halloween Freakfest party on State Street (infamous for the rioting, mayhem, and tear gas in previous years) but decided to skip the $10 admission fee and just people-watch from the perimeter for a while.

On the way home, just two blocks from our house, we saw a couple of young guys going from car to car, accompanied by the sound of broken glass. “Are those guys breaking into those cars?” I asked and Rahul biked up to see. I looped around and came back–they were still heading up the street and I could see that they were carrying drumsticks and apparently banging on the passenger side of the cars. “Hey! What the hell are you doing?” I yelled.

“Don’t worry about it,” yelled back one of the guys, and fixed me with an intense stare. I got kind of scared and biked away to find Rahul, who had vanished in the meantime. I found him around the corner, calling the police. Unfortunately, by the time he got off the line and we went back around the corner, the two vandals had run away. We went to take a closer look and it seemed like they hadn’t actually broken windows, but had broken or broken off a number of side view mirrors and dented car doors with their stupid drumsticks. I just hope one day those two morons find themselves having to file an insurance claim for property damage. Scratch that, I hope they find themselves having to pay out of pocket for bodywork as many times as the number of cars they thoughtlessly damaged last night for fun. If only I’d had my camera with me!

BRAAAAAAAINS

“What do we want?”

“BRAAAAAAIIIINNS!!!”

“When do we want them?”

“BRAAAAAAINNNS!!!”

This was the rousing call to undead political action that echoed through the streets of Madison, Wisconsin last Saturday at the 2008 Zombie Lurch. Like dead rights activist Reg Shoe, whose livejournal can be read here, these fine members of the postmortem population were lurching for zombie rights (and delectable brains.)

We stopped by to see them and saw an impressive zombie “Thriller” synchronized dance routine:

The zombies included hikers who had met with some kind of unfortunate ancient evil on their backpacking trip, a scientist who had been bitten by a rabid possum, and a zombie holding a “Zombies for McCain” sign–unfortunately, I didn’t get close-ups of most of them.



Check out the zombie biker at the left of this photo:

A neuroscientist was monitoring the situation while protesting zombie brain waste:

Local news story here, youtube photo montage with excellent soundtrack choice here. (You can see the top of my head (in turquoise bike helmet) in the foreground at 1:36. I’m faaaamous!)

The zombies started at the Capitol building and lurched down the main drag, State Street, until they reached the university. Every so often, the calls of “BRAAAAAINS” would be interrupted by a moan of “BUUUUSSSS,” and the seemingly chaotic mob of zombies would flow smoothly over to one side of the street to let the bus go by.

A woman standing outside Ben and Jerry’s said to me in a puzzled, wondering tone, “What would ever possess a group of people to get together and do something like this?”

Whatever the reasons–delicious brains, camaraderie, Halloween, a sense of humor, raising awareness of Election Day next Tuesday–it was fun! Our friends Steve and Jeanne were visiting us over the weekend, and even their dog Nola got into the undead act:

Back in the land of the living, here’s what’s on my needles (STILL Flicca: I’m perhaps 1/3 of the way through the sleeves now, and then I’ll have to set them in and knit the collar and front bands. This cardigan is taking forever):

And here’s what’s on my wheel:
3.5 beautiful ounces of hand-painted merino in “Tapestry” from my new favorite Etsy seller, Bee Mice Elf. I’m currently trying to produce soft, thick, knittable, self-striping singles, but I have a tendency to spin too fine:

She also sent along this little sample with my order:

It’s the same stuff I spun up for my Quantette, and I also spun up some of her merino in the “Early Drop” colorway last month–spun over the fold for extra bounce, and twisted into a two-ply:

She doesn’t have too much listed in her shop at the moment, but you can special order a 4 oz. braid of any of her fall/winter color collections anytime, and they’re all totally gorgeous. I think the Quiet collection is my favorite, particularly Pensive Plum.

The Urban and Coastal collections aren’t up on her photostream yet, but you can see them in her sold items by clicking through those links.

You stuttered like a kaleidoscope

Look at this great poster I found linked on the Malabrigo Junkies ravelry group a few days ago:

MALABRIGO: THE MOVIE

So we had an excellent time yesterday spinning. I loved Mary’s Turkish spindles–two normal-sized, one tiny and adorable, all from Jenkins–they are beautifully turned, spin fast and smooth, and make a centerpull ball when you’re done, ready for plying! Rosemary Knits made a clever homemade version using Brio Mec construction toys.

Along with spindles and tons of fiber to share, Mary brought along some delicious homemade samosas with 4 kinds of homemade chutney (mint, cilantro, tamarind, and tomato) and yogurt!

Her friend’s daughter brought chocolate chip cookies to share and exuberance and energy to spare. Her 5th-grade art class sounds pretty great: apparently they’ve been wet-felting llama fiber and dyed sheep’s wool, and talking about natural dyeing with onion skins, etc.

We all took turns with spinning on the 2 different kinds of spindle and wheel. I can’t say that the Jelly Yarns drive band worked very well with my wheel, unfortunately–it would start out nice and tight, but kept stretching and popping off after a minute or two of picking up speed. Perhaps I didn’t tie the knots right… I was never a Girl Scout, and have likely missed out forever on valuable knot-tying and cookie-selling skills.

In any case, it was a fun way to spend a Saturday morning!

Rahul and I went for a nice bike ride in the Arboretum later. The leaves are starting to turn, and thinking about all the beautiful Autumn colors around me, I’m eagerly awaiting my next Sundara Seasons shipment, sock yarn in a color called Roasted Persimmon over Green Papaya–the color looks pretty different in all the photos I’ve seen so far and I really want to see how it looks in person.

In the afternoon, I spun up some yarn: a magenta-purple chunk of a Miss Babs BFL batt Mary shared with me. I loved it–the fiber was so fluffy and light and nicely prepped, it spun like a dream. I Navajo-plied it today and it’s hanging in the bathroom to set the twist–I wound up with about 60ish yards of DK/worsted weight from 1.5 oz of fiber.

And yesterday evening we had a truly remarkable coincidence.

To preface this, on Thursday, we’d gone to a dinner outing at Africana arranged via a new Livejournal group for Madison-area foodies. (When I sat down, the woman sitting next to me asked if I was on Ravelry! She’s a knitter too and recognized my name.)

Last night, we went to the Magnetic Fields concert at the Overture Center–fun, if perhaps a bit heavy on the Gothic novelty songs and short on the yearning, bittersweet, melancholy songs I like best. Though they did play a really nice version of “Take Ecstasy with Me” from Holiday, one of my favorite albums.

As we were leaving the concert, Rahul noticed that two of the women from the Madison foodies group (the Raveler and her roommate) were leaving the concert as well, so we biked up and said hi. We talked to them for a few minutes, then their companion introduced herself, and it turned out she had gone to junior high with Rahul! This was in a town of 35,000, in Southern Missouri, almost 500 miles away–it’s not as though they had both gone to school nearby in Wisconsin or something. Totally wild.

The last big excitement for the weekend (barring anything unexpected and really great happening tonight) was that we went to a restaurant called Yen Ching this morning for their Sunday dim sum. I don’t even really know if you’d call it dim sum, since it’s more Northern-style breakfast foods, but I loved it and it reminded me strongly of home–they had much better food, in my opinion, than Hong Kong Cafe, which is unfortunate since the latter is just around the corner from us.

My favorite of everything we got was the sweet soy milk with you tiu, which translates literally to “oil sticks”–I think they called them crullers on the menu. It shouldn’t be hard to make, but I’ve been to plenty of restaurants where they burned the soy milk or gave you an impossibly tiny portion. The worst offender served it in a mug. In my opinion, properly made, it should be a huge, steaming-hot bowl of sweet and slightly fragrant soy milk without a trace of bitterness or burned/smoky flavor, with hot, crisp, freshly fried you tiu to break into little pieces and dunk into the bowl. You spoon them up after letting them soak up the soy milk for a moment, and they’re wonderfully juicy and soft. Yen Ching did it perfectly. The you tiu were crisp, so fresh out of the fryer that they burned my fingers when I broke them into pieces, and the soy milk was delicious and came in a very generous portion.

We also tried steamed pork buns (plain pork, not the barbecued pork you would expect in a Cantonese-style restaurant), har gao (a little surprising in a Northern-style restaurant, I guess, but very well done–the shrimp tasted fresh and sweet, and the skin was delicate), won ton soup, steamed buns, fried buns (to my surprise, these were essentially the steamed buns, sliced and deep-fried and sprinkled with sugar, a bit like rusks, not at all what I was expecting), and siu mai. Aside from the steamed and fried buns, where our problems could be attributed to user error in ordering, I had no complaints about any of it; I really enjoyed the meal.

If I haven’t been eaten by ladybugs in my sleep, hopefully I’ll actually have some pretty pictures of craft-related content to show next time. Have a lovely, lovely Sunday!

(Edited to add: I wrote earlier and then apparently accidentally deleted a small saga about the ladybugs invading our house. Hence the closing ladybug comment, which I just realized makes no sense without the preceding ladybug story. I removed about 20 ladybugs from our living room yesterday and around 15 today. They’re EVERYWHERE! All I can say is I’m glad they’re ladybugs and not roaches or centipedes.)

Sheepish

More pictures from the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival:

A baby lamb, born the day before! CUTE! Also covered with an alarming number of flies. NOT SO CUTE!

In the shearing demo area, a man with a spectacular amount of raw fleece in a couple of giant plastic bags:

Some sheep with lovely natural-colored wool

Sheep who did NOT want to go home

We wandered into the 4-H judging barn, where the judges would stride up and down and say things like “This is a fine example of a Lincoln ewe, good volume in the hindquarters, good muscle, nice and square, but if I were going to change something, I’d want to see a bit more femininity in the haunches.” They all looked like just plain sheep to me. Perhaps one day I’ll be a connoisseur. (Though I generally disapprove of breeding animals for form, a la the AKC, maybe it’s different for sheep, more functionally based? Who knows. Perhaps my Sheep! magazine will tell me.)

We tried to feed our carrot tops to these sheep but they were pretty “meh” about it.

Carrots? meh.

One of the highlights of the day was seeing some sheepdog herding trials. It was one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever seen. This border collie (I think his name was Ben) was having the time of its life herding these ducks around the pen–slinking around, eye-stalking, running around the edges and chasing them through tubes and over stairs and between traffic cones. It was hilarious (watching birds run is inherently funny) and heartwarming at the same time, seeing this dog doing what he was born to do. (More or less. I bet he would have preferred sheep.)

Look at him on his belly, watching them run.

Good boy, Ben!

On the lake

Less than 2 miles from my house, about a 10-minute bike ride away, there’s a local yarn shop named Lakeside Fibers.

I was feeling a little cooped up today, so at lunch, I decided to pack up my laptop and go down there to look at buttons for my Cherry cardigan.

Let’s take a ride, shall we?

My house is on a tree-lined residential street in the Vilas neighborhood, a few blocks from UW-Madison’s Camp Randall Stadium. Some fairly large and busy streets (Park and Regent) pass through the neighborhood. Park runs north-south and is lined with some interesting shops and restaurants as you go further down–a very large Asian grocery store that sells fresh durian, a tiny taqueria with whitewashed walls, an “Oriental Store” (I haven’t been in yet to figure out what, exactly, they sell–it doesn’t look like a grocery store), a South American handicrafts store, a Peruvian restaurant. Sadly, the Vietnamese restaurant called “I’M HERE” doesn’t seem to be there anymore, just its sign bearing false witness.

If you cross Park, heading east, you reach a bike trail that runs around the shores of Monona Bay, a round little pond of a thing scooped out from the much larger Lake Monona. It’s a beautiful place to ride, with mallard ducks and Canada geese resting in the shade on the banks, and an occasional muskrat making an appearance from among the rocks on the shore. Here’s a view looking across the bay towards the yarn store.

If you ride on this dedicated bike path, tiny private piers on your left, eclectic and doubtless very expensive houses on your right, you’ll eventually loop around till you meet Lakeside Drive. Turn left, and just before the railroad tracks you’ll see a tiny block of cute little shops. Lakeside Fibers is just up ahead, on the left, by the rainbow flag.

In one of the windows is a yarn bouquet.

Step inside, and there’s a table of the newest pattern booklets on the front table, and the most delicious luxury yarns all piled up high–Classic Elite cashmeres, Hanne Falkenberg kits, Shokay pure yak, glittery, beaded Prism yarns, Claudia hand-painted sock yarn… and on the back wall is a big Wheel O’ Berroco, just above a mega-sized ball winder and a box of partial skeins (no labels) on sale for $2 an ounce. The buttons are over to the left. (I didn’t find anything suitable, but they do have a nice selection.) The needles and pattern books are over to the right, and the single patterns are stowed in binders under the windows.

Here are some Mountain Colors handpaints…

and my favorite ones to look at, the Dream in Color “veil-dyed” yarns (the Shokay can be seen in the lower left-hand corner):

In the next room back, there are tons of Rowan yarns and a large selection of chunky and tweedy yarns along the left wall:

And finally, in the back, you reach the cafe, the Washington Hotel Coffee Room. There are couches here for knitting, and tables, and the walls are lined with yarn. The stairs lead down to a room of coned yarns for weavers and machine knitters.

The cafe serves lots of locally sourced and organic foods. I had a slice of onion and kale quiche with warm, seedy toasted buttermilk bread slathered with fresh butter, and later on, a big mug of hot chocolate.

On the back wall is their selection of Cascade 220. On the right, their sale yarns–among the good finds were some Habu kits and Muench Touch Me. There’s an outside wooden balcony with tables, too.

And, of course, sit down for a coffee and you get a beautiful view of a park and Monona Bay:

The wi-fi worked wonderfully, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening working there and looking out the window at the lake and the dogs playing fetch in the park. They played some Sufjan Stevens and some Sun Kil Moon. I approved.

(The two downsides I’ve found so far: the cafe is pretty expensive, and the train comes by periodically and makes noises like it’s about to burst through the wall of the yarn shop.)

Kissing tortoises

I’m making good progress on Cherry . Here are the sleeves:

The color came out a bit too muted and brown–the lavender color is more candyish in person.

I’m a few inches into the body, almost to the point where you do the eyelet row for the waist tie. I decided to knit it all in one piece, so I cast on for the fronts and back all together, subtracting one stitch from each front and two stitches from the back to account for the stitches that would have been eaten up in seaming. I placed the decreases right at the side markers (paired ssk/k2tog) but in retrospect, I wish I’d left a one-stitch divider in the middle, because the decreases right next to one another look sort of messy.

One thing I’ve messed up because of doing this is the rate of decrease–since the designer doesn’t tell you to decrease X number of times, but rather to decrease at a certain rate till you reach X number of stitches, then at another rate till you reach X number of stitches, I forgot about how I’d subtracted the seam stitches from the stitch count and started the second rate of decrease a little too early. I remembered in time for the rest of the decreases, so at least the overall waist width and length to the waist should be OK.

However, knitting everything in one piece does eliminate seaming and make it easier to keep the little birds pattern lined up across all the pieces.

Do you have any suggestions for the buttons for this cardigan? It needs little, delicate buttons. I was considering robin’s egg blue, bright red, gray, or a gray or white mother-of-pearl. I’ve also been hoarding some adorable ivory-colored buttons shaped like tiny owls, and I was considering using those, but they might be a little too bohemian or twee for this sweater. It seems like when I use them, I should make them the focal design point of a sweater.

I met up with a fellow Raveler, turtleknitter, at Lakeside Fibers on Sunday for some knitting. She’s a fellow Pacific Coast child transplanted to the Midwest, and we had a really wonderful time chatting about all sorts of things… knitting, of course, but also eating locally, bikes, and the terror of snowy Midwestern winters. (Her advice for staying warm: a good EZ Ribwarmer.) We’re planning a trip to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool in a couple of weeks, and I’ll be heading to the local Stitch ‘n’ Bitch tomorrow night to meet some more Madison knitters.

In closing, here are some more photos from the zoo:

And we watched this giant tortoise:

slowly walk up to the other tortoise in its pen and touch noses (beaks? snouts?) with it in greeting.

Awwww.

it’s all happening at the zoo

Some of our new neighbors at the Vilas Zoo, which is in a beautiful public park a few blocks from our house and has free admission to all ages:

And in case you’re curious, here are some photos of the best features of our new place–please excuse the mess, we’re moving! There’s also an office, balcony, and bedroom that I didn’t show in these photos because the pictures didn’t come out well.

Bike rack on the porch:

Storage room with color-coded yarn in the little fabric ladder thing on the left, and some very awesome folding shelves we got at Staples yesterday:

Kitchen, with gas stove! Hurray for BTU’s.

Living room

Urinal