Thursday, November 4, 2010

two posts, two days wheee

Since I know my Dad doesn't read my blog, I'm posting some progress shots of how knitting goes on the serious scarf project.  I know it looks fuscia.  It's a deep royal purple.  Curse you lack of camera skills and lack of editer skills.  Meh, here's the pattern as it knits out anyway:
apparently, you get the closeup first.  You can see how my job has been interrupting my knitting and altering my tension.
luckily, a light blocking will straighten this out and nobody will be the wiser, but you
So, this sucker is about 28 inches wide not blocked, and will pick up a scant couple of inches when blocked so you can see the "openwork" that defines it.  I rather thought chain link fence was a good choice, but we'll see what my Dad thinks of it. 

Man Lace (otherwise known as Serious Scarves) continues apace.  I am about 1/2 way through the yarn we chose for it.  Dad wanted a worsted weight yarn, as he didn't want anything too light, and it had to take a beating.  I'm paraphrasing.

I'm hoping to have it ready for this Saturday, when he comes over to help me, my oldest son, and my brother frame in windows to my covered porch.  It's currently a 3 season porch that allows gale-force winds to freeze my kitchen pipes every winter.  Soon it will be a 3 season porch that BLOCKS gale-force winds in the winter, in the interests of not-frozen pipes. 

I purchased the materials around the time that the mother-in-law incursion/debacle happened in the interests of giving them more space.  We won't be heating it with nobody actively living in it, so it will remain the same use it is now.  I just won't be shoveling snow off of it this year with a little luck.

So this weekend, I will also be taking pictures of our progress so you can see what has taken away from knitting time.  Remember:  document your knitting infidelity well. 

So next up, I have a progress picture on my Mary Mary Quite Contrary shawl.  At least, that's what I'm calling it at the moment.  Luckily, you can read your progress in lace so no matter how many times I put it down I always end up figuring out where I left off.  Just takes a while sometimes.

Very representative of the color of the yarn.  Surprisingly enough.
This is Misti Alpaca Laceweight yarn.  Unsurprisingly, it contains.... Alpaca!  Sorry, I think I've hit goofy hour.  This is the silver blue sister to the yarn I'm giving away in this post.  It's not too late to enter, you have until Nov 14, at which point the winners will be announced. 

Speaking of entering the giveaway, I recently found some quilt-stash fabric that reminds me of the cats in the banner picture at the top of the blog of one of the posters.  Hmm, is that sentence convoluted enough?  Maybe I need more coffee.  I think I still bleed actual blood instead of caffeine, which may be affecting my ability to communicate...  y'know, effectively.

Here's the fabric for reference

I heart this fabric.  I must do, I have 5 yards!
So, I'm thinking I may have to do up something sweet in way of a project bag in this.  It's too cute to ignore.

Finally, in case anyone was curious about how I write my patterns the first time through, I give you the graph paper swatch o doom.  You can even see some of my really bad math if you look closely.  Don't worry, I used the right numbers instead of the crazy ones and that's how Dad's Serious Scarf got started.  The design process is a whole 'nother set of posts, but I figured a little window into the start of the process would be kind of neat.

these are the 'test-drive' of the patterns for THREE different projects.  


Yep, those little sketches are in the midst of transforming into a SUPER ROBOT.... oh wait, wrong show.  Into a stole or three.  Yeah, three sounds about right given what I see there. 

In our next episode, there may or may not be a well deserved (and not at all opinionated ;-) review of Quince and Co yarn. 

1 comment:

  1. Ears burning over here! That is some very cool fabric, love the colorful lions! Your design process beats mine all to heck.

    1. Open about a dozen books and mags to random pages.

    2. Check all the recommended yarn weights and average them out to determine # of buttonholes/zippers in project; annotate all the suggested colors and psychoanalyze them to determine needle size; add all page numbers and subtract distance in KM of three random cities to determine fiber and size of project. Make a cup of tea and read the leaves to see who the lucky recipient will be.

    3. Take anywhere from one to 77.543 rows from each pattern in the order designated by the position of the Rings of Saturn in relationship to the amount of water currently being retained and start knititng.

    4 When done, name the item and send it to recipient.

    5. Wait for package marked "Return To Insane Knitter Sender"

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