Happy long weekend

For everyone who had a long weekend. Ours was rainy, but nice. We didn't do much.
Our new deck is done, and I finally washed our siding, so now one part of our house looks kind of nice. Of course, the downside to doing something to improve one part of the house means the rest of it looks all the cr*ppier by comparison, but life's a process, isn't it?
We also saw a brown thrasher out in our back yard hopping around attacking a pretty good size snake. Then tonight we realized what was going on, he or she was defending the nest. We have babies hanging out in our back yard. Cool! Yes, I used a zoom.
Did some knitting too - working on my latest free form fair isle and got back to the Peacock Capelet too. Peacock is now so large that doing 3 rows in 30 minutes is an accomplishment, so no pictures of that.

New things around the house

Okay, so I had that really loud space dyed Bare - hot pink, red, orange, brown and gold. Beautiful, but god-awful gaudy. What to do with 400 yards of it? The world's ugliest socks? A horrid hat? Mittens?
Tired of thinking small, I've embarked on a slip over - it's going to have a placket neck with clasps and vines going up on either side. I love the way the bright colors shine against the grey and black. And the kitty foot is cute, too.

And look, our porch is gone - for now at least. I should have a new and improved place to take bad snaps of my work by the long weekend.
I scraped and spray painted the metal tables and my index finger is still all tingly

I'm back

And for all my fussing about what to bring for knitting, I did very little while I was away.
I do have some things to take pictures of tho' - not the least of which is our completely destroyed deck which is being redone this week. I'll see if I can't get my act together and post some pictures tonight.

Happy Mother's Day

I was told that for Mother's Day "Mom, I"m going to be nice to you and not sing all day." He did not keep that promise.

Anyhow, I took the excellent advice I got on a good use for my Imagination - a scarf! I think it will take 3 skeins not 2, but it's very pretty yarn. Much better use for it than socks. I kind of based it on a Cheryl Ober shawl.

And this is the house our son designed for us to all live in together. Note the whirlpool and 100 inch plasma TV in the bedroom (which we will all share).

Rosa picture

Kauni

So in my travels I've gotten interested in the Kauni thing. I saw the Yarn Harlot's a year or so back and thought "oh that's cool" but didn't really get the yarn component.
So, what about his in Effektgarn EL? I'm not sure if that isn't too monochromatic. I also like the EB. Might wear better on me.
But I'd like to see it/touch it before committing. Has anyone used it? Stories?

Proof that my child takes better pictures than I do

Not that you needed any.
Just a couple of thoughts:
It's hard to do homework when someone chews on your hand.

It's a toss up who is actually the boss of our house, the child or the cat.



Oh yeah, look, some knitting too. I'm thinking something with floral and leaf motifs - rose garden sort of thing. Maybe with a placket.
Gotta go wash the kitchen floor. The glamor!
PS - I got a nice suggestion about a way to use the Imagination - I like the idea of a lacy shawl or scarf, something simpler. I think I'll try that, sounds like a great idea for plane knitting. That plus Audible books for the Ipod, I'm almost looking forward to flying . . . .

Eh, crap

I feel stuck.
All of the sudden, I've hit the wall. I'm tried of beads. I mean, I love them, it's fun, but suddenly I want to do something else. Something with color. Something that really sings - dark shy gray and bright colors, like the stuff I dyed eariler this spring. Maybe I need to design a fair isle.
(Maybe I shouldn't have left the caps off 3 tubes of beads that the little one then dumped on the floor and had to sort them out - he helped, though. Totally my own fault, I'm a big girl and I certainly wasn't mad, but sort of a buzz-kill. Like when your lace yarn gets super tangled and even once you get it sorted you feel like "go away you dumb thing". Good thing I'm so spiteful to my own knitting, I sound a little scary, don't I?)
I got some really nice fingering weight Imagination hand painted intending to make socks (mermaid and looking glass). But it's sort of too fine and too nice. I want to do something that will show it off more than just socks that will go on my feet. Maybe mittens instead?
Maybe I need to put that Imagination away and do some color swatching.
Oh, wait, I know what's up.
I'm going away in a couple weeks and I'm having travel knitting anxiety. I need something portable, yet interesting. I'm not sure beading into knitting will work on the go.

Peacock capelet is coming along

This one uses a whole lot more colors than ever before, in the hopes of making it actually look like a peacock tail.
I had hoped to get outside for some pictures in natural light, but we had a big thunderstorm so nix on that. Soon maybe.
The real proof will be seeing it on someone.

Things from over the weekend

Okay, Rosa Brown is currently in the wash. I think she'll need to be laid flat to dry, but pretty - I'll get someone to take another headless snap of me with it on.
Next, we have a tiny, fuzzy, crappy snap of the peacock caplet. This is the collar, it will fold over and the right side will become the wrong side in a few more rows. I should post a snap of the graph for this puppy, kind of crazy. But first I want to knit the prototype.


And finally, on Saturday we hiked Blood Mountain. It's one of my favorites around here. The leaves are pretty much fully out at our house, but on top of the mountain they were still buds. Kind of cool the way you can travel in time just by changing elevation.

What can brown do for you?

Okay, my lame commercial quote doesn't even make sense, but I was casting about for something to say about this incredibly dull brown sweater I'm nearly done with.
Here are the buttons I had selected. I then had my husband pick the ones I'll use. He picked brass. He's way better at this stuff than I am. But I think I've mentioned that before. I like the silver ones too, but they'll go on something else.

And . . . . .

My, what boring beads you have purchased. What do you think you're doing? The white and silver are for a test run of a wedding shawl I'm working on - I got both size 6 and size 8 to see which work better, and the black and sterling, that's for a variation on the peacock. Which I'm graphing. Slowly.
News at 11.

Finishing more things

They need to be blocked. And no, they aren't for me (I'm not a pink person, my skin is too yellow) but I'll find them a home. They're sort of fun, and very soft.
Now, I want to get one more of the bigger things out of my knitting basket before I start work on the peacock caplet, so I guess that means the brown cardigan is next.

The restful quality of doing something fussy

These aren't new, I've been working on them for a while.
So long in fact, I spaced what I'd done to mod the pattern. Working on sock two, I did the entrelac on the wrong size needles. After an evening of "hmm, is it close enough?" my better self won out and I ripped it back and have been re-doing it on the right size needles.
Entrelac is fussy work, for these socks it's done on small size (2's and 3's) short double point needles. Sometimes working on something like this would make me feel insane with boredom and fussiness overload. But when I'm really tired, like my joints hurt kind of tired, working on something like this makes me so happy. The tiny needles, the tidy little stitches, the little patches of color and discrete increments of progress just make me smile.
Once upon a time I heard, or read, that when you're sad or depressed, cleaning is a good way to cure that, or at least a way to break yourself out of the funk. The physical activity provides endorphins, the task gives a concrete goal that can then be accomplished and hey, who isn't cheered up by those nice clean smells?
So, I clean when I feel like I need to be perked up.
But entrelac socks are more fun.
What do you do for unwinding knitting (ha, I made a dumb funny, get it? Unwinding? Okay, I'm very tired.)? Lace? Socks? Gloves?

Being boring

So I'm on one of my kicks where I try and clean up my knitting basket. Which is boring and doesn't give me cool new things (well, okay, be fair, cool to me) to take bad pictures of. But soon, I'll have the second pair of entralac socks done and the brown Rosa (I'm on the sleeves) and I'll start the peacock caplet.
But I had some other ideas too.

• I want to do the caplet in black with jet/hematite beads for evening wear and see how it works.
• I want to design a wedding shawl, maybe white doubled lace weight yarn with clear iridescent beads? I need to look for interesting edgings and flower lace patterns for that, do a little research on traditional flowers for love, faith, etc..
• I want to design a beaded cardigan with the purple gloss (which they aren't making anymore, which stinks). I charted a modified leaf pattern for Yarn or Death, but I haven't had a chance to test it and find it's kinks - and there are always kinks - but I think it might work for this.
  

I love going biking, it's very restful and I get all these ideas. I need more hands.

Bittersweet pattern available

Here it is, all blocked and modeled by my coworker - who is the perfect model for this sort of thing, being tall and slender and willowy. I'm going to charge $5 for this pattern, I'm in the process of getting that function turned on in Ravelry, so you'll be able to get it there too, soon. For now, I'm going to set up a widget here so I can take PayPal payments and send folks the pattern if they want it.

Bittersweet is done

Well, drying at least. The beige towel doesn't exactly show it off to best effect, but I'm hoping to force someone to model it for me tomorrow.
Someone who looks good in orange.
I'm glad I wet blocked it - a lot of color came out of the yarn (which didn't fade, it just had a surplus of dye) because I hate to think of ruining someone's shirt because they wore it and then it got wet.

It's coming together

The two sides of Bittersweeet are done, now I just have to see if I have the requisite skills to kitchner together lace.

Oh, and I've been looking a buttons. And there are some absolutely lovely ones, but since this will be a throw in the wash sweater, I'm going to wait and look at JoAnn first.

I didn't fall off the earth

Between little league and work and other random stuff (like wanting to live in a house that doesn't smell) I've been doing lots of knitting, just nothing very new and exciting, so I haven't posted. This should change now, as I'm at the end of a lot of things. I kind of have a Soviet-era "storming" thing I do, don't I?
So, I'm nearly done with the second half of Bittersweet. This first picture gives a better representation of the color, and even though you can't see much of the beads, you get a better sense of how they glint out of the deeper pumpkin color. Indy thinks it's nice and warm on his rear end. This in a brownish green or dark red, any color combonation that works with the fall motifs I think would work.
This next thing is just a swatch so far, but it's going to be a peacock feather caplet. I spent weeks graphing, swatching, not getting it right, ripping out, re-graphing, re-swatching and once I got the lace and increases right, I had to decide how to work in all the colors of beads. I think the gold ones will move up more towards the tips of the feathers, to look more like a real eye. I can also see this working well in other color combinations - dark rose with sparkly silver and pink beads, like pinks or bachelor buttons, or you could do it in black with silver or iridescent beads for an evening wear sort of thing (or if you just go for drama). It's going to have 3 buttons at the top and the two sides will have a fine XO cable - I like using thin cable panels for buttonholes, but you can only get away with that if you are working at a fairly fine guage. And finally, this boring brown thing. Rosa Rugosa - the back is done, the fronts are halfway there and the sleeves are 3/4, so it shouldn't take much longer. But I need buttons, ones that can go through the wash. I'll have to look around and see what I can come up with.

Really cool old stuff

So I got some old knitting books in the mail today - my mom is cleaning out her old books and I asked for anything old she didn't want. First Book of Modern Lace Knitting and Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting, as well some old Patron's baby's pamphlets and something from Jack Frost. Holy cow, people really used to knit for YEARS on these things with incredibly tiny yarn.
I'm thinking I'll see if I can adapt something from the Modern Lace books for the peacock. I swatched it, but wasn't happy - yarn overs with all those colors of beads just got muddy, so back to the drawing board.

It's that time of year

So once again, I'm working on too many things at the same time and it's spring - yes, mowing the yard starts in MARCH down here in the great southeast - and little league is in full swing again. However, Rosa Rugosa (from Knitting the New Classics) is perfect. I'm using Comfy, in Fedora, and it's lovely and soft (hopefully it will wash well, the linen stitch pullover has worked out so far) and I'm not going to do the colored flower intarsia on the fronts, so it is perfect for knitting while watching games and practices. Boring to photograph, tho' sorry.
I also started the second half of Bittersweet - it's going to be worked in 2 halves and then grafted together at the end. But it isn't worth taking a picture of right now, it just looks like all the other pictures.