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August 20, 2004

Olympic Knitting

I've set aside my Fuzzy scarf for a while, in favor of... another scarf! This one's for my mother-in-law's birthday in October though - and my sister-in-law's birthday is only 2 days later, so I figured I should get going now. So, I now present to you Barb's Boucle: I know the picture is pretty dark, but it actually is a decent representation of the yarn. It's the Firenze Boucle that I picked up on sale at Lint last week, in a colorway that is largely a deep eggplant color, with some dark magenta-toned purple and some golden brown, which are exactly the sorts of colors I see her in all the time. This yarn is sooooo soft, and it has this fabulous subtle sheen to it - I'm really enjoying working with it. I've even managed not to stick my needle through the boucle loops too often. Unfortunately, the three balls that lint had of this colorway will not be enough - I decided to make it pretty wide, and I'm using seed stitch because I wanted something more interesting than garter, and something that would really show off the texture of the yarn. Fortunately, somone on ebay had two more balls of the same color listed, and I got them for $15. Now I'm trying alternately to convince myself that I do and that I don't need a couple of skeins of Berroco Optik and/or Hip Hop from the same person to make pretties for myself... the siren call of combined shipping is strong. Most of the knitting I've done on this scarf has been while watching the olympics. I'm frustrated with NBC for keeping me up until almost midnight every night to watch the incredible gymnastics performances, but they have been worth it. I've also been enjoying the swimming, and loved the synchronized diving - wow! I've never really watched fencing before, and I've been getting into that, too - I find it really fun to watch. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the women's sabre gold medalist is from my hometown. Last night, though, I did no knitting or crafting of any sort. Instead, D and I went out to Oaks Park (for the second time in a week!) to skate. I am learning how to rollerblade, and actually having lots of fun doing it. We also ran into my 7th grade english teacher, who happened to be one of my favorite teachers, while we were there - it was neat to see her again and catch up a bit. --------

Posted by Shannon at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2004

Stash Enrichment...

I finished the Spiral belt on Thursday night, and wore it yesterday. It is exactly what I had envisioned, and I love it - Hooray! I'll have to move that down to the finished objects section of the sidebar now... Thanks to Melissa at Action Hero, I also spent too much money on yarn today. She posted about the sale at Lint this weekend, so of course I had to go check it out. I got 5 balls of ggh sierra, 6 of Filatura de Crosa Luna, 4 of Tahki Shannon, and 3 Firenze Boucle - all at 40% off! Since I spent over $50, I also got to draw from their fishbowl, and got a free r2 scarf kit - not as good as the extra 50% off all sale yarn that the woman in front of me got, but still cool. I've been wanting to try something with the r2 anyway, so here's a great opportunity. This afternoon I've been alternating between cleaning, and watching the olympics while knitting. I've started a scarf in seed stitch with the firenze boucle for my mother-in-law's birthday, but I haven't taken a picture yet. We're going out to dinner, then to play cards, with my father-in-law and his wife, tonight (not sure if anyone else will be there yet... ), so I won't be getting much more done along those lines today. And tomorrow my mom and I are going out to the Street Of Dreams, then out to dinner for my aunt's birthday... so I may well not get much crafty done tomorrow, either. --------

Posted by Shannon at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2004

Marimba + Knitting

Every Wednesday during the summer, a group of businesses in the area of my office put on lunchtime concerts. Today they had a Marimba band playing, so I headed out to enjoy the sunny weather and some fun music. I had a nice lunch of sushi and farmer's market apricots, then pulled out my Fuzzy scarf and got some work done on it. The colors looked awesome in the sun, but unfortunately the picture doesn't show them off well... In any case, I made some significant progress before I got too hot and had to come in for the last 10 minutes of my lunch (the bench I picked to sit down on was in a nice dappled sun/shade mix when I sat down, but was in full on beating sun 30 minutes later). One of these days I will successfully make it to a Stitch & Bitch... I actually went to a SBux in NW Portland on Monday night for the scheduled "Sip & Stitch" from 6:30-8:30. I ended up showing a bit before 7:30 but nobody there was knitting... so I just bought a drink and left. Ah, well... I'll have to try one of the other ones in town. --------

Posted by Shannon at 03:47 PM | Comments (0)

2 nearly FOs

I have now come very close to completing two of my WIPs... one of whick I'm just now getting around to putting up on here. The first is my Spiral belt, so called because it is made with Trendsetters Spiral yarn. It's made in a drop-stich pattern, and is meant to tie around the waist... I finished knitting it the night before last, when we were spending the night at my parents' house to get away from the heat. The only thing left to do now is add finge to the ends! I have also now completed the Hot Stuff tank, other than blocking and weaving in the ends... I'm actually thinking it will work, with a cami under it, now that I have finished it all and tried it on. Still a bit boxier than I usually like to wear, but I think it will work for something cool and casual. I'll post again in a bit about the knitting I got done today... I'd prefer to separate out the entries. --------

Posted by Shannon at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)

August 05, 2004

Keep going..

Oops... I put this blog together, got busy, then spent 4 days in Eugene (about 2 hours south of here) and have been pulling everything back together from that since, leaving the poor newborn blog to get neglected. Don't feel bad, newborn blog... you're less neglected than my other bloglings! In any case, though the blog has been somewhat neglected, the knitting has not been. I have about 10 rows of 6 stitches left, then binding off the straps and blocking to finish my hot stuff tank (I know, a very small amount, but my eyes were killing me last night so I decided to get to bed and finish it tonight)... Sorry it's a bad picture... The one I thought I got that was well lit I apparently didn't get, cuz it's not on my camera anymore. I've only knit scarves before, as you can see from the sidebar, so I'm very excited to have completed an item of clothing. However, I'm also concerned that I may end up tearing out that first item of clothing and starting over! It's probably best to do one's first knitting or a shirt/sweater/etc with a pattern. big surprise, I know! I really, really wanted a ribbon tank, so I went out and found a yarn I loved and could afford... but then I couldn't find a pattern for it, so I figured I'd just run with it and see where it went - silly Shannon. I checked gauge and cast on enough stitches in the round to fit around my hips and just kept going until it got what I thought was a reasonable length. In the interim I was checking out a variety of tank patterns to see how they did the arm and neck holes, and basically just picked up with a modified Tank Girl pattern from Stitch & Bitch for the decreases, etc (keeping it to basic stockinette, though), when I got to that point. So once I finished my third strap-piece last night, I sort-of pinned the arms together as much as possible and went into the bathroom to try it on. I'm concerned. First off, the ribbon kept folding over while I was knitting with it, and I gave up on trying to keep it straightened out only a few rows from the bottom? so the spaces between stitches change all over the top, making it look horridly uneven and awful, so I'm going to have to go back and bloom out the folded yarn. Then there's the matter of proportion? despite the swatching, despite checking the length against a tank II wear all the time before starting the armholes, it's very, very off in proportion - it's short and very wide. So, we'll see just how magical blocking is (once I clear off a flat surface to block it on), and if necessary, I'll frog the whole thing and start over with a pattern this time? That'll teach me to try to design my own stuff before I have any experience. --------

Posted by Shannon at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)