Just a quick post to show you some spinning! I haven’t washed either of these skeins yet, so I can’t say for sure what their final stats will be, but I’m rather proud of them, so I’d like to show them off : )
M
It’s that time of year that seems to run away from you. When I was in school it seemed like May was always hasty and over before you knew it and I attributed this to dress rehersals, final exams, performances and papers all coming due at the close of the school year. But I’m not in school, nor have I been for a few years, and still the month of May just flew right by.
And now the hectic season begins. I’m marking time between one trip and another (Estes Park… Brilliant* Family Picnic… New York/Philadelphia…..) and it seems like I’ll hardly be home from one before I’m off on another.
The deadlines are coming thick and fast too. I’ve got a small handspun project for Wooly Wonka’s Fiber Club and the contract piece that are both due on June 15th, then a bunch of lace that needs to be done at various points before the middle of October, and some pieces without contracts that are burning a hole in my brain. I just HAVE to get them out and into knitting!
But I can show you a sneak peak of the contract piece I’m working on right now, although I can’t tell you the details.
The yarn is Queensland Collection Kathmandu Aran Tweed, which is 85% Merino Wool, 10% Silk and 5% cashmere. The yarn itself is really nice, and would make a really great sweater! I’m still not sure it was the best choice for this project, but I think it could work. And it’s all a matter of my opinion in regard to the competition between tweed and pattern. And it’s quite possible that I will block it and suddenly it will be fine and I’ll have worried for nothing…. but I never know until I get there. I’m probably about 2/3 done, and it’s going quickly, so I may have time to finish the pair of socks I started before I leave for Estes.
M
*No, I don’t have a really high opinion of myself ; )… my pre-married name was Brilliant.
Check out Sandy’s Icarus shawl! It’s lovely Sandy! That alpaca drapes so well!
The Random Number Generator has spoken and e-mails have been sent out. The 3 winners are:
My grand plans for today involve lunch with my coworker friend Deb, and sushi dinner with my some good friends in my apartment building. C has been working on a rather astonishingly large collection of presents, and I feel like it will be a good day.
So I was upside down when I was ready to be born. They had tried in vain to turn me, and I just wanted to go feet first, I guess. They had scheduled a C-section for June 3rd (I would have then shared a birthday with Laurie), but on May 31st I decided I was coming. And had I been 30 min. earlier I would have been born in May, but instead I was born in the wee hours of June 1st.
Some things are said about people with birthdays on the first of a month. Something about being bossy as I recall. When you combine that with my gemini tendencies, it sort of explains a lot ; )
M
So I had to show you what I found when I got to work today.
There are so many streamers that I have to limbo to get into my desk! It’s fabulous!
A man who was here for some training stopped when saw the streamers:
Man: So it’s your birthday?
Me: Yes, it is!
Man: Sorry to hear that.
Me: ….. *blink*
Totally not what I was expecting him to say.
Don’t forget the contest! E-mail me your answers to those 3 questions in that post and I’ll put you in the drawing for one of three prizes.
#3 Tell me something you take great pleasure in and why?
Ever since I was little I’ve always noticed the details… the very small things that make up the bigger picture. I actually tend to obsess over those small things, and I have a tendency to anthropomorphize them as well, but I take GREAT amounts of pleasure in them, and a few small things can make the difference between a bad day and a good day. There are just way too many of them for me to pick just one, so I’ll just list some of my favorites. Take a minute after you read each one to revel in the feeling of it and I guarantee your day will be better.
M
Don’t forget the contest! E-mail me your answers to those 3 questions in that post and I’ll put you in the drawing for one of three prizes.
#2 What is your favorite book and why?
I asked this question, knowing full well that I couldn’t answer it without some waffling. If we’re speaking philosophically, my favorite book is probably Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury because books in general are so important to me and this book always reminds me to be vigilant and wary of a world where censorship of ideas reigns.
But if we’re talking favorite book to re-read over and over again for pure entertainment purposes, it could be Night of the Avenging Blowfish by John Welter. That book never fails to make me laugh out loud and also usually cry as well. Any book with Stealth Kites made of plastic wrap and straws can’t be bad, right?
Also, I’ve recently been reminded of my great love for The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. My Aunt J gave me her second copy while I was staying with her and I immediately started reading it again. It’s a good reminder that every woman, no matter what she looks like, is made beautiful by the spirit within her. I get something different from this book every time I read it.
Hey, make sure you check out the Sneak Peek for a new documentary “Handmade Nation”. The video is here.
Oh, and thanks for all the great comments on Tilia! : ) You sure know how to make a girl blush!
M
Don’t forget the contest! E-mail me your answers to those 3 questions in that post and I’ll put you in the drawing for one of three prizes.
#1 What is your dream job and why?
My dreamjob is hard to describe… I’m pretty good at making myself miserable at any job I do, but if I can be excited for the things I get to do that day at work, then that makes it a good job for me. If it’s not HARD to keep myself happy instead of letting myself get depressed with it, then it’s a good job. I think my dream job would be to run a bakery/cafe. Of course, this is subject to change at any minute. Tomorrow I could want to be an underwater photographer, but for now, the bakery is it. A lot of people said that they would like to own or work in a yarn shop or design full time. But let me tell you, working on someone else’s deadlines and fighting with yarn companies to just send you the damn yarn already isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing it the part time that I do, but doing it full time would probably get really old.
With a bakery or cafe, there would be the regulars who act as your friendly coworkers, you can chat with them, hear about their kids… and you can bake something new every day, or experiment with perfecting a recipe. You can sit and read or check e-mail or whatever while you’re waiting for something to come out of the oven. It’s got early morning hours, but I LOVE early morning hours : )
And yesterday I finished all the sewing and facings on Tilia, so here she is.
Pattern: Tilia from Elsebeth Lavold’s Book 8 The Enchanted Garden
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool in Verdigris
Needles: 3.25mm and 3.75mm 24″ Addi Turbos. That’s US 3 & 5 respectively.
Modifications: As chronicled here, I added gussets to the sides to allow for my ample hips. I also made the whole thing shorter (the length would have ended up looking like a tunic on me and that’s not what I wanted), also, as I neared the sleeve caps, I found that my stitch count wasn’t quite right yet, so I changed the rate of increases right at the underarm to account for it. But other than that, I think this is the most closely I’ve followed a pattern in quite a while!
Verdict: I love it! It fits nicely, and it’s comfortable. I’m wearing it right now in fact. The one thing that is a little wonky is that because of the shape of the sleeve cap, I can’t lift my arms much before the sweater’s hem starts to lift and the collar starts to gape. But really, in the scheme of things, those are very small problems. Silky Wool took me a bit to get used to. It’s sort of sticky, even on Addi Turbos. And it will NEVER give you perfectly even little stitches. It’s just the nature of teh beast. It needs to be given the room of being knit on a larger-than-you’d-think-appropriate needle, and the finished fabric has a crepey texture that I really like.
M
Check out Sarah’s finished Seraphim Shawl! She made it square! It’s lovely, but yes, there is twice as much knitting : )
Also, don’t miss Hannah’s finished Seraphim Shawl either! She made hers triangular, but pulled off the old world woman from a kibbutz look very well! I love the color Hannah! *sorry for the missed link, it’s fixed now!*
EDITED TO ADD: Just a reminder that posts in the comments will NOT be counted toward the drawing. You need to e-mail your answers as instructed below for them to count.
I’m in Califronia right now, so this post is being brought to you by the magic of the time-stamp feature!
It’s about time for a contest and some prizes, yes?
So it’s really simple. In order to be entered into the contest, just send an e-mail to contest@mimknits.com with your answers to these 3 questions.
E-mail me your answers to these 3 questions by 12:27 am Mountain Time on Friday, June 1st (the exact moment at which I will be a quarter of a century old) and I’ll pick 3 random winners. I’ve got a sock-themed prize, a lace-themed prize and a spinning-themed prize. So get your mojo working and send those e-mails!
M
Thanks to everyone who left condolences. I will pass them on to my family. I started responding to everyone, but I got really busy and haven’t finished. I’ll try to send you all a note, but it might take me a while. I finally got my flight figured out (and by the by… no one seems to offer bereavement rates anymore), so I’ll be there for the memorial service.
Today I am wearing some jewelry that he made for me. The strand of rice pearls he gave me when I was 12 and the jade and silver ring that I literally dreamed up and then told him about, which he made for me. He hand shaped the stone too.
I remembered to take pictures of Tilia and her full figured gussets, so here she is.
I was trying to decide what would be least disruptive for the ribbing on the gusset. The options I considered were:
Since the sweater was designed to be seamed so that the seam made on knit 2 rib down the side with the seam in the middle of it, the gusset done in this way fit right in! If you click on the gusset picture, I’ve marked where the gusset ends with a flickr note.
I also learned that you have to be very careful matress stitching with silky wool. It starts to untwist and then falls apart. I have to make sure that I keep the plys twisted together enough to keep it one strand.
The sleeve are almost to the sleeve caps, so I might even get the pieces finished before I leave. Sadly, the yarn for the contract piece that has been so horrendously delayed showed up on the magazine person’s desk today. So it’s being fedexed to me, but it won’t be here in time for me to take it with me, which is too bad. Airport waiting and flight times would make short work of the deadline piece and leave me not so stressed about it. Oh well.
M
I had plans to post today, but my grandpa (Dad’s dad) passed away this afternoon. He was sick, but we thought he was getting better. He had cancer of the lining of his chest, and was getting chemo, but then he had a bad reaction to the chemo drugs. He was getting better from the reaction and then stopped eating, but was eating again now.
Well…. what can you do.
M
I could have a picture of Tilia’s finished body and half finished sleeves, except that I woke up at 7:30 this morning and realized it was Monday, I had forgotten to set my alarm and I had a half hour to get dressed, pack my shit and get to work in order to not be late to start at 8:00 am. I made it, but I was pretty shaky by the time I got there.
It was a good weekend all in all. Lots of relaxing, a bit of meditation, a couple epiphanies, some spinning, a WHOLE LOT of knitting and seaming, and the realization that IKEA opens in the Salt Lake Valley on Wednesday! Woot! I hear there are people planning on camping out, but I won’t be one of them. That’s a little TOO crazy for me. I’ll probably make it out there this week though, as I am just CRAZY for IKEA. I don’t know exactly what it is… the clean lines, the your-house-is-a-blank-canvas approach, the some assembly required (which I LOVE) or maybe just the cheap furniture thing… I don’t know, but I love IKEA with a passion that cannot be put into words. Some of my favorite kitchen things are from IKEA and they’ve got a fold-out-from-the-wall table that I think may give C and I a place to actually SIT (!) AND EAT (!!) in our small apartment. I want to look at nightstands, lamps and a chair for my desk, but I will try to fight the urge to buy a new couch and a wardrobe and a whole new set of dishes and kitchen utensils. : D
I did photograph and enter another good chunk of my stash into Ravelry. It’s astonishing when you look at it all collected like that. You don’t realize quite how much yarn you have until you take it out and catalog it. Also fondling my laceweight yarn stash made me really LONG to design another lace shawl. I’ve got a couple contracted, but one of them was stalled by overseas yarn that never showed up and the other is on hold until I finish the most recent contract piece (who’s yarn should hopefully have been sent by now).
Oh, also… it’s C and my anniversary on Thursday. Our tradition is that instead of buying each other gifts, we buy a boxed set of movies that we want and go out to eat. We’ve already decided on the X-Men Trilogy, but we haven’t decided where to eat. Any local people have recommendations?
M
Check out Ellen’s finished Seraphim Shawl in custom dyed yarn from Sundara! *drool* It’s lovely!
