Kiss My Knits!

I’m very excited to be going out with the Charlotte Browncoat community this afternoon. One of our members, Tanya, is twenty kinds of clever and put together an event for us.

It’s called The Train Job. It’s a photo scavenger hunt centered around Charlotte’s new LYNX light rail system. We’ve all been assigned to teams, and we’re going to meet at 1pm at the furthest Lynx station, out on I-485, and buy round trip tickets. We’ll be given assignments of things along the line that we have to try to photograph. Then we’ll all meet uptown and compare what we’ve got to declare a winner. Maximum predicted running time: three hours.

I’m on Team Lassiter. Tanya has assigned us so that all teams have at least one person with a digital camera and one person who knows the South Boulevard corridor. I think we’ve got two people who know the area. I’m one of them. We’re all supposed to have cell phones, but mine’s on the fritz, so hopefully I won’t get separated from the group. If I do, well, it’s not like I’ll be stranded. I’ll be right next to a train.

If you’re a local Browncoat who wants to participate, y’all come. I’m sure we could squeeze some more people onto the teams. It’s only supposed to get up to 47 degrees today, so I’ll be bundled within an inch of my life, but it’s never too cold for thrilling heroics! Plus I’ll be knitting Jayne hats on the train between stops to maximize productivity and Browncoat spirit. I think this’ll be fun!

The list as it currently stands, by state/country:

1. MN
2. WI
3. CA
4. Ireland
5. IN
6. AK
7. Need address
8. NH
9. NE
10. OH
11. TX
12. GA
13. Ontario
14. MA
15. TX
16. Australia

I’m working pretty hard to keep the list short for the holidays. In theory these could all be done in four weeks. In practice life gets crazy around the holidays, so I’m not making any promises I might not be able to keep. The estimate at the moment is six weeks for new orders, and if someone’s hat gets done sooner, then it’ll be a wonderful holiday surprise.

MN’s just needs its pompom, and WI’s is halfway done. Back to the Jayne hat mines!

By now everybody reading this knows that I sell Jayne hats at wearwithstyle.com. Part of the packaging is the note that Jayne’s mom wrote to him, which he read when he received his hat. Sometimes people are delightedly surprised at how non-computer-generated the note looks and ask if their note is handwritten.

Yes. Yes it is. Every single time. Nothing but the best for my “Jaynes.”

I missed the post office on Monday by about five seconds, it was closed on Tuesday, I had jury duty on Wednesday, so today I literally have more packages than I can carry that need to go out. I apologize in advance to any poor schmoe who gets stuck behind me in line at the post office. And now, I’m out the door!

Summer 1944 McCall’s magazine. Remember: just because you CAN crochet something, it doesn’t mean you SHOULD crochet something.

Sorry for the lack of updates recently – remember, I have evil hand issues – but there’s been stuff going on, no worries. Today Em and I went to a local production of Annie, Jr.. Our seats were in the next to the last row, and Em couldn’t see great swaths of the production. We moved to another set of seats about 3/4 of the way through the show and things went more smoothly. Em had a great time and wants to go again. It’s playing next weekend, so sure. Em loves theater. I feel better about spending that money on tickets than on another doll.

Jayne hats are chugging along. When my gauge and tension mess up due to evil hand issues – for instance, when a 24″ hat comes out 23″ – I just assign it to the next person of that size in the queue. It means folks are getting stuff out of order, but at least they’re getting stuff. The queue is actually just under 20 now, which is a minor miracle. I’ve had to order another large amount of earflap red, and consequently may have to temporarily stop ordering kits so that I’m sure I’ve got enough for my finished hat clients. We’ll see.

Non-Jayne on the needles: little legwarmers, pictured right. They’re around a pill bottle which is much larger than it appears, I assure you. I’m waiting to hear back from the client on whether these colors are what they had in mind. The yarn is Regia Stretch, so it ought to fit well. I am very skeptical that I can get the second one to stripe up identically to the first one, so I may go completely in the opposite direction, depending on what the client tells me she prefers.

Pardon, I need to go check on some Smurf cobbler which is currently baking. When blackberries are on sale, you’ve got to seize the moment!

I was updating my “who gets the next hat” spreadsheet today and realized that I passed a milestone last last month without even noticing it.

I have now sold more than 1000 Jayne hats and kits. WOOOOOO!!!

The nice thing about longer nights in Fall is that we have dark mornings, too. This may not seem like a plus sometimes, but this morning my daughter and I were able to go out the front door and see Orion in the sky. It was a good way to start the day.

Our family went to the Carolina Renaissance Festival this weekend. My husband had won free tickets, although we would have gone anyway. We had a good time. I saw a couple of journals I liked from the booth of The Journal Guy. I’m looking for a good journal for writing down dye combos. Unfortunately, many of the ones he had in person at the fest didn’t seem to be up online (he had a nice green one I was eyeing pretty hard), and I only got a chance to look for about two minutes before my family started wandering off and I had to hotfoot it after them. Ditto with a spinner and fellow ravelry user. I stopped to talk to her for several minutes, and my penance was quick-stepping all the way back to the entrance and then back to the rear of the fest again to figure out where my husband and child had gone. Answer: watching the belly dancing. Em was fascinated with the belly dancers. I have a cousin who belly dances; maybe I can get her to give us a few pointers.

Sadly, I do not have a picture of the belly dancers, so here’s Em on one of the rides. There was a good Browncoat showing among vendors and staff, by the way. Mr. Tvini wore his Captain Hammer shirt and I wore my Serenity shirt. Mr. Tvini got maybe two “hey!” recognitions, and I got about ten (including Journal Guy). I handed out Jayne hat cards liberally (which is the way I do everything – heyo!). Renfest is a good venue for geeks of all stripes.

A giant package of 100 6x6x6 cardboard boxes came in, so I’m ready to stamp up some more and ship out some Jaynes. The wait right now is about seven weeks, so I want to stay on top of things so that the maximum number of people get theirs by Christmas. Everyone in line now will, of course, but I want to be sure there are many, many happy Browncoats this holiday season!

Right now, I’m going to finish watching Ran and knitting, then go for a little run while it’s still cool. Good times.

The last few days I’ve been launching into the day full speed. Did you know that the grocery stores don’t have their bananas out at 7:15 in the morning? Slackers!

I’m trying to decide whether to go running this morning. It’s still fairly cool, but even though I did get to bed at a reasonable hour last night (see, Mom? Your Mom Guilt^TM worked!) I’m still pretty tired. Something had me kind of sickly last night, and I think I’m still recovering a bit. So maybe I’ll let it go, since I did run yesterday and since the Greenway smells like dead skunk.

This morning: I’m stamping more padded mailers, knitting a hat for a guy in Belgium, and watching Becket. I may also stop by the hardware store and pick up some PVC pipe for a side project that I’ve wanted to get underway for some time.

At right, for no particular reason except that it amuses me: a cat’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

After my comment yesterday about not leaving socks on the floor, this happened. I brought in some hand-knitted socks from the line. I was called away before I had a chance to put them up, so I put them on a plastic bag on a stool and walked off. I heard the bag hit the floor, and sure enough, there was the cat. Caught her red-pawed.

Lot of stamping of boxes, etc., this morning, for Jayne hats and kits. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s not the knitting that slows me down, it’s all the other assorted stuff. Also, I’m almost out of shipping materials, so it’s time to order another gigantic box of boxes. Our house may never be free of clutter.

I did find time to go out and run the Greenway this morning. The rains of last week flooded the stream. It crested over the bridge, and there are still bits of straw and debris stuck through the railings. It’s been a week, and now there’s a wet, rotting smell in places. It’s definitely motivation to keep running – on the way back, at least, to get the heck out of it.

The Office Season 4 releases today, and yes, I will find time to grab a copy. Can’t wait for 30 Rock to come out, too. If I’m knitting Jayne hats in the mornings, it’s nice to have something new to watch. Although I did pull out Bowfinger for the first time in a long time, and it was just as funny as I remembered. Love that movie. I’m baffled that it didn’t do better at the box office. Last night was The Last Emperor, a favorite movie of mine. A Jayne hat bound for Massachusetts came off the needles during that one. It’s a long movie.

Time to eat some lunch and go stamp up some more padded mailers. People need kits!

Final question: the spider at left is living in my rosemary bush. It’s big and it’s pretty, but what is it? Anyone know?

For some reason, there’s been a sudden upswing in the number of Jayne inquiries. Some is probably back to school shopping, but I think it’s mainly that the weather’s cooling down.

Happy about this development: the guy to the right.

Look what my cousin made for me. Hee hee!



ETA: My cousin’s wife has a LJ now, as .