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Rather than posting self generated content, here's the results of an online quiz: At a glance: In depth: My personalDNA Report

Back from the dead

Time flies. A lot has happened... I've been to some far places and some near places I've even managed to fit in a little knitting here and there Some of it quite little Others not so little

Happy Birthday to Me!

I am not sure if I should, but I do get an inordinate amount of pleasure from the fact that my various cards and gifts all coordinate. BTW - I have caved in and embraced the social network by re-activating a facebook account I cancelled over 3 years ago. If you'd like to be my friend, message me on ravelry to get my facebook user name

What's that Tweeting sound?

Since I am too lazy unable to sort out how to blog from my Blackberry (plus for some reason I can't upload Blackberry photos to Flickr), I have started to use my Twitter account. I actually first learned about Twitter back in 2007 when we were in Berlin. The Museum of Communications had an exhibit featuring a web page projected on a wall. Every few seconds, a random statement would appear from somewhere in the world. The exhibit explained that this was an online service which allowed people to post brief messages for all to see. There was a terminal that you could post at using the museum's account; I am pretty sure that we both posted something that day. Truth be told I was more impressed by the exhibit which showed photos of heavily tatooed people accompanied by their statements about what tatoos meant to them/why they did it, etc. Subsequently, Twitter became all the rage, and I opened a Twitter account last year, but I did very little with it. A month or 2 ago, a new twitter app showed up on my Blackberry which made it easy to log on. So now I'm following several knitting buddies and intermittently tweeting as LadyLungDoc.

Hey - I just knit a sweater!

I sat down with a 4.5 mm crochet hook tonight and ended up with a finished sweater: (Making do with a bathroom mirror reflection photo as nobody else is around to take a picture right now) Overall, I am relieved that it fits happy with the fit post blocking. However, I'm not sure about the neckline: The pattern instructions are to do a row of single crochet, but I am toying with the idea of ripping it out and doing a few rows of garter stitch, or at least another row or 2 of crochet. Since the sleeves and bottom of the garment both have a 1 cm garter border, the single row of crochet looks kind of skimpy to me. Any suggestions/opinions would be appreciated. One minor problem is that I used the leftover charcoal yarn as the contrast colour on my Twisted Vest, and I don't know if I"ll have enough to complete the I-cord and arm/bottom edging. Why do I so often find that projects intended to use up leftover yarn leave me having to buy another skein of the "leftovers"?

Ready To Wear

I didn't quite make my Labour Day target of completely finishing my Honest Tee, but I did get the ribbons sewn in and weave in the ends during the month of September: At some point I will have to "hem" the ends of the ribbons to prevent fraying: In addition to lengthening the top, my other significant modification was to extend the back so it would be the same length as the front. As written, the front narrows down to straps which get attached in the back. I suspected that this would lead to issues with bra strap coverage. Luckily I had adequate yarn - actually had a bit more than a full skein left over. Next up is sewing up and knitting the I-Cord trim on my Twisted Vest. I am hoping to get that done for next weekend when we take a short trip to Ottawa. But more exciting is this: Cast on January 2007. The only thing left to do is to crochet the edging on the neckline. I want to finish it in time to wear it home to Winnipeg for (Canadian) Thanksgiving.

Twisted

I do appreciate the supportive comments regarding my last post. I don't want to go into exactly what upset me; I have always been a very private person, and although I have read many posts about other blogger's personal tragedies, that's not how I roll. Fortunately, I have several IRL friends to talk to, and they have been a great help. But the virtual hugs are nice - many thanks. Luckily I am not back to work until next week, so I have some time to sort things out. *********************************************** Ages ago, during my second SeaSocks cruise, we went to Tricoter in Seattle. One of the women who run the shop is quite a talented designer who can sit down with you and come up with a simple pattern that works for you and the yarn you have selected. There was a sample tank top which had been knit out of 2 different types of Blue Moon Fibre Arts yarn: Twisted and a mohair blend (Silkmo? Kidmo?) I wasn't crazy about the texture that the mohair added, so I instead got a skein of Twisted and a skein of Geisha, (which is a mohair yarn with minimal halo), as well as a pattern for the tank based on my measurements. It has sat in the stash with other potential projects since then. A few weeks ago, I decided to instead use the Twisted to knit a Jellybean Vest. I had hoped that I would be able to complete it over the Labour Day weekend, but I ended up doing other things that weekend so didn't make that much progress. A single skein of Twisted is 512 metres, so based on the pattern requirements, I knew I would be cutting it close. In an attempt to make the yarn go further, I cast on with contrasting yarn which I will use for the armhole edging as well as the "wrap". The mock wrap is an I-cord which runs up the front and the neckline edging; at the end, stitches are picked up along this diagonal band for the applied I-cord. Very neat idea. After knitting the front, I had exactly half of the skein left. Since the back will use more yarn, I knew that I would not have enough yarn. It would have been OK if I hadn't had to lengthen it, but then the waist would have sat at the bottom of my ribcage. Luckily, there was another Toronto knitter (Dr Steph) who had used the same colourway of Twisted to knit a baby sweater, and she has been kind enough to send me her leftovers. By the way, the colourway is "Carbon". Initially I thought it was the magenta that drew me to it... ...but maybe there was more to it than that: Somehow, shedding on this is much less satisfying than usual. One of the "other things" that kept me from The Twisted Vest" on the long weekend was this: This is a Buttonhole Mobius Wrap. I am knitting it with Silk Garden Sock yarn held together with Estelle Cadenza. The idea for that mix came from a shawl pattern created by Martina at Kniterary . The one-row buttonholes are much easier than I had initially thought. My goal is to finish this in time for me to wear it to a wedding at the end of October. I also visited Mokuba (which is a totally awesome shop - makes me want to knit more projects that feature ribbons!) on the long weekend and found some ribbon for my Honest Tee: There was a different ribbon which appealed to me more on the spool, but surprisingly, this ribbon looked much better threaded through the eyelets. Kind of like how sometimes handpainted yarn looks better in the skein than it does knitted up. Now it is just a matter of figuring out the best way to anchor the ribbons at the top and bottom. There needs to be a bit of give to it; I will have to try the top on and do a bunch of torso contortions to figure out how much exactly.

Crewel world

Mommy started a new project today. It's not knitting - it is a vintage needlework/applique collage. She says that she needs something to distract her... ...because today everything got turned upside down. She feels sad and mad and confused all at once... ...and just needs some time to figure out what to do. Maybe cutting up bits of felt and stitching them onto some fabric will soothe her more than mindless knitting will. Or maybe it won't. Maybe she will just cry herself to sleep instead.

The Summer Finishes...

Now that they are officially above board, they spend all their time in the back window. Cats. Sigh. I managed to finish 2 projects since I last posted: These booties took me almost 3 years to make. Okay - truth be told, the knitting part took a weekend, crocheting the first 2 button loops took about 5 minutes, and then there was a 30+ month interval between that and me crocheting the last 2 button loops and sewing on the buttons. I am able to rationalize the time out because they were definitely boy colours, and the babies born in the interval form whom I would knit something were either girls, or were unknown genders and thus required gender neutral colours. (I realize that that excuse does not apply to the rest of my long list of UFO's.Oh well. )But now the wife of one of The Gambler's fencing coaches is expecting a boy. So I had the incentive to finish them. I also finished knitting my Honest Tee: In this case, it's just the knitting that is finished. I am still going to have to weave in ends, block it, and sew it up. I had toyed with the idea of knitting it in the round, but since this yarn apparently stretches after washing, I decided the seams might minimize bagging. And even though one of the benefits of knitting in the round is being able to try the garment on as you work it, it's possible to do it with pieced garments: I created temporary seams with T-pins that my Secret Pal so brilliantly gifted to me: The shoulder was "seamed" by alternating front and back stitches on the needle: There were 2 key learning points to doing the temporary seams: 1) Insert the pins with the points facing upward if you are going to pull the garment on over your head. This minimizes the likelihood that the pins will jab into you. 2) It is best to leave a bit of a gap below the underarm join, because if the pin sticks into the armhole proper, your armpit is going to get stuck. Now my goal is to get it to wearable state by Labour Day. Labour Day 2010, that is.

What's more fun than 6 inches of 3x2 ribbing?

7 inches of 3x2 ribbing! Someone on Ravelry had commented that this top was a bit short. So for reasons that are still not clear to me, I decided to add an extra inch to the ribbing. [This is after knitting 6 inches of the ribbing with 3 mm needles before admitting to myself that negative ease is not a good idea in the waist area.]. I decided to take a break from knitting the front to work on the ribbing for the back, and I am finding it incredibly tedious. I think that the eyelet section in the front at least broke it up a bit. I have also added some length to the non-ribbed section of the top, and I suspect that I will be adding some length to the section above the armholes. This is another reason to start working on the back before finishing the front - if I catch up to the front, I can try it on before I cast off for the neckline. I find it somewhat ironic that I won't be putting the front and back onto the same circular needle until after the armhole shaping begins rather than knitting it all in one piece.