Tuesday, June 12, 2012

The Wool Eater



You want to know what the hardest part about blogging is. It's coming up with a catchy title. And I suck at it. I’m seriously considering just numbering them like for podcasts.

Our internet was down all day Sunday. And, of course, that was the one day that I had great ideas to blog about & loads of time to do it. Of course. Actually, the internet is still down today on Monday so I’m typing this up in Word & will upload it when & if the damn thing ever comes back up. Update: It's UP!!

What’s on My Needles:


The wrong side looks like Chrysanthemums


I knitted & crocheted so much yesterday that I’ve aggravated my right shoulder/arm/wrist/hand.

I’m working obsessively on The Wool Eater Blanket by Sarah London. I don’t think I’ve blogged about this project before. It’s crochet which I don’t normally like the looks of. (Wow! My grammar is horrid!) Anyway, this afghan looks amazing. Take a look at some projects on Ravelry & I think you’ll agree with me. The back side is nice too. It is worked from the center out in a square. It’s a two round repeat.

The pattern was a little tricky. Or it may be that my crochet skills are not up to the level of this pattern. Oh yea. I just remembered that it's written in Australian terminology which makes it more confusing for me. The rest of this paragraph is tedious detail about the pattern. Skip ahead if you're so inclined.  I read a lot about it on Ravelry which lead me to a video for Bavarian crochet. This is apparently what this pattern uses. The video helped a lot. Combined with the comments on Ravelry & I was able to figure this pattern out. Even with help the hard parts for me were figuring out where to place the slip stitches for rows 3, 5 and placement of the 8 cluny group on those same rows. FYI-For the 8 cluny group you don’t make any stitches in the “dip” where the slip stitch is. You only make the cluny group over the back posts of the previous rounds trc. Until this afghan I had never done backpost crochet. In fact, I’d never heard of it. I would recommend doing a practice run with worsted weight yarn before you jump off into your project.

I’m using only stash yarns. At least that was the plan. I thought I’d have plenty of this off the wall yarn that I picked up at Walmart a year or so ago for $1 per skein. It's called Georga Promo Fil. I bought 9 or 10 skeins of white, 1 of a dark purple, 1 of a light purple & 1 light blue. I’ve used small amounts of the purples for hats.  The yarn is very soft, acrylic, dk weight. I’m not sure of the yardage & can’t look it up because the damn internet is down. I also had almost a full skein of Universal Yarns Worsted Tapestry in a colorway that works well with the others. 

My plan was to alternate two rows/rounds of white, two of color, two white, etc. All went well through round 17 when I only made it ¾ of the way with the light purple. So, I finished that last ¼ round with white. Then the next two rounds were white. My next two rounds are with the dark purple. Except that I only have 12 g left after one round. Argh! I think I’ll try the next round with the pale blue & see how it looks. Or maybe hit the LYS in search of a compatible purple dk weight. I still have 3-4 skeins of white left but I’m almost out of colors. It’s only about 22 inches square now and each repeat grows it about 1.5 inches.

Update: I ran by Nan's Needleworks yesterday & picked up two skeins of Dark Horse in two colorways that will work. So, I don't even want to think of how much this small "stash buster" blanket is gonna cost me. Not that the Dark Horse was expensive. It was on sale even.

The other new item OTN is a Fir Cone Square Shawl by Cheryl Oberle. I’ve loved this pattern for years. Somehow, I’m a moderator on the Folk Shawls forum on Ravelry. We’ve decided to do a KAL for the Fir Cone. So, I cast on yesterday using some old laceweight that I got from B several years ago. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 8000 yards of it. It’s rather scratchy & I’d definitely rather use fingering weight but I just can’t justify spending the money right now on 2200 yards of yarn with all the medical bills.

What’s NOT on my needles: anything for the Market Days in September. I’m bad. That’s what I should be working on. I know. Baby things. I do have a couple of baby blankets, hats & one sweater in my basket. But I need more. I know.


Saturday, June 09, 2012

Procrastination

I'm not happy right now! I spent about 20 minutes writing a wonderfully fascinating post using Picasa & when I clicked "post" it got an error. All my lovely & scintillating prose is gone!

So, to rephrase....the picture at left is a collage of my first week of Photo A Day. Taking a pic everyday is harder than it sounds. Because you want it to be symbolic in some way or at least be a really good picture.

Saturday is normally my day to clean out my inbox, update Quicken, pay a few bills etc. It's a job that I don't love. So, I'm procrastinating by writing here.

Our local knitting group is planning to have a booth in the Marble Falls Market Days in September. Our last attempt at such a thing was a huge FAIL! I'm hoping this will be better. We learned some things from the last one. Let me list all a few of the things we did wrong:

1. We had too many workers in our booth. It was intimidating to the customers.
2. Our booth was set up poorly (my fault). It made it difficult for customers.
3. Some items were hung up on the wall out of reach of customers.

Market Days is a much bigger event with good traffic. One lady has great birdhouses that her husband makes, another has written an awesome cookbook that sells well. I worry that having too much diversity in our booth is not a good thing. I worry.

I don't know what type of knitted/crocheted items the other women are planning to include. I am thinking of making up a few pairs of fingerless mitts. They are popular & quick to knit. The only thing I sold in the last show was one baby hat. Ok...maybe I'll crochet a few of those! Should I focus on baby things or fingerless mitts?

What do you think?


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Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Photo A Day

6/1/2012

6/2/2012

So, I saw this idea somewhere on FB the other day & I thought it was pretty cool. Take a photo everyday for a year. In theory it will help you be a better photographer. And will serve as a journal. Of sorts. I have 2 more pics in my camera but haven't freed them yet. I forgot to take one on Sunday. Oh well. I'm not going to beat myself up over this. Really. I'm not.

We watched Julie & Julia tonight. What a cute movie. I loved it. Not sure Gary did. He actually said "what is the point of this movie?" My answer "entertainment". Ha! Like I ever asked that at a Mission Impossible movie.