OCD....Knitting

I am still here, haven't jumped off the edge or anything....at least not yet. I don't have much to report in the way of knitting, but I'm trying like crazy to get to it, life is just not cooperating that much.

A few things to talk about: first of all, I bit the bullet and decided to stay with my current cellular provider and buy myself a snazzy, real phone. Instead of making due with the crappy free, cuz they suck phones. Here's what I got:
Dana's new phone Pretty cool huh? I opted for the titanium one as opposed to the girly pink one, cuz some days I don't feel like wearing pink, and I would rather look cool than trendy.

I went to the dentist this week and that's always a fun experience. I suffer from TMJ (trust me, the word is waaaayyy too long for me to spell out for ya) and I'm really doing a number on my teeth. So, I've ordered a new sexy mouth piece to sleep in. Try not to be jealous of my cool-ness. But hey, who wants totally flat molars when they're facing a large juicy steak.

I don't have any pictures to show, as I'm once again without the camera. I have a new camera phone, but just haven't taken the time to set up shots of stuff I've managed to find time to work on. Currently, I'm almost finished with a new mosaic phone case for the Razr, I finished my sandal socks since Candie's season is almost upon us, and I finally .....tah dah!! started my sock pal socks. I love the color and wish they were for me.

It's not the clearest picture, as I'm still learning how to work the ole phone/camera but you can get an idea of the color. It's Baby Ull, and kinda splitty, but I'm getting the hang of it. I am actually further along into the pattern than this picture shows, but that will have to wait till my next post.

The proudest moment of my weekend was my daughter's gymnastics meet. She was just at exhibition level, but she had a great time and gained important experience for her next meet. Gotta love this grin:

And no, Roger Rabbit is not her father. I feel very strongly about not posting pictures of children on public websites, so I used a handy feature and turned her into a cartoon. This way, you can see her fabulous smile, her medal, and her salute (the pose) but it's still not exactly HER. With a smile like that, who could ever tell her no? I sat around at her meet from 10:30 am until about 4:00 pm, even though her portion lasted at best, an hour. I got some knitting done so that was worth it.

I'm off to cheer on the Wings tonight, and hopefully indulge in some good food in Mexican Town. Have a great weekend all, and I hope to have pictures to show you next week.

I have a small request. I am looking for Rowan's Magazine #37, Spring 2005. If anyone has this and would be interested in working out a trade, please send me a comment.

On a side note, Miles is doing fine, and looks much better after his bath yesterday. No trip to the vet was needed. Hooray!! More money for yarn!!

That's all for now!

And the Luck of the Irish to you and all that malarkey! I just wanted a reason to say malarkey. Any other time of the year that word would bring strange looks, but not today! I fit right in!!

Hopefully I'll be blowing off early from work and joining the crowds in the celebrating. But that is still yet to be determined. I'm working my angles now.

On another note, I just wanted to take a sec to post about my puppy. I call him puppy but he's actually going to be 12 in July. He's a Sheltie, and I've had him since he was about 6 weeks old-he was literally all nose and ears then, and not much else. Oh, and his name is Miles. Anyway, my daughter pointed out Wednesday morning that Miles had something wrong with him. Truth be told, he looked like he duked it out in the yard with a squirrel or something, cuz he has a goose egg under his left eye. It was puffing up so much that his eye was actually squinching closed. Well I've been keeping my eye on him the last two days, and it hasn't really changed at all. I thought maybe he got bit by something or the bone he was chewing on irritated something in his mouth - he always looks like he's about to swallow them whole.

Well, this morning I let him outside as usual and when he came back in I noticed he was bleeding from the big puffy goose egg. Poor guy, he probably had about enough of that "thing" on his face, and tried to rub it off in the grass. He was kinda batting at it with his paw every time I examined him, like "hey ma, could you get this thing off my face?" Anyway so he was bleeding and I had to help him. I laid him down on the bathroom floor with a roll of paper towels and the peroxide and went to work. Holy cow, that was nasty. It was blood mixed with I-don't-know-what kinda oozey stuff. So I kept wiping and squeezing (gently of course) trying to work the yuck outta him. He's so good about that kind of stuff, very patient and all but I couldn't help notice the look on his face that said, "hey ummm any time you're done poking with my face, I'd really rather be anywhere but here". So as I was putzing around his eye, the only thing that came to mind was Rocky Balboa (ok, so I've seen all the movies about a hundred times-Yo Adrian!) and his trainer in the corner during his first title fight, and his eye is swollen shut and he says "cut me Mick, I gotta see". I opted not to take that route, and just wiped it up and cleaned it with peroxide. I'm guessing a trip to the vet will be in order. Luckily, he stays in his cage all day so at least I won't go home to a St. Patrick's day massacre scene or anything!

Anyway, that's what I have going on right now. Not alot of knitting to report, I "finished" the striped hat for the coach at my daughter's gym, but when I tried it on last night it looked suitable for the Coneheads, so I'm guessing I need to rip back one or two color changes and start the decreases a bit sooner than the pattern called for. I was working on my socks last night, and obviously fell asleep while doing them, cuz I woke up this morning with them shoved onto the floor and I may have dropped a stitch in the process. So, I'll need to look at that too! Probably not tonight though, don't know if green beer and knitting would be such a great combo. Actually, no green beer for me as us Celiacs have to avoid that, but I'm sure I'll come up with something suitable.

Oh, speaking of Celiacs, I have to give a shout-out to my new favorite store that finally opened up. It's Belcibo (pronounced Bell-Cheebo) in Clawson. They have carry-out pizza for freaks like me!! Too cool! I'll be there this weekend at some point for sure!

Have a great weekend!

I just love chunky knitting! This is the hat for the coach at my daughter's gym, and it's just zooming right along. I'm hoping to have it complete enough for him to try it on tomorrow night, and then the scarf should be a snap, except for weaving in the ends. The only drawback to multi-color knitting. But, it's going fast enough that I think I can handle a little weaving to finish it.
These are the socks I was talking about in my last post.
Cute huh?
This is how the first one came out. I'm using some leftover sock yarn, so it's not as brightly colored as the above pic, but my Candie's are black so it won't show anyway, and if it peeks out a bit, it's color coordinated...like I planned it or sumthin!

Speaking of socks, here's my Lorna's socks. I got impatient with the idea of only doing 1 at a time, so I cast on for the second one at the dentist yesterday (my daughter got a sparkling report, as usual!) and did the cuff while they cleaned her teeth. I transferred it to the 2 circs when I got home last night and started in on the pattern repeats on both.
The colors seemed to be pretty fairly represented in the photos and in person are even brighter, which I love! It's been kinda gloomy lately, so this little boost
of color has been a welcome change.
It's been curling up a bit on me but I'm hoping once I get a little further along the weight will pull it straight.

Enjoy the sun while we have it. After all, it's Michigan and as they say "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes and it will change on ya!"

Have a great day, Friday is only 2 days away!

I love it when I'm able to put a big check mark next to that list in my head of works in progress! I don't even mind shoving the pen thru my brain to do it! It's such a great feeling to say, oh yes, I've finished another project. I was test knitting a top for Marnie Maclean and sent her the pics today, for her approval. Here is a sneak peak at what I made: The front: And here is a closeup of the back:
And a full size of the back: I still need to knit the straps, and now I have the proper placement marked as the intended recipient tried it on (at work, yep, my boss is gone AGAIN!).

I sent some pics off to the designer, gave her a couple of my comments, and there you go!

I also made 1 of these this weekend: Sandal socks. I have a pair of Candie's that I love love love, but they hurt - A LOT! And that just won't do, so with some leftover sock yarn I have attempted to remedy that. I will post pics of those in and out of the shoes when they are complete.

I also started my next pair of socks, out of that lovely Lornas in the pink/purples that I posted previously. Can't wait to see the pattern develop. I decided to copy Amby and make mine out of the same pattern she's using for her next pair. Eh, I wasn't feeling too creative and those looked like they'd go quickly but not be boring.

I managed to finally find some Tang, so I can now create the yummy Tang-tini/Science Experiment that Amby so kindly posted recently. I love going shopping and employing the help of the workers there. It's good to be a girl. "Excuse me sir, where might I find some Tang?" As he scurries off to look I'm able to continue shopping and then said gentleman comes back, out of breath, saying "Oh, it was buried on the bottom shelf , and there were other products in front of it." Now, can you picture me crawling around on the floor reaching toward the back of a shelf, trying to find something I've never bought before? NO? Me either. It's good to be a girl. And when I asked this same gentleman about some bacon that seems to be discontinued, he said he would check into it for me as I continued shopping. Several aisles later, he found me once again, and said "here, this is very similar to the discontinued item, would you like to try it?" It's good to be a girl. So, needless to say, I had a very productive shopping trip to the local Kroger yesterday, and all is well in the grocery world. It's good to be a girl. Now, if only they carried garment steamers. Or maybe that guy could go work at Joann's....there's an idea!

Happy Monday all!

After some of the projects that have been hanging on forever, I decided to reward myself with something fast and pretty. Saturday's shopping in Birmingham proved to be very enjoyable and I saw this lovely shade of Noro Silk Garden. Actually, I think it called out to me, "hey lady, I'd look great on your head, you know how much you like purple, and besides, I'll match your gloves!" No, I hadn't been drinking yet. But that's what I heard. And of course, with Kirsti enabling me "you should, it's lovely" I HAD to. No choice about it. So this lovely color begged me to become this:
See, this is why I had to have it! The sunlight makes it look wonderful. Never mind that I was out front at work snapping pictures and the gang at the party store probably thought I was nuts! They look much better with natural light! (My FO's, NOT the gang at the party store!)

These are my official FO photo of my SO's socks, and to prevent any previously un-proven borrowing of other socks, his initial is on each one, so there's no mistake those are HIS socks!

Here's some more of my stash enhancement from our "Yarn Experience" in Birmingham. I won't bore you with all the details, as my friend Amby has already eloquently detailed the day. But this is what I found.
This was my first venture into Lorna-territory and again the colors were just calling me! Can you see a trend here?

Next, I decided to add to my collection the felted clog pattern and the black Cascade 220. I had the purple Cascade 220 already, and the black will make a proper "sole" for these cute slippers.

I too, decided to indulge in the sock yarn with Aloe in it, so JP and I will just have to consult each other before we wear our matching socks.

I took several pictures of the sweaters I claimed as my own at the thrift stores we visited on Saturday, but the pictures were too dark to show the detail. But trust me, for not a lot of money, I walked out with some really nice future projects. One of them is 100% silk, and after searching some links yesterday about recycling yarn, I'm inspired to deconstruct and re-use this beautiful fiber. One sweater I'm probably not going to destroy though bore this tag. There are absolutely no seams in this sweater, and the sleeves look very much like the gusset of a sock, with stitches picked up. I'll be bringing this sweater to the next meetup and will give everyone an opportunity to analyze this gentleman's craftsmanship. I highly doubt I'll have the heart to deconstruct it, but who knows, maybe I was meant to learn from it and then put it to good use.

All in all, it was a great shopping day, and having received 1/2 off the already affordable sweaters just topped my day. We had a great early dinner of sushi in Troy, and I spent a few hours trying to deconstruct the silk sweater. I say "trying" cuz I didn't make much progress until last night after I checked out some links about this process. I have renewed faith that I will be able to pull this off. Some people even sell their fiber on e-bay. I'm always looking for new ways to quit my job, so who knows!

Have a great day!

I love Michigan! It's such a great place to live. Are you convinced? Neither am I. A little freezing rain falls and people freak out like it's 10 feet of snow or something. It's only snow people!! And I'm betting today wasn't your first day in it!! So needless to say, I had a fabulous commute this morning. Can't wait to get out there and do it again later.

I am kinda excited to get outta here tonight though, cuz I'm hoping to go check out Munro Crafts in Berkley. The ladies at Haberman's in Royal Oak couldn't say enough about their selection and one lady even described their collection as "orgasmic". Holy cow, we ARE still talking about beads right? Well, since my recent attempts at beading, I'm bitten and am anxious to find nicer beads to work with than our local Joann's can offer.

I worked up a swatch last night to test out the yarn and my ability to change colors for the hat/scarf combo I'm going to make for the guy at my daughter's gym. Here's where I'm at:
This is the pattern I'm using, and by holding 2 strands together of the acrylic (he's young and on a budget) that he bought me, I am getting very close to the same gauge that's called for in the pattern. If you open up the pic so it's larger can you see the lines of black that are showing up on the white? Yeah, I can, and it's bugging me. So, I decided to employ a technique I have read about in many different places. Jogless knitting I think it's called. The idea is to knit (only) the first row of color change instead of following the ribbing pattern written in the pattern. The results are this:
I like this much better!

And this is how the wrong side looks:
I think at least for the hat this is a better way to go. The scarf done this way will have a more definitive right side and wrong side, and I might choose to do the scarf the standard way to minimize the funky pattern.

That's all for now-drive carefully everyone....It's Sleeting!! Oh, and just cuz you drive an SUV or something doesn't make you invincible, so slow down dummy! And quit tail-gating too! It gets on my nerves!