November 2007 Archives

So I've placed all my heathered 2-ply out on the bed to try and figure out how to place the colors. Generally I'd go for light, medium and dark colors, but sometimes it's hard to figure out which category a color falls into. I'd heard you can use a black and white photo to take the emotion out of the decision, to base it on the shade of the color instead of the value. My first try was pretty close: After that, I rearranged again and came up with this: It's a litle disappointing that the KnitPicks yarn has only two light shades. Al the rest are more medium shades. It will be harder to make obvious fore/background combinations, but with the solids and the other colors I can fill in the blanks. Now I can get started on a swatch, or maybe a swatch of the pattern. Meanwhile, I soaked and dried my shawl, but now I need to pin out the points and steam it to be all lovely. I'll try and do that this week and post a photo, but it may not happen til Friday, since I have that day off from work.

I've been thinking of playing with the palette yarns from Knitpicks to come up with a little fair isle sweater for a baby. The heathers are really nice, although I don't think the range is quite all there. I'll have to mix in some of the solids, and maybe some of the other odd balls I have from J&S or Jamieson's. I'm thinking something juvenile, like the fish and anchors motif from Alice Starmore, some trees, some mountains, and some wave peeries.

I am dying to start something new. I thought I was close to the end of my shawl and had screwed up because my count was off, but it turns out I just misunderstood now many pattern repeats I had already worked, so I now have about 36 more rows before I get to the neck edge, and have run out of prestrung beads. Ugh! I have to either break the yarn and string more beads, or string them onto the other end and slide them up to the other end.
Both ideas sound as bad as each other, but the sooner I do it, the sooner I can move on to something else. Not counting the Hello Kitty.

There are a few things that get me all girly, and one of them is Hello Kitty. What is it about her? Ever since I saw her for the first time, back in middle school, I was in love. That's why, when I saw this book at Kinokuniya, I had to pick it up. I flipped through, and thought, "nah, it's crochet, and I don't do that very well", and I put it down. I looked through some of the knitting books, and kept returning to Ms. K. Finally, I just had to make the purchase.

It doesn't matter that I can't read the instructions. I just dug out some cotton (Paton's Glace, in white) and an appropriate hook (3.5mm) and started on my very own Hello Kitty crocheted...doll? I have no idea what I'll do with it, maybe give it to my niece, but I just had to do it.

The other thing I just had to do was buy myself a new toy. I've been thinking about it for so long, even went to the Apple store twice and chickened out on the hefty price tag, but finally, last week, I bought my first Mac. It's the super-duper MacBookPro. It's a beautiful thing, and I am a bit lost, having been working with some form of Windows for over 20 years, but I am making my way. (The last time I used a mac, it had a black and white screen and a floppy drive.) I am having so much fun playing with iTunes and iPhoto, I haven't even checked out any of the other iStuff.

My mimosa shawl is coming along nicely - I have one more row of beads to place, and my math is terribly off, so I am going to try and figure out what I did wrong and make adjustments. How hard can it be, it's just a shawl?