Hooooooooray for Saturday.

Teenuh and I went on a merry yarn tour yesterday, visiting 6 wonderful yarn stores of the Bay Area Peninsula. We ran out of time and did not make it a perfect 10 by missing 4 of South Bay stores. The day started with me driving around in circles, having forgotten my cell phone at home. I picked up Teenuh and she gave me this lovely potholder set she knitted and felted. Then off to San Mateo to check out the Ashford Traveller, which turned out to be simply fantastic. I purchased that little jewel and the gal selling it offered up her entire fiber collection to sell piece-meal, which was simply too much for me! She dappled in spinning (meaning she jumped in with both feet and about 15 + lbs of various fiber) only to decide that spinning wasn't for her! My goodness did that luck out for me. Here is my new spinning beauty, I tested it out last night at 3 am after Teenuh and her DH went home. It spins like a dream. Double treadle is AWESOME. Here it is pictured next to my Ashford traditional. You can see the size difference is quite significant.

The first stop on our yarn tour was Nine Rubies in San Mateo. It is a new store, very nice, friendly people, the setup and locale reminded me a lot of Commuknitty. Teenuh made a purchase there, but not me, though when she got her bag, I had total bag envy over the heavy duty black polka dotted back she received. Our next stop was Purlessence where I really controlled my self and bought only 2 oz of silk hankies from Rainbow works. In yummy browns and golds. In spite of the Sheep To Shoe kit that had AMAZING purples and greens in it that SCREAMED my name. We proceeded on to Yarn Place to partake of their best 20% off everything sale. Some shiny black mohair roving. A cheap drop spindle and a nifty felting needle set, that can use 1-6 needles (scary, scary I can just see stabbing myself in the hand or leg or something with that) completed my Yarn Place purchases. We then drove back up to The Knitters Studio in Menlo Park to see the Annie Blatt trunk show, but bought nothing because of the high price of everything in the store. Then schlepped over to Full Thread Ahead in Los Altos where I sold myself on a some more Seasilk in this yummy aqua blue to beige-ish silver blend. So yummy. As well as some white Cascade 220 to make the edges on the Seven Ten Split bowling bag from Anticraft that I've started in black. Why is it so hard to find WHITE 100% feltable wool?? Doesn't anyone believe in white wool? Apparently only Cascade seems to. Our last stop was a dash to Uncommon Threads, just a few streets away from FTA. We arrived just before closing and had only 10 minutes to peruse. They have a nice selection of Lana Grossa that I want to go back to and sift through some more.

Duh, it seems like I've forgotten how to post!? Really, has it been like 10 days since I posted? I guess so. So yesterday was my birthday (unenthusiastic Eyore type cheer here *yay*) and I got to pick out my own present when the hubby let me spend the big bucks and told me get a drum carder (for this so called Birth/mother's day combo present) . So after extensive research I went for the best and I ordered a Strauch's Finest drum carder (405) yippee. I can hardly wait for it to get here. I also ordered some unprocessed Suri Alpaca fiber from Homestead Wool and Gift farm, that came SO quickly (like 3 days after I ordered it from Wisconsin even!) That I know is going to be super nice once it has been washed and carded. It makes me crazy eager for that carder to get here. I just can't stand the tedium of hand carders, *brush brush brush* *pick pick pick* *brush brush brush* repeat. I want to go *crank crank crank crank crank* *pick pick pick* *crank crank crank* and be done with 20 times as much fiber in 1/4 of the time. The carding is most certainly NOT the fun part. Maybe it will be now right?

Looking forward to a fiber filled Saturday of fun with Teenuh. We are going up to look at an Ashford Traveller double drive, double treadle spinning wheel a woman is selling, hopefully that will work out. Also we are going to look at Nine Rubies an lys in San Mateo, catch the Yarn Place sale and have a jolly meandering day of fun. Although most any day I spend with Teenuh is fun fun fun. Pics of my socks to follow soon, I am binding off the second one later tonight and I will be ready to wear them for this unseasonably cool weather.

More socks? Maybe to go with my new shoes? I got some ultra comfy new soft walk shoes, humorously enough named, Lafon(Didn't notice that until I was throwing away the box at home several hours after I put them on my feet) that will show off my socks knit with an interesting zig zag pattern from my Bauerliches Stricken 3 book. Knit up in the Lisa Souza South Pacific sock yarn I picked up at Stitches. I knit away like a fiend and in a day had the whole sock done.

Like a hump though, I didn't really pay too much attention to the size of my foot asI was knitting this sock. So As I am completely done with it, at the point where I am debating what type of ribbing or non-ribbing to put at the top of the ankle, it occurs to me to put this thing on my foot. So I slip 1/2 the stitches onto a circular and cram the sucker on to my foot, only to find it is a bit, um, short. I blink in surprise " Like, duh, this is too short why didn't I make the toe section longer so that it would fit my foot???" It was the kind of tight, where I thought to myself, yeah, I can wear it like this... Yeah, I don't mind my toes pulling down just a little like that.

Then I frogged it. Pulled out all 18 inches worth of stitches back down to the toe where the pattern work began and added an inch of stockinette. Stupid. So now I have worked back up a whole 1". Wahoo, just 17" more to go...

At 51 days. I lost my will and bought more yarn.... I guess I won't get my 60 day sobriety coin now. Hmm. Nobody seemed to be rewarding me for not buying yarn anyway. Not even DH seemed to notice. Guess I should have been buying yarn all along. I just couldn't resist buying the jumbo skeins of Seasilk that FTA got in. I ordered 2 skeins of the Nova Scotia colorway. Still having that thing for peacock colors. Now I am debating using that to make the Peacock Feathers shawl from Fiddlesticks instead of the purple mohair I have been saving. Oh the debate. Not that it is likely to be the next item off the needles but there is always some yarn to project debate going on in the back of my head somewhere, those are the voices in my head telling me what to knit.... Must obey voices....

Several weeks with no post. These have been crappy times. My FIL. A kind and patient man who was so full of life, had a massive stroke, spent 5 days in a coma and went gently into the good night on April 1st. We buried him on April 9th. Life was chaotic for a while. Now it is as back to normal as it is going to get without him in our lives.

On a brighter note. Today was my mom's birthday and she received the Ostrich Plume shawl and a pair of Queen of Cups socks knit in Knitpicks bare Kool Aid dyed by me. They were a perfect fit for her foot. She then humorously posed with her shawl and her new socks on the lawn. A neighbor walking by with her two dogs asked what we were doing and if I was taking photography. We all had to laugh and tell her I was taking pictures of feet because I had knit the socks. She looked at us a little warily smiled and walked on her merry way. My sister also wanted her feet photographed in the socks I made for her a while back that never made the website. My whole family loves to make fun of me taking pictures of feet or whatever but they are quick to run outside and pose. Hillarious. Tomorrow back to the grind. At least I am looking forward to Bunco this week.

The cure for the common pool.

Teenuh and I were discussing pooling sock yarn and what could be done to "unpool" it short of knitting your sock sideways or adding 20 stitches to the width of the sock. After a bit of brainstorming, Teenuh, made a freakin' brilliant suggestion, to knit the pooling yarn in a stranded pattern to break up the pooling. She had seen a sock somewhere that was stranded and the colors that were lifted up broke up the pooling a little. Merely from the strands in the front breaking up the color blocks. I totally dug the idea realizing she was right because the strands would use less yarn than a knitted stitch and the colors would start repeating differently than they were. So I grabbed my trusty pooling Tofutsies yarn and started to work it out. Here you see the sock with it's pooling in full effect.

After reaching this point I began stranding only in the front and it started to shift the pooling but did not get rid of it entirely. It wasn't until I started working the pattern on both sides of the sock (imagine a pattern on the sole of your foot!!?) and it was then that the pooling magically disappeared! Hurrah! Here you can compare the front (left) to the back (right duh!) and see that the inch and a half that I was only working the pattern in the front was changing the pooling somewhat into longer strands like windblown clouds, thinner but still connected.

















You can really see the slip stitches changing the course of the colors as I work the pattern on the front and back stitches, the pools just slip into lines and actually break up. Here is a close up of the unpooled section as well. You can see the yarn is even kind of striping.
This is MUCH more pleasing than the blotchy pooled up yarn isn't it? The first problem is you have to keep doing this pattern which isn't very exciting or interesting to knit. Row 1: ( k2, sl2 with yarn in front) across, Row 2: K across, row 3: (sl2 with yarn in front, k2) across, row 4 k across, repeat until brain falls out bored slack jawed mouth and I did try knitting it without the knit rows on even rows but it began looking like a bizarre old thing with tons of strings stringing flatly across the front. The second problem is how many pairs of the same style of socks can I knit? I have 2 different colorways of Lorna's laces that pool and the Tofutsies as well as some other yarns I know I have in my stash which would make at least 3 pairs of socks knit from this mind numbing pattern. Any suggestions? I will have to sit and think about it and maybe incorporate the strands into another more interesting pattern. Maybe a barred stitch with some cables or something? Hmm.

Anyway, here is a glimpse of my Monkey socks in progress. The photo really doesn't do the color justice. The purple is much deeper and brighter and the green more shady forest-y. I am LOVING the Melody yarn and wishing I had bought like 10 skeins of this instead of only 2. I could have had one in every colorway.... What a fool....

Redo!

I changed my mind. Now I am making monkey in my Jojoland Melody sock yarn and it is coming out AWESOME! Yeah! I am happy. It looks good, feels good and I just KNOW it is going to be good.

Froggedfutsies.

Tofutsies and Monkey are SO not working. It is pooling SO badly. I have decided to frog it and work Monkey out of some other sock yarn. I identified said pooling by the top of the toe cap. Once the increases stopped the pooling started. Realizing there was no increase in stitches to fix this I immediately frogged the stupid thing. So now what? I am thinking of using the Kool Aid dyed sock yarn I made and giving that a try. We'll see how it turns out.

Tofutsies it is.
I spent the weekend, goofing off with some girlfriends, scrapbooking this weekend, so I didn't get any knitting done this weekend. Bummer. On the other hand, I have just started working on Cookie's Monkey sock (flipped over and worked toe-up) with Tofutsies. I wound it into two equally sized balls. I am using 723, Put your Foot Down. The yarn had lots of knot joins in it. The one skein had 4 knot joins in it, kind of annoying. It also has a smell that reminds me of baby vomit. I am REALLY hoping that smell will go away when it is washed, on the other hand, I will be wearing the socks on my feet and not my face so it probably won't even matter!

Ostrich Plume Shawl is finished!

I finished the Ostrich Plume shawl. I cut it very close on the amount of yarn I used. I had about 6 feet of yarn left. Chart a was worked once, chart b (the body portion) 7 times and then chart C from row 1 to row 25 (instead of row 32) because I noticed I was running out of yarn and did the bind off. It would have had 2 more repeats of the ripple at the bottom. It looked very pruney and puckery before blocking. The plumes look puffy and puckered.

Tada! Here is the blocked version, much nicer and smoother. It is 82" wide and 43" long down the center.A close up of the chart b (top) sections as well as the chart c setcion (bottom).

This is the bottom point of the triangle. The towel it is on has cows on it sorry it makes the picture look weird.

The silk was very nice to work with. I think this will make a nice summer shawl.The yarn had a funny smell when I washed it to block it, just as soon as it was wet. Sort of like moth balls or something smelly. Yuck. I hope it doesn't retain that smell when it is dry.

Next on the needles? I am not sure. I am in the process of designing a shawl with "lots of hearts on it" for my DD. She asked me to make her a lacy shawl with the Half Pint Farms Merino/tencel I picked up for her at Stitches. So far though, I only have the cast on, center strip and edging. I am still working on the body of it to try and add more hearts. It is hilarious she loves hearts and pink so much which are some of my least favorite things. Oh well. If it makes her happy. Maye I'll start some Tofutsies socks.

What Kind of Knitter Are You?

You appear to be a Knitting Goddess. You are constantly giving and are unconcerned with reward, you simply want others to love knitting as much as you do. If someone wants to knit miles of novelty yarns, you are there for them. If someone wants to learn short row shaping, you can help. There are no taboos in knitting, only opportunities to grow. Everyone should have friend like you around if they want to learn to knit, and there's a good chance that your passion has rubbed off on a few others.http://marniemaclean.com
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Stitch Markers.

During Stitches I was TOTALLY inspired by Teenuh, who bought a spiffy bag of glass beads on Friday, ran home and cranked out some stitch markers and had them to show off on Sunday. Which for some reason she has never posted a picture of *nudge nudge*. Seeing how cute her stitch markers were, I just HAD to make some too. So on Sunday of Stitches I picked up a bag of the glass beads and last night I finally got around to making something with them. These were my favorite beads in the bag.
They are so cute, these little duckies. Sorry for the blurry picture it was late last night and I was a spaz.
These wierd little guys, I had a lot of debate over. The kitty heads (and purple mushroom) came in the bag and I had the weird little underwater mine beads already that happened to match so well. I tried several different configurations with lots of other beads, but DS really like them like this and so I went with it.
Lastly, I quite like the birds, they are opposite colors, the white bird (not clear in this pic) has lavender wings, so I did opposite colored beads on them to make them a "matched set". The hearts I just had to use. I actually hate hearts. Hate em!! But I am a SERIOUS crow and I LOVE shiny shiny things and they are SO shiny and red.

Not too much longer I'll post pics of the Ostrich Plume shawl. It is almost done, probably 1 more repeat and then the border before I run out of yarn.

A little bit of Luxury

I was so super excited to get those yummy little angora puffs that I couldn't wait to make them into something. But pathetically they only contain a meager 50 yds each, imagine trying to make a sweater or even a scarf, the number of balls it would take plus the cost makes me feel a little faint... So I sat around and thought of a nice project that would make the skimpy amounts of angora into something usable and enjoyable (what's the point of an extra soft mouse cover or finger puppet or pony tail holder right?) and finally came up with these little spiffy things.Each one is made from one ENTIRE ball of angora. As I worked on them I had some people say to me, "Oh you should make them go all the way up your arm!" at which point I want to smack them in the head and yell "DUH!" because I only have 2 balls and I could just make one that goes up to about my elbow and then only have one or I could make 2 short ones and have one for each hand. Hmm, which do I choose? Like these people think this stuff is cheap or angora grows on trees or something. I made my own pattern using a little lacy 11 st wide edging from Knitting On The Edge (Nicky Epstein) along with a made up rib with a mini cable that was a p2, mc, p2, k2, p1, k2 rep worked in the round on size 5 dpns over a total of 44 sts with an Elizabeth Zimmerman cast off.

My only qualms with this yarn, other than it being the softest most pleasurable to knit with yarn ever in the history of yarn is that it breaks SO easily. Tug a stitch a little too tight to try and close the ladder between your dpns and POOF the silly thing has torn apart and it wasn't as if it was pulled very hard. It is very, very weak yarn. Also, at the cost of 10 cents a yard on super clearance lucky sale price and with a full price of about 25 cents a yard, I wasn't going to make a swatch and leave it swatched. I swatched it then unwound it, boy howdy, once you knit with it and unwind it (perhaps even as you make a project and you have made a mistake and must frog) this yarn is even weaker after. It falls apart just tensioning your stitches as you knit. Still, sesory wise, it was nice to knit and I feel grateful to have just this little bit of luxury (boy will I be typing in style...) and I will revel in it and enjoy it because it will probably be the only piece of angora luxury I will ever knit.

A yarn buying blog.

That is what this has turned into. It looks like I am just a yarn collector and not a knitter. Well, just to disprove that, here is my Falling Leaves Shawl (Lavish Lace, Carol Rasmussen Noble) All pinned and blocked and good to go. I wore it to Stitches on Sunday. It is my first beaded work. It has a good weight to it. Because of the pattern it comes out longer on the front than the sides/back, so if you are wider than you are tall this is probably an excellent choice in design styles. I just worked until I ran out of beads then finished off. You can really make it as long or as short as you want, it has no specific size, you are only limited by your yarn supply (and your desire to have a 11 foot wide shawl). Most of the time it drapes on looking quite a lot more like a shrug than a shawl. The beads add a nice sparkle. I think I am addicted now to putting beads on knitting. So you will probably see a whole lot more of that on here.

My current project is the Ostrich Plume Shawl using the Cherrytree Hill Silk I got at FTA. It looks very, very (annoyingly) similar in color to the Schaeffer I just finished with. It has less yellow and orange, red where the last had none and quite a lot more green. However it is still similar. Several muggles have asked me if it is still the same project and where the beads went. This pattern goes really fast. It has only 1 truly patterned row per 4 rows of knitting with the WS rows are all purl and 1 row, with only yo's at the center stitch and edges. Very simple. Unless something derails me, this should be done within a week or so.

Sunday at Stitches.

Well I am a psycho sometimes. Late Saturday night I finished the Falling Leaves Shawl while enjoying the festivities for my sister's birthday. We didn't get home until about 2 am. So like the fool I am I must/need/HAVE to block it. So I wet it and spin cycle it briefly and then pin the darn thing down, and now I realize I haven't even taken pictures of it yet, so that will be the next post. I finally rolled into bed at 3:30. Only to get up at 7:45 to be on time to pick up Teenuh for the last day of Stitches. We arrived right on time and wandered around. We realized we had missed a whole row of booths on the far left side on Friday, whoops! We picked up some of the things we had ogled on Friday as well. Then hit the Jane Sowerby talk on Victorian Lace Today, it was nice to see the shawls from the book, live and in person and to touch them and feel them, she is kind of humorous, with odd little quips here and there. We watched some lucky people win some money (why not me!!?) then hooked up with Tina's friend Amy and her friend Julia. We did some group wandering and then we went home at about 3:45. I was dead on my feet. A good time was had by all. So here are my Sunday purchases. Some rayon microfiber ribbon yarn in the Florida Keys colorway, from Tess's Yarns, if I had a choice (and the funds) I would buy enough of this to fill a bathtub and roll around in it naked for hours. These two silvery blobs of roving in Merino/ Tencel are from some store in SF that I can't remember the name of (maybe Carolina Homespun?), wow that leaves you feeling excited doesn't it!? Also added to my stash was this lot of odd balls. The sparkly purple is the super soft, not itchy Trendsetter Aura (which will become one of those generic potato chip scarves with some super kid or kidsilk haze), two yummy little tiny balls of angora in grey and two 50/50 wool silk balls of Horstia all picked at the Knitters Studio sale, buy 2 bags and get 1 free. This amazingly bright superwash merino/tencel fingering yarn is from Ellen's Half Pint Farm. The brightness in the picture looks almost computer generated or as if something weird has gone on with the pic, but it is really that bright, the shiny tencel helps. Funny thing about this one, I saw it at 10 am and didn't buy it, we came back by at about 3 pm and there it was, I knew it was meant to be, it will become something for DD not sure yet though she wants a shawl. She is the world's biggest fan of pink and purple and anything dramatic and girly. I also picked up some stubby Addi's in size 2 for glove fingers and some 0000 steel Addi's for beading. Finally, I have these precious little silk hankies ( 3 stacks) and some Firestar to blend in with them (as if silk weren't shiny enough, but my inner crow couldn't pass it by) all in the Pt. Reyes Reflections color way, from The Royal Hare in Santa Rosa. This place had lots of stuff I wanted to buy, including some sock roving in the same colorway among others.

All told, I spent a fortune (good thing I spent 4 months saving up for it.) If DH knew how much he would probably pop a circuit and have a stroke on the spot. Good for him he doesn't know. My stash has been enhanced enough to last until next years Stitches, don't you think? So if I buy more yarn this year, I probably need to be set straight or have my head examined.

I'm in stitches!

Yipee. Stitches was loads of fun. With the exception of my aching shoulder, I had a great time at Stitches West with Teenuh. I carried my Victorian Lace Today book, because Jane Sowerby was on hand to sign her book, all you had to do was catch her at any of half a dozen booths she was signing at. I did get mine signed, she seemed like a very nice lady. However I did have to carry my book the rest of the day and like a FOOl I bought another book right away in the morning. Added to my book collection, this lovely German book, primarily designed for knitting German socks, but full of nifty patterns not typically seen in the states.The show was huge. It took up pretty much the entire Santa Clara Convention Center Hall. The majority of vendors were yarn or knitting products, with some spinning stuff. There were also a few odd ball sellers, we really wondered what the seasoned olive oil guy was doing there.


We hit Cookie and Kristie's booth the Bay Area Knitting Co-Op. Where I picked up the Ostrich Plume Shawl Pattern and the Madeira Lace Stole Kit with black alpaca yarn (mmm alpaca, however black alpaca doesn't seem to photograph well) both designed by Lynn Curry. I also got 3 skeins of purple lace weight merino from Terrylynn Needlearts at the B.A.K.C.O.


Also added to my stash was 3 skeins of brown dk alapaca (that look pretty unappealing in this blurry picture) from the Yarn Barn that I am hoping will become one of the sweaters from Big Girl Knits, as well as 2 skeins of hand dyed sock yarn from Lisa Souza, the pink blend is the Sky Drama colorway and the Green is South Pacific, all of her colors were SO fantastic, I could hardly choose. I am SO in love with the South Pacific, I really have a thing for peacock colors of late. The skeins are a generous 400+ yards. For lace knitting I picked up a giant cone of red silk (1.10 lbs!) from Village Spinning and Weaving, that will probably end up as something from Victorian Lace Today or A gathering of lace, no specific plans yet. I also got a giant cone of rayon thread(about 1 lbs also), that I will use for some beaded knitting. That should be lots of fun. I also got this lace weight Harmony, color gradient yarn from Jojoland as well as some Melody superwash sock yarn, nice and soft. It is similar to the Yarn Place's type of yarn graduated yarn imported from China.



I also got 2 skeins of this Angora Cottage, merino/ silk blend roving that is so soft and lovely, I had 2 of these at home already, I am just padding my stash with this. Actually I have been torturing myself with spinning on the hokey cd drop spindle I got from the Serendipity Spinner's Guild, which is lighter than the wood spindle I have already. Maybe not so hokey, it sure doesn't look very cool though (because I am totally the image of cool, ha ha). Maybe I should stick some stickers on it?

So here it is, the Super New and Improved Beading Wire Device!!!! *bounce bounce bounce*


I purchased some memory wire and spent quite a bit of time tormenting and torturing this wire into the correct spiral shape I desired. It was MUCH harder to bend into a hook on the working end and a loop on the terminus. It took 2 pairs of pliers and much force to make this wire comply. It works much better though, it doesn't bend out of shape and hold the beads quite nicely. You can see the spiral is much tighter. I have made the wire quite a bit longer since the memory wire holds its nice spiral shape and it doesn't ever flop around. I should have put a ruler in the picture for scale. It is about 2 inches across (with a radius of 1"). I am much more pleased with the results. I will probably make some more. I gave Teenuh some wire to make herself one too since she bought beads on Saturday too. Although, when it comes down to it, she'll probably bring the wire over and I will twist it into shape anyway. I don't know if she has pliers. Overall though it took me about 45 minutes to force the wire into submission whereas the first soft floral wire took me all of like 3 minutes to make. In the long run though, the stronger wire will pay off with lasting effectiveness.

Yipee skipee just about 58 hours until Stitches. Buying yarn may be my favorite part of knitting. I LOVE the hunt.

Hooray for a day spent shopping with a friend.

The sun was shining, the weather was a beautiful 80 deg. F. and not a cloud in the sky and we spent the whole day shopping to boot! Went to the 20% off everything sale at the Yarn Place. Hit, Micheal's, Joann's, 3 Beads and a Button and Starbuck's as well. What fun. Got some cute measuring tapes at Joann's. Hot fix crystals at Michael's. Memory wire to improve my beading device and lots of goodies at Yarn Place. More lace weight yarn: Also some really super yummy, yummy soy silk roving to spin. Now if could just get durn good at spinning and make it worth my while. This is a HUGE bag, it weighs 2 lbs. Yay for 20% off sales!
I can't wait to grope this and play in it and hopefully spin it into something usable.

I distinctly heard HOOPLAH!

Valentines hooplah. What is all the fuss about? I totally didn't buy any cards or even MAKE any cards this year. WTG. Called Grandma and Grandpa wished them a happy 58th anniversary. Gave DH Snakes on a Plane and a giant box of his fave Rocher. Gave the kiddies gifts. Gave mom roses. Gave Sister some roses. Though she's probably the one who needed something the most because when it rains it pours. Her house was burglarized Sunday night (the day she found out her best friend died). Her stupid separated husband is having health problems of some mysterious sort. Though I am routing for the side of mystery. Tough times.

I have been knitting deprived. DD has been sick for 5 days now and worsen in the last 3 days to a point that I am getting NO sleep and I had no time to knit today. Though I did have to go and buy 2 more tubes of the beads for the Falling Leaves shawl. I believe it will use all both of those tubes and probably want for more, but I bought the last 2 the store had in stock. Once again I told myself I was stupid stupid stupid for picking beads that were $6.95 a tube instead of the rest that were $2.95 or $3.30 AND came with more beads in each tube (simply because they are not as fat, yet the bore is the same size). These were NICE though. Look at them, they glisten like golden drops of sunlit dew sparkling on a leaf. They are fat and round and lusciously golden. I just know I made the right choice, even if my wallet is starting to hurt....

Reinventing the Wheel.

Sometimes things seem like they should be simpler. For example, putting a bead onto your knitting. What I started out doing, was what everyone said to do. Work until you reach the stitch you want the bead on. 1. Put down one needle. 2. Pick up the crochet hook. 3. Stab the bead onto said hook (max # of beads that will fit on the hook at once - 2) . 4. Use hook to lift desired stitch to be beaded and slide the bead on. 5. Drop crochet hook. Repeat as needed per each beaded stitch. Was it me or was that WAAAAAy too many steps and way too inefficient?

I sat and thinked for a minute (ala' Pooh bear... Think think think..) The light above my head went on and I grabbed a piece of floral wire, put a curly loop onto the end so the bead wouldn't fall off, then carefully bent the other end of the wire into a tiny hook (this was the hardest part getting it small enough to fit through the bead and not to snag onto the yarn and never let go). Strung the wire full of beads, then realized a giant 14" long piece of wire loaded with beads is a bit unwieldy.I curled the wire into a spiral so the beads would still slide nicely and instantly eliminated step 3, the slowest and most tedious step, completely from the procedure. It is now twice as fast to slip those beads on. I can even have my eager small helpers put the beads on for me. Instead of picking up a new bead every stitch, I now have 100 beads ready to load. In the right pic you can see the next bead on the wire, right at the top. Sometimes the answer to something can be SO simple if you just think about it. Now I just need to dangle it off of a necklace so I don't have to keep grabbing it off my knee. Tidy it up, make it look professional, with a dangley clip on it and market the darn thing to all the knitters of the world still wrestling with one bead at a time...

Today was a sad day.

My sister's best friend Melody died today. She had epilepsy and had lately been having fairly frequent seizures. She died alone in her apartment some time between 1:30 am and 1 pm when the police found her body. It was tragic and it was terrible. She was only 32. She was a nice girl, who loved to have fun, was always a good friend and loved all animals dearly. She will be missed. Keep dancing in the great Goth Club in the sky, Melody.

One perfect morning I was all alone
Listening to the blaze of summer
Drifting
I was falling
I was floating in a golden haze
Breathing in the sky-blue sun
Of memories of other days

And in my dreams I was a child
Flowers in my mouth and in my eyes
And I was floating through the colours of the sky
Up to the stars and angels

Up to heaven
Up forever
Up to heaven
Up forever

Turning in my climb
I looked down on a lake
Traced upon the water
There I saw your face
Sending recollection of the times we shared
Pushed on ever up into the sky

And in my dreams I was a child
Flowers in my mouth and in my eyes
And I was floating through the colours of the sky
Up to the stars and angels

Up to heaven
Up forever
Up to heaven
Up forever

To the Sky. The Cure

Falling Leaves I.P.

Here are some quickie pix of my Falling Leaves in progress, modeled by my DD. I have decided to put the beads only in the center of the leaves. The pattern is not terribly clear because of course this lace has not been blocked, but you get an idea sort of. You can also see the bottom edge is actually V-shaped and not a blunt line. Here is a blurry close up of the bead work. Sorry, the camera did not want to cooperate and we had like 2 minutes of sun before the clouds blew back in. I had threaded all the beads on (PSYCHO!) then realized this was a bad idea and I ended up pulling them all off anyway and now am using the crochet hook method to place each bead (sllllllow) on the WS and RS rows. If I have enough yarn left I am going to knit on an edge with beads on it too, though I think I will probably have to go buy more beads, I bought 70 g of size 6/0 and I think it will be enough to just do the body of the shawl and not the edge. And of COURSE I picked the beads that were $6.50 per tube instead of $3.50 like all the rest.... gold and sparkley mmmmm.

Now in progress...
A falling leaves triangular shawl made from my Shaeffer Anne in the autumn leaves colors. I swatched it on a size 5 needle, too tight, not airy enough, switched to an 8 and was satisfied with its holey-ness. I am using the pattern from Carol Rasmussen Noble's Lavish Lace book, but I didn't like the beginning she used so I have changed it some to make it taper up more. As attentive as she is to details she makes a crappy beginning on this project. I have also noticed her lace charts are lazy, she adds on a garter edge but doesn't include it in the chart pattern. So back to the beginning part, she has you cast on 6 sts, then begin working the pattern right away off the cast on. ALL the rest of the edges ALL the way around have a garter stitch edging that is 3 sts deep on the sides and 5 rows tall on the last rows before cast off. So why didn't she put that on the beginning on the bottom? If you look at the picture in the book, you can see how weird and blunt her beginning edge is. So instead of c.o. 6. I did a c.o. of 2 sts, worked the first one in knit, knit the second row with 2 twisted lift increases, then knit the third row, knit the 4th row with 2 increases (now I'm up to 6 sts), knit the 5th row, so now it matches the top cast on and begins with a gently tapering point and on the 6th row, began working the charted pattern. So I am about 4 repeats into the pattern (about 40 rows?) and I realize that this thing will be so light it will always want to curl up, so now I want to add some beads to it, maybe just on the edges? I am going to a bead store tomorrow to shop around a bit and then I'll decide. I am debating putting it on every other row in the garter border, or using it around the edge of each leaf, or in the center of each leaf, or just knitting the whole thing up then knitting on a separate border onto the edge with beads on that. Too indecisive. What do you think?

As I was looking at this book I realized something kind of funny. I bought this book about 3 years ago (or whenever it was that it came out). All of the projects in this book use Cherry Tree Hill Yarn's, pretty much something is knit from every one of their lines. When I got this book I looked at that and said, "Ha, who's ever heard of this kind of yarn" the one yarn store near me didn't carry it and I pretty much put it off as something I would never get my hands on (at the time it was even hard to find affordable lace weight or fingering even!) Then I am sitting here in my living room with the Cherry Tree Hill Silk Cascade Fingering in my hand and I think, hmm, maybe something from that Lavish Lace book, and Lo' there are 2 projects in there made from that very yarn, bizarre. Things can sure change in a couple of years. Now there are 1/2 a dozen yarn stores to shop, with large selections and real yarn brands, plus of the course, the glorious world of internet out there waiting for us to search for that special something we saw somewhere and now need to have.