Blog Rating

I found this over at a fabulous blog, TECHknitting. I always learn something when I visit, which can't always be said when visiting blogs. ;-) [No, I have no idea why this fun little thing is on an online dating site, but there it is. NAYY, I've never been there before, I'm very happily married, etc.]

I was hoping to get a picture of my progress on the Mystery Stole 3 but we had a day of house cleaning and I didn't feel like I could abandon my wonderful husband while he vacuumed/washed dishes/straightened up to have a photo session with the knitting. [See? Told you I am happily married--he's such a wonderful guy!] Plus, hopefully I'll get farther along on it and be able to show more. I love having a clean house, but with young kids it sure doesn't happen very often.

I'm also working on a cute hat, Miss Dashwood, in a orchid Simply Soft yarn (a soft lavender). It's going to be very cute! I decided to forgo the bobbles and instead just purled a round. I don't think it's going to be any less adorable than it would've been with the bobbles, plus it'll get done faster. It's going to go to DH's cousin who had a baby in April. We just got the birth announcement last week so I'm not doing too badly as far as being behind. I started it last Tuesday and should have it finished by this Tuesday. I'm still on the fence about doing the ear flaps, as I think she'll have outgrown the hat by the time it gets really cold.

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Thank you to those of you who commiserated with me over my knitting math stupidity. It's so nice to hear that I'm not the only one who does stuff like that.

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DH's boss and his wife are trying to talk me into going with them (and DH) to the Gwar concert on Tuesday night. I'm still on the fence about it (never really been a big fan), not to mention that we'd have to get a sitter for the kids. I'll probably pass on it this time, but it sounds like quite an experience. They come to town fairly often, so maybe next time....

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As usual, I should be in bed sleeping instead of sitting in front of the computer. :-)

Confession of Minor Idiocy

I almost hate to admit it, but I have to wallow in my shame for a few minutes.

I made a fundamental math error when calculating how many repeats I'd be doing on my Shetland Tea Shawl border. Instead of 36 repeats, since each TWO rows of edging bind off ONE shawl stitch, there are 72 repeats, not 36.

So instead of being almost finished (and please, don't ask my why I didn't notice that I wasn't even close to half-way finished...) I'm three repeats away from being only HALF finished.

Le Sigh.

It has become blindingly obvious (a little late, DOH!) that there is no possible way this shawl is going to get finished before the first clue of the Mystery Stole 3 comes out tomorrow.

Le Grande Sigh.

The good part is that I don't need the needles from the Shetland Tea Shawl for the Mystery Stole 3, so I don't have to but the STS on waste yarn or anything. I had just really hoped to have one fewer projects going when I started a new one. Oh, well.

It sure did feel like the edging was going unusually fast.

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I managed to dye a second batch of yarn for my MS3, since I wasn't in love with the greenish tint to the first batch but Lynn loved it. We went bead shopping (again, for me) and I found some pretty blue beads that should compliment my yarn quite nicely. Of course I'm not going to swatch again since I'm happy with my yarn/needle combination from the last swatch, and the yarn has only changed colors, not weight. Yeah, no comments about daring the knitting gods/goddesses/karma to knock me down again--at least I swatched the greenish yarn. :-)

Hopefully I'll have pics of the yarn tomorrow. I actually blew the yarn dry with a hair dryer, but it was too dark for pics by then. Maybe tomorrow. As Scarlett says, "tomorrow is another day." [I'm feeling a smidge dramatic at the moment. LOL!!]

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Totally unrelated to knitting, I had a 3 Musketeers Dark Chocolate Mint candy bar the other day and that is my new favorite candy bar! I didn't really have a favorite before, but oh man, that is just delicious. It came in two little bars so I was able to spread the goodness out over four days. :-) mmmmmmmmmmm yummy!

Frappr map of MS3

I've added myself to the Frappr map for Mystery Stole 3. I LOVE these maps--it's so fun to see where everyone is, and it really drives home that the internet is an amazing thing for bringing people together from all over the world.

Click here to see the map.

More later, after I've gotten my yarn dyed....

Mystery Stole 3 Swatch

I did a little bit of swatching for the Mystery Stole 3 KAL, and this is what I came up with:

I'm very pleased with the open-ness of the lace; I know that many people would think it's too open, but I've gotten used to looking at the Shetland shawls/stoles and that look really appeals to me.

The beads are so hard to show properly, so here it is on black:

You can really see how open the stockinette sections are. I like them. :-)

Here you can see the sparkly-ness of the silver-lined crystal beads, but you don't really see the verdigris-ish matte beads at the bottom.

This is pretty true to how it really looks, with the greeny beads so much darker than the yarn. If the yarn was a little darker I'd love them, but I'm not real happy with them in this case.

Now, after all of that, Lynn (blogless, sadly) is going to use this yarn with the sparkly beads for her MS3. I'm going to dye some more yarn, and go for a little more grey yarn this time (I think!).

Relevant info about the swatch:

• yarn: KnitPicks' Paint Your Own lace-weight merino, marinated in the stash for about nine months and hand-dyed by me last week.
• needles: Crystal Palace size 5/3.75mm bamboo.
• size: 8.5" wide. Quite a bit larger than Melanie's 6.5" but that's all right with me!
• beads: top are silver-lined clear crystal, bottom are a greenish-slightly bluish matte bead. Both are 8/0s.

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Over at Caps for a Cure, there's a drawing every so often and I won one of the prizes for this round! I'm excited because I've never used this yarn before. It's hand wash so I won't use it for a chemo cap (since I think those really need to be machine wash yarns). Not sure what I am going to use it for, but I love it!

We're thinking about having a cast-on party for the MS3 on Friday, but of course nothing is worked out yet. I'm a little slow sometimes. :-)

Victorian Lace Socks KAL

Last month I decided to join the SixSox KAL group, but I lurked through the one they were knitting, the Horcrux socks. I hope to do them at some point but I knew I had to do the current one as soon as the pattern was posted. I debated about ordering some plain yarn but decided that I really should try to use up some of the yarn I have in my stash.

Here's my progress up to yesterday afternoon:

And here's my latest on my Shetland Tea Shawl:

And here's a pic of my chart and scribbling, just for the heck of it:

I've got 12 of 36 repeats finished.

I also managed to dye some yarn that my friend Rori is going to use for the Mystery Stole 3:

I used KnitPick's Paint-Your-Own yarn (the precursor to Bare) and Pro-Chem dyes. Here's a shot of how my yarn is usually drying: Not sure what the neighbors think, but it doesn't happen all that often and I don't know that they really care. They already know I'm a little weird.

My contest for what's different about my Swallowtail shawl is still going! I'll draw from all of the correct guesses on Friday, June 29th so leave me a comment with what you think is different about my shawl. Just in case you need a refresher about what it looks like:

And here it is pre-dyeing, modeled by Judie Overbeek:

The other project (well, one of many, truthfully!) has been tearing down the old front porch railing, ripping it apart, and rebuilding it about 12" lower (and building it better, of course!). Here's a before pic:

And here's how it looks now:

We need to prime and paint, preferably without "help" from little hands (which is why it isn't already done). It may not be all that different in the picture, but what a massive improvement! We can now sit there and not have the top rail going right in front of our eyes. We always felt like we were hiding. And just for the heck of it, here's a beautiful lily in our mailbox flower bed: Tomorrow night is KnitWit Night, which I always enjoy. Eight hours of eating, knitting, and chatting! You just about can't beat that. :-)