Zing! KaPow! Zowee! Mild Mannered Office Drone by day, SUPER KNITTER by night!

Ever feel like SuperKnitter? I totally did today. Yes, I had entirely too much time on my hands and had fallen asleep last night to American Life channel with that old Batman and Robin show with all the POW! Zoom! WOW! stuff.

Seriously, I don't feel like SuperKnitter because I've completed a technically amazing piece of knitting. No, it's because I'm wearing three hand-knit-by-me sweaters to work this week. Tuesday I paired the recycled cotton from a VERY fugly tempting into Tomato from the No Sheep for You book with a white denim blazer. ZING!



Today I wore my friend the Sizzle with a white & red patterned blazer. I had to frog off the shoulder trim because too-tightly bound off 100% mercerized cotton on my pits is not a pretty thing. ow. I never even replaced the trim, I think it looks fine. Professional woman again. KaPOW! (And my bra wasn't showing through this badly, it was just from the flash. I promise!)



Tomorrow I plan to pair my JUST COMPLETED ChicKami from Bonne Marie Burns. Damn I love this sweater. I've knit 3 now. THREE SKEINS of Frog Tree cotton/silk blend bought from Misknits. Three skeins. This may be the cheapest sweater I've ever made. By itself, a very cute summer top. Paired with a funky blazer from Chico's? Mild mannered office woman indeed. I won't wear it with the jean capris, but will probably put it on with a long denim skirt. Zowee!

Man, I gotta tell you, these designers all show their sweaters off modeling the sweater, standing in front of a beach, or hanging in a tree in a beautiful glen. They don't know what they're missing. Nothing shows off a sweater like a headless pit shot. I can't imagine why I get no calls for my photography skills.

OH, and the bags at Knit Wit, that little shop in Olathe? You know the ones, the kind-of-cloth-ish fabric totes you get when you spend over $100? Yeah. They're hot pink now. Ask me how I know. Well, Six skeins of Cascade 220 and a few pattern books later and I'm the proud owner of this one here. See what happens when the computers go down at work and SuperKnitter is told to go out and run a few errands for an hour or so?


Go on and be a SuperKnitter too. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to liberate a sweater from its imprisonment deep in that bottom drawer or way back in the closet. My sizzle and tomato sweaters were just waiting for a hero, for their chance to shine. You know you probably have a couple hidden away somewhere too. It's amazing what a blazer can do. Find one, fix it if it needs it or cover whatever bugs you and WEAR your knitting!

You don't even have to say "kaPOW" under your breath while walking around the office, but it totally helps.

Oh and Jeff is absolutely my superhero too. Not only did he put in a new fake-walnut laminate floor in our kitchen and front entryway this past weekend, the man rigged up this angled wooden platform under the bunny cage and now their poop rolls into a bucket for easier disposal. Zowee!

Do not be fooled by our fluffy cuteness with wiggly noses, we are actually evil poop machines

These came home the day after the wedding. Somehow on the way back from returning the tables and chairs we rented for the shindig, there was a detour to the bunny shop. cripes almighty. Yes, they ARE cute. Yes, they ARE soft. Yes, their noses DO wiggle ever so perfectly. But they POOP. a LOT. And they are NOT coming into my house. It gets freaking cold in Kansas, so the boys and Jeff had better damn well figure something out. Maybe they can set up a little heater system. NOT. COMING. INTO. MY. HOUSE. Not gonna happen. Their names are Lion and Midnight. Beth wanted something cute and the boys wanted something fierce. We girls figured out we could call the brown one Dandylion, Lion for short, and the boys are no wiser. These aren't even the kind you can spin wool from.


Ah, airport knitting. I got about 3 inches done on the current Chickami. I'm using Frog Tree silk & cotton I bought at MisKnits in a dark navy. It should be gorgeous. THANK GOD for thick wool socks. After hauling butt carrying a heavy backpack and bag to try to make it to an earlier flight and fly standby (the ticket counter woman told me there was plenty of room) in heels, my toes were getting a bit sore. After learning that they'd actually overbooked the damn flight by 11, I had two hours to wander through the airport to the very other side of the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, and my baby toes were screaming. SO, what does a knitter do? Pulls out the pair of nice medium weight socks that rock socks knit up tightly so there's good squoosh factor, put them on and ditch the heels. Yes, I wandered through the airport at a leisurely pace in my comfy socks with no shoes. Damn I love knitted socks. They're better than a super hero's cape.

Minneapolis, yes. As a perk to the new job, I get to go there about 5 times a year. It's just been one week each month for April, May, June and probably July. Then it backs off to October and again in January. Minneapolis is freaking COLD most of the year. I don't know how those people do it, but more power to them. The best part? They have a TON of knitting shops. My current plan is to hit 2 or 3 each time I go to town. I should be good for the next 5 years and then can branch off into the St. Paul side. I went to a neat place called the Yarn Cafe, where they have FOOD and YARN and lots of tables to sit at. Oh, and diet coke. DAMN you gotta love that. They are also open evenings, so I had a fun time roaming around and sitting and knitting for a while one evening. A few hours beore my flight, I stopped by Skeins, a shop in Minnetonka. I can't seem to find a website for them, but they had really nice yarn and a ton of books. I behaved myself and spent less than $100 on yarn and patterns this trip. I was told of a neat knitting group that meets on Thusday nights, but can't remember where for the life of me. I'll call Skeins next time I'm in town and find out. I love sitting and knitting with new groups when I travel.

More knitting on the farm. Got back to KC Friday night, took off for the farm on Saturday morning for the day. THIS time I was prepared. I brought more bug spray than you would think humanly possible. I had the extremely toxic high deet stuff for spraying the top of our ballcaps, shoes and ends of jeans. The mildly toxic mid-deet stuff for clothing and bellies. The barely-deet and mostly picarin stuff for arms, legs and necks, etc. Also sunscreen. I was a spraying fiend-momma. I also reapplied often. Some of the locals were talking about how it's a bad year for ticks. EVERY year is a bad year for ticks for me, but they were right. We went hiking across a bunch of land Jeff is wanting to buy (this one is quite pretty without the whole rat-poop-filled broken down farmhouse with mold damage and animals in the basement.) It's just land. And ticks. And ponds, creeks, forests, pastures and ticks. I pulled off at least 5 from Jeff's clothes. Nature boy doesn't BELIEVE in bug spray. Yeah. I'm a believer. Our only come-apart was on the way home, Elizabeth had one biggie just starting to nibble on her belly. She survived that trauma and when we got home I did a MAJOR tick looking-over and we came out clean. Jeff came home the next day and I pulled more off him. OF COURSE he drove my truck, so every time I get in there I think of the ticks he brought home and probably laid thousands of tick babies just waiting to pounce on me when I drive to work each morning. No, I don't have a problem or anything. Hey, surviving my "wow, my freckles are moving.....wait, those aren't freckles.....holy FUXX they're EATING ME!" situation last year deserves a mild freakout now and then.





Came downstairs this afternoon thinking "those girls sure are being quiet on this playdate" usually a sign of trouble around here. The scene melted my heart. Junior weavers. Yarn everywhere. Our back porch rocks.


The one thing I decided (besides we're absolutely buying stock in a bug spray company) whenever we do move out to our farm to be (years from now, don't worry) is that I really REALLY don't want my own animals. I've got no problem with a farm dog or two and some cats (OUTDOOR farm cats). Those are ok. I've got a problem with having to take care of them every freaking day. And the poop, OH GOD the poop. You've got to DO something with it. Yes, the image of me spinning yarn from my animals and then knitting into amazing hats and sweaters to keep us warm in our later years will have to NOT include fiber from my own animals. I'm going to make friends with people that have animals, help them during shearing time, and then the poop is not my responsibility. Yes. I have issues. I'm ok with that.



PS, I promise to post more than twice a month so these things don't take an hour and a half to read. Sorry!

Friends don't let friends knit drunk, on a boat, in total darkness, while decreasing a toe, but apparently new husbands do

OK, so maybe not drunk, but seriously tipsy after two and a half strong pina coladas made with REAL coconut and lots of rum, yum! Yeah, I knit an ENTIRE toe of one sock in the dark while drinking and rocking on the boat in the dark. DARK dark. Only stars above dark. Impressed Jeff's aunt and uncle (the captain of the boat and his wife, also a captain) and impressed the hell out of myself as well. Until the next morning. Holy hell, I've never seen a more fugly piece of knitting in my LIFE! Entire two inches had to get ripped back out. But sitting on the boat watching the sunrise? Knitting on wollmeise? It doesn't get any better than that. I brought 2 skeins of wollmeise along for sock knitting and the best EVER knitting project bag from Carmen, aka Girley Purls. Oh and I was totally singing "Give me Two Pina Coladas....one for each hand..." the entire honeymoon. I know it. Yeah, I'm still singing that song.

The first night, before much limbo-ing and pina coladaing. I was actually carried under a LOW limbo pole by a large Bahama Man and I've got to say, that was something you don't see every day. Jeff's cousin has that pic on her camera, so I'll post it later.

My survivor-man, after throwing rocks up at the coconuts and gathering them as they fell. The man spent almost three hours beating these on sharp rocks until he got two of them peeled down to the final layer. We're going to use a drill to get to the coconut milk. I've heard the varieties out on that island either tasted like heaven or like stinky feet. Let's hope these are the angelic ones.


The sock that had two knitted toes. See what a little pina colada will get you?


A little deck walking. Can you believe the colors of the water?



OK, you KNOW he totally licked that thing, don't you? Claws and all. Jeff caught at least 4 crabs and almost pulled this giant crawfish out while we were snorkeling. He really IS Nature Boy. After a mild come-apart while snorkeling, I realized I truly am Nature-Over-There-Me-WAAAAAAYYYYYY-Over-Here Girl. My kind of snorkeling is where you float along, and say "Oh, how lovely, way down there, at least 50 feet away from me, is a beautiful creature. How about that?" THIS kind of snorkeling is more of the HOLY SHIT THESE THINGS ARE ALL TOUCHING ME!!!!! MAKE THEM STOP TOUCHING ME!!! Seriously, we were IN the fish. Beautiful fish, colorful fish but IN the freaking fish. INCHES from the damn reefs. I had the same freaking out feeling as when I was being eaten by the thousands of itty bitty ticks in the country last spring. Damn nature.


This starfish was left behind on a low tide, so apparently dead. It came home with us. It was also the color of my other pair of wollmeise socks that were completed on the honeymoon, therefore they will be called my Starfish Honeymoon Socks. It is now brown, still big and VERY smelly and will probably take 20 years to fully dry out.



These were knit while looking at this kind of a scene the ENTIRE week.


Are you tired of this long post and pictures yet? It's almost over, I promise. Stay with me, you HAVE to hear about the fishing! One morning we were anchored outside of a cut, where the Atlantic Ocean comes into the Sea of Abaco. I guess this means good fishing. Not being much of a fisherwoman, I figured I'd sit and knit and watch Jeff do his stuff like a good little wife. WELL, the man proceeded to set up some complicated crap on this super fishing pole, rigging up lures and smelly fish parts and the like. Then told me that after he got it all set up just so, I could HOLD THE POLE until something happened, where he, being the fisherman you see, would come and take the pole away. So I could be like a hook on a dock. Yeah, that'd be fun. After telling him just where and how he could put that fancy pole I walked up to the front of the boat.

I picked up this spool of fishing line that looked like a big spool of thread. It had two hooks on the ends and a sinker. I cut up some hotdog bits, dropped them into the water and BAM, BAM BAM BAM BAM! Every time it hit the water I was pulling out fish. Serious fish. Poor Jeff, his fancy pole and lures and funky floaty system didn't catch one damn thing. I caught over 18 fish. EIGHTEEN FISH! His uncle about wet himself laughing about it. Jeff would get to the other end of the boat, sit down with his pole and BAM I'd catch another one. Hell, I was even catching TWO AT A TIME! hotdog and hooks on a string, baby. High tech fishing. Jeff did catch a barracuda while we were sailing, but it dropped off before I could get a picture.

Jeff finally gave up the pole and figured I was catching dinner that night. After checking the book to see which ones were good for eating, we saw I was catching things called saucer eyed porgies, and grunts. About 6 different kinds of grunts. These things were beautiful, yellows and blues, stripes, polka dots, gorgeous. Oh, and why are they called grunts? They grunt like pigs while they're out of the water. I'm even holding Jeff's pole AND pulling fish out of the water at one point. Damn, that was fun.








Best. Trip. Ever.