potpourri

It's been a long time since I've written, but I'm popping in with some catch-up!

I released my October Pins & Lace Club pattern yesterday. (Don't miss the sign-ups for 2013!)

I've called it Firebird, in thanks to the amazingly brave and wonderful firefighters who saved us over the summer fire season.

The full club kit came with a nickel shawl pin (an impressionistic take on wings), a sample of my favorite wool wash Kookaburra, and Spark lace yarn from Little Red Bicycle. It was a special color called Scarlet Sentinel in wool, silk and stellina metallic, which adds just a subtle sparkle to the yarn. 

The sample shown here is knit in The Grinning Gargoyle's lovely Divine Lace in Signature Red, as the mail gods conspired against my receiving Didi's yarn on time.

The shawl starts in the center (in the round) and is divided later

as part of it is bound off

and the two sides are worked into wings.

I used Rosemarie's belly button start for the center, which I love love love. But I am admitting here - to all of you who have similar troubles - I always have to start several times when I knit laceweight yarn in the round. Usually, I start and rip about 4 or 5 times, sometimes more. One of these days, I'll post a video of me starting and having all the needles fall out, just so you can all have a laugh!

A couple weekends ago, at the Carson City pool complex (indoor; Olympic-sized), Reno/Sparks teams hosted a meet and my little one, The Bear, got two JO times! This means he qualifies for a championship meet (Junior Olympics) and he cannot wait to go!

We are super excited for him. He is one positive little guy. (I wish that we could move his elder brother in the positive direction, but he seems determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Someone please tell me I am not alone here. It's so painful to watch him defeat himself.)

Last Friday, it was Nevada Day, which meant no school. It was also our 16th wedding anniversary. We all piled in the car to go up to Granlibakken and pick up a Clemes & Clemes wheel that had traveled down to SOAR via Tracy and Tom from Diane in Eugene, OR. What nice people! Spinners and knitters are truly the kindest people. Here she is. (I am sure she is a she, but I'm not sure why I think so.)

While I was at SOAR - only for about an hour total - I made a whirlwind tour of the market tent (yes - tent - and apparently not bear-proof) and stopped by the Verb for Keeping Warm booth to see two shivering friends (Kristine and Aday) from the California Bay Area. I will admit to having made some good-natured fun of them. And I had to snap a pic.

I stopped by Karen's booth and she insisted I take some of her lovely yarn. I couldn't refuse. So I chose two skeins for a new two color design.

I got a much needed niddy noddy from Clemes and Clemes.
I had wanted to replace the orifice hook on my new wheel,

but they hadn't brought any hooks with them. So this past weekend, Mr. Romi and I did a tandem project.

I love it.

In other news, Otto the Dog has a new necklace. (He can take it off, as well as put it on all by himself.)

We finally installed our new doorbell.

And...look at the splash of color up on the mountain!

There must be a seep or a running spring up there, and look at the lovely grove of aspens. We've been watching them change color as fall progresses.

in, out, down, up in smoke

Whew. I really haven't been trying to maintain radio silence about all the things I'm working on. I want to share them, but the past few days have been insane, to say the least!

Last Friday as I was starting to do paperwork for my club (there are still yarn/pattern spots open!), the power went off. At first I thought that we had tripped a switch and down I went to check the electrical panel. Nope. Then we all noticed the smoke out the back window. Wow, was it close! Mr. Romi got in the car for a quick reconnoiter, but was turned back at the intersection of 395, and we were told to stay put. The wind was swirling and they didn't know where the sparks would blow. At least we now knewfrom the NDOT flagger that the fire was on the other side of the highway. But the kids were on the other side of the road block, and on the school bus to the swim center for their swim meet. We were supposed to be there to watch them and work the meet. Heh. Not! This is where I tell you how happy we were to have given #1 Son a cell phone, and how utterly desperate we became when he wouldn't answer it!

We arranged for the kids to stay with another swimming family and then the question was whether we should go through the mountains and back down to the meet - much longer drive, but possible. No - we thought. If 395 wasn't open the next morning, we'd never get them back in time for the meet (I am still amazed we were thinking this dispassionately; Mr. Romi and I tend to be very calm in the face of terror). So we dug the candles, candle holders and battery powered lamps out of boxes while it was still light, and went to get a bite to eat down the road where they still had power. The road was still closed at our street when we returned, so we went back home and lit the candles. It was very very quiet. No humming of power, no cars, no crickets. I guess they didn't like the smoke. Early in the morning, the power came back on. We set our clocks and got up to go to the swim meet. As I'm writing this, it seems fairly surreal! But out we went to the car as dawn was breaking. The road was open with pilot vehicles. I video-taped some of the drive through the fire zone. Devastation. But reassuringly farther away from us than we had supposed.

There were still areas burning and all was black and ashy. But the firefighters had saved Every. Single. Home. I almost cried when I saw the homes standing in the middle of that burned out area, completely untouched.

It was beyond wonderful to see the kids. They had been pretty freaked watching the fire from school. I guess it looked a lot worse from town than it did even from here. And I worked the meet all weekend (for other swim parents who know: Meet Manager software). Our ISP has been up and down ever since. They had radio towers along the fire route and, well, it still isn't back to normal. In fact, I am writing this on my Verizon Jetpack (thanks be for that!). I've been able to do some paperwork online while the ISP was up, but...it's down again and I am almost out of bandwidth.

I wanted to pop in though, and say hello. The hotspots are still flaring off, but things are getting better, thanks to our firefighting heros. They think the fire was caused by a cigarette thrown from a group of motorcyclists smoking on the side of the road - on their way to the Street Vibrations rally in Reno. I can't even begin to comment on it, or write about what I think or feel hearing that.

And now? I think a little knitting is in order!

My cheatin' heart

...is at it again. I had to cast on another Muse. That makes three I am working on at once. Plus my second Buttonwillow. This latest muse is all about elegant texture. And is fitting my mood of late.

The color is incredible. It's from Alisha Goes Around, but she told me once that the color name marked on the skein was incorrect. I have to find out from her again what it is because everyone who sees it wants to steal it!

Love the stitch definition.

It's going to be perfect to take to the swim meet this weekend.

Yep. Swim meet weekend and I will be trying something new! Tomorrow morning (October 15th) at 9 a.m., the rest of my Pins & Lace Club spots open up. I have everything all set up to take it live on my iPhone! How cool is that?! I have an ftp app. I'm hoping it works properly and I won't have to run to the nearest Starbucks. :)

But probably what you really want to see is...the winners! Right? The randomly chosen winners of the two digital copies of Bambeanies are Marlie and Megan, and the winner of the signed hard copy is Fara! Congratulations! Please email me with your contact info at romi(at)designsbyromi(dot)com.

Today was a very sad day at Chez Romi. We lost #1 Son's bunny a little over a week ago and then The Bear's bunny became ill a couple of days ago. We had to have him put down today. Pepper's eyes were swollen, and at first I was so hoping it was sunburn or allergy, or something of the sort. Those of you with bunnies are now saying to yourselves: "Oh, no. It's not sunburn!" No, it wasn't. Between the two of us, Mr. Romi and I determined it was Myxomatosis. We don't usually diagnose our critters, but I have to say the vet was really not qualified to look at a rabbit. Our bunny was presenting classic symptoms and the vet had absolutely no clue when she looked at him Tuesday. Lesson learned. If you are going to have rabbits, you need a vet who knows how to treat them. In the case of Myxomatosis, treatment is almost completely futile, and we didn't want our poor little bunny to go through the end stages of the disease. So now we are watching our little Diva bunny very very closely. If she gets through next week without swollen eyes, I think we will be ok. Fingers are crossed.

baked crunchy and draggin' my wagon

In other words: knackered after a three day swim meet. But I did get a little swatching action happening. (Pardon the iPhone photo please!)

I was having some fun with it. Unfortunately, this was one of those times when I couldn't get very much done in actual knitting and charting. It was more of a thinking through things kinda weekend. But I do have a cast-on plan and chart for the First Muse. And I can't wait to cast on a little bit later. Woot!

More soon. Happy Father's Day!!!

Through the woods and across the Sierras

Last Friday we packed up the car and headed off to our very first out of state swim meet; across the Sierras and into Carson City, Nevada! It had been a very long time since I'd actually been into Nevada (California is a big state and we don't usually leave by car!) and an even longer time since I'd been to Carson City. Newsflash for this California girl: on the other side of the state line, they have it pretty good! I mean, just look at this gorgeous indoor Olympic sized pool!

The Carson Tigersharks get to practice there. We were all seriously - and I mean seriously - green with envy. #1 Son just stared open-mouthed when he walked into the complex. They have a scoreboard that keeps a running time and has each swimmer's "name in lights" as #1 Son said. Both boys went on to have an absolutely amazing meet, with personal bests in every event. Part of that is because they are both finally getting thoroughly over whooping cough (yes - they were both vaccinated the requisite number of times, but they got it anyway), and part of that is because they were just so thoroughly enjoying the moment and the whole experience. It was such a joy to see!

Now, not only did both boys have personal bests in each event, The Bear won his 8 and under age division, taking first in every single one of his events. Here he is with his age division trophy. He is one proud little dude. And his parents may have burst a few buttons, as well.

While we were there, Mr. Romi, who loves archery, stopped by the local outdoor course. He had called ahead and gotten ahold of the caretaker (I was feeling the similarities here, since I checked Jimmy Beans' hours!) who met him there in the morning to shoot before the afternoon session of the swim meet. (Big kids in the morning, little kids in the afternoon). It was so gorgeous that Mr. Romi took me out later to see the view. Look at that sky!

It had snowed the night before, but the snow had all evaporated. You can still see some on the Sierras in the background here, though.

I was absolutely enthralled by the scenery. I have always always loved the desert, and the high desert in particular.

And then we were off to Reno. Happily for me, Jimmy Beans is open on Mondays! (And yes, I had already checked on the way up. I believe in being prepared.) Look at this yummy wall of yarn!

Mmmmmmmmore yarn.

This is where the website fulfillment magic happens - in the back room. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming (and they let the boys use the bathroom so I will love them all forever)! This is Kristen, who is packing up orders.

And this is Terry, who actually used to live in Sonoma County and knew exactly where my town is! This is a very Rare Thing.

She was nice enough not to say anything when I pronounced Nevada incorrectly. Being from California, I pronounced it with the Spanish "a" as Nev-AH-da. But in reality, locals pronounce it Nev-AD-a. So, many thanks to you, Terry (and apologies for messing up your state name); I am much obliged! :)

Oh. Did I mention that some yarn might have followed me home? This lovely is from Lorna's Laces. It's one of their designer series yarns, and this particular skein of Shepherd Sock is Grand Street Ink, Jared Flood's color. I loved the gorgeous rich purpley-brown color immediately, and it went wandering around the store with me.

And because a skein of yarn can never be lonely, it found a friend. Seasilk in the ebony colorway.

Seeing that I have an absurdly enormous stash, I asked #1 Son which he liked best, because I was determined to split them up and only adopt one. He gave his opinion. I asked Mr. Romi and The Bear. They said both. Hee. Love it! Although I secretly thought Mr. Romi was buttering me up because we were about to stop at Cabela's on the way back to California.

Here's the view out the Cabela's door. It is an insanely enormous store. Utterly overwhelming. All I can say is: it's a good thing I was there. Otherwise? We might be starving and homeless today.

We finally got out of Cabela's and were off back to California! The traffic was quite civilized, probably due to the exorbitant price of gas.

And when we returned? Look what was waiting for me! It is angora/wool/silk from one of my club members. She keeps angoras and had the fiber spun by a local mill. It is sumptuous!

I really wish you could see it and feel it. It's a lace weight and it is the lightest and softest stuff ever! I can't wait to dig into it. She spoiled me with four 315 yard skeins!

And then today it was back to work. It was nice to sleep in my own bed, but I find myself really missing the high desert! Kind of amazing for a dyed in the wool California girl. Just shows that even an old dog, well, you know.... ;)

Please help me choose!

Some of you may remember that I convinced the wonderful (well, she didn't need much convincing because she is so wonderful!) Dee from Saffron Dyeworks to create a new color of her Enya Sock for a little fundraising shawl pattern for my sons' swim team, the Neptunes. The Neptunes, like so many other swim teams, have been having a very difficult time of it because of the shaky economy in my county. Though this isn't a nation- or world-wide cause, the team is very close to our hearts in this family - swimming is a terrific sport - and I am hoping to help out as much as possible. There are quite a few kids whose parents are unable to pay the dues, and added scholarships (swimmerships?) have been helping to drain the team's coffers.

For the pattern, $5 of each purchase will go to the Neptunes team. And the afore-mentioned wonderful Dee has pledged $5 from each skein of 50 that she will make available for pre-order, as well as $5 per skein ordered within a three month period (she will set the dates on that one). We are all so excited and thankful here that I can hardly tell you!

Well...Dee just sent me three gorgeous watery colors, and I can't decide which to choose! So I showed them to the boys (my two younger ones and the older one) and they each chose a different one! Will you help me please? I took a picture of them, but the colors are so vibrant that the picture doesn't really do them justice.

#1 is probably most like clear blue pool water, with a little grey thrown in; #2 is the stunning green of the San Francisco Bay right near Angel Island, and #3 is the brilliant turquoise of the South Pacific near a white sandy beach. Which can you absolutely not resist?

Please leave me a comment and let me know which one you love best!

In which Romi goes on and on and on

Whew. I feel like I haven't been here in ages! So much has been going on. This is going to be a long post, but I really think I owe you at least a few highlights!

I guess the super gigantic whirlwind really started being a perfect storm right after I rushed Sakaki out, with my 3 secret projects, due dates all falling within a period of two weeks. My first, a small one thankfully, was completed way ahead of time and sent off to its new home. It is still a sekrit. Then came my offering for Kristine's Pro-Verbial Club. (Isn't that a great name?) Meet Cáliz, which will not be available to everyone until later this year. She was designed to take full advantage of the rustic camel/silk blend from A Verb for Keeping Warm.

Kristine's club ships right at the same time as mine. I rushed to get Cáliz to my test knitter extraordinaire, so that I could then concentrate on my own club offering, a more complicated confection that needed tweaking before going to test knitters. All I can say is that I have the absolute best test knitters in the whole world. I am so lucky! With their help, I was able to get it all together in time. Meet Lisianthus (which, btw, is also the nickname of a very dear friend of my mother's).

You can see the center leaf panel transition into the edging a little more clearly here, I think.

And here we have the detail at the neckline.

She is knit from String Theory's seri silk silk lacewight yarn, which is utter heaven. It reminds me of that incredible color of blueish-purple hydrangeas. I have several options in my club, and the "Romi's Choice" people, who receive my choice of yarn, pin metal and pattern, received the pictured shipment for April.

There's also a little polishing cloth thrown in for fun. The packages all went out over a period of about a week and half, as I try to give the international members a little head start so they don't have to wait as long.

After that craziness, it was time to start another secret project, take the boys to STAR testing (which is an event when you homeschool as we do) and allow the poor long-suffering Mr. Romi to catch up on some things that had been put aside to help me get everything together. So the couple of weeks before I went off to teach at Yarnover were spent at a lot of swim practices and putting together some sizable wholesale shawl pin orders. This made me realize how much I really needed to have a Mac laptop, so that I could work on patterns in my Adobe software while at practice. I already had Mac and PC versions of charting software and OpenOffice so that I could use my little Toshiba laptop in the pattern writing process, but I wasn't about to buy Adobe's Creative Suite again for the PC! Enter my new MacBook Pro, the most beautiful piece of technology I have ever owned. (Posing here with one of the extra projects from my eBook).

I finished laying out my Alcyone pattern - the last shawl from the eBook subscription! - on my new laptop, the next up for test knitters after those three secret projects. And then? Disaster. I discovered an error that changed more than half of the charts and written instructions. Not complicated once discovered, but terribly time consuming, as I had to throw out a huge amount of work. By now it was time to be going, and so off I then went to Yarnover. (Can I just add that I absolutely love Yarnover? If you have a chance to go, grab it!) It was their 25th anniversary and I was lucky enough to be teaching there! Here I am with a great group of people from my Ravelry forum (thank you for letting me use the picture, Nora!); it was amazing meeting everyone in person, and I so wish I could have gotten pictures of all! :)

I also finally got to meet Twinset Ellen at dinner! Here she is (in a terrible, low-light grainy picture - sorry!) with StevenBe.

Here's Cathy, who wove that beautiful bookmark as a gift for me! I was very touched. Thank you, Cathy! :)

And here's the wonderful Kristine's wonderful mother.

I also collected some yummy yarnz, and I will show you those in my next post!

From where I live out in the middle of nowhere, it takes pretty much a full day to travel anywhere, so I had loads of time to work on different projects. One was the afore-mentioned 4th secret, and one was a little extra for my eBook: a cowl out of decadent cashmere sock yarn from Artyarns.

When I returned, it was three days until Mr. Romi left on a business trip through the next (swim meet) weekend (by now we're up to the week before Mother's Day). I was still working on some wholesale pin orders and the secret project, while trying to keep everything else going in preparation for Mr. Romi's business trip, and working through Alcyone for the second time.

Around this time, silver prices went up to an all time high of $50/ounce. I had been expecting prices to go down, and so had been absorbing the extra material cost (my sterling pin prices were set when silver was $18 an ounce). It was obvious I couldn't do that any longer and still feed the kids. So, with a weekend approaching, and no fast site fix (I needed to update the database and my site both to change silver prices), I was forced to take my jewelry site down for maintenance, thinking I could get it back up after the weekend swim meet. Um. Not.

That weekend, I put everything work related away, except for some work on the Alcyone pattern in spare moments. We were up at 4:45 a.m. both days to get there in time to set up and warm up in the pool. We got a smaller pop-up so that I could actually put it up with the help of the boys. (Mr. Romi is much taller than I, and the big pop-up tent was too much!) I love the checked top. :)

It was a very very windy weekend. This is the timing tent. Luckily it blew in after the last race when no one was in the pool! If you look closely, you will see buckets attached to the poles. They were full of water to weight the tent down. Heh.

The meet was super fun, but left me utterly exhausted. Sunday evening I went to bed early and slept late the next morning. And I slept ten hours a night for about two more nights, actually going to bed before midnight or one in the morning. This is unheard of!

Mr. Romi returned Monday and was immediately back to work catching up, and with promises to pamper me for two weekends for the missed Mother's Day. (I thought that was a great deal). :) Alcyone was fixed and in testing, and I breathed a little sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, the yearly swim team fund raising swim-a-thon event took place.

Here's a happy Bear, who swam the full 200 laps for the first time!

Onward! Life and the secret project knitting continued, it started raining, and I came down with the world's worst head cold. Bleh.

But now? The sun is out, the secret project finally dried and sent out (amazing what 3 hours in the sun will do for drying that 20 hours inside will not), and I am finishing up the pattern, getting my site back up, getting ready to release some half year club memberships (tomorrow, May 20th at 9 a.m. PST!), doing a final edit on Alcyone, and getting the last two extra patterns ready for the eBook. Other stuff is happening, too, but more about that later. (Hint: another subscription is part of it!)

I know I've omitted quite a bit, but really? If you have read this far, you deserve a cup of tea and some chocolate for your patience. So...more later!