lolajl: September 2007 Archives

Going off for a day of fun at Maryland Renaissance Festival! Hoping to get some good pictures of some of the costumes.

Since I finished the shawl, I'e been freed up to move on to other projects. So, I restarted my sock knitting, with Back to Basics socks. The directions are different enough that I just had to try it, and this will keep me going until the 2nd edition of Cat Bordhi's new sock book is available (it seems that 1st edition sold out quickly and I haven't been able to find it locally). I had actually gotten up t the gusset shaping, when I realized if I kept going on as directed, the foot would be longer than my actual foot length. So I measured the gauge and it turns out that I'm 1 stitch more in rows and stitches per inch. Auuuuggghhh! I had to rip back almost all way to about 2 inches above the toe section and there I'll get the shaping started. If this doesn't work, I'm going to have to go down a size in needles. Not really looking forward to this.

And it seems that I've been suckered into helping out at the bazaar in the craft section. I'm supposed to be bringing my spinning wheel and you know, demonstrate or something. I'm concerned about my ability to explain all these to visitors and having them be able to understand me, but I'll worry about this later. It occurred to me that my fleece sample book would be good to take along. It also occurred to me that I still haven't assembled the pages from Exchange 2 and Exchange 3, even though the Exchange 3 package was concluded in 2001. Life sure has a funny way of interfering, doesn't it? I found the box for Exchange 2 in the other bedroom's closet, still unopened. Wow . . . a package for me that arrived in the mail 8 years ago! Since I've been out of work for too long and can't just go off buying fiber and yarn and checking the mail, it felt good to have an anticipated delivery. And I found the boxes for Exchange 1 and 3 in the garage (whew - that means there's a little more free room for junk).

Now, my job is to get all those samples washed up, put in the washed locks next to the in-grease locks, and spin up some of those samples. I'm going to be combing some of these, but it seems silly to use my big combs for such a tiny bit of samples. I'm looking into getting mini-combs. I'm shocked, shocked at how some of these cost. The cheapest costs $75. Why the high prices? Know where I can score a set of used mini-combs?

I finally finished the shawl yesterday. It was a really nice pattern to knit, but I made a major goof that resulted in ripping out almost all of it right before I was set to work on the lace edging. Yes, the blocking is a bit uneven - I couldn't find the wires after I'd already wettened the shawl and so I had to proceed with the blocking. When I find the wires, I'll reblock it and take pictures again when it's not a cloudy day (like today).

Yes, you, with your feet hanging out of the window sometime before 9:00am this morning, somewhere in DC. I guess you don't care if a mack truck accidently runs into your side of the car.