follow up/ fouled up

Oh thank you, thank you, my dear commenters for the unanimous support in doing the right thing. You know I went and got those damn size four needles even if it meant heading out to Arizona with only 4 hours sleep the next day.

this is the road in, as seen from the ranch on Black Mesa

I would rather be telling you about this churro sheep ranch visit and the family of herders and fiber artists I was privileged to meet and live with. There aren't many experiences that have me at a loss to for words but this...well, this will be a chapter worth buying the book for. If possible read that last sentence with some modesty in my voice.

Since it'll be a while till that's possible (the book buying, I mean) and you know how I love to show & tell... as soon as I can distill coherent words and edit out a few more of the the 1200 images, I'll be sharing .

Meanwhile, back to them new needles:
I cast on the hat I am test knitting, a lovely slightly artsy little hat, on the plane and finished it on location - with the whole Navajo family I was staying with watching to see me try it on . It was too freaking small. What was wrong? Aside from- ahem- the obvious not swatching for gauge?

What was wrong was that it needed to be knit on size 5 needles. Take a moment to absorb the irony.

So now I rip and reknit. And save my size 4 needles for future outings.

One more view on the rez. Mostly the other 1198 images have people or sheep or fiber in them, you'll see.

wwak*d?

* ak= any knitter

for want of a needle an hour is lost

Say you were leaving tomorrow for a remote location on a Navajo sheep ranch and you had stuff to do up the wazoo or is it out the wazoo...oh, what is a wazoo anyway? Equipment to check, recharge and pack , clothes to wash , deadlines for clients, a vomiting itchy dog, a 16 year old who went to school saying he might be getting sick (although blessedly neither itchy nor vomiting) , a 13 year old with a high maintenance homework assignment that will be due tomorrow and requiring your attention as he struggles through it .....

wouldn't you find time to run to a yarn store for some size 4 circulars, even though you have the world's largest collection of size 5 needles in all configurations, so you can knit what you have in mind on the plane ride?

I thought so.

sing for me, Kermit

Do you think I have spring on my mind?
My new shoes:

My new bag:

Yes, it is ginormous, though they call it Classic Large

The jacket I am itching to wear:

What I'm knitting today:

well, you know what they say,
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds".

shakshouka

Trying to think of an alt word to well-worn random, this dish popped into my brain. From way back when a much younger version of us lived in Israel for two years. You throw anything you have on hand into a pot on top of sauteed onions and tons of garlic, adding crushed tomatoes, cook till it's melded, then you toss in a couple of eggs on top. If cooked over a fire while camping in the desert: indescribably delicious. Not bad at home either but when you get those little smoky embers in it, mmm.
Anyhow, here I am with all kinds of stuff and an egg on top.
Thinking about our Israel years , Dave reminded me that I used to try to get up early on Thursdays for the weekly sheep trading market in east Jerusalem by the Damascus Gate at dawn. To take pictures. Consistent, am I not?
I wandered everywhere fearlessly then, now I can barely get my quaking self on a commercial airplane from fear of turbulence. An ageing wuss! And yet I still love to travel. Flying recently I spent hours in a panic over a super bumpy start and the pilot's warning that landing was going to be rough, too. Like I had any choice, seeing as I was in the air strapped in trying to do yoga breathing. I am crying uncle and going for drugs before the next flight. I'm also heading over to the excellent travel sites MamaCate linked to yesterday. I'll add Mobissimo to her list.

On to knitting. It's still woolly weather here, I'm knitting this scarf as a way to use the beautiful hand dyed mohair locks I was given at Kai Ranch.
It's a feather and fan, 20 stitches wide in Andys Merino from Farmhouse Yarns (it never ends, I tell ya), I'm just knitting the silky little curls in sort of how you'd add thrums, except poking outward. I decided to congregate them near the ends and more sparsely placed in the middle, so I won't end up with an upscale wool scarf that looks like fun fur.

You know what I want to be knitting? Lots of the new Knitty . I looked at my spring Interweave and thought "well that proves it, I am not in synch with What Knitters Want to Wear" Then, the spring Knitty and if only I didn't have other sweaters started, this or this or this would be cast on immediately.
You still with me? I'm getting to the egg on top (or maybe the whipped cream but its more proteiny and useful than whipped cream): my next trip to shoot sheep is to a Navajo ranch, in Arizona. Can I not wait to leave? No I can not! Why am I doing this? For a book! Next year, from PotterCraft. Fiber farms, lots of juicy photos, fiber artists, great writing and of course knitting patterns from the fiber farms/ranches all over the US . Please note: I'm not writing, I am definitely NOT designing anything, you've got to know your strengths and designing? Not mine. Real designers and fiber artists from each farm are, using their own yarns from the profiled farms. I just take the photos. And give opinions to editors. And test knit. Swoon.

my groove thang

Before going to Texas, I was sure that a successful photo shoot hinged on a warmer weather headwrap. I needed to knit one more Calorimetry . So sure was I that, the day before I left, I bought me some Noro Tidiori , and with my priorities thus clearly in order, I was good to go.

Texas turned out to be over 80 degree F . Head wrapping was not so high on my needs list after all.

Back home, I returned to Group Groove , a hiphop dance workout class I get to any week I can. Go ahead and click on that link, you'll see what my inner flygirl thinks I look like . To the untrained eye at the gym, though, I look like a dork. Best thing about being me now? I really don't care what I look like while I dance. I always leave laughing and aerobically fortified. Or depleted, whatever. My wardrobe is way not hiphop cool. For months I've been sure that if I could tweak my look, I'd surely dance better.

Last week I figured out what I needed: a head wrap. A non-wooly headwrap
.

This one feels like cotton, even though its a rayon/nylon/cashmere blend. I can cover the front of my hair and sort of twist up and stick the longer messy wild part up under the back button. The instructor , a woman who can shake her hips , wear blue tinted glasses and pants that are falling off while looking non-chalantly fabulous- complimented my head style right from the front little stage she teaches on. oh yeah. Everybody to the dance floor.

I only used half a skein to make this last 88 stitch, narrower than the pattern calls for Calorimetry little groove thing. The colorway is so all over the place, look at this, I can knit a second one out of the leftovers in completely different stripes.