Latitude 61...Land of the Midnight Sun

New email address...

For those of you who haven't been reading my recent blogs, I have been more or less off-line since July 1.  That inconvenience necessitated changing internet providers which also necessitated changing my email address and phone number... major pain!

So sorry about the inconvenience, but if you're using any old links, or old addresses in address books, they won't work.  And if this is inconvenient to you... it took me a whole week to change all my email addresses with my favorite groups and of course, now all of those log-ins are still not working properly.

The one standard in my life is still Ravelry where you can find me at:CarolyninAlaska. So, I hope everyone who has been having bounce-back issues sees that problem go away, because I love hearing from all my knitting friends.

I got this sweater vest back too... I knit it for my brother who didn't really like it and gave it to my Mom.  It didn't really fit her so she never wore it... go figure... I mean, why did she even want it?  Now it is back to me and it doesn't really fit me either.  I made the shoulders and arm holes large enough to fit my brother, so now when I put it on, it looks like I'm wearing a sweater with built-in epaulets!  If I had known it was going to be mine eventually, I would have done the ribbing adjustment that Anne did to hers.

Still, I'm not complaining because I'm thrilled to have my knit items back. 

Since I don't expect my shoulders to grow, and this is too small to fit my husband, I guess I will try to snug up the arm hole ribbing with some thin elastic... otherwise, I will have to rip them out and re-fit them... not something I really want to do. So check out these shoulders... I did try reblocking the vest too, and that didn't work.  (Actually, they don't look that big on the woolly board, but they really stick out.) Any suggestions that I didn't think of...?

Too many pictures!

With the internet problems we had been having, I hadn't uploaded any photos for quite a while.  Yesterday, I discovered that my Flickr account was full.  Although I love the fact that Ravelry can take direct uploads now, I have kept my Flickr account since I like the "badge" of my knitting projects that displays on my blog page. First I was only going to remove all the sock photos from Flickr so make room for new things.  Then, I got a little carried away and began some really extensive editing.  Before I knew it and about 4 hours later, I had removed all the sock photos and all the stash photos from Flickr, which meant that I had to upload them to the Ravelry servers.

It was a real time waster... I had planned to do a blog post instead, but at least it's all finished now.  One surprise was the difference in the photo clarity of the Flickr hosted photos and the clarity from the photos directly from my computer.  The Flickr photos appear much more washed out and have less depth of color and detail.

Here is one of the other sweaters that "returned" to me.  It is the second Larvik I knit... this time from Tiur rather than the red and black one I knit for myself from Heilo. I loved knitting this pattern... well, except for the embroidery.

Old, But New Sweaters

After my Mom passed away this spring, I had some of her belongings shipped to me.  I didn't unpack them right away because looking through her belongings made me sad.  Last month, I finally unpacked most of the boxes "liberating" the sweaters that I knit for her; at least the ones I could find. A few disappeared?

 As much as I really miss her, I have to admit that it is nice having my sweaters back... they seem like old friends.  Also, because they were knit before I owned a digital camera and sent straight to Oregon, I never really got any pictures of them.  So here are a few pictures of my new, old sweaters.

Looking at Tucumcari is a history lesson of how my knitting evolved.  The size and shape is a little weird... I'm not even sure what happened it's been so long, but I definitely didn't quite follow the directions.  I thought I knit a size small, but it's a medium and it's really short and wide.  Also, I think I did the neck decreases wrong, or maybe not as frequently as the pattern called for because the arm holes and the V-neck are both really deep.  I still love the colors though, and for my first Fair Isle experience, the tension is surprisingly even. I don't think Mom wore it much because it looks brand new.  Maybe she just liked to show it to her friends. Not the best fit on me, but I still love the colors!

 

Only my internet was dead...

I knew it had been a long time since my last post, but I didn't realize it had been over a month!

We have been having internet connectivity problems just like we had last summer.  This summer we decided to take action and dump the one provider and go with the other provider after 3 weeks of 30 second-5 minute outages about every 10 minutes when it was "working" or no connectivity at all for hours and hours.  After many calls with them saying, "but everything is working fine on this end", we just dropped them.  Of course, that necessitated changing phone numbers and email addresses... why couldn't the electronic age just be simple! 

I never realized just how many web-sites I used until I had to navigate all their account changing processes.  I probably still missed a few, but I am now back online and not only able to read... but leave comments on people's blogs!  (After I lost so many comments I was trying to post... I just quit trying!)

I have been doing lots of knitting and lots of bike riding.  My biggest July accomplishment was to take part in the Fireweed 400 ride; although I only rode the "short" distance... 50 miles.  It seemed long enough to me, though!  We have been having gorgeous sunny weather, mostly.  And although we just finished 2 weeks of rain, here is a photo of the lovely weather we had this week-end.  Everyone who lives in Alaska, will probably recognize this location, but for those of you in other states... this is a picture of one of the "sunken forests" which was caused by the great Alaska earthquake of 1964.  The land dropped vertically by 3.6 meters causing this forest near sea level to be inundated by salt water.  Luckily for me, I lived in California when it happened... I don't think that would have been something I would want to experience.