A Mano is such a TV magnet! 
Posts Tagged ‘lys’
Last time I checked, 48. No, it’s not the physical age of my brain. But an estimate of how old my brain is behaving. Looks like I need to exercise my brain “muscle” to get it back in shape. That’s why I got the Nintendo DS Lite and Brain Age. Something that I can use to exercise my brain power and, ahem, have some fun. Having a brain age of 48 at 40… I need to do something about that. Seriously, feeling that my mind is not as sharp as before bothers the heck out of me.
A couple of weeks ago CB and I hung out at Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica when the cleaning lady was here. It was nice to get away for a few hours.
Last Sunday we celebrated Thai New Year at the temple with a special “hand washing” ceremony.
There was another filming at A Mano yesterday (Wednesday). Time Warner Cable wanted to do a Video On Demand segment of the S&B. If it goes well, it might even appear on CNN. Not a lot of details. But we had tons of fun!
We had super strong wind in Southern California last Thursday. I had some Thai food delivered. The smell of burning fire was immediately noticeable as soon as I opened the door when the delivery guy showed up. I thought it was weird that someone had a fire going. The delivery guy commented, “strange that people are doing BBQ in this crazy condition.” BBQ? It turned out that the wind blew down a power line, started a brush fire and burned down a house in Beverly Hills. Yikes.
Few things I want to enter in this online journal before I forget them. First, I want to thank Ted for turning me on to the idea of a vertical swift. I wouldn’t have known about it if he didn’t send me all kinds of info on the various styles of swifts. He truly is a walking knitting encyclopedia. A fiber Guru.
I’ve been knitting quite a bit. I am doing the Four Corner Hat for mom. The crown is made up of four panels. The photo shows the first one that I completed.
You can work the panels separately then sew them together. Or join while you knit. I choose the second method of course. The brim for this style is a slip-stitch pattern, which is much easier than the fair isle pattern for the Nordic style. I am almost done with the third panel of the crown. Yay. Also, the yarn from Blackberry Ridge is very soft and stretchy. Quite enjoyable to knit.
I also started a simple lace project with KnitPicks’ lace weight, Gossamer. I know. I mentioned that I won’t blog about this one because it will be a gift. But this person doesn’t read my blog. So why not?
The pattern is the Candle Flame Shawl that I bought this yarn for. I thought about doing a more challenging pattern. But decided, heck, go with the original plan.
I am also knitting Afghan squares for Marianne’s friend Julie. I am not liking the yarn that I am using. Time to make a trip to A Mano to get something else. Any excuse to make a trip to the LYS, right? But seriously, I also need to get some cotton blend for the next hat project for mom.
Speaking of A Mano, remember the taping of the Men’s night TV segment at A Mano? Yeah. That aired some time ago. And to my horror they used part of my interview. I sounded like Miyagisan in The Karate Kid. Eek. Anyway. A Mano wants to continue Men’s night. Please let them know if you are interested.
Mac users, have you heard of Quicksilver? I discovered it recently. I absolutely love it. It’s an amazing launcher app. Go take a look.
Next topic. I made some changes/improvements to my blogs. First. I decided to end My Project 356 blog. With all the things that have been going on, I stopped taking photos regularly. Keeping a 365 project just doesn’t make sense at this point. I will just keep my Flickr account and make that my photo blog. It is also subscribable if anyone is interested to see my less than amateurish photos.
Speaking of subscribing. I was able to find a way to combine all my blogs plus the Flickr account into one feed. So, if you are interested to read EVERYTHING I post, like my tarot journey, Buddhist practice, and of course, knitting, you can subscribe to this feed. It doesn’t necessary mean that you will get a lot of reading material though. 
I also added a feature called “Subscribe to Comment”. I always wonder if anyone who asks a question on my blog would return to look for a response, or would they expect an email instead? This will solve the dilemma. If you expect a response or want to be notified of new comments, just select to be notified by email. As long as you provide a valid email address, you will receive an email for any future comment to that post.
Do you see that new section in my sidebar that’s powered by Twitter? It’s a social networking thingie that I discovered yesterday. I don’t know if it will be useful or not. But definitely fun to try. It lets you use web, IM or mobile phone to send an update of your status, which gets posted on the network and sent to everyone that you consider a friend. The idea is to let friends follow what each other is doing, strengthening the relationships. It’s also used to send updates like news, etc. Go check it out. Read the TIME article. Let me know if you sign up!
A little update on my mom. Her condition is stable. But she is not able to walk around much. She uses a wheelchair most of the time. And her hair is mostly gone. Thank goodness that I finished the first hat. I was going to post more about the ridiculous things that my sisters did. Yes. Sisters. I don’t just have one wacky sister. I have two. And I don’t mean the one that I am working with to find help for mom. I have another one that’s making the matter more difficult. But I am just too tired of talking about them. I’ll just focus on the positive things for my mother and hope that she gets back some strength so she can have better quality of life.
No, I didn’t. A couple of things that I wanted to mention but forgot in the last post. First. Some of you might wonder, “is he moving or not?” Well, it’s still a possibility. We are still waiting for the big funding to come in before committing to it 100%. It’s still likely to be around June. We’ll see.
I ordered a pair of cotton hand cards last week, and… A BALL WINDER. Yes! Finally! I can’t do it by hands anymore. I’d rather spend more time knitting or spinning than just winding balls of yarn. I still need to get a swift though. But I don’t want an umbrella swift. That thing scares me sometimes. I want a vertical swift. You can see examples here. I am thinking of getting the one on the right.
I started knitting the Odessa hat (without beads) for mom. I don’t know if she will loose her hair or not. But I want to have something ready for her just in case. She can always use it on those days when she doesn’t feel like fixing her hair. I won’t give it to her just yet. I don’t want her to think that I expect her to lose hair.
Mom is feeling better everyday. She’s really handling the treatment quite well.
I went to A Mano and had a fantastic time yesterday. You see, I received an email from Shannita on Monday, asking if I would come in and help out. YourLA, a daytime show airing on the local NBC station, was coming to do a segment on the store and the men’s knitting group. She wanted more guys to be there. I agreed to show up thinking that I was just going to sit and knit.
Bunch of us showed up. John was there. My spinning mentor. He brought his Victoria to do some silk spinning. Chris came in. It was nice to finally meet someone that you only knew through blogs in person. He was fun… and tall! There was Brett. He teaches Japanese. hehehe Ruwan brought some sweets for everybody. Absolutely delicious. I called them Lava Cakes because the centers were all gooey and chocolaty. Mr. and Mrs. Twisted came in with a friend, Jason. (What a great name. ) Mr. Twisted showed off his guitar cozy. A nice lady came in to do some exchange and stayed. (We teased her about planning the whole thing to be on camera.) Sorry. I can’t remember her name. (See Chris, I do have a hard time remembering names.) And of course, there were Annette and Shannita who, as usual, made everyone laugh so hard.
The host and the producer didn’t let anyone get off easy. They interviewed EVERYBODY! I nearly fainted when it came my turn. I did it, but I don’t remember the details. It was almost out-of-body-like experience. Maybe they’ll cut my interview out. I had a great time though. It was good to get out and get a few hours of knitting fun.
Last Friday was the “Two Socks at Once” class at A Mano Yarn Center. I showed up early to take some snapshots of the yarn store. Above is the display window. What you can’t see is the window seats. A great place to relax and have natural light to do knitting with.
A Mano doesn’t have a super large space. But there sure are a lot of yarn! I’ve never realized this until I looked through the lens of the camera. Wow! No wonder the yarn often pops out and hit you when you walk by.
They have a lot of needles! Some
funky ones too. I was going to get a couple of interesting Japanese circular needles made with plastic. The needles and cable are made as one piece. There’s even an 8.5″ circ for socks and baby hats. I’ll try to remember to get them next time.
The large table in the back is where things happen. Classes, S n’ B gatherings, lunch, dinner, etc.
Now on to the class. I was jumping up and down when I saw the needles did arrive in time for us. I immediately grabbed one 47″ #1 and one 47″ #2 Addi Turbo. I decided on a yarn that has all the colors of the rainbow (I wonder why.) Very vibrant. I am going to do another post on the yarn when I get enough length worked on the socks to show you.
Seven people showed up for the class. It was scheduled to start after the store hours. Thank goodness for that! We didn’t need distraction that’s for sure. It was HARD! Kathy was a very good teacher. She went through every little detail. The way she taught also encouraged us to adjust a pattern to our individual measurements.
The cast-on chosen by Kathy was Twisted German Cast-on. It is stretchier. I soon realized that it was the same as Old Norwegian Cast-on which I learned when I did my second sock. I was glad. It was a difficult technique to learn and took up a lot of time to explain and demonstrate.
Anyway, the class was fun! Only one of us decided to use two circs. Everyone else chose single circ. It was difficult. I mean really really difficult. But it was so fun to be in a class when we teased each other on. When several people are frustrated at the same time, it can be really really funny.
I frogged what I did in the class and started the whole thing over at home. I wanted to take my time to go through every step so that I could understand it completely. I also found instructions on the internet for knitting two socks on one circ. Only two rows finished at this point, but I think I am beginning to like it very much. Just like learning to use the DPNs, this method takes time to get used to. Once you get into the flow, it’s quite enjoyable.
