Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Blessed
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Stormy Weather
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Thirty Days
It is my second to last real day in this apartment before I pack up some things and move back with my parents to await the wedding. When I come back—save, maybe, a night here and there if I need to be in the city for some reason—it will be with Keith, and it will not be to this corner bedroom, with its sunny windows and desk in the corner. I am both glad of that, and a little nostalgic.
Right now I am knitting nupps for my bridal shawl, and it isn’t the horrid struggle so many knitters complain of, but a peaceful process. I sit here, all the blinds drawn open, surrounded by trees that wave through the windows, as though I myself am sitting in their branches. There are passing cars and muffled voices, but those tend to fade into the background of my awareness. There is also a chiming from someone’s windcatcher, a series of high, melancholy notes that follow one another sometimes at a distance, sometimes on each other’s heels, and I think I should like to write the story they are telling, the one that pulls at something in my chest and the corners of my eyes.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Detours and other mishaps ...
Just this old one from last week.
To be honest, the shawl doesn't look that much different! Just bigger. I've finished the flower design of the body, and have moved on to the edging, not without a few detours along the way.
Detour 1: I wanted to knit 13 repeats of the flower design to make it a bit bigger. But after reading other people's project notes on Ravelry, I knew it would be a tight squeeze for the amount of yarn I had. And I wasn't about to spend almost $40 on another skein. (Sigh, I wish.) So after the 12th repeat, I gave myself a lifeline and began the 13th, using my mom's food scale to weigh the remaining yarn as I went.
I'm not sure that the food scale was much help, seeing as the space between 40 and 30 grams was about the size of a fingernail. :-P But I chickened out/realized I was being foolish, and so had my first experience of ripping back to a lifeline and picking up all the stitches.
Detour 2: Resigned to having only 12 repeats, I set about knitting the border chart. Nupps were still several rows off, and the pattern was easy to memorize and knit while reading. Until row 5.
That was when things stopped matching the pattern below it in the way I thought it should. But what did I know? Maybe the pattern was supposed to look all random and raggedy at this point, despite the neatly aligned rows of stitches before.
So I kept on knitting, until, halfway through the row, I realized there was no way I had the right number of stitches. So I tinked (unknit stitch by stitch) that half a row. And then the purl row before that. And then the whole row before that, where I had been adding two yarn overs to every chart repeat, resulting in 64 extra stitches. Whoops.
I am now past that point and on my first nupp row, so all is (relatively) well.
As for reading: I am almost finished In the Hall of the Dragon King. Sadly, I have *cough* broken a second Kindle, which means I'm finishing it on my computer screen. Argh. This one wasn't my fault, really. I can't believe it. These things are EXPENSIVE. Sigh.
Anyway, I am off to plan class and pick up a bridesmaid dress and look at wax models of wedding rings and take a dance lesson. Blessings to all and happy yarning along with Ginny!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Yarn Along :)
The fourth and final bridesmaid stole is cast off. Now it needs blocking--probably not until after this summer course is over next week. Two stoles to block, and then the bridesmaids' gifts are finished! The shawl pins I ordered to go with them were waiting for me when I went home last weekend, so I will have to take pictures of them at some point.
I just finished Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri--it's way overdue at the library, unfortunately--and have started In the Hall of the Dragon King by Stephen R. Lawhead on my Kindle. I know I read this years and years ago, but I've forgotten all of the first book. Actually, I don't think I read it myself--it was my dad who read it to me as a bedtime story. As I read it for myself the first time, I am realizing that this book really shaped the way I wrote my first novel back in high school, though I was basically unaware of it. (No, I never finished the novel, but I got to 150 single space pages. I started rereading it recently. Good times.)
Last but not least ....
.... I have cast on my wedding shawl!
The pattern is Echo Flowers, the yarn sweetgeorgia cashsilk lace in Riptide. Gorgeous .... I'm on the 8th repeat of the body pattern. Not sure if I'll do 12 or 13 total. We'll see when we get there!
(Also cast-off a hat for Japan, but sadly, no pictures.)
Linking up with Ginny.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Nothing like ...
(Unless it's that voice in person.)
Friday, June 3, 2011
I shall not be dismayed ...
For non-knitters (or just non-nuppers), a nupp is when you increase my knitting multiple times into the same stitch--usually making five or seven stitches out of one--and then on the next row you knit or purl all those stitches together. If you have the wrong needles, or your stitches are too tight, or the yarn is slippery, it can be pretty difficult to get all those stitches knit together.
Which is why so many people hate them, including my mother. :) I had a bit of a hard time with them on my Annis, but then I got the hang of them a little ... and no, they didn't look the best, but practice makes perfect, right? And while the Raspberry Dream stole didn't have *nupps*, it did have k7tog which is pretty darn nupp-like--and I had no trouble with it.
So.
Now for my real reason for posting:
My two choices for my bridal shawl are the Swallowtail and Echo Flower shawls. Which should I do? (Imagine them in teal. :) )
I want to cast on today or tomorrow but I can't decide ... so I'm gathering opinions.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Not a Yarn-Along
Instead, I picked up one of my bridesmaid's dresses so I can mail it to her in Colorado. On the way back I stopped by a friend's house to visit her and her two babies--one of whom is quite new. And I suppose you can't really call the other a baby any more. He is my godson, and he is most definitely a little boy now, with a strong will of his own! It's great to see him interact with his new little brother--he always wants to touch him, and I think he's starting to learn he has to touch him gently, as opposed to giving him a solid whack on the head. But it's amazing to see his awareness of personhood, even though he's only one year old.
Today Keith and I also met with Father Josh, and then the DJ, and even though I did none of the grading I planned to do ... I am wiped.
So yeah ... no yarn along post.
Anyway, I feel this blog has practically become a knitting blog of late. Not that knitting (or knitting blogs!) are a bad thing, but there are other things I mean to blog about and never get around to. But the yarn along keeps me posting, and that's good. :)
Edited to add: I thought I had a new follower but when I check I discovered that I had managed, somehow, to follow my own blog. Wow. I wonder what that sort of thing says about a person?