So about that swimming thing

In an effort to catch up on all that's gone on in the last few weeks, I've made a list:

1) Halloween, costumes, and the totally ludicrous amount of candy collected by my children
2) The no-Gillyweed experiment
3) Dyeing with Devil, parts A and B
4) Manon, and my poor Mommy brain that cannot read patterns, or comprehend them even when they are read.
5) What am I, an Aggie?

I can take care of a couple of those items in this post. Starting at the bottom...

I was posting last week from College Station because I was invited up there for a work-type deal. I got to spend two and a half days in a hotel room without anyone yelling for Mommy (except when I talked to Devil on the phone on Tuesday night), and I got a bunch of knitting done (Manon, TBD).

Back up to #2: I did actually complete a 5K swim last weekend. It was a near thing however. Let me set the scene...

Week before race: Ironman was in the UK, and I came down with a horrific lurgy of some sort, which meant I did not set flipper to water until the day before the race. Tapering is one thing, but this scenario was not ideal. And then there was the entry problem.

I sent in my race entry and check in the beginning of October. And then heard absolutely nothing. I figured that, since they asked for my email address, I might get an acknowledgement of my entry, or some pre-race info or something. But nothing. On the Tuesday before the race, I finally got around to checking my bank account and realized that my check hadn't been cashed. I hunted down the race director's email and sent him a message.

And then I heard nothing.

By Friday, I was getting a bit concerned, so I hunted down the race director's phone number and called him. The very nice lady on the other end said "Oh, you mean you didn't get his email? I know he wrote back to you." Suffice to say that no, they didn't get my entry and, for once, Yahoo's spam filters had actually worked, only the message they worked on was not spam. Harrumph.

You will not be surprised to know that the idea of getting up at 4:30 am on Saturday to drive 3 hrs to Austin was not popular at that moment with yours truly. But somehow it happened. Actually, it mostly happened because Ironman, who arrived back from the UK that day, said "Well, I'll be awake then anyway because of the time change, so I'll drive." What a trooper.

Off we went to Lake Travis, which was a balmy (!!!) 73 degrees for this endeavor. And it went quite well - I wasn't last (my biggest fear), I didn't drown, and the distance went by a lot faster in the open water then it did in the pool. But it is not fun to wear a pair of swim goggles for 1.5 hours without a break - talk about a headache!

The best part of the weekend was taking the girls to Lake Somerville to camp out that night. They enjoyed playing in the tent (although I had to lay down the law about bringing handfuls of dirt in there as "food") and eating hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner. And only three parties of duck hunters came by and launched their boats off the boat ramp next to our camping site. At approximately 3:00, 4:00 and 5:00 am. Niiiiiice...but we saw lots of birds, and deer, and a live armadillo (usually only seen as smudges on the pavement around here). It was a very nice weekend.

And no, I haven't been back in the pool yet!

OK, that takes care of two items...

1) Halloween, costumes, and the totally ludicrous amount of candy collected by my children
2) The no-Gillyweed experiment
3) Dyeing with Devil, parts A and B
4) Manon, and my poor Mommy brain that cannot read patterns, or comprehend them even when they are read.
5) What am I, an Aggie?

Ehem. Now back to your regularly scheduled knitting content.

Sorry about that (both the long blog break and the excessive political wanking). I have been knitting, even if I haven't been posting about it at all.

I finally broke down and busted out the Noro sock yarn. Say what you will about the feel of it, the thick and thin nature, the VM, but the colors are absolutely To. Die. For.

I'm moving to a new office, which I was cleaning out today, so I took advantage of a window (!) to take some pictures

Pattern: Stripey Noro Socks, by yours truly (pattern now available for download here)
Yarn: Noro Kureyon sock yarn, colorway S40
Needles: Knitpicks Harmony dpns in US 1/2.25 mm
Start/finish: 10/3-10/17/08

While harsh in the skein, the yarn feels fine on my feet. I haven't tossed these babies in the dryer yet, but I've heard that makes a grand difference in the feel. I originally meant these for a Christmas present but they ended up being too big. If they do shrink or shift around in the dryer, I will gift them. Otherwise, I'm keeping these things for me me me.

I love the striping on the heel. I kept the heel flap in stockinette so it would work out, and I managed to get everything to line up just right. Hooray!

**************************************************************************
I guess it's now November so it's time to take stock of October's accomplishments:

Knitting
Ummm...Noro socks. That's it.

Spinning:
Cotton Candy
Superwash merino, as yet unblogged because I need to unload a cubic buttload of pictures from our camera.

Other:
Halloween costumes! (see above disclaimer on superwash merino)

What was I doing last month?

Oh wow

I am sitting in a hotel room in College Station, watching CNN with tears running down my face. And all I can think of is a story I heard on NPR last week, in which they were interviewing voters in some of the swing states. And one man spoke about a text message he had received. It said

Rosa sat so Martin could walk.
Martin walked so Barack could run.
Barack runs so our children can fly.

African-American children, Latino-Americna children, Asian-American children, even my own hybrid Yankee-Texan children. All of them.

This is an amazing moment. Truly.

FO: Gathered Pullover

The nice thing about having a number of ongoing projects is that every so often, you get to indulge in a massive spurt of FO generation. Which means lots of fun, "look what I made!" posts on your blog, thereby boring the bejeezus out of your readers (all 6 of you!). But tough noogies my friends. Here's another one.

Pattern: Gathered Pullover, by Hana Jason, Interweave Knits Winter 2007 (Rav linky)
Yarn: recycled from a sweater I found at Goodwill. Some kind of multi-plied red wool, in copious quantities. Someday I will either purchase or borrow a McMorran yarn balance, and figure out exactly how much yarn this took.
Needles: US 7/4.5 mm
Start/finish: I made the 40.5 size, 6/12/08-9/24/08.
Comments: I read the thread about this sweater on Ravelry before I started, so I knew at the beginning I wanted to do a bunch of modifications. My gauge was slightly larger then called for (5 sts/7 rows per inch instead of 4.75 st/6 rows) and picked a slightly larger size to compensate. I added ~2 inches of waist shaping, and left out the increased/decreased stitches in the middle of the cable motif. I also knit a bit longer after finishing the motif before starting the neck.

I was a bit worried that it was going to end up too short, but blocking fixed the hem curl admirably.

For the neck, I knit it in the round with a centered double decrease (slip 2 tog as if to knit, knit 1, pass two slipped stitches over) in the middle of the V. Finally I bailed on knitting the sleeves on their own and messing about with setting in sleeve caps, and knit them from the top down as instructed in this genius tome.

The finished product is nice and light and flowy, thanks to the larger-then-recommended gauge, and fits perfectly (bad Photobooth picture not withstanding). And I will never fit another sleeve cap again in my entire life.

The End.

Please send Gillyweed, stat!

Yesterday I swam for a long time. A very long time. 112 laps worth of a long time.

Why did I do something so silly? Because I'm scheduled to complete* this event in less then two weeks time. And I needed to at least swim the distance once before hopping in to Lake Travis.

I can say only three things about the experience: 1) I hope I'm faster on race day, 2) damn, am I sore today and 3) doing 5600 yds in a 25 yd pool is damn boring.

*Note I did not say "race". Because I will be participating, not racing.