February 2003 Archives

Which reminds me, anyone out there a member of TKGA? I am contemplating taking the first level course, because I know I have a lot to learn and that might be a nice structured way to learn some stuff. I wonder about other's experiences. Did you feel the work was worth it? Did you really improve your skills?

I wonder if there would be a difference in me hearing from some stranger via snail mail that I am doing well, or if just knitting a difficult garment would give me the same feeling. Its not expensive, so I may just go for it, but I am curious about other's thoughts.

Over the weekend, I picked up a copy of Tudor Roses, and I am inspired to become a better knitter. I think I will do Elizabeth I first of the collection, because I like it, and I am sure I will never find a pattern for Sand Dollar unless the book is reprinted.
I also really like Katherine of Aragon. I think that's a bit ambitious of me now, EI is only one color, and a good place to start.
Now the question becomes, do I use the VY yarn and add stitches to the sides, or do I use a slightly larger yarn, and do different math to figure that out.
Time to get out the Vogue reference book and see what looks better. I wonder if using a larger yarn with the existing pattern would be very distorted, making a huge neck and wierd shoulders.
This is why I wonder if I should join a guild, to speak to folks who have experience in this kind of stuff.

I decided to work on the Baby Albert #2 first, and then see how I feel about a next project. Good thing too, since I may see the twins' mom next week, so I have got to get cracking!
I cast on Saturday and am done all but the sleeves and one front panel. I think I am getting better at this! And now that I can knit and read without making mistakes (well, many) things are going much faster.

Does anyone out there have an opinion on whether or not you leave the ball band on your yarn as you knit? This is assuming it's a skein or center pulled ball that would allow such a thing. I tend to leave them on, and I don't know why, because inevitably the other end does come peeking out and gets in the way. I don't know why I do it.

Just wondering.

A friend from work went to Germany and brought back some pretty sock yarn for me in a color I've not seen here. It's hard to see in the pic, but the main color is white, and there are varying shades of blue from very faint to navy blue. I am curious to see what it will look like when knitted up!

Thanks Amy!

The straps still need some adjustment, and she's a little damp, but I am overall very happy with how it turned out. Can you see the little peerie around the top? I've got her blocked sort of, while drying. Hopefully it will collapse in a pleasing way when not full. If not, I guess I can suffer the wet wool smell again and really block it around a box or something.

I have a bunch of stuff floating around in my mind to do next...

1. Secret sox for a birthday coming up.


2. The second of two Baby Alberts.


3. More socks for me.


4. Felted clogs from Fiber Trends pattern for my hubby.


5. I have a bunch of bulky cotton that I love but can't figure out what to make with it. I didn't realize how bulky it was until I swatched. Maybe a poncho. Maybe I can split each skein into two and make something normal. Maybe that's crazy, I dunno, I am new to this craft.

Well, the body of the bag is almost exactly as I imagined, but the straps are not shrinking at all! I guess I shall have to do some surgery after all, but it won't be as bad as I was worried about. Now to get the smell out of the laundry room. Wet wool is not one of my favorite scents.

I think I will go ahead and put it in the dryer and see how that goes.

My sister just called to tell me she is engaged and is going to get married in Bangkok on new years eve and I got so distracted that I forgot to take the before photo and I put the bag in the wash! Oh well, the thing was huge!

I have been working furiously on my bag, which is now looking a bit like a sleeping bag. Luckilly, the current issue of Cast On has an article on what "weaving in ends" really means. This is something that I have been sort of winging up until now, so the timing was nice for me to use the techniques on my bag. I am busily weaving in ends and hope to throw her in the wash tonight. I will post a before and after picture later on tonight.

I ended up doing a little cheesy-love peerie around the top of the bag, inspired by knitty/mama kate, and the AS book I borrowed from the library. I thought it might add a little stability to the top of the bag, and keep it from being a gaping hole.

That darn Orange County! Meetup isn't happening after all, since only 3 people confirmed. Oh well. Maybe next month, again.

Went to my lys to see about finding some yarns that match my Bachelor Buttons photo, and came up empty. The shop really has lots of acrylics and novelty yarns, but I didn't think they would only have one brand of wool that was smaller than worsted. I was looking for some maybe DK or fingering to play with making a swatch, but no luck in my colors. She is planning on moving to a larger space, so hopefully that means bigger selection. The place was hopping, with everyone buying yarn for a felted bag. I feel so trendy.

I did find some Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Purple Club. Very pretty, and I met a few nice ladies while I waited for it to be wound into balls. There was quite a line due to the aforementioned felted bag yarn shoppers. They liked my little pencil case that I use for my knitting doo-dads.

Looks like it will actually happen this month in Orange County. I'm amazed, we shall see how it goes.

Here they are, maybe I will even include the fog in my design...

My connection this evening is atrocious! Has the rain washed away my happy bits and bytes? I think I am going to install Zone Alarm so I can see what's eating my bandwidth.

So, tomorrow is St. Valentine's day, and I am in love... with a sweater. I first saw it a few weeks ago, and have been thinking about it off and on since then, and the worst part is, it's one of hers, so I may never see an actual pattern. Sigh.

Oh, it's called Sanddollar. And I am not a girly-girl, so how I fell in love with a pink sweater is a mystery to me. It's from the Pacific Coast Highway book. None of the libraries around here have it. I checked. Ah well. Here's a link if you haven't seen it.

I braved the crazy SoCal rain last night to go to the Anaheim Public Library. I had seen on their on-line catalog that they have both POK and She who must not be named's fair isle book.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a pretty huge selection of knitting books, and even more amazed to find that they were all organized by both their Dewey numbers, but also alphabetically after the numbers. I am not used to this, my local library is very good at getting books near the correct shelf, but never so neatly organized. It must be the German influence in the city, that they keep things so neat.

So, since I was there, and I had just opened an account and was limited to 5 books, I had to choose carefully. I already knew I wanted those 2 books, but there were tons more that I had heard chatter about on some of the lists I am on, and wanted to check them out. There were several Kaffe Fasset books, so I picked those up, and some Cheryl Oberle, and I picked those up too.

Browsing through the Fasset books, I was wholly unimpressed. The color patterns were nice, but the actual garments were crap, I think. Since I didn't read the books, and only looked at them, I hope the point of the books was inspiration rather than blind pattern-following. Those long sweater coats were awful! They could have been so improved by just removing the ribbing from the bottom, I think. Anyway, his books did inspire me to think about making a sweater inspired by the photo I took this summer of the Bachelor Buttons planted outside my grandparents house.

I ended up only with POK and AS Fair Isle to take home, simply because I wanted to focus on one thing. (Remember, trying to pay attention.) I spent a bit of time looking through the Fair Isle book, and I can see what the fuss is about. Again, more inspiration in this book than patterns, I think. This got me thinking I could make a fair isle using the same photo as inspiration. (I will post the photo later. ) I may head out to the LYS and pick up some skeins of DK or smaller wools and make a swatch just to see if I can. (I don't know of any reason why not, I just haven't tried it yet.)

I didn't look at POK much yet, just the first few sections, but I can see why someone would want this reference. It appears to be well written and organized, and very comprehensive. Not sure it's $600 worth of info though... but I have 3 weeks to find out!

OK, does anyone else think this is Dubya's only plan for stimulating the economy?

I caught them just in time, they only just fit! I think if I do them again, I will do a few more stitches around. I made them with a pointy toe top, with stranded stiches across the instep, which I then snipped after fulling. I think they look kinda Grinchy. Soon enough, they will end up Oscar-y, which is ok with me!

So I made a swatch and then another, and now I have felted this on gauge swatch but with the Galway I had to use size 13 to get gauge, so it's more like a lace swatch that's fuzzy than a piece of felt.
Time to go shopping, and get the yarn actually called for in the recipe. Perhaps on the way home from work today. I tried last night but, this being southern California, and, it being Thursday, I really didn't have a chance.

Does Thursday suck everywhere, or just California? I didn't have much of a commute in NH, and I didn't have a car in Boston, so it didn't bother me as much if it took a little longer to get somewhere, I had a book or The Globe to read while I waited.

I decided to do the FFFA after all, so I have to get crackin! No new episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so what's a girl to do on a Tuesday night anyway? I have some blue bulky Lamb's Pride (as shown in the swatch of a few days ago) and that top color of Galway worsted, I think I'll use those! But, ARGH I am using my 10.5 circular needle for the bag I am making.
Ok, between the time I typed that and took the picture, I committed to making the FF.
Here you can see that I decided to slip it onto some of the other yarn that will be in it. It's kinda looking like a toilet seat cover at the moment. I did 60 stitches by 60 rows, then picked up 30 stitches on each site and started going round. I figure, if it comes out huge or sucks, I can just cut it up with scissors and fire up the sewing machine and make it look like a bag!

Have you seen this? We Like The Moon

I made up my swatch last night for a bunch of stuff I want to full. I can't decide if I am going to do the or not... I mean, it was at least 85F here today, and I usually go barefoot. My husband wants some slippers though, so I bought some black wool for that. I am planning to make a bag of some kind with the wool I bought for myself, but haven't decided on proportions yet. It turns out that the Lamb's Pride Victorian Pink doesn't full as well as the other darker colors, but it did get a bit of the fuzz on.
Before: After:

I am going to try and figure out a pattern for a bag.

I feel like I am 17 again. There was an exchange student from Spain visiting our small NH town that year, and he was known for being a bit of a prankster. So when Bernardo came to our classroom door and said "The Space Shuttle exploded!" we all laughed him off, even the teacher, who knew Christa McAuliffe from those statewide conferences that were held once in a while. Mr. Roy said, "Wait a minute" and left the classroom, apparently to find a TV. When he returned, he had tears in his eyes and told us that it was true. It was the first time I had ever seen a man cry, and it really made the news more real to see such emotion from a teacher. They are usually pretty unemotional in the classroom, just to keep things in control, but he lost control there for a minute.

I was working on my blog this morning, changing the templates and things when my husband brought up cnn.com and told me what he read. My first reaction was to laugh, because he is also quite a joker. I wen't to google news to see what happened, and the Washington Post story was 5 hours old and didn't mention anything. The most current link was from a newspaper in Pakistan. I guess because of the Israeli on board.

You wouldn't know if from my blog, but I am a big fan of NASA, I dream of going to Mars. Well, maybe not me, but perhaps my kids or grandkids could be part of the first colonies. I hope that the kids I hope to have will be as interested in space exploration so I can make lots of trips to the Aerospace Museum in Balboa Park, or the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

I am so sad today. I hate explosions.