Well Now I *Really* Love the Frog
Gah… 6:30 on a Sunday morning is a ghastly time to be awake. Someone needs to tell my cats that breakfast is not due for another two hours at least.
But since I’m up, I’ll brag on my friend Laura of A Life in Scribbles. She’s an extremely talented artist an has a real gift for comics. She took a blog post that I wrote last month (How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Frog) and turned it into an amazing comic! I’m so honored that she chose my piece to illustrate. Please check it out. It’s very, very cool. Click on the illustration a couple of times to get it larger.
Enjoy!
Finished!: Hubs’ Christmas Surprise
Another scarf for 2007. This particular neck warmer was a Christmas surprise for Hubs. Well, a sort of surprise. He picked out the yarn (Filatura Di Crosa 127 Print) back in October, but given my average knitting speed, I don’t think he expected to see it for another few years or more.
He was almost right. Once he picked out the yarn, I started thinking about patterns that would show off the print. I wanted to do something very simple and I sketched out ideas for rib variations that, had they materialized, would have looked lovely. By the time I had a collection of patterns to try, it was way too late to try any of them.
Finally, with five days to go before Christmas, I decided to toss it all and resort to my old faithful: mistake rib. The fabric that results from mistake rib is worth all the tedium of creating it, if you ask me. It’s a fun stitch that looks a lot more complicated than it is. It has more texture than standard rib and isn’t as squishy. All in all, great fast scarf stitch. And, for this particular yarn, it has the added bonus of letting the print do all the work. The stitching is basic, but the print gives it some pizazz.
As for the surprise, it went very well. Hubs never saw me knitting the scarf, which was the biggest challenge. Usually I pull out the knitting while we’re watching tv or driving, and so I gave up many great knitting ops to get this done. I ended up spending nearly three days knitting. (But given that those three days were spent catching up with season 1 of Heroes, I guess I can’t complain.) The surprise factor was really what made the gift and it was totally worth all the knitting for that.
Although, I think this will be the last scarf for a while.
Finished!: Lopi Lace Scarf
I can keep my knitter membership card for one more month. I finally finished the Lopi Lace Scarf from Weekend Knits. This particular “weekend” knit took me about a month to finish. It was also the first not-to-be-felted project that I’ve done since oh… March? That is to say, the knitting on this actually mattered. And I had to get back in to the swing of things, ya know?
Anyway, a little history behind this project. The yarn is Reynolds Lopi Lite, which is what the pattern calls for. I even did it in the same colorways shown in the book. No originality here. I bought the yarn several years ago after I’d just started knitting and had yet to realize that you could substitute yarn for a project. So I’ve been sitting on this yarn for over four years and through three moves and I finally dragged it out of my stash last month when I was looking for an easy knit to get me back into the knitting game.
As for this particular easy knit… It’s not a complicated pattern, it’s really not. Yet somehow I unknitted and reknitted the first quarter of this scarf. And Lopi Lite does not unknit well, let me tell you. It’s splitty and clingy and the worst kind of yarn to unknit. And then there was the matter of my cat breaking the yarn…. Weekend knit, it was not. But it’s over and I’m done with yarn overs for awhile.
If you aren’t on Ravelry, here are the relevant details:
Yarn: Reynolds Lopi Lite (MC – Rose Heather, CC- Celery Heather)
Pattern Alterations: None. Except maybe unknitting and reknitting every other row. I think that gives the scarf its special look.
Next on the needles: Bamboo socks and “Hubby needs a neckwarmer” scarf.
Ravelry, Chuck Woolery Ain’t Got Nothing On You
The new fad in the knitting community is a nifty site called Ravelry. I put my name on the waiting list for membership a month ago and, as of yesterday, there were still approximately a gazillion knitters and crocheters in queue ahead of me. (This is what you get for being the last to know everything.) But then my very awesome coworker and fellow knitter got a second invitation and turned it over to me, and today… Ravelry!
So here’s a little confession: I love organizing, cataloging, and recording. It may go beyond love into a slight psychotic obsession. As a child, I made a game out of trying tocatalog our family books, photos, and videos on index cards. When I was ten, I actually created a template so I could record results of (sigh)… Love Connection. Yep. For at least a week I could tell you who went out with who. Who went out with who again. Who the audience thought the best match would be. And possibly even what tie Chuck Woolery was wearing. I was a weird kid. I was a born librarian. Only, you know, I’m not.
So of course, I was spastic when I realized the possibilities with Ravelry. The opportunity to categorize my yarn? To keep track of my stash. I can actually show progress on my knitting!
Except I haven’t actually done any knitting since the wedding whirlwind began.
My knitting basket? Luckily, not quite empty, but as I look at it, I have to wonder am I really going to finish that 2×2 ribbed sweater… on size five needles… with fingering weight yarn? (To my credit, I managed a full twelve inches around thanks to the Alamo’s Firefly marathon.) But I refuse to let Ravelry be wasted on a knitter like me! I will perservere! I will knit again. I will knit lots of little things from Weekend Knits!
I may not be the best knitter. I may not have the most complex projects, but Ravelry, I promise you I will be the most organized.
