I should know better.
I’m itching to cast on something new. I want to work on my Girasole blanket or the Coraline cardigan. I must, however, avoid the urge. I have so many other things to finish! Sigh. And more yarn’s coming tomorrow. I have visions of tiny flowers on a greeting card…
My brain’s a busy place.
…On what turned out to be a most unusual day. It seems hard or somehow inappropriate to even talk about my mundane knitting when there was such a horrific accident on our Metro system today. I am not the most praying person, but I am indeed praying for all of the victims and their families this day.
But, on to the knitting, even with my heavy heart. I realized earlier today that it’s been a while since I’ve updated Jen’s Hello Kitty Scarf. A solid 6 weeks of knitting, and this is what I’ve got:
It’s probably close to three feet long now. I figure I’ll knit until almost the end of the ball, then fringe. So it will be however long it is. Thankfully, Jen is small and so it doesn’t need to be hugely long. But it will, I am convinced, be quite long enough.
And ok, here’s a yarny confession:
Yes, I hit the Knit Picks yarn sale last week. I got 22 balls of Andean Treasure yarn, with which I am going to make Ysolda Teague’s Coraline Sweater. I met Ysolda at Maryland Sheep and Wool this year and she was wearing that very sweater. I was smitten! And totally thrilled when she said she had made the pattern in larger sizes. Wow.
Then today? I ordered small quantities of brightly colored sock yarn for another birthday card project. I’ll be rushing. Shhh… it’s a secret.
Oh, and Jon and Kate? I’m so over them now. So sad for the kids.
I had to give up on the knit necktie greeting card for now… it just wasn’t working out. I’m sad! But I came up with this instead:
I have a long way to go in the “it doesn’t look like first grade art” department, huh? But, I hope he likes it. It has a knit heart, sparkly Mod Podge (because the plain mod podge wouldn’t do!) and carefully printed upon and then recklessly torn up paper. I still have to learn the art of effective yet not overkilled and messy gluing. (Is that a word? Gluing? It looks weird.) Any advice for an inexperienced card maker? I’d love to get better at this.
Of course, Tegan had to get into the middle of my photo shoot:
And then my daughter spent 10 minutes digging the cat hair out of the card. Ick.
Today was a busy day. We had a party at my mom’s house, where I made homemade guacamole and lime fizzies. Both seemed to be well liked. I’m on a lime kick these days. I had never made lime fizzies before so I sort of “winged” it. Basically I squeezed about 5 limes into a measuring bowl, and then added enough sugar to make it syrup-y. Don’t ask me how much, but it was a lot. Then mint leaves and stirred it all around. Then poured about an inch or so of the lime/mint syrup into the glasses, over ice, and then filled the glasses with club soda and stirred. (The glasses were actually small plastic party cups, so for a tall glass, perhaps more lime syrup would be called for.) Yum! Someday I’ll post my guacamole recipe but I don’t know proportions for that, either. I’m a very seat-of-my-pants sort of cook.
Tomorrow is Father’s Day but we don’t really have any big plans. Some years are like that. We have lots of housework to do and grocery shopping. Maybe I’ll surprise John with a meatloaf. He’s pretty easy to please.
I miss my dad.
I’ve been obsessed with making greeting cards this week. More thinking about them than doing, but here’s my first attempt:
The cover says:
“I herdz u wants naps fur ur birfdays…”
Inside:
“Already took dems… Srry.”
Now I need to figure out how to knit a father’s day card for the DH. Thoughts of what could go on it? I thought of a teeny knitted necktie, but not sure how that will work. I need inspiration. Thanks for your help!
PS–yes that’s my own cat on the cover. I took the photo about three months ago and have been waiting for something to do with it.
Today was Worldwide Knit in Public Day, and the Bowie Knitters rose to the occasion! We all showed up at the usual time in the usual place, needles, cold drinks and yummy snacks at the ready. It seems most of us were working on wearables today. I took a few photos, so here you go. As always, click to make them bigger and read the details.
Today we welcomed Kathy (is it with a K?) to the group, who brought along her Amazon Kindle
to show. Boy oh boy, do I covet one of these! Dina, who works in the publishing industry, worries about how this device and others like it are changing the way people read books. For me it would make a huge difference to have one, because many books are too bulky and heavy for me to manipulate. Sigh… the device is still too expensive for me… plus I have other big projects to work on later this summer. Can’t talk about that now, though. I’m veering off subject. Back to the knitters.
Helene brought her amazing sweater coat that she just finished and blocked, for all of us to ooh and ahh over. That woman’s knitting is amazing! Just look at it! Isn’t it stunning?
We even had a power outage at our Borders today, which made alarms go off and the air conditioner stop working. For the most part though, the knitters were undeterred and just kept on knitting.
I also got some more card making supplies today. some decorative papers, lots of hole-punchy things with different shapes, some glues and a paper cutter. I’ve decided for sure that my knitted cards are going to have some added flair. I can only hope that I can somehow make it work, that my fingers can do what I see in my head, and that I can create items that don’t look like kindergarten refrigerator art. Wish me luck on that!
One more thing to show you before I leave you for today:
It’s a slightly better photo of the Halloween Scarf, complete with eyeballs. I wore it to work the other day and got some weird looks! But hey, it’s ready for the Harry Potter movie release next month. I’m hoping it won’t be 100 degrees that day.
Other than that, I haven’t found too much new around here that impacts my usage in either a good or bad way. If I find anything exciting enough to report, I will, but this seems a little less like a full version upgrade than I was expecting. There’s probably a lot more on the back end that a mostly casual user such as myself could never understand.
But wouldn’t you know it, I can now upload and manage my photos a lot easier, and I broke my USB hub? So I can’t connect my card reader to the computer until I get a new one. That kinda sucks, but the new one will be here on Monday. So, until then, I will be photoless.
In the meantime, I bought some card-making supplies today. Mod Podge, colorful papers, some cutting tools, etc. I think I need some more stuff, like those little die cutters that make fun shapes and stuff. Last week I bought some confetti, and some card stock that will go through my printer, that has a feathered edge. I really want to pretty up the knitted note cards I’ve been making. I think this could get really addictive.
Pssst… have you heard? Knit Picks is having a yarn sale. Oh yeah, I ordered. Don’t tell anyone, K?
Tomorrow is Worldwide Knit in Public Day. I’ll be at the Bowie Borders with my peeps at 2 p.m. If you’re in the neighborhood, come on by and knit a spell! We’d love to have you.
