MS3 Finished and blocked.

I finished MS3 yesterday afternoon and had just enough time to block it before soccer practice. I probably could have taken more care in blocking the wing end but I was running out of time. It looks wonderful. It is airy and soft and light. I love the design. Here are some photos before it was blocked. Sad and crinkly the feather section looks like lumps and the beads only show on the wrong side. The edged curl under and you can't see the beads at all. Blocked, you can see every fabulous detail. The edge is uncurled and the feathers are open, every bead is visible. Two thumbs up for Melanie of Pink Lemon Twist. This was really fun and I am looking forward already to next years project.

Guess who cut in line in the queue, ah, if you guessed that luscious Kaffe Fassett Yarn, you are right. I have already cast on for a Chevron sock, with a 10 st repeat. Right now it looks kind of big over 60 sts on a 3.00 mm needle. Still dragging along on the Tenderheart shawl. With DD angrily yelling at me any time she sees me working on anything else. What a slave driver. All missing photos have been added in to the previous posts as well.

Photoshop disc located...

Phew after a daunting search through this messed up computer room of squalor I share with my pack rat husband I have FINALLY found my Photoshop CS disc. I am adding pics to previous posts that were missing their pictures. This whole new computer thing has been a lot of trouble. I don't know how some people can upgrade every 6 months or less. It took me nearly a month just to get everything running. Now maybe I can actually get some knitting done and have some genuine knitting content on my page....

By the way, the Sock Pixie lady is super awesome. Because we were so disappointed in the way the yarn looked, Teenuh (who placed the order) complained about the total lack of red in the red colorways. So the Sock Pixie gal is replacing them for us. That is great. I am excited to get my new RED poppies skein.

Still no pictures.

Heart break city, I can't find my damn Photoshop cd. Now I have fancy pants yarn to post pics of too. Today Teenuh and I went with Cynthia to a Cat Bordhi book signing at Purlessence. She was out promoting her new book about unconventional socks, New Pathways For Sock Knitters. About all I can say, she was unlike any other author I have met. She was quiet and didn't really have much to say.

That said, Purlessence did have some sock yarn on sale to celebrate this book signing. So I purchased some Crystal Palace Maizy, 2 skeins in Nightshade and 1 skein in Bittersweet, this is destined to become socks, with the solid Bittersweet on heels and toes. Not on sale, but undeniably NEEDED was Regia's Designer Line, Kaffe Fasset Landscape in Caribbean colorway, which is MUCH more blue than it looks in that picture.

Also joining my stash are 2 skeins of Sock Pixie. The first skein, Poppy, is a red - brown skein that really disappointed me. The color of yarn on the ordering page is a BRIGHT firey red easing into maroons and brown. In actuality there is no bright red, not any kind of actual red at all, only maroons blending into browns. Teenuh, also ordered a red, Ladybug, which had no brightness to the red either. Hers was a very muddied maroon mixing into just a tiny bit of distinct purple the rest was a muddy blend between the purple and maroon. The second skein I bought, did not disappoint. It was Stormy Seas and was every bit as stormy and sea-y as in the order page picture. It is exactly this kind of thing that reinforces my behavior to only buy things that come in shades of blue - green and occasional purples.... Ah, the yarn is spongy and soft and is dye stench free. Each skein comes wrapped in an individual cello bag, which I found a little bizarre, ever heard of this thing called environment? I would order this yarn again, but defintely nothing in red.... probably some Lake, or Peacock or Emerald sea....

Still plugging away on MS3, I have 20 rows to go until the end. I am going to try and finish it by this weekend, so I can get it blocked. My least favorite part. From what I have seen of other peoples shawls (well except the one woman who hung it on her dummy upside down!?), the wing thrown across the shoulder looks FABULOUS. I am excited to see mine finished.

Umm. Anyone seen my Photoshop CS disc?

Big blog backup....
All caused by a new computer. I got a new computer on Sunday. So I couldn't download my pics until it was set up, but first I had to take hours saving stuff from my old computer. 15 cds worth of mp3's. 10 cd's of photos... Documents etc... All removed from the old computer. Then the new computer was installed, new flat panel lcd monitor set up. Computer turned on. Set up took ages. It wasn't done until Monday evening. Loading drivers for all my usb gadgets, printers, camera's mp3 players, etc. So, Monday night the computer hibernates. Tuesday morning, it is in a coma. Won't turn back on. We punch every button, push every key. FINALLY, about 30 minutes later it wakes up. Tuesday I check my email. install most of my versions of Sims 2 and feel good to go. check my email , turn off the computer, and go to bed. Wednesday morning. NEW COMPUTER DOESN'T WORK!! Dead as a doorknob and utterly useless. A giant paper weight. We spend 2 hours trying to get it booted up so I can at least remove all of my data from it. But NO, it won't cooperate. So we end up returning it to the store with all my passwords and logins and bookmarks and document files saved on the damned hard drive that we can't get into. New computer came home on Wednesday afternoon and has for the last 24 hours performed perfectly.

I have all my programs installed now except one. Photoshop. As soon as I find my disc, I can download and upload photos. The blog should be back on track. Today's thrilling action? Washimg more of the wool and working on Mystery Stole 3 clue 6. Busy weekends and the beginning of soccer season has already cut into my knitting time!!

Wash, Fluff, spin.
(pictures to come to this post as soon as I find my Photoshop...)
Well, I am mostly doing Washing and fluffing and pretty much the only spinning yet is in the spin cycle on the wash.... Processing a whole fleece from a Cormo -X I got from Merry Meadow's farm. This somewhat tedious process has made me sure as sure can be that I don't want to buy another fleece without holding it in my hands first. Because, Boy Howdy, this fleece was friggin' filthy. This naughty sheep must have rolled in the mud, just days before shearing time. Or maybe the moral of the story is, buy washed fleeces instead...
The drum carding is going well. My lovely assistant DD was helping me to crank the handle, but she got mad when I asked her to crank a little slower a few too many times. She wants to crank it like she is reeling in line on a sail boat in the America's cup or something. So, needless to say, the first batch was full of noils from the overly vigorous carding it received, following batts were significantly smoother. So far 3 batts. I don't have a scale to weigh them on. But I am guessing at this rate, I'll get probably 20+ batts of this size from the fleece.

On wings and other things.

Well, I have stared at the wing for 2 days now. Waiting for clue 6. I don't like the transition from clue 4 to clue 5. An error was announced on the beading schema where there are 2 more rows than there should have been between beads. I noticed this, but thought it must have been part of the transition plan. Turns out it wasn't. I am trying to get over it. Looking at what I have now... I am guessing I may complete the wing then will probably decide that I hate it and will rip back and duplicate the left side. I am really liking the feather pattern for the wing though. I think I might flip it and do 2 sides and join it together or Do a magic toe type center and knit out from a center line. Although I believe that Melanie is attempting to design a 2 winged shawl at this point.

I finished DS's socks. I was nearly done by the time I left Boba knits on Sunday. Somehow the ankle on sock 2 didn't come out perfectly matched (it was in fact, horribly unmatched, being 2 WHOLE color stripes off from sock 1) . Later that evening when I reached the top and was about to cast off I decided I couldn't stand the imperfection and I ripped back to the beginning of the heel. To my surprise I discovered that I had actually goofed on the heel and had pulled in 4 stitches from needle 1 resulting in 4 more rows than necessary. Upon reknitting I found that I was now 1 gray row off from a perfect match to sock 1. Sock 2 has 2 rows of light gray (left sock) and sock 1 has 1 row(right sock). So I ripped back again and reknit. It still came up with 2 rows. I tried one more time (you see where this obsessive compulsive thing becomes a problem...) came up again with 2 light gray rows and finally threw in the towel. It will just have to be 2 stripes of light gray. I reknit the sock up to the top counting rows, and gee what a surprise, I am 1 row shorter at the top on the dark gray stripe. I tried adding another row, but somehow, 1 row to my twisted mind made the sock appear longer... I know, how could 1 tiny row on size 2 needles make any difference. I decided since it was already mismatched, just go for broke and have the top off by 1 row too right? Well, here they are in all of their imperfect glory....

Clue5 finished!

Today we had a mini reunion (6 families) with my Las Madres playgroup. We haven't seen most of the kids in 1.5 - 2 years. It was really amazing how much the children had grown and changed and how little all the moms and dads had changed (although we all seemed to have done a fine job of growing at least a little fatter, myself, of course included.) It was really great to be reunited with old friends again, it makes you realize how much you miss them! Time was spent at the park, chatting and taking pictures, so not much knitting was done. Though I did manage to finish clue 5 today...

I am not sure about this whole "wing" thing. The last time people were so excited about wings was when they added them to maxi pads, now 6,000+ knitters can't stop talking about them. My view on the wings : I thought the point of this Mystery Stole exercise was to trust the designer. To blindly and faithfully follow a pattern that would result in something satisfactorily beautiful. So I have proceeded to make this wing. Looking at it as it is, it seems, suspiciously odd. More like the one winged Swan Prince of Hans Christian Anderson's The Wild Swans story than the Swans of Swan lake. I will however work the entire thing and upon completion of clue number 7, decide whether said wing stays or goes. Perhaps this wing will be SO magnificent and SO spectacular, I will want to rip off the front end of the shawl and attach a wing to the other side! Or maybe I will knit clues 5, 6 and 7, have some sort of epiphany and tear the damn wing off and repeat clues 1-4 to kitchener stitch it together, fortunately I am right handed so I am able to do this! We'll see what the future brings. or maybe I'll just hate it and give it away to someone else. That always works good. (Teachers at christmas? Mothers in Law? Friends who don't knit? Small people I know with really bad taste?) Well, I apologize that I haven't taken a picture of it yet. I'll try to do that in the next day or so. It is worth mentioning that both Teenuh and I have chosen the side of EVIL!!! in choosing the color of Odile instead of Odette. Although the fact of the matter is many of the knitters (older or not) knitting this project picked on the side of white, simply because they could see the stitches better (without having to bring in high powered lights and a 100x's magnification lens) than they could with black and I have nothing white in my entire stash.