Lir's ugly daughter.....or Swan lake only Green-

Knitting, Spinning and family dementia

Thursday, July 28, 2005

A Short note about this week


Ribbet -this is about my mood this week!

This week I've fought with my computer. Screaming and cursing. I downloaded something that ate my security programs!! Thanks to my Loveable and brilliant youngest son (Marshall) it is now working fine. I have stopped screaming and my blood pressure has returned to normal for the time being.

PLUS it didn't help that MY game.. that I play for a couple hours everyday.. Final Fantasy XI .. Did a HUGE update on Monday. As in most updates, its malfunctioning. They are slowly working out the bugs. But its annoying to be disconnected and locked out of game ..over and over and over again. They are gradually working out the problems. I'm breathing deeply and thinking Happy thoughts. I'm a mother of 3 boys.. I know patience!

I also, did some spinning everyday. I ran out of yarn for the Sleeves I've been working on for the diagonal knit sweater I started 2 years ago. Hopefully, I will have that all done by this weekend. Gonna drag my wheel with me everywhere till it IS DONE!!

This has been my week..

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Is this really ME??


Original

Morphed

Terri Shea helped me out with this. Thanks alot Terri. I couldn't get it to save threw my firewall. Isn't it cool. The site is..Here..

Sunday, July 17, 2005

ITS HERE!!


MY HARRY POTTER and the half blood prince finally showed up. I've been waiting ..Y E A R S! I'm so excited and its not even yarn.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Quiet Week

Very Quiet this week. I have done a little knitting. Working on a diagonal sweater (purple, what else) that I started over 2 years ago. I am now 4 inches into the sleeves.
This week has also been filled with my Grand daughter, Eryka. Whos Birthday it was. She had her main party last Saturday. I made her a coupon for a day of shopping and a Tea Party at Village Tea and Yarn, which we did on Wed. Where she discovered..to her horror.. that Tea is made of dried leaves!! She was NOT amused. Otherwise,The tea party was really lovely. They really put on a nice show. If you have a little girl in your life,you have to try this. Lovely Cucumber and Cream cheese sandwichs and little round peanut butter and Jelly (the ones she liked most). Plus a selection of fruits. She was very silly.. drinking her tea with her pinky extended and dabbing delicately at her mouth with the linen napkin.
Shopping went on all day. Lots of pretties. I think she had a good time.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

A lesson in Plying


Sweater?
Yes yes, I own the books.. yes, I did read them. I remember something about twists.. and crimp and bla bla bla. But, truthfully, my brain sees wool.. it goes "spin wool, pedal faster, Wool good... heee heee.." Not much thinking goin on.

So, imagine my surprise when. The little thinking light went on!! It was painful.. believe me. But, plying 2 colors like this really shows you what your doing correctly and incorrectly. I discovered that I've been handling my plying all wrong. Pfft.. go figger. I think I'd been just pretty much slamming the two plys together .. lazy like.

I found that if I run my lightly pinched fingers of one hand up the yarn that it plies much more uniform. Now these are about as perfect as I've ever done. At least to my eye. Am I dreaming or did I get something?

Anyway, I have 6 hanks and I think I should be able to get the body of a sweater out of it with maybe the green as sleeves. I have some lavender as well but it seems to mute the colors where the green makes them pop.

Now to settle on some kind of pattern stitch for the front and leave the back and sleeves plain st stitch. Any Ideas? Pull over or Cardigan?
You guys do know how to leave comments don't you??

close up

Sunday, July 03, 2005

Can You Say .."Overspun"?


Evolution of a Yarn
It was spin day for the 3rd place book knitters. I had two sacks of these little balls of different colored wool. I thought I'd mix them together and it WAS alot of fun till I took the resulting yarn off on a niddy noddy and saw how over twisted it was. Only way I know to fix that is to ply it so I plied it with some natural mystery wool I've been playing with. Here you see the results.
Left <-> right balls of colored wool, Plied yarn and overspun singles. I think it turned out really .. REALLY cool. Like Tie Dye... Far out man !! Like totally .. fer sure!!

Friday, July 01, 2005

Berry Cluster Cardigan finally done


Berry Cluster Cardigan..before beads

This cardigan is very comfy. Of my own design. The bottom and cuffs are the berry cluster pattern from "Knitting on the Edge". The rest I did on my bond knitting frame. I'm to lazy to follow patterns. Most patterns don't fit me,anyway. Not just because I'm a bit fluffy (ok fat) but I had to have my cloths custom made when I was a skinny girl ,also. Thank you Mother. I'm very long waisted.

I bought silver-blueish beads to be the berries. I'll get around to that. The shawl collar just didn't wanna end. Thought I was going to cry before I finally got it finished.. but I like it! Been wearing it all day.

We did buy the leather furniture we looked at last week end. One HUGE barkalounger (black) and a lovely reddish brown leather sofa. Not at all western looking. Bill has plans to put some wood embellishments on the couch when it arrives..in August or Sept..He thinks it needs a wood kickplate and that the arm fronts would look good with some swirly wood on it. He likes to do swirly curley German style wood embellishments everywhere. You should see my Kitchen! I'm planning on a little tole painting to girly it up a little. So, it will be OUR couch. It will be so different from the threadbare set we have now.

I have plans to recover the old swivel/rocker to be used in the blue room. But, recovering the couches would be a nightmare so we're planning on pulling the sofa bed out and making a bench/sleeper for either the Rec room or the blue room. We'll let you know when or if this happens :) The loveseat which isn't as worn will go to a good home..Jyll? Marie? Speak up or its gone.

Now on to the next project. I'll have to think about that. I have a green sweater perking in my brain but I also have 2 or 3 UFO's to finish.. whine! Oh yea.. pffft, the sari silk-merino sweater..guess I should get that out of the way. Why am I hearing the music from Psycho's shower scene?

I also have about 30 lbs of roving to spin......I shouldn't get bored. SIGH!! If I complain of being bored.. beat me..ok?