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March 22, 2006

Shawl Collar Wrap Cardi is done...

and I love it!

I finished it last weekend, including finding a pin for the closure, instead of the suggested suede. Ilona and Josie came over on Saturday night to watch what ended p being a horrible movie (Just Friends). It had one good line, in the whole thing. It wasn't even in the so-bad-its-good category, it was just plain bad. However, some good knitting time was had, and Ilona fulfilled her blog minion role by taking sweater pics for me - thanks, Ilona!

Here's a better picture of the pin I'm using to close it - I decided I wanted to use a pin both so I wouldn't have to sew a ribbon or suede tie in, and so that I can adjust it more easily as I lose more weight. I dropped by Nordstrom Rack to look, and found this - it was more expensive than I had been hoping for, but it's so perfect, I had to get it:

In other news, I won Bron's Keyhole Top drawing - how exciting. I just love the colors of the top, and I can't wait to try it on. Now I have to take a look in my stash and see what I have that's wool free and might be worth sending her in exchange.

Okay, lunch time now... in my next update: Purl Necklaces, Bellevue, and a partial sock.

Posted by Shannon at 11:39 AM | Comments (3)

March 14, 2006

Life imitates "The Producers"?

Courtesy of the RSS feeds at the top of my Gmail page: An article about Yoduk Story, a South Korean musical "about a North Korean woman's fall from a dancing revolutionary hero to a tortured inmate along with her family at Yoduk prison camp, where she bears a guard's child, and learns to forgive her brutal captors," complete with songs such as You are just like germs" and "All I want is rice." Wow.

In Knitting Knews, I finished knitting the Shawl Collar Wrap Cardi this weekend, and got all of the pieces blocked last night. All that remains is to sew the seams, weave in the ends, and decide what I want to do to keep the bottom from rolling, since I chose to forgo the 2 rows of garter stitch edging. I'm thinking I'll either attempt a crocheted edging or pick up and knit a few rows of ribbing, but I want to put the whole thing together first and see how how it fits and where the edge hits before I decide what to do and which color to use. In any case, hopefully I'll have FO or nearly-FO pictures to share within the week.

Oh, and to my fellow geeks - Happy Pi Day!

Posted by Shannon at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2006

How did it get to be 4 months...

since my last post? Well, basically, my winter was nuts - busy busy, go go go (new boyfriend, vacation, gift making, vacation, holidays, babysitting, flu, moving, setting up a new place, etc)! And the more that happened, the more that built up to blog about, the more time it was going to take to blog - so I kept not updating. But I'm back now, going to recap as much as I can without getting too lengthy (though I may end up splitting that into multiple posts,) and renew the blogging. Yay!

So, let's start with the ever-popular FO parade (AKA Things I Finished During My Most Recent Unplanned Blog Hiatus - TIFDMMRUPBH... rather unwieldy, isn't it?)

Wow, I just realized that all of my FOs since my last post were gift knitting. I've been doing plenty of knitting for myself as well, but none of it is done. So, for the hands, I made some fingerless mitts for Ilona's birthday - I didn't get any pictures, so head over to her site to see them. I also made these gloves for my Mom, for Christmas, though only one was done by then - she received the completed pair sometime in mid-January, as it turned out (what with the getting sick and the moving and all).

For the mitts, I used Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted (very nice to work with), and the gloves were knit with Artful Yarns Virtue and The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. Mmm, cashmere.

My major end-of-the-year knitting project was the Colinette Perugino throw I gave my grandparents for Xmas (as a joint gift with my parents - they bought the kit, I did the work). I did get that finished, including blocking, in time for Christmas morning present opening. This was my first real experience with blocking, and I used a garment steamer I had just gotten a great deal on - what a fabulous thing. Especially for such a large project, it made blocking a real snap.

It's laid out on a twin flat sheet (in my little sister's bedroom), to give you a sense of the scale. I ended up making it far longer than the pattern called for - I basically just kept going with it until I didn't have enough of one of the yarns to finish another repeat, completed the repeat I was on, and finished it. I didn't want to deal with all six balls of yarn hanging off the edge and getting tangled, so I did not carry the yarn up the side as suggested in the pattern... made for a lot of ends to weave in, but it was worth it.

And my most recent FO, a mobius scarf I just completed - to be given to one of my best friends, as a graduation gift (Bachelors degree in Math) later this month.

I used Berroco softwist, and the basic pattern here for the scarf, although I didn't make it quite as wide. I do still need to weave in the ends on the scarf, and block it, but it should be on its way south quite soon.

So, that's the list of FOs... I think I'm gonna call this entry done, especially since I don;t have any pictures of my in-progress projects at the moment. So details on those, and the rest of my life, to come - soon!

Posted by Shannon at 03:09 PM | Comments (1)