A glorious wedding

My brother got married this past weekend. I am still floating on the energy of this incredible event. Katie is the executive producer at an event organizing company in Manhattan, and Eric produces parties driven by whimsy in Brooklyn as a hobby, fueled on the energy of friendships he and Katie have made over years of living around the world and attending Burning Man. To create a wedding festival suitable for their life, they found a summer camp in the Catskills that hosts events when camp isn't in session, and about 250 people converged to share in their joy.

We weren't able to leave Vermont until the late afternoon so we didn't get to see the signs along the way.

I knit desperately for the entire 6 hour trip. We stopped at Golden Corral because the kids wanted to eat there. It will be okay with me if we never go to another Golden Corral again. They liked the chocolate fountain, though.

We arrived at 10 pm, after the pig roast but before the campfire hangout.

There were greeters waiting at the gate with brochures with a camp map and schedule of activities, on which they marked our assigned cabin. Everyone had a button waiting for them with their first name, color-coordinated based on their relation to the bride and groom. We were also provided with plastic cups with the couple's crest (yep, they made a crest) labeled with our names to use for drinks, and ear plugs, though we found the cabins were so quiet we didn't need these.

I was still knitting my shawl and bound off around 1 am, went back to the cabin and blocked it out as quietly as possible. Yes, I brought mats and pins. The next morning I made the tassels over coffee.

They had asked everyone to dress in their favorite colors - you may still be able to see the instructions at boltfest2017.com. The result was amazing.

We were greeted with bags labeled with our names, instructed not to open them until we were instructed to do so.

You can see my shawl in this photo, just above Katherine's arm.

Also here's me and my mom.

Eric and the rest of us in the close family entered to Ceremony by New Order.
Then we all sang A Little Respect by New Order together. Mary Ellen helped us. That's Scotty, the officiant, on the right. He had an ID tag labeled CLERGY so no one would be confused.

Katie came in to Music for a Found Harmonium by Penguin Cafe Orchestra. She's actually that beautiful. Every day.

Lauren read I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone by Rainer Maria Rilke. She read it twice so it could settle in.

Their vows started and ended with the same words and were more individual in between, and both promised to join together to build friendship, community, art, and love.

The rings were delivered by drone. I am not kidding.

We also sang The Crane Wife 3 by the Decemberists and Manchester by Kishi Bashi.
Katie and Eric were adorned with capes.

We were then instructed to open our little red bags, in which was a cape, in our favorite color. They knew our favorite colors because it was a question when we RSVPed via Google Forms.

Much rejoicing!

We went down the hill for drinks and tacos. Dad led the way playing his bagpipes.

That kid on the right in orange pants? He's mine.

Here's the crest:

My parents' speeches were just perfect. My mom was so funny and my dad blew everyone away with his philosophizing, and spontaneous quotation of more Rilke. This is Dad in his kilt, with his friend Amy.

And me and Eric with our lovely parents. I had replaced my shawl with the cape as it was too warm for that much alpaca. (Miranda Lace, yum!)

Then there was an afternoon of hanging out by the lake and dancing.

Also streamers!

My other kid is the one wearing the Vans with green laces. When they reunite with their second cousins from Mississippi, it is like they were never parted!

Dinner was hot dogs and burgers, and blue bug juice! It felt like camp.
Saturday night dance party was 18+. Katie wore her shawl and was stunning as always!

It is knit in SpaceCadet Luna (cobweb) and the pattern will be released on Ravelry at some point in 2017 ...

My speech was during this part, and it was well-received, though of course I didn't manage to say everything I meant to say, or everything I felt. I was dead on my feet and had to go back to my bunk, sadly, before the party moved to a mysterious woodland location to continue all night.

There were so many DJs at this party. My brother's set started at 4 am and greeted the sunrise. He has a great aesthetic for sunrise.

Turns out their capes glowed. GLOWED.

People took off gradually over the morning on Sunday. We were among the first, because we had to get back to Vermont for Will's All Star baseball practice. It is Thursday and I still want to be back there. I am so blessed to have Katie as a sister and to be among this amazing group of people. Thank you Eric and Katie for touching so many lives. You make the world better every day.

Photos collected from various sources: camp photographer, Facebook, other family and friends. Everyone is awesome.

Alpine Adventure: Day 1

In which we ascend to base camp
Uneventful flight to Zurich and the international entry process went smoothly. I had been looking forward to the Swiss rail system and I was not disappointed. The app I downloaded ahead of time generated the next 5 possible itineraries, each indicating the platform for the train, and linking to a progress bar of the train along the station route. Every connection involved getting off of one train and walking to another platform to get on the waiting train which then left within 5 minutes. It was unbelievable.

We were anticipating a shared room with twin beds and were amazed to find ourselves assigned to a 3 bedroom apartment with a patio overlooking Murren, the valley, and the Eiger and neighboring peaks. Here's a panorama from our deck:

From left to right, the peaks are:
Eiger (pointy)
Mönch
Then the ridge without snow is Lauberhorn.
Just behind that is Jungfrau, the one just under the clouds.
The center of the photo is a long ridge leading to Breithorn (rounded).
There is another rounded peak just to the left of the ridge on the right, which is Tschingelhorn.
Then the ridge just behind the patio with umbrellas leads up to Gspaltenhorn, a cute mitten shaped peak.

We walked to Grimmelwald, about 45 min on a paved path. Tiny village. We took the cable car back up to Murren for fun. The cable cars are loaded with tourists traveling up to the summit of Schilthorn, where there is a rotating restaurant which was featured as "Piz Gloria" in my favorite Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. We're going up today, the hard way.

With the train ride I nearly finished my Oscillo scarf. Just the cast off to do and it looks like I won't need the second skein of yarn. Now I have an extra 100g of Aurora ... What a problem! Not sure what I'll do with it as it's a rather distinctive colorway. I think it might be nice combined with a semisolid in Pure Joy.

We have "half board" at our hotels, which means breakfast and dinner are included. We sat on the sunny panoramic patio (with the umbrellas on the right in the photo above). They have a huge a la carte menu but I was pretty happy to not have to choose. Our set menu was a lovely salad with fresh strawberries, mozzarella, basil - fresh and delicious; roasted wild boar medallions and mushroom risotto; and caramel pudding.

We were fighting to stay awake all afternoon and evening. I made it til 9 then thought I'd just finish the last rows of the scarf. An episode of Outlander helped carry me to 10.

Alpine Adventure: Day 0

In which I earn my vacation
June 26 I went for a great bike ride. When I got home I took a nap and I woke up sick. This virus really wiped me out and I took naps whenever I could, all week long, and canceled one of my clinic sessions. I needed to rest as much as I could for my week on inpatient service.

My call for our maternity care group started at 8 am on Friday morning 7/1. I needed to go to the hospital straight from work because we thought we were going to put our laboring patient on pitocin. She ended up not needing it but I stayed to manage things until her own doctor got there, and worked on catching up with notes from the week. By the time I was relieved it was midnight and as I wanted to be in for sign out on Saturday morning, I slept in the hospital.

It was a busy Saturday on service, July 2 so the intern was brand new and the second year was acting as the solo senior for the first time. Labor intensive. I got home for dinner then in the evening answered a call from a patient with contractions. She didn't sound too uncomfortable so I decided that while she was getting to the hospital I would take a shower, as I hadn't changed my clothes in 24 hours. I got out and was drying off when L&D paged that she was fully dilated. Because I was officially in charge I headed on in even though there was no way I would make it. They paged me along the way as the baby was born and the placenta followed. Happily my friend who was on as the obstetrics attending was able to supervise my resident, and it was a great experience for him to do the delivery so independently. I tidied up loose ends but then it was midnight again so I slept at the hospital, again.

Another busy day Sunday and I was paged about obstetrics again Sunday night, though I didn't have to go in. Monday was July 4 and I was still on maternity call until 8 am Tuesday, and responsible for the hospital service until 5 pm. I calculated that this put me as the responsible attending on call for maternity and/or inpatient for 105 hours straight (8 am Friday until 5 pm Tuesday). And still Wednesday through Friday I was rounding. I did a good job getting all the notes signed but it required staying up until 12 or 2 am every night. I averaged 5 hours sleep I think.

I had a nice restful weekend. Then a busy week with lots of extra time in the office so I could get some patients in before my vacation.

In the category of really, really stupid, I was again on maternity call starting Friday 7/15 and hospital attending for the weekend. A friend had asked for coverage so she could go out of town for her son's birthday and I agreed so I could trade for a weekend I wanted to be off in January. I knew it was right before I was leaving so we agreed to trade off on Sunday night. But I hadn't thought about how my family might want me around for the weekend before I left them for 9 days. Also I forgot that it was my own son's birthday on Friday. Idiot. I again had to go straight to L&D from work because I was responsible for a patient who broke her water at 22 1/2 weeks. I had already arranged for the high-risk obstetrics service to take over her care, but again I needed to go in to be present. I had a good talk with her - lovely lady who has had a really hard time, and although I'd never met her before, I was glad to be able to support her on behalf of her own doctor. Then home for cake which was delayed for me.

As I was lying down to sleep Friday night the resident called me about a woman coming in, just to let me know. He was being so responsible, knowing that we expect them to call us about all pregnant women who call, but hadn't heard the part where if they have decided to evaluate them on L&D they don't have to call us until they have done the assessment. Then an hour later I was paged by a colleague who wanted to know about a test result. Then another call to let me know the patient's water was indeed broken and she was getting admitted. Then at 3:00 a call about a decrease in the fetal heart rate, so I needed to go right in. I stayed up getting work done and watching the strip, got sign out on the hospital patients, then back to L&D. I had tried to call the patient's doctor all night without response, so I figured she must be out of town. She got to complete dilation and started pushing. At the same time, another colleague's patient was undergoing induction. Things had been going okay and at the last check she was 4 cm. We were working with Patient 1 and giving her lots of coaching, she was doing fine - then the nurses asked for us to check Patient 2 - and she was complete with visible hair. So we left Patient 1 with her nurse, zipped over to Patient 2, did a lot of careful support so she wouldn't tear. I called her doc but there was no way she could get in in time. Patient 2 pushed out a 9 lb 10.5 ounce baby in about 20 minutes with no trauma and we were able to get right back to Patient 1 for more support. Then I heard from Patient 1's doctor who had been sleeping in a tent with her kids so didn't get my pages and texts. By this point there was no reason for her to come in either. Patient 1 started having some more low heart rate and we started talking about a vacuum delivery and called the peds team. But then just when she thought she couldn't do it anymore she turned the corner and had a great delivery. Two babies in less than an hour!

During that exciting hour another patient arrived in early labor and she had a prior cesarean section so needed lots of monitoring because of the extra risks. I was able to get my adult patients managed then back up to L&D to watch Patient 3. Her doctor couldn't come in because her husband was away and she didn't have child care. At 11 pm I lay down for a nap, got update calls from the resident every hour or so, things really stalled out but my brain was so fried so I let him manage things. Then there started to be some heart rate issues so I got out of bed and went out to assess, we were finally ready to push. This was a kind of scary second stage because the heart rate kept going down and our monitors weren't working well. But happily we had yet another nice delivery and healthy baby.

Back to the call room for 5 hours of sleep before another day of medicine service. Then hometown for dinner, signed out to my friend at 8, got my bag packed, hung out with the fam, took a shower. Alarm at 3:30 and cab at 4:20, flight at 6:10 am. Now I am spending the day in Atlanta until our 5:45 pm flight to Zurich! I managed to devote 3 hours to getting work done so I am in great shape and now I can KNIT.

Projects I brought:
Beekeeper's Quilt - plan to continue a puff a day. I did two today because I didn't manage any the last two days. I still owe myself one for today.
Featherweight (wip) - Posh Yarn Bryony Lace
Oscillo (wip) - SpaceCadet Aurora
Everyday Shawl (casting on now) - SpaceCadet Oriana and Celeste - gradient mini skeins from Sept and Oct 2015
La Jefa - SpaceCadet Thebe
Tucked - (Vi)Laines BFL DK
Wide Ribbed Beanie - Swan's Island DK

Express Lane by Diane Mulholland - KAL

Hello PL!
I started the socks with a video pretty much of each of the 6 rows. Here are some things I learned:
- it's pretty hard to see the stitches with the yarn I'm using, I think
- I needed to do gauge math.

I realized once I was in the 6-8 row range that the toe was going to be HUGE. This is because I ignored my gauge swatch. Rookie mistake. I'm still going to put up the videos, since I took the time, and because maybe they're helpful. But I frogged and will start over with the right number of stitches. I might also do a mini piece with a yarn that is easier to see.

Gauge math:
Pattern gauge is 36st per 4"
My swatch is 30st/41r per 4" on 2.5 mm needles and the fabric feels good to me so I don't want to do another swatch on smaller needles.
My foot is about 9" circumference, 9" x 36st/4" = 81 st in pattern gauge - not sure how much negative ease is recommended for this pattern. The L size has 64 st around, 64st x 4"/36st = 7.1", 2" negative ease seems like more than enough so I'll follow the L instructions.
The L instructions say to CO 32.
32st x 4"/36st x 30st/4" = 26.67 st so I can CO 26 or 27 st
Once in the round pattern has 64st x 4"/36st x 30st/4" = 53.3 st
twice 26 is 52, a little tighter
twice 27 is 54 which is pretty close to what I want so I'll CO 27 even though it's an odd number.

Oh you didn't check your gauge? Then you have homework before you start!
1. read this article
2. knit and measure your gauge swatch

My usual strategy is to CO half again as many sts as the pattern says will be 4" - this makes a 6" swatch. So for this pattern, 36 + 36/2 = 36 + 18 = 54, but I like multiples of 5 so I'd CO 55. Then I'd knit garter stitch for a few rows (3 or 4 ridges), then I carry on with 4-5 st of garter stitch at the beginning and end, and when I'm about square I do the symmetrical number of garter stitches. Then I bind off, measure, wash the swatch, and measure again. I have a sweet little pile of gauge swatches that are something like 6" square that eventually might be an interesting quilt ... someday.

This project illustrates how I have taught myself so much knitting. I started in and thought things were awkward but figured I was following the pattern so it was okay. Then I got to the "complete toe" section and it didn't work at all. I frogged and started over with my new knowledge and then something clicked and I figured out how it worked. Lots and trial and error but I learn a lot from all my mistakes.

Here is me figuring it out for real:

Then as I worked more to get to the toe completion part it started to get a lot more comfortable so I think it might be valuable to watch this toe part before starting.

And this is unzipping the provisional cast on and preparing to knit in the round. I picked up with the other end of the same needle. Don't do this! My needles were going in opposite directions when I was done!

Crochet Bind Off for Hexipuffs

I am trying to answer a question on a Ravelry forum about how to do the crochet bind off for hexipuffs. To do this I propped up my iPhone on a pile of books and tried to knit in front of it. This is surprisingly awkward. It might not be as helpful as I'd hoped it would be but regardless, here's the video:

Drogo slippers in double kniting

When I saw the Drogo slippers in the Winter 2014 edition of Knitty (issue 50 OMG) I pretty much immediately decided to knit them for my sun & stars and ordered the yarn - Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift. Then as I read through the pattern I thought they would work well done in double knitting. I have used this technique before, but always with the slip stitch method, which I learned from a knitting techniques book that I bought when I was first starting out.

Around the same time I discovered Craftsy and signed up for a couple classes. One of these was Adventures in Double Knitting, taught by Alasdair Post-Quinn. I reread the pattern and figured out how to adapt it. There may be other ways but I came up with something I think will work. I haven't gotten to the short rows yet though.

I knit my swatch with size 0 needles and still didn't get down to gauge, which is unusual because I generally knit tightly and need to use needles 1-2 sizes larger than a pattern calls for. These are my swatches:

There are a few mistakes but whatever. One thing was that I cast on with the lighter blue instead of the darker. Fun to not care, because it's a swatch! On the real slipper I am knitting now, I am dropping stitches back and picking up again to fix mistakes. I am insane.

I don't know if my adaptation would work for anyone else. My sun & stars has large feet and the L in the pattern would be too small for him. I am able to use the size S instructions for the stitch count, and something bigger than size L for the row count.

To do double knitting for this project, I started knitting flat for the leg opening and will seam up the back (the cast on edge, folded double) at the end. This is the progress through the first pattern repeat:

I have gotten to the point where I have joined into a round and started the center panel. The cast on is interesting, I may post a video of it when I do the second slipper.

At some point I will come back and add in more detail about how I am doing this, if I have the time. I need to keep knitting though. My fantasy was for these to be a birthday present but I don't know that the first one will be done by Feb 10. One slipper is not so useful of a gift.
_____________________________________________________

ETA: Both slippers have been completed. Really fiddly work but worth it in the end.

I kind of want a pair now, with different colors and a different chart (just to avoid boredom), but it is not high on the priority list.