Goal Setting

Above is my Blackbird Shawl.  I want to work on it.  I don't know why, but it seems like the timeline for this shawl has been slightly screwy from the get-go.  Let me demonstrate:

Week 1:  1 inch of progress
Weeks 2-3: Another inch of progress, finished two charts and started stockinette stitch section

Weeks 4-7: Half inch of stockinette stitch knit.

This seems like the exact OPPOSITE of what's supposed to happen, since the shawl is worked from the bottom up, so there are less stitches each row.  According to my calculations, after the last row there will be zero stitches and I won't work on the project ever again - wait, that's supposed to happen.

All jokes aside, I don't think I will ever finish this shawl unless I set a goal, so here it goes:

This shawl will be finished before Rhinebeck.

That's a little over a month.  Fingers crossed!

My Random Monday - 9/12

1. The flower of the week is goldenrod.  It is EVERYWHERE around here!

2.  I cleaned up today (more than usual) and unpacked some figurines that W got me for my birthday:

They're supposed to be for kids, but I just think they're cute! <3

3.  School is REALLY busy and kind of frustrating.  It's hard for me to read things that I don't like/don't agree with, how I got this far in the environmental field I don't know.  But, this really made me spit out my coffee today:

"... is becoming increasingly central to religion, science, medicine, literature, the arts and women."

Really? Why women and not men? Are women more eco-contientious? This just seems sexist to me! It's from Ch. 1 of Paul Hawken's "Ecology of Commerce."  I'm going to refrain from critiquing this gem for the sake of my future career.

4. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the things I'm supposed to - I guess the mystical-sounding word would be "on the path of my destiny." If I am on the right path, I'm a little peeved that that path has led me to live in my boyfriend's run-down college apartment with three other people I barely know and who seem to have a problem with the fact I keep fresh veg in the crisper.

Damage Control

As you might (or might not) know, there's been a lot of rain in my hometown, and even more in W's hometown. Roads are flooded, people are drying off knickknacks with hair dryers in the laundry... etc. W's mom's house has had some major changes.

Grass has been pressed down and covered in mud - you can see how far the flash flood reached.

The creek is still really high - you can't even tell where the banks were originally!

This tree appeared in the yard - we walked upstream and looked and peered but couldn't figure out where it came from!

The water is orange-ish because of the clay-ey soil in the area.

I also found this:

What kind of shrub is it!? I'm going to have to look it up when I get back to school.

I also checked the garden for save-able veg; most of the pumpkins and squash are still going strong, and the tomatoes are still ripening. I picked a bunch, but some had burst from all the rain.

You can't eat fruits and veg that have cracks like this - some people insist it's okay, but I firmly believe that you should put these tomatoes in the compost pile. The cracking lets in bacteria - if you wouldn't buy it in the grocery store, don't eat it from your garden. *steps off soap box*

There was also two flowers that fell down, so I cut them up and brought them in so they can live out the rest of their lives in the kitchen.

Happily, the single rose bush appears to be fine! When I look at it I think of the rose in The Little Prince.

Then it got dark and we went out for pizza, which was FULL of refugees - well, people that were too worried about their crop/livestock being safe to want to cook.

At home, we found a refugee of another kind!

 I'm not sure what kind of caterpillar is, but check out the tail!

While the damage WAS pretty bad, no one was hurt and the only thing that was lost was a few tomatoes, some junk that was stored in the basement, and part of the yard.  I'm sending prayers to those downstream, where the flooding wasn't flash - the photos that I've seen from Binghamton are absolutely horrible.  I also found a photo of the facility I used to work at! Yikes.

My Random Monday - September 5th 2011

L is for Limonium - flowers I bought :)

Also, the club fair was yesterday - Hooks and Needles got 78 new members! I bought lots of cups and juice for the first meeting, tonight. I can't wait :)

Fall 2010 Mood Boards!

Whoo hoo! Despite the horrible rain cloud that's been hanging over my head since last weekend, I've got the mood boards up for this round of Design Along!  I tried something new this time, and had people vote on images - last round, I had to do a TON of cropping, rotating, and resizing to get each image to fit into the three pages.  This round, I took the images with the most votes and plugged them into the boards with minimal formatting - I just stopped when I ran out of room.  The result is less images in (pretty much any images with less than 5 votes didn't get in) - I'm not sure how much I like them, but it was SO. MUCH. EASIER!

Anyway, the theme for the round was Fairytale.

Click on the images for larger ones - they are quite big :)

 

And now I want to say thanks to everyone that contributed!
sosoclever

yarn about yarn

Tinyknit

Rachael's Knits

The Sculpted Stitch

By Hand, With Heart

Melissa J. Leavitt Designs

soxnshawls

Bakuhatsu no Subarashii

DaneMum

wayfaring knitter

And everyone else who doesn't have a blog that I can stalk ;) If I forgot someone, let me know and I'll add you!

So, hope this inspires you - I can't wait to see the designs that come out of this round!  If you'd like to participate, check out the Design Along group on Ravelry - it's a TON of fun, and the community is really great.

Swatching!

I don't usually swatch, but I'm starting a baby project and wanted to perfect this pattern that I'm un-venting.  So, I took out my trusty winder (really, winding yarn into center-pull skeins needs to be less fun - NOT.) and found this!



I don't know a lot about spinning, but my hypothesis is this is the leader.  How often does this happen? Maybe we could calculate odds, and find out how lucky I am! I'm assuming that this doesn't happen very often.



Oh, the yarn I'm using is this new stuff from Cascade, "Pacific."  It is very soft, but sort of has an un-plying problem (anyone that's every used Caron Simply Soft probably knows what I'm describing.)  For a merino-acrylic mix, it has the feel of soft acrylic, but blocks out well.  Just from one swatch, I like it!



I like to keep my labels with my skeins, so here's a pick of my trick - a label extender - in case you were wondering how I did that.  As you work from the middle and the skein gets smaller, just move the tape.

Free Pattern - Sunflower

Originally, this pattern was supposed to be a whole scarf - tons of tiny sunflowers sewn together to make a stole.  But, I gave up on that - other projects got in the way.  I still want to make that stole, some day, maybe... eventually...

Anyway, these flowers would make a cute summer garland, or maybe a headband, or just knit up individually as coasters, brooches... whatever! The uses for knit flowers are seriously limitless.  I know.  I've made around a dozen of these puppies.  For amazing results, pair one with two knit leaves!

Anyway! Hope you enjoy this little pattern - it's more a set of notes than an actual 'pattern' - and if you make something totally inspired, let me know and I'll feature you! :)