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Well, I'm doing Ravelympics - I'm a co-captain of TeamResolutions2010. I wish I'd realized there was going to be an "unraveling" event, because I totally would've waited to unravel my sweater until then! What sweater, you ask? Well, long, long ago, my cousin wore a sweater-vest with a cute little "Argyle hearts" motif:
So, I started one. (See this entry from November, 2008.)
But I wasn't really happy with it, so, in January this year, I unraveled it:
Then turned it into nice, happy little balls of yarn:
Once the torch was lit (I counted the first flame going up as "start"), I cast on the front right panel, and I've gotten pretty far. I also made some changes. First, the tiny heart in the diamond over the big heart on the bottom row of Argyle-type stuff is centered. You can see in the old one that it wasn't, and it looks better centered.
New
Old
I'm just shy of the first armhole decreases now, and the left front should go MUCH more quickly, since I won't be trying to figure out the pattern as I go.
Don't know if I'll finish, now that I have to be back at work all day, but I'm going to have fun trying!
What I read last week:
The Back of the Jacket:
I have sworn upon the River Styx that the events in this book are purely fictional.
There is no such twelve-year-old boy as Perseus "Percy" Jackson. The Greek gos are nothing more than old myths. They certainly never have children with mortals in the twenty-first century, nor is there any such place as Camp Half-Blood, a summer camp for demigods on eastern Long Island where I train young heroes to survive against their monstrous enemies. Percy never met a satyr or a daughter of Athena. They most emphatically did not embark upon a quest together across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods.
Having said this, I must warn you to think carefully before starting this book. If you feel anything stirring within you as you read - if you being to suspect that this story may be describing something about your own life - STOP READING IMMEDIATELY. I cannot be held responsible for the consequences.
May the gos of Olympus (who of curse do not exist) watch over you.
Yours sincerely, CHIRON KENTAVROS
Immortal Trainer of Heroes
Activities Director, Camp Half-Blood
Bearer of Laurels, Olympian Council.
Okay, I was a Latin jock (specifically, Mythology Expert) in High School. These books are a blast and - might I add - about ten times more fun than the movie. (Which wasn't a bad little popcorn flick, I caught it yesterday. The books are much, much better, with all the backstory, and the plot actually makes sense. Also: the movie is actually aimed at an older audience than the books; there's a lot of innuendo & such that just isn't in the original.) And read the books first, if you can; the movie gives stuff away that's more fun to be surprised by (if you didn't see it coming). I was able to finish a book a day, easily, and will probably be picking up the other three over the weekend. (Not tough, since I own them all - I had a pretty good idea I was going to like them!)
Genre(s): Fantasy
Audience: Kids, allegedly, but anyone with a sense of adventure, really
Online Extras: www.rickriordan.com, and, well, there's a movie....
Reading Time: 4h apiece
Recommend: Yep! And I'll slap folks who say "It's just like Harry Potter" or "It's just like Lord of the Rings" or even "It's just like Star Wars!" They're all mythic cycles; there's a formula for those, and they follow it. Deal.
I read a lot. Given how much I knit, I really shouldn't have time for eating - but I tend to eat at least two meals a day at work (by myself), and I don't want food on my knitting, so - I read. I'm not reading as much as I usually do, since the Monster Yarn Pattern Project thing is taking over chunks of my evenings (it's going to be a while before there's little enough yarn left for it to be a "portable project"), so I'll share what I've been reading. It's pretty eclectic, and I'm not a critic. Pretty much anything I pick up, I read; I don't tend to pick up things I don't think I'll finish. Don't expect anything in-depth, but you may find something you hadn't heard of that you might want to track down to read yourself.
A little late (okay, twelve hours late) today, due to actually getting ten days worth of errands and things done all in one day, today. Exhibit A:
That's my street. This is the best it's been for the past ten days. Note there isn't PAVEMENT or anything, just that nice sheet of ice. The "secondary roads" around here are fine (we finally left the house today, as you can tell from the photo), but our little 'burb? NOT.
Getting to work tomorrow isn't going to be fun - but we're REALLY not looking forward to the drive home. It took my husband (and several others from the neighborhood) 6h to get home - because the bus driver forgot to tell them he wasn't ACTUALLY going to drive the bus route - that someone else drove just fine that morning.
Srsly, glad the snow is stopped!
I didn't get to the SuperBowl party down south from here on Sunday (no plow, no way!), so I didn't see JJ. During the game, though, I put the finishing touches on the Scots Santa canvas she gave me. I was able to put in lots of litle details. I needed some silver for the buttons/buckles, and a recent issue of one of the Brit cross-stitch mags happened to have some Madiera in silver metallic as a free gift. Yay! I did a cross-stitch for the buttons, so they'd catch light both ways. And can I just say how much I love Very Velvet black fiber? It makes a totally nonreflective black that just absorbs light. If you ever want something on your stitching to be a deep, pure black without stitch definition, this is the stuff to use. Black, blacker, blackest!
I made up the star - it's just woven, as you can see, much as the plaid on Santa's kilt is. And, for this particular canvas, the Furry Stuff I used for his beard and eyebrows was just the perfect length, and it's super-soft to the touch. I need to find a canvas with a bunny on it... I want to stitch a bunny!
Here's the finished piece. I didn't want the background color to be too solid, so I only used four strands of silk, so some white shows through here and there. I like the woven-plaid; I'll definitely be doing that some other time, somewhere - and I'm really glad I did it here. Having Santa's kilt actually be a plaid is fun! (Also, I now know that a two-stranded, two-color plaid is how one gets hound's-tooth.)
This was really a fun little canvas to stitch up, and I'm really glad I made that trip to The Point of It All before the snow hit!
As you may have guessed from the title, we've gotten a lot of snow here lately. So, I got quite a bit of knitting done. Here's the first bit!
The project: Knitting all the stitches in KnittingOnTheNet.com's Stitch Directory.
The yarn: Anything you want. I'm using a Phentex "Monster Ball of Yarn" (32 oz. 100% acrylic), which won't block, but will give good stitch definition.
The needles: Again, whatever you want that goes with your yarn. I'm using my beloved Lantern Moon size 7s, because they're pretty.
Why this is happening: Because lots of people want to learn new stitches this year!
This week's stitches: Garter Rib (#16), Garter Stitch Steps (#18) and Inverness Diamonds (#19)
First up, Garter Rib. Since this stitch is a (multiple of 4) +2, I chose to go with 18 pattern stitches, with six stitches of seed stitch before and after the pattern. It's also not terribly exciting, so I only got through twelve rows before I decided that I had enough to work as a gauge swatch, then did my six rows of seed stitch.
Things I noticed about this pattern: Very reversible, very textured. The rule is "whatever is on the row below, DON'T stitch that on the next row". Makes a nice, thick fabric like garter stitch, with a nice texture.
Next up is Garter Stitch Steps. This is a "multiple of 8" stitch, but pretty easy, so I'll do two and a half repeats, which will give me 20 pattern stitches with five stitches of seed stitch on either side. Here's what I actually knit, with the "extra" stitches in bold:Row 1 and all odd rows: knit across
Rows 2 and 4: k4, p4, k4, p4, k4
Rows 6 and 8: k2, p4, k4, p4, k2, k2, p2
Rows 10 and 12: p4, k4, p4, k4, p4
Rows 14 and 16: p2, k4, p4, k4, p2, p2, k2
I wanted the "center step" to extend all the way from corner to corner, so I repeated rows 1 and 2. Then I knit across once more (repeating row 3, I guess!), and started five rows of seed stitch on the wrong side.
Things I noticed about this pattern: Not reversible at all. Lies fairly flat, without much pulling in. Would work well over any number of stitches divisible by four (but preferably over 12).
On to Inverness Diamonds. This pattern is over a multiple of 17, so I went with that. I started each RS row with 6 stitches in seed stitch, and ended with 7 stitches. It is a 12-row pattern, and it's time to get back to 24 rows per swatch, so I'll knit it twice; then, to make the top and bottom look the same, I'll knit Row 1 again, then knit five rows of seed stitch, starting on the wrong side.
Front/Right Side
Back/Wrong Side
Things I noticed about this pattern: It is reversible, but not identical, as advertised. It's one of the patterns that should be blocked, so knitting it in acrylic would be a bad thing, but since it's in the middle of what will be a pretty heavy blanket, it will probably look okay.
A note on the whole project: Since there are 139 stitch patterns (some are listed under multiple headings), plus 7 different edgings in KnittingOnTheNet.com's Stitch Directory, I'll be trying to do two to three stitches a week, minimum. This should get everyone a goodly number of new stitches by the end of the year, and hopefully get me a blanket. No worries if you "fall behind" or "start late" - this is for fun & education, there isn't *really* a time limit of any sort on it. If you're just discovering this project, this link will take you to the beginning, and this link will pull up all the related entries. Just knit on, and have fun!
