Ike Can Suck My...

So, yes.  I am in Houston.  Hurricane Ike hit us last Friday night/Saturday morning and WRECKED Galveston, parts of Houston, and most of East Texas and Western Louisiana.  Thankfully, my family and I are fine.  We are in the center of the city and there wasn't much substantive damage to either my parents' neighborhood or mine.  Sadly, my parents' neighborhood lost a number of large, ancient pine trees, but thankfully none of them did any damage to homes.  Our street got lucky--we had a branch down in the back yard and that was about it.  There was a tree leaning on a house across from us, but it didn't hurt the house.

We finally have power back, though!  We got it back on Thursday morning, which means I won the bet with my parents and husband on when that would happen.  I said Thursday at 3 PM, but 10:30 AM is close enough!  My parents still don't have power, though.  They are JUST outside the Loop, while we are pretty much dead center inside it.  Apparently (apparently) the entire Inner Loop will have power back by Monday, but who knows when my parents will have it back.

So I've been knitting in the dark.  Sort of.  Thank God our neighbors across the street had power, and one of them let us run an extension cord to power our fridge and a lamp.  And thank God the weather cooperated and remained nice and cool and breezy, so we just opened the doors and basked in the unseasonably cool 65-degree evenings.  

It's really amazing how the city has come together, and how quickly things are getting back to "normal."  I say "normal" because it's not, really, but we're all trying.  Signs and trees are ripped up everywhere, a lot of places don't have power, but every place that does have power is open and trying to do what they can to help people and get the city back on track.  Hell, last Sunday the city was giving out free generators to people in need at Ikea and Second Baptist was hosting a Red Cross relief center in their parking lot for ice and water and so forth.  Our neighbors really all got together and did their best to help each other.  Restaurants are opening, hotels are offering discounted rooms, Continental is offering discounted airfares, and every place you go has a can for the Red Cross or some sort of donation option.  Even Borders is asking people to buy bags of coffee to donate to the relief effort in Galveston.

Galveston is pretty much destroyed.  They're not letting people in yet, so we don't really know how bad it all is.  We have friends who have houses down there (they're fine), but they don't even know what's happened to them because they can't get in to see them.  One of our friends is working in Galveston today doing recovery, and he has to be escorted in by the cops.  He's coming over tonight, and I almost don't want to hear what it's like....

So, during the hurricane (couldn't sleep, of course) and in the long, powerless days after, I knit.  I started off knitting the Sweet Dreams Throw from KnitPicks because I wanted to do something that was just plain garter stitch, very simple and mindless just to keep me busy and relaxed.  I finished one whole strip (out of five) before I got pissed off because it was TOO mindless, too hot, and the mohair was making me sneeze.  

It's still a great pattern and I intend to finish it now that we have A/C again.  But I caved and switched to the Funky Sock Monkey from Blue Moon Fiber Arts.  I've had this kit since it came out, and have been dying for an excuse to start it.  My colorways are Hot Flash and Rock Star, and while similar at first glance in places, up close you can definitely see the difference and I think it gives it a nice subtle (HA!  Subtle in hot pink?) dimension.  

I've finished Ralph, the small monkey.  All he needs are eyes.  He is a knitting monkey, and he is definitely a he because I was listening to the Y Knit podcast while knitting him and decided the world needs more male knitters.  He's knitting a scarf out of remnants of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Lightweight in Knitters Without Borders, a colorway that benefits Doctors Without Borders.  So he's a knitting monkey for a cause, too!  I adore him.  Check him out:

I'll post more picks once he has eyes.  I'm working on his big brother Steven right now--he's knit in the reverse combination of colorways and is about twice the size.  I just finished his tail and am getting ready to stuff him and start on the legs.  They are SO CUTE!!!

In between my last post and the hurricane, I knit squares.  Remember that pile of yarn in the last post?  Here it is now:

I am bloody sick of knitting diagonal garter stitch squares.  REALLY bloody sick.  I did use up all my leftovers from the last post, but have since found a whole mess o' Lamb's Pride Worsted under the bed.  Damn.  But I really couldn't knit another square with that leftover Lorna's Laces (I made like four before I lost it) to save my life.  So, instead, I knit a squid:

This is the Skylla pattern from the book Anticraft: Knitting, Beading, and Stitching for the Slightly Sinister.  It's a Diva Cup holder.  If you're male, you really don't want to know what a Diva Cup is.  If you're female and you don't know what a Diva Cup is, or if you're interested, their website is here.  I've been using one for about a year now and I LOVE it.  I'm never going back.

I had a LOT of trouble with this pattern--it's knit using double knitting, and this was my first time using that technique, so I had tons of trouble with the increases (I'm definitely going to try m1 increases instead next time).  I had to re-knit the darn thing about four times before I got it, and even then they looked awful.  Huge gaping holes in my squid!  I know I still didn't do it properly, but now I think I know what I did wrong.  Anyway, the lumps and bumps you see are my poor attempts at fixing it.  Have I mentioned I can't sew?  No?  Well, I can't sew.  But I'm claiming they're a design feature.  They're veins.  Squid have veins, right?  Giant, protruding veins on their heads?  No?  Oh, well.  I still like it.  The pattern doesn't call for the I-cord loop on the head, but I added one after I discovered that the small legs hang funny when you use the long legs (which you're meant to use) to hang it.  Plus then it doesn't look so much like a squid.  So I took a page from Ravelry user Snow Blue's Skylla and added an I-cord loop on top so it can hang upright.  I am much happier with it now.  And look at the cool fabric I have inside:

How awesome is that, seriously?  I love it.  Sorry about the knot.  We didn't read the sewing directions before we tied off our ends and we didn't think it was going to show.  We don't like to talk about that.

Next time: giant sock monkey, another stripe for my Sweet Dreams Throw, holiday knitting plans (already?), and probably more squares.  Damn squares.  

Also, at some point we will talk about my trip to South Africa.  I promise.  It's just hard getting my thoughts together on it because it's darn near impossible to put the experience into words.