Tuesday, September 02, 2008

A potpourri of stuff…

Clearly, a clever post-title is beyond me today :)

I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday weekend.  Dad is doing better - even finding some of his appetite again.  We had headed out to our favorite diner yesterday, only to find that while it indeed had been open, we had missed it’s abbreviated holiday hours by about 20 minutes.  So we wound up at Friendly’s, across the river.

Nothing to write home about, I guess, but reasonably good.  Dad managed about half of his clams and cole slaw which is a whole lot better than he’d been doing.  And I had something I haven’t tasted in years - a hot fudge sundae with peppermint ice cream.  Heaven!

I am terribly relieved that dad is finally showing some signs of improvement but it is a mixed blessing.  He’s much less obnoxious when he’s not feeling too chipper :)

His new furniture arrived Saturday morning and he is very happy with it.  I have begun work on his afghan and right now, I’m a little concerned about being able to find enough of the Country Blue color.  So far, I’ve only located (and bought) 2 skeins of it.  I’m going to need a lot more than that!  The Light Gray is plentiful so that color won’t be a problem.

Yup, this is the same blanket I made for both Myria and myself earlier this year (there should be links to the pattern on both of those pages).  What can I say?  You don’t mess with a winning formula.  There are only two colors this time so the whole will be a bit simpler than either of the previous two incarnations.  It will be rescued from complete tedium by inverting the color scheme on alternate squares.  We live exciting lives around here :)

While I am trying to focus almost exclusively on the blanket, an alternate project is sneaking in now and again for a few minutes once in a while.

This is the wool/mohair lace weight I found last week.  I’m liking it so far.  It’s not bad at all to work with and works up nicely.  This is just part of a garter stitch triangle - what should have been the beginning of a new entrelac design.  Unfortunately, this is the second try and it still isn’t right.  That doesn’t have anything to do with the yarn; apparently I have forgotten how to count.  The first time I cast on I wound up with way too few stitches because I had mis-remembered the number of stitches for each lace unit.  It should have been, for four units of 25 stitches, 100 stitches cast on.  For some totally inexplicable reason, I thought the lace units were only 21 stitches across… I got the count right the second time - or thought I did - but I suspect I’m going to have to rip this back too because I keep coming up with extra stitches.

Oh yeah - and this frogs just as you would expect any mohair to frog - reluctantly.

But I did discover something totally neat :) I have had good luck, when casting on for entrelac, using a needle about 2 sizes larger than the one I want to work the piece with.  So, using the above piece as an example, I want to work with a size 6 US (4.25 mm) needle.  I did the cast on with a size 8 US (5.00 mm) needle...and suddenly realized that if you’re using circular needles (I was) and further, if those circular needles belong to an interchangeable set (they do) then all you have to do, making sure the cast on stitches are all safely on the cable, unscrew the larger needles and screw in the smaller ones!  Yee-hah!

I also did some dyeing a couple of days ago - how long has it been?  I had used 4 balls of pink Peer Gynt wool to make the Here, Kitty, Kitty scarf and I had 4 balls of it left.  The pink was not a color I loved and I’m trying to move away from that anyway - so I dyed the remainder.

As this was drying, I kept thinking what a nice hair color it would make :) For 200 grams of wool, I used (Easter egg dye tablets) 4 yellow, 3 orange, 1 red and about 1/4 to 1/3 blue.  Standard Crock Pot procedure, wash, rinse and hang to dry.  I really like the color but it is a bit more vivid than I was going for.





That’s because I’m sill working out just how much of the damping color (in this case, the blue) to use in order to mute a tone.  Too little and you wind up with something that may just be vivid - or may scream it’s head off.  Too much and you’ll wind up with mud-colored yarn.

Myria and I are headed up to Maine tomorrow and hope, for the first time in a long time, to make a day of it.  I plan on bringing my new camera and filling its little memory card with pictures of everything under the sun, but especially the ocean.  I love the ocean :)

And I love my camera :)

If I don’t make it back to the blog this week…

See the “Knitting Chatter” button on the side bar for more information.

...Chatters is definitely on for Saturday night.  Bring your knitting (crocheting, tatting, what-have-you!) and drop in for some pleasant conversation!

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1. I cannot get in to chat with you!  :( I sometimes get the log in screen, but no matter what I do it tells me there is an error and the “administrator has disabled chat"…

   I was looking forward to a nice chat, too!  :(

   Posted by Kathleen  on  09/06  at  05:29 PM
   Location : ... in a wind-blown land



2. I accept no blame for the falling down on your part onto the merino/tencel. I am completely innocent on all counts. ;-)

   As for Red Heart? I like to use it to crochet afghans. It really is sturdy and it does come in some lovely colors.

   I love the motifs you’re making and I really admire your skill. I’ve always been afraid of joining motifs together.

   Posted by Opal  on  09/08  at  02:41 PM
   Location : h

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