Saturday, March 24, 2012

March Madness Gets Ugly

After alot of trash talking about college basketball at work we had an escalation in the workplace harrassment. My co-worker who has the office next door is a UNC graduate and has the ugly Tarheel stuff all over her office. When she was out of the office I "borrowed" her Ram and made him a Duke shirt. It took her a few days to notice but when she did she was not pleased. The next day I came in to find my door decorated in Tarheel style. That was painful for this Duke fan. The third picture is the memorial my co-workers erected outside my office door when Duke lost. It is hard to see in the picture but the little black box is a coffin with a Duke logo in it. There was music and a guest sign in book. Apparently Oprah and RuPaul came by but I missed them. I am trying to think of an appropriate payback! War is HELL!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Old knitter learns new trick

I love knitting socks but have always done the top down construction. For years I have wanted to challenge myself to try toe up. Finally did it. Mastered Judy's Magic Cast On and am moving along. I am going to Soxperience in April in Chincoteague and will be taking classes with Wendy Johnson. She has written two books on toe-up socks. I am ridiculously excited to be spending the weekend in this beautiful place with DH and taking sock knitting classes.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Falling Hard

Oh my goodness! I have fallen in love! I bought these Signature dpns from a fellow raveler to try them. Fiday night I did the above little swatch and by Saturday was doing a major destash to fund more dpns. The Stilleto (gotta love that name) points are killer sharp and they are made of aircraft grade aluminum. I am not just knitting socks here people...this is some high tech precision *&^@ we got going here! I may never knit anything but socks again!

Monday, February 20, 2012

Misadventures in Weaving

The weaving adventure continues but think of all the wonderful lessons I am learning. I began weaving the Broken Top Twill Towels from Weaver's Craft Issue 22. As shown above after a couple of inches an error became obvious, at least to eagle eyed husband. I was enthralled to see the pattern emerge and missed this irregularity. After some close observation, we determined there was a threading error. See the diagram above in the last picture. I isolated the problem threads with the blue contrasting thread. Tomorrow I will cut off the small amount of weaving done and rethread the last couple of dozen heddles. Persistence is a virtue. I read that somewhere.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Warped Sunday

I started the year with the best of weaving intentions and then promptly encountered the warp from HELL! 280 ends of 8/2 cotton which I wound into a 7 yard warp. I sleyed the reed and heddles were threaded without incident. Then when I tried to wind the warp onto the beam, I heard pop, pop, pop as threads broke. I fixed about ten broken threads and then walked away. Every time I attempted to fix this warp I ended up making it worse. Dear hubbo got sick of hearing me say I needed to straighten this out and helped me do it today. Lessons learned: next time a shorter warp, thicker thread until my warping improves and do not think you can move the tangles to the front of the loom towards the chain. This way leads to madness. So now the Broken Top Twill towels are under way!

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Managing the Stash

Today was the perfect day to organize my craft room. I made kits, putting yarn, pattern and buttons in bags so the projects are ready to go. KITS 1. Galvanized Cardigan 2. Modern Quilt Wrap 3. Spa Day facecloth 4. Icarus Shawl 5. Every Way wrap 6. Dawn 7. Hip in Hemp 8. Treasure 9. Kaellingesjal 1987 10. Stripe Study Shawl 11. Juris Mitts 12. february Lady Sweater 13. Shaelyn 14. Gold Brocade Christmas Stocking 15. Steppin' Out Christmas Stocking 16. Liesel 17. Bridgewater 18. Scarf or shawl with a center pattern WIPS 1. Ruffled Fichu 2. Scarf with the Clarence border from Weldon's 1886 3. Ryan's socks 4. My socks 5. Deep Peace 6. Wurm 7. Welted Fingerless Mitts for me It is definitely time to bust the stash and knit up some of these projects!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

1st FO of 2012

Reed wanted some fingerless mitts for flying his kites this winter. They turned out great and fit perfectly. Of course since I finished them Winter has disappeared and it was a balmy 70 degrees today on February 2nd. I continue to work on Deep Peace. Lace knitting is good for me as it requires total concentration but I am not good at total concentration so am ripping repeat nine out again. I blame the damn Republicans! I was knitting along during the Florida primary debate with no problems and then...Newt Gingrich mentioned building a colony on the moon and I dropped several stitches. He is one scary dude!