Rose of England blocked!

I finally got the Rose of England shawl blocked and photographed!

Be sure to click on the pics to see details.




I can't get the color quite right—it's a little more magenta and less red. You can get the idea though!

Ravelympics and web site down

This is another catch-up post, although it's not going to be a complete catch up.

To start, Ravelympics is in full swing (knitting during the Olympics, organized through Ravelry) and as usual I'm rather overcommited. I decided I'd go for the Cowl Jump, Handspun Heptathlon, and the Shawl Relay. I finished the Handspun Heptathlon, although I'm far from thrilled with the finished product.


I looks neat, but it's horribly, horribly scratchy. It's a wool/mohair blend and I really should've known better. I even find Kidsilk Haze hard to wear, and this isn't anywhere near as soft as kid mohair. I didn't end up using the whole 4 oz as I just wasn't interested in doing more of this. I probably used about 3.5 ounces of it, and when I ran out of the thinner ply (for the second time) I decided I was done with that project.

I have no idea what I'll use it for since I don't want it anywhere near my skin. Any ideas?

----------------

For the Shawl Relay I'm designing a shawl, and while I'm not 100% in love with it, I'm pretty happy. I'd like it better in a lace-weight yarn I think, but that's not something I can do during the Olympic time parameter with all the other stuff I've got going.

Here's my progress as of yesterday:

I had it pinned out and steamed it to take some measurements, to figure out how much farther I want to continue that last lace pattern before doing something different. I want it to go down just barely past my elbows and I'm getting close.

Then I have to figure out the border. I want to do a knitted-on edging because I don't like the way other ones flip. I'm tempted to go with a garter border to match the edges, but I'd like to do something prettier than that. We'll see--I have a day or so to decide.

----------------

At this point I have to confess to being a complete idiot.

I let my domain name expire.

Again.

Two years ago, the last time this happened, I was told to change the domain host but that I couldn't do it within two months (I think) of then and within two months of it expiring. Two months is a loooong time for me, and when I finally did remember, I got partway through the process, got confused, got interrupted (multiple times--I have young children and they were even younger then), and forgot.

Last night I went to check something on my site and it did not take me to my site and I panicked a little bit.

Hopefully I can get it straightened out soon and the site will be back up. I've had the darn thing for six years now, but now there's a quilt shop called Pieceful Stitches that started up a little while ago, so hopefully they don't grab it before I can do something to get it back. [No, I'm not affiliated in any way with them, and they have nothing to do with my business or line of patterns.]

----------------

Last night I pulled yarn out of my wonderful yarn box that Greg built for me (and I LOVE LOVE LOVE) and photographed it to put in my stash on Ravelry. It was kind of depressing in some ways, but I'm trying to get a handle on what I've got since most of it is stored out of eyesight. I sure have some lovely yarns! They just need to become lovely knitted items now.

----------------

Have a wonderful Sunday, everyone!

It's Almost Time for School....

School starts on Wednesday and I can't wait!! Isn't that horrible? My little boy is starting pre-kindergarten and I am really, really looking forward to a whole 2.5 hours ALL TO MYSELF every week day!

It seems like I haven't gotten a whole lot done in the 20+ days since I've blogged (sorry about that, Mom!) but I guess I have. One of the things I did was to move my considerable paperback book collection from the living room to the wonderful bookcase in the dressing area. I moved my knitting and quilting books into the living room instead, and I'm happier with the arrangement so far.

----------------------

I managed to finish my Concentric Squares quilt a couple of weeks ago.




I started this quilt in 2002 (I think), at a workshop with Mary Ellen Hopkins. It was a fabulous weekend, full of sewing and laughing. I think this might be my first finished quilt from that workshop. How pathetic is that?!? I have a bad habit of wanting to make everything queen size, but I think I'm pretty much over that now. Too many quilts in the house!

----------------------

Before we left for Idaho I ordered 4 onces of super-wash merino roving, and I managed to finish it earlier this week.


The final weight was 3.8 ounces and I got 367 yards from it. That put it solidly in the sport weight range which is a little disappointing because I was shooting for fingering-weight yarn, but that's all right. It's still beautiful.

Unfortunately it's not right for the project I had in mind so I'll have to spin up something else instead. (Ow, ow, twist my arm! LOL!)

----------------------

I lost my mind and signed up for not one, not two, but THREE projects for the Ravelympics that started this morning. One hand spinning project, one shawl project, and one cowl project. The shawl project is about 2/3 designed so far, and I managed to swatch last night. (Swatching is considered "training" and I should've been training and designing for this project last week instead of last night.)

Here's my (kind of out of focus) swatch:


I'm basing it off the wonderful Faroese-style shawls in Myrna Stahman's book, Stahman's Shawls and Scarves.

----------------------

I'm making progress on my Pay it Forward projects, but I'm not going to give any more details until things are done and received. I just want to let my PIF people know that I haven't forgotten you!

----------------------

Our garden project has done wonderfully!

We started with this:

And now (or last week, actually) we have this:

The birdhouse gourd vine is going crazy, and actually has four good-sized gourds right now.

In the front yard, we actually had a recognizable chrysalis from a Black Swallowtail butterfly!

We planted parsley last year with the hopes of attracting that type of butterfly and we got to watch numerous crops of caterpillars decimate the parsley. It came back every time and survived the winter, so we've had a good time watching them again. Be sure to click on the picture and you can see the filament holding the chrysalis in place.

One of this summer's projects was redoing the front planting bed and adding an island, and we're mostly done! Here's how it looks now:

I'm so thrilled! It makes me really happy to look at it. We put in a red flowering Dogwood so it should be pretty spectacular in the next few years.

----------------------

I had a couple of more things I wanted to post about but I think I'm done for now (and I'll bet you are, too!).

I'm going to try to be better about posting more frequently. Now if only I had 20 more hours in a day I might get everything done that I want!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Response to Comment on Victorian Lace Shawl

This is for Miriam, who left a comment on my Victorian Lace Shawl post (post from 2006), and I couldn't get an email address to respond directly.

YES, there were errors in the pattern but they've been corrected on the Elann website. However, there are still some aesthetic issues (in my opinion) and a lot of people have had trouble with the loose instructions in the pattern.

There is a group on Yahoo Groups, Vicotorian Lace Shawl KAL (I think--I don't have time to chase down the link) that has a lot of discussion about the pattern.

If you'll send me your email address I'll be happy to give you some pointers, too. Send it to kat at piecefulstitches dot com.

How to save $143

A while back (like late April, maybe) I discovered a tick on Ryan.

Let me state, just for the record, that before discovering this tick, I'd never seen on in person before.

I had NO IDEA how to get it out other than hearsay, and so I decided (after taking a few deep breaths and staving off panic) to do some internet research.

The tick had been there for at least two days because I'd thought it was a mosquito bite that he'd scratched and made all red.

Nope.

Two days later it was big enough to see that it was a tick, and I freaked out.

So my internet research said that if it had been more than 24 hours, take the person with the tick to the doctor to have it tested for various illnesses. Since I'd never seen a tick, much less removed one, I decided that taking Ryan to the doctor was a very good idea indeed, and called the doctor's office.

They were rather blasé about it (which should've been my first clue) but humored me and set up an appointment for later that day.

At the doctor's office the doc (a man I really like and respect--we tried five other doctors before finding this man) simply got a pair of tweezers and pulled it out, then flushed the offending bug down the toilet. I was shocked at how far the skin stretched before the little bast*** popped out, as well as the audible "pop" that it made. I swear the skin pulled out about 1.5" from where it normally is. That shows not only how elastic skin is, but also what a good hold that little disgusting bug had.

The bill came today and it's $143 after insurance. I'm not a happy camper, but there's not much I can do. They didn't even give him a bandage. Sigh.

I'm going to consider this an expensive lesson in tick removal, and here's my advice if you've never removed a tick:
it takes a LOT of constant, even pressure with tweezers to get a tick out of the skin, but keep trying, in one firm but gentle and slow pull.

Apparently the only concern in this area is Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, but it's not common at all.

Now you know, and hopefully in the next day or so I'll post some pictures of our vacation in Idaho.