Here booky, booky, booky

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I read alot.

I know, I know. Where do I find the time, right?

Here's my secret: I'm a really poor multi-tasker*

I read before bed at night. I read at breakfast. I read while I'm cooking dinner. I read on the can. I read in the shower more often then I'd like to admit. And most days, the westside Houston commuters will find me on the bus, reading, knitting and listening (sort of) to Morning Edition.

I've always wondered how many books I read in a year. So I'm going to keep track. Feel free to skip to the next fibery post if you are so inclined.

So far in 2009:
7. Darwinia - Robert Charles Wilson
6. Undertow - Elizabeth Bear (I needed some aliens to recover from the overload of teenage vampire hormonal angst and wizard vs. werewolf shenanigans)
5. Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
4. Breaking Dawn - Stephanie Meyer (phew!)
3. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
2. New Moon - Stephanie Meyer
1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larsson, translated from Swedish by Reg Keeland.

**********************************************************************************
Finally got another Tomten modeling shot:

Devil on her new bike. She is much, much faster now. Maybe almost fast enough to ride while Mama goes for a run around the neighborhood. Hooray! And FYI, these sweaters are so much cuter in action then lying on the couch that I just about fall down everytime the girls wear them.

* As IM would say, why do one thing well when you can do three things badly?**

** This is why I am a triathlete, not a cyclist or a swimmer or HAHAHAHA a runner.

FO/FF: Sunset scarf

Pattern: Morning Surf Scarf by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer
Yarn: My handspun, superwash merino from Crown Mountain Farms, "Sunshine of Your Love", ~125 yds
Needles: US 8/5.0 mm
Start/finish: 1/15-1/17/09. Fast, fast, fast.
Comments: The colors of the yarn reminded me of Tucson sunsets, hence the title. The yarn was bulky (~10 wpi), so I cast on 26 stitches for a scarf that ended up about 6 inches wide.

I also found that my dropped stitches were really long, so I decreased one yarnover for each dropped stitch (i.e. I did yo, double yo, triple yo, double yo, yo instead of the pattern as written). The finished scarf is 6 x 78 inches - plenty long enough to wrap several times around my neck, or double over and pull the ends through.

My attempt to blend the white sections of top with more saturated bits did not work out perfectly. You can see that the end of the scarf on the left was from the skein that had more of the white in it, and the right side is from the skein that had the deeper colors, but it's not terribly obvious when the scarf is on.

One thing that I liked that came out of the spinning method I choose was the almost-tweedy look to some of the singles, where I had multiple colors in one strand, that when plied together came out looking almost mottled. I like how those sections knit up alot - the fabric has a lot of depth and interest to it.

The colors are perfect for dark, grey winter days. Unfortunately, winter in Houston seems to be over - it was in the upper 70s today and just stunningly beautiful - so this scarf may not see much us until next winter. Which I hear starts in September or October across the pond. So hopefully by then I'll be well supplied with scarves and hats and suchlike.

Oh bugger

This is what my current pair of socks looked like while I was waiting for the bus this morning:

This is what they looked like when I got to work.

I had the sad duty of coming to terms with the fact that, although I was almost done with Chart 3 (of 4) on the leg, the sock was too big. Just too long. And if I kept going, I might not have enough yarn for sock #2. So I spent my bus ride imitating a froggie. My socks for this month might have to be some quickies for the girls instead of these bad boys.

Speaking of the girls, I did manage to get some modeled shots of Boo in her Tomten.

Last night watching TV.

I think she likes it, because she wouldn't take it off until bath time, resulting in a lovely ketchup splotch across the front from dinner.

She wore it again this morning, so I think this one is a keeper!

Please note the pink Dora Crocs, three Dora books clutched in one hand, and 'Raf under the other arm. She is prepared for the day.

How not to train for a half-marathon

1. Start training about 4 months ahead of time and get a fairly consistent schedule.
2. Lose a couple of long runs to Thanksgiving and general laziness.
3. Go home for two weeks over Christmas and run maybe three times.
4. Have your longest long run (12 miles) occur two weeks before race day.
5. Come down with a cold 5 days before race day and don't run at all.
6. Arrive at the starting line on Sunday morning saying "What the hell".

Despite all that, my race yesterday was way better then I had any right to expect. I had a complete brain cramp and thought I beat my time from last year, but I checked results this morning and discovered that actually, I was 7 min slower this year. Big deal. Given the amount of training I did, I got off easy.

It was a gorgeous day for a run. I try to not be too humbled by the fact that the top women marathone runners finished twice the distance in less time (!). Hey, I've got at least 80 lbs on most of them. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I was still in the top 50% of my age group, which pleases me. And my pace was pretty consistent throughout. It's amazing - I did 12 miles a couple of weeks ago that was an absolute death march after mile 7, and ran 13 yesterday and enjoyed* most of it.

Thankfully, Ironman did not beat me. Of course, he ran twice the distance too. I actually had enough time to get my stuff, my finisher's t shirt, change my clothes and wander out to the course before he came in. His race went pretty well too, but he missed qualifying for Boston by a mere 3 minutes. He was annoyed. Now we're just both stiff and sore - thank goodness my work environment includes elevators.

Next post: a finished, 2 day (!) Morning Surf Scarf guaranteed to cure winter doldrums if Houston had any. Today, with sun and upper 60s it's not necessary, but maybe in a few days it will get cold again and I can wear it.

* Which is to say, I wasn't grimacing in pain the whole time, but enjoying picking out rabbits and listening to the music along the way. The spectators for this event are fantastic - there are rock bands, DJs, a marching band, even a drum section set up along the course. Makes it all go by so much more easily.

FF: Sunshiney

There's a great Ravelry thread I've been following for a while now, where people post pictures of their handspun projects start to finish: fiber, spun yarn and FO. A brief discussion there generated a new group that I've joined - Ply by Night. This is a spin/knitalong, where everybody buys the same fiber and colorway, and then knits it up. For the first venture (January/February) we're knitting the Morning Surf Scarf.

Since I'm fascinated by the change from fiber to yarn to knit, this was the group for me. We picked superwash merino from Crown Mountain Farms in the "Sunshine of your love" colorway. My fiber arrived right before we left for vacation,

and the day we got back from Boston I started spinning the singles. Let's hear it for spinning as recovery from 17 days with two small children!

The top was very interesting - one side was really saturated, the other side had splotches of white. I decided to try and blend those as much as possible, so I split the top into quarters, and then spun from two pieces of top held together to blend the saturated and white stretches. I ended up with two bobbins like this.

I knew I wanted to chain ply, since I really like the way a 3-ply looks in dropped stitches (as seen in my mini-Clap, also with handspun), so while I was home sick the other day, I plied everything up, soaked it for a bit in warm water and Eucalan, and hung it out to dry. I didn't really do any rough finishing since this is superwash, and the overplying evened out well after finishing.

Before finishing

Having finished a Tomten, and reinvigorated my mojo for another long-slumber WIP, I was going to hold out this stuff as a carrot to get some other things done. But...I couldn't do it. I now have about 8 inches of scarf already hanging off the needles. It's amazing. Should be done by Monday.

Final yarn stats: 126 yds of chain-plied superwash merino (8 oz!), 11-13 wpi before finishing, about 10 wpi after finishing.