Making this quick

Very busy weekend, flu shots, multiple soccer games - all in all, it was great. I love soccer season and have started some green/blue food color dyed silk and wool and green wool mittens to celebrate. Because I don't have enough things on needles now.

Here's something fun for your Monday:
http://whywouldyouknitthat.blogspot.com/
I'm adding this to my bloglines subscription. Frickin' awesome!

Fun weekend, knit some

The winter peacock is coming along. At first I thought I would do all the beading in grey and white, but I really didn't end up liking it, so the bead colors will end up being the same as the first one, the major change is that the eye centers are white, not gold.
And here we have Percy, take 2. This one is great for hours spent watching Infamous being played.

Doodle Flower

6 months of thinking, 130 seconds of scribbling.
Back to work.

I had plans for today

So I had big plans today because we're having stuff done to the bathroom - which the cat hates. He hides on dad's sweaters whenever anyone other than the three of us is in the house. But then the little one got sent home with a tummy ache. I'm 1 small part away from finishing the written out directions for the peacock and I had hoped to finish today. But here's a snap of my latest stab at the Winter Peacock.

Undoing Peacock number 2

I got through the first skein of black silk and wool for the night Peacock, and realized I didn't like it. Not subtle, it was muddy. I ripped it all back out and I'm now going to get different beads and try again. This time I think I'm going to go with bright colored beads again.

Back on track

It took 2 plus nights of ripping and sorting, but the Olympian Pullover is back to "knitting".
Kudos to the yarn, it held up to this sad state of affairs quite well.
So, give it a week or two and maybe I'll have something.
Happy weekend . . . .

Sigh.

There was more internal cursing before, but I'm moving through the stages towards acceptance. Tried on the Olympian, didn't like it up to increases on the sleeves. So I'm ripping it out. Which is a big fat pain in the butt when you alternate 6 colors of yarn.
Sigh.
Lots of sorting out to do.
Double sigh.

Vacation

Took an overnight trip up north (this is the trail from Unicoi State Park to Helen, GA). It's a very pretty time of year. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of mushrooms; brown, purple, red, orange, white, sulfur yellow. I only posted a handful of the pictures I took (because I take cr@p pictures). Down at the bottom is a snap of some knitting.
Happy holiday weekend -

It's not quite as stripy as this makes it look

But it's all my favorite colors and it's SO SOFT.
So now I'm hoping for a very cold winter!

It was finally kind of cool enough to wear this

AKA look who needs a haircut - me!
It's very soft and nice, but my one crack on the yarn is that it's so soft and even that it shows any imperfection rather glaringly. There's one stitch up by the neck and it's impossible to miss. Otherwise, I'd call this one a perfect yarn/pattern match.
Still working on Percy, fast but not very photogenic yet. I'll post some soon.

Oh look at that . . .

At what? you may ask.
Yeah, it's kinda like the Cheshire Cat appearing slowly on a branch, starting with the neck and working down.
Doubling the City Tweed DK gives a super bulky 3 sts./in fabric but it's really nice and soft. Since the color slubs are the same for all these colors, the fabric thus far is pretty nice.
It's a loose roll neck pattern, I'll post it when I finish.

Pictures that stink

I'm halving the lines of beads on this version, both to keep the shawl lighter and to speed up knitting it. The second picture is cr*p, but colors look more realistic.

Persephone's Peacocks

So, I started on the formal wear version of the peacock. It's going to be hard to get decent pictures of, but this should give you the idea.
And it occurred to me:
Persephone lives half the year above ground in fields and tending crops (first peacock) and half the year in the Underworld with Hades (this peacock). One of the legends I read talked about Hades building Persephone a garden made of precious metals and jewels, flowers and trees and birds and animals all made from gold and gems, which sort of works for this colorway I think. So these two could be a set. (Yes, I know peacocks are Hera's birds, but I'm riffing I guess.)
I've been listening to Bullfinch's Mythology and it's lots of fun (goes with the Percy Jackson books). Got this stuff on the brain.

Cross that off the list

Daisy mittens are done - need to be blocked, but done.
My patient coworker modeled them for me. Happily, she has normal sized hands. Mine are so freakishly dwarf-like it makes designing mittens challenging, they always come out too small. So when I though "oh no, I made purple oven mittens" I was wrong. Love to be wrong like that.
I really liked the Imagination to work with. If you like the pattern, it's available on Ravelry, or you can email me to request the pattern.

Neighbor, can you spare a cup of time?

Soccer season has started! Which is tons of fun. This is a great age.
And there goes any illusion of time.
So, I'm working on a written instruction version of the Peacock, which is slow going, and Putnam's shawl is lovely, but not quick. I'm nearly done with the mittens, and I find myself coming up with zillions of new things I want to do. Oh, and I have one or two friends I want to catch up to someday.
So here's why I started this blog in the first place, so I can use the internet as my external harddrive back up!
I want to design a shawl in Gloss Winter Night and design it in a water/wave pattern. I had thought blue beads, but maybe white or grey instead? Or would that look like lint? Such a fine line between clever and stupid, to quote Spinal Tap.
I want to design Adria, which will have raised leaves with just a few beads for sparkle, in dusty pink. Need to dye that yarn myself. Have yarn, not time.
I want to design the Posies shawl, shaped like the Peacock, but with small stylized flowers in it, inspired by Yarn Or Death's doodles. I have the YO pattern and everything.
I want to design a beaded cardigan, using the wave pattern I used in the peacock, only it would mostly be plain st. st. with edge beads and patterns - too much and it would be heavy (and so stretch out) and not comfortable.
I want to get busy with the Olympian pull over - I really love that yarn.
Most folks want more money, which, I admit would be great, but I really want more time. And I'm not one of those cool folks who sleep 3 hours a night.

Random

Happy Friday.

Done, and weaving in ends

I'll take an action picture of this one once it's got all the ends woven in and is blocked. I really love this pattern, and it looks pretty good on. More soon.

Doesn't look like much

Well, if you ever read this blog, you know that it's most long stretches of working on stuff that doesn't make for good pictures punctuated by tons a newly started projects. Anyhoo, I'm about to knit the arms onto the white sweater. I picked up the 45 sts. on each side on needles this evening and I'll knit them in place tonight, so maybe I'll have a picture of something remotely garment-y tomorrow.
High ho.
Hope everyone is enjoying their end of summer weeks.
Oh yeah, Halloween costume 2009 - Grover the Satyr from The Last Olympian books.
Can I make fur legs?

Update on Putnam's

Yeah, I pulled it out, it's just going to be a big rectangle, but a lovely one.
And I'm trying to update the Peacock pattern for a larger size and English directions on the charts.

Olympian pullover

Here are my test swatches for the Percy Pullover. After much hemming and hawing, I think I'll work it RS facing, stripy, but not too stripy. The wrong side is nice, but too muddy, methinks.