Thursday, May 27, 2010

5.27 Dayflower Daydream

Thanks everybody for the nice compliments on Blue Cocoon. It was a good knit - written instructions only, which made a change from the past few projects before it, and a good prep for the current project, Dayflower Daydream, which is both written and charted, but for which I'm finding the written instructions easier to follow.

dayflowercenter

It's a circular shawl, in eight panels. It starts with Pattern A, which makes a wedge. Once you get to row 40, you continue in Pattern B on the established wedge (which makes a column) and start a new Pattern A in each panel. Once you reach row 80, you start a new Pattern A and continue with two columns of pattern B...

I have this feeling that by the time I get to the point where I have 3 or 4 (?) columns of pattern B I'm going to have a bazillion stitch markers color and size coded for each repeat.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

5.23 Cocoon shawl

A friend of mine was a sweetheart and took some pictures for me. Ummm... a month ago, apparently, looking at the date stamp.

cocoon3

cocoon1

I finished it about a week before that (before we left for the Okefenokee).

Blue Cocoon, also known as the Cocoon Stitch Half-Circle Shawl from Martha Waterman's Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls, knitted up using the blue DHF/silk I spun up earlier.

bluepile

Thursday, May 20, 2010

5.20 Been plying...

I've not gotten much spinning done of late, but there has been a bit of plying going on:

Spindle spun BFL (from High Bid Farm)

spindleBFL

and

my rustic yarn all plied up, rinsed and air-dried.

rustic

That's all there is of the BFL (unless I buy another bit of top, which would be a different dye lot) and I haven't measured it yet. It's fingering weight, maybe.

That's about a quarter of the Cotwold (I have a pound of it), but I haven't measured the grist yet. This one should be sport weight or light worsted, something in that range. It should make a nice vest, lightweight and warm.


Thursday, May 13, 2010

5.13 The best thing...


about having a teenager with a license is the ability, as she's heading out the door to take herself and her brother to their music lessons, to hand her a $10 and say "Stop on the way home please and pick up the gallon of milk and loaf of bread I didn't get when I was out earlier."

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

5.11 Ten places that make me happy

1. The 1000 Islands - On the St. Lawrence Seaway, between NY and Ontario, are 300-some odd islands, known as the 1000 islands. Blue waters, lovely scenery, lots of things to do. I'll never forget the day my (then) 8-yo brother took his little kayak and paddled to Canada and back (crossing the sea lane each way) without telling anyone where he was going...

2. Yosemite - One of my favorite places to visit, as long as one avoids the hordes of people on the valley floor. To visit the valley floor, one should go in the off-off season. There are so many different kinds of places to see there, depending on the season and the height one goes to. We went to a star party on Glacier Point - cold but fun, staring at the stars in the clear night. (Before the sun went down, they were letting people look through the telescopes at a camping party across the valley on Half Dome. That is, they were until a couple separated from the rest of the party, went over the edge out of sight from their own party and started taking each other's pants off. At that point, the star party decided it might be best to concentrate on the rising moon in the sky instead.)

3. Washington, DC by night - Having grown up around DC with parents who liked family outings, we spent many a Sunday afternoon in the Smithsonian and visiting the monuments. I discovered visiting the monuments by night as an adult and it's my favorite way to do so. The numbers of people are diminished and the monuments are more beautiful all lit up at night. It's easier to find parking, too!

4. Mendocino - California coastline at its best. I'm not a big sandy beach person, but I love listening to the waves on the rocks, and the restaurants in town are great.

5. Lac Brompton - just north of the Vermont border in Quebec - a long narrow lake with several islands and a cabin on the shore that has belonged to J's family for generations.

6. Powells - the only thing better than a bookstore, is a huge bookstore that goes on for floor after floor after floor.

7. Saturday Market - very few places with lots of people are going to make my top 10, but the Eugene Saturday Market is definitely there. Farmer's market crossed with crafters, along with good food and good entertainment. What more could one ask for?

8. Exploratorium - A wonderful hands-on science museum in San Francisco. We took K&S there several times when they were small. The local science center has a room full of hand-on items loaned from the Exploratorium here in Rochester - not quite the same as having the whole Exploratorium at one's fingertips, but a nice place to go play. It's too bad they've almost outgrown it. When they're in their mid-twenties they might be ready for it again ;-)

9. The Smithsonian - as previously mentioned, we spent many a rainy Sunday afternoon in DC at one or another of the Smithsonian buildings. When we moved back to the East Coast, I seized the opportunity to introduce them to K&S. Doing it from a distance means they've only gotten to each building once, but at this point they've seen most of them, including the big Air and Space museum out near Dulles and the new Native American building.

10. Home.

Friday, May 07, 2010

5.7 Minor question...

Why is it that the day it's convenient for me to go watch S's sporting events is always the day it decides to be cold, windy and rainy?

Watching the 4 x 400 was fun, but not the rain.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

5.4 People...

I'd like to interview.

Hmmm.

In alphabetical order:

Natalie Angier - one of my favorite science writers. I started with Woman: An Intimate Geography, which is a book I thoroughly enjoyed, which I've bought or lent to every woman in my family, and which I think every woman should read. I wish she'd a) update it with the latest research and b) write a similar one for men. I want one to hand to my son.

Jasper Fforde - The author of the Thursday Next books, which have such a charming wackiness to them. I want to ask more questions about the Well of Lost Plots.

Lynn Johnston - The cartoonist behind For Better or For Worse. I've lived with her strip for many years and it's given me many, many talking points with my children.

Michelle Obama - I'd love to have a chat with her about domestic matters.

Michael Ruhlman's wife - The author of Making of a Chef, etc. was married when he was going to school and learning to cook, then writing all about it. His married life was just backstory, but I'd love to have her take on it.

Most of the rest of the people I'd like interview would be bad for my blood pressure as most of my questions would start out "What the hell were you thinking when..."