Go outside now. A total lunar eclipse on a cloudless night.
Beautiful!
Happy Birthday, Ma!
the crud February 16, 2008
Ughh. I have the crud. Thursday night I started running a fever. I never get fevers. I often think I’m running a fever, but then when I take my temp, it reads its normal 97 degrees (I guess I run a little cold). And then this elephant came to sit on my chest. Friday morning, my fever was down and I went to work, but after an hour there, the fever came back with a vengeance and stayed elevated until this morning. I was shivering and sweating at the same time. I’m sick of coughing. Thursday night and most of Friday I was too out of it to knit! The fever broke this morning, but I still spent most of the day in bed. Around noon I was standing in the kitchen and all of a sudden my head began spinning and I began broke out in a cold sweat. Before I knew it, I fainted. I whacked my head and my back on the counter on the way down. I’ve never fainted before. I’m not interested in doing that again.
I’d really like you to go away now, Mr. Crud.
Please.
Sunday February 10, 2008
Yesterday I went to the Janesville Guild of Knitters Knit-in up in Milton, Wisconsin. I took two classes, both of which were great. The first was Two Color Brioche Knitting in the Round class by Elizabeth Prose. What a fun technique – pretty simple and lovely. I can’t see wanting to make a sweater using brioche knitting – mostly because I’m not sure I’d like to see that much of it – but it’s great for hats. Elizabeth shared several samples that she had made. My favorite one was a reversible cabled brioche scarf that was gorgeous. Hers was knit in a rust color. Beautiful. We worked on a neck warmer:
The other class I took was a Latvian Wristers class with Beth Brown-Reinsel. Now “wristers” aren’t exactly an age-old garment, but she designed the project to be something one could make during a three hour class. I have done some color work, so quite a few of the skills that were covered in the class were familiar to me, but there were a couple new, fun things. I loved the herring bone braids. Pretty.
Beth brought many samples with her. This is a pig that she didn’t make, but had it as a sample. I think I’m in love. Isn’t he cute? And surprisingly dense – no, no, I’m not doubting the intelligence of our porcine friends, it feels like it was stuffed with hay or something. The sad thing is that Beth didn’t have a pattern for it. Frown.
One of the greatest bits about the Janesville Knit-in is the door prizes. I’m not quite sure if everyone gets a door prize or just those who registered for classes, but I got Charmed Knits. I love the pattern for Mrs. Weasley’s Bag of Stitch Witchery. Thank you, Anonymous Donor! And I expect gold stars: despite the 11 vendors selling gorgeous yarns, baskets, soap, etc., I didn’t buy anything! That was so hard. There were so many beautiful yarns, but I have a huge stash that I’d really like to decrease. A nice day.
And remember that sock that I said needed ripping? Well…
Going…
…going…
…gone!
I hope to have it recast on and worked a bit before knitting group on Wednesday.
I guess that’s it. Have a nice week.
Snow Day February 6, 2008
Here I sit – still in pajamas at 4:00 in the afternoon. I’m not thinking about the make-up day we’ll have in June and trying just to enjoy this. Holy snow, Batman. We’ve gotten several inches of snow today. My neighbor spent nearly an hour in the street trying to get her car going. [Before you think I'm a terrible person for not helping her, she had three people helping her already]. She was trying to go somewhere and pulled out of her driveway into the street and couldn’t get her car going anywhere. Yup – I think I’ll just stay home. I have season two of 24 to watch and knitting to be done.
Well, since it’s been a while since I’ve updated, here are some projects that I’ve been working on:
This is a great pattern: Everlasting Bagstopper from Knitty. I love the pattern. I’d really like to be knitting it; however, Super Dumbby neglected to plan appropriately. I have run out of yarn. I await – and not so patiently – the arrival of supplemental yarn. Please come soon, pretty yarn.
Here is Dragon (Norberta again from knitty). I made her for Sweet Nephew for his birthday. It ended up very cute; however, I can’t say that I enjoyed knitting her. It accompanied a cute book about a boy who ends up with a dragon egg instead of a chicken egg and teaches him about all things dragon (breathing fire, kidnapping princesses) – I have no idea what the name of the book is. It’s cute. This pattern was hard on the hands. It’s knit on size 6 needles with worsted weight yarn held doubled. Ouch. Norberta (now called Dragon by the nephew) is larger than I expected her to be. The spine was much longer than it needed to be to fit on her spine. Thanks to friend Mary for helping me sew her together!
Different crafting for me: this is a cross-stitch of a Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass window. I know that it doesn’t look like a lot of stitching, but the gray lines took quite some time to stitch. I made this for my friend, Kristin, for Christmas. It was finished in time; however, framing took quite some time. It turned out beautifully.
Last Saturday, my Stitch N’ Bitch group gathered at Madame Purl’s home to dye yarn. We dyed sock yarn. I apparently was channeling the Swedish side in me (aside: I’m not Swedish; however, my mother decided to raise us kids as good little Swedes – my church is uber-Swedish and it just sinks in after a while; I’m constantly reminding my mother that we’re not Swedish) and chose two pretty shades of blue and a buttercup yellow. For good measure I dabbed on some dots of orange. I quite like the yarn. What do you think? Thanks, Madame Purl, for having us over!
Well. I’m going to call this post done. Off to watch Jeopardy.
