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This and that…


This little collage (poorly pieced together by yours truly using PaintShop Pro), is the many faces of Annie’s rose. At first I thought the last bloom would just be these flimsy “singles” as can be seen in the bottom left picture. However, although I got two of those flowers, the rest of the blooms appear to be back on track. I guess I have aptly named this rose. Annie was always a problem child (hound)…so her rose acting independently is a nice tribute to her.

And, yes, I guess I have seen cousins who look more alike than MPs “fraternal twins” below. He just enjoys having some wool socks made for him by his wife. Either that or he’s just the best sport.

I’m really getting impatient for Blogger to get some of their beta issues resolved. I feel kind of guilty grousing about a FREE blog service, but I miss some of the nice little conveniences that the old Blogger had. The new one shows lots of promise, though, so I decided to just go ahead and go with the beta version and hope for the best. I usually wait until new techy-stuff has seasoned for a while before jumping on the bandwagon with it. Not sure what posessed me to do it differently this time, but…there you have it.

Fraternal Twins

Well, when you think about it, not having to “match” your socks up is really a guy thing, right? MP likes them, even though they don’t match.

Multi-Tasking


In order of appearance (top down)
1. MP’s sock.
2. Still “thinking.”
3. 375 stitches currently serving the purpose of a circular needle “cozy.”

The sock is getting close - remember these are big, Shrek-size socks. However, it is suffering from one of the “tertiary symptoms” of Second Sock Syndrome - different size from sock #1. Not sure what if anything I’ll do about that. Michael thinks I should “just get more yarn and knit a 3rd sock.” Why, certainly dear! Anything you say! Hmmm….We could end up with matching socks that way - if I knit another 2 similar socks to the ones I’ve just knit - or we could end up with a party of 4 of all different shapes and sizes. Who knows! I don’t do well with knitting two on one needle. I tried that with the swallowtail shawl that never happened. Ended up knitting too much on one pointy part of the butterfly, not enough on the other, getting confused on the charts, and it was just not a pretty sight. So, I think I’m too easily distracted to keep track of knitting two things at once. Actually, I could have avoided making this one bigger if I’d bothered to keep track of how far I was on the heel flap, but…well, I decided to “wing it.” Usually not a good idea for me.

Picovoli is still waiting for me to get the courage to decide whether to do the math - or just wing it [ahem...see above statement on the advisability of me doing any winging]. Acutally…I really DO have an “excuse” to let this one “cure” for a bit in the basket. Since it’s a “top down” sweater, and since I’m not positive it fits or doesn’t, I want to try it on to see how close I am for the shaping part. Well, as can maybe be seen in this picture, I really don’t have enough length of the circular needle to try it on because if I stretch it over my head, it’s going to pull off the needles. I found a really cool little “invention” on Nancy Roberts‘ web page called “Try it on tubing” - the other day. It connects to the tips of your needles, and then you can put the sweater on without worrying about dropping live stitches because it makes a complete circle for them to slide around on. It’s so ELEMENTARY while being ingenious at the same time, that I just love the idea. So, I’m waiting for that to get here. Hopefully it’s not just some air tubing to an aquarium that a person could get at Wal-Mart or their local pet store for a pittance. Oh well…support your local fiber entrepenuer, right? This lady’s got some very good ideas. Stuff I wish I’d thought of. Spin-Off Magazine has her work on the front cover this month.

And as for the so-called needle cozy….that’s the beginnings of Ene from Scarfstyle (see the side bar for a link to the book on Amazon.com). I wasn’t going to cast on until after I finished these other two projects, but that baby alpaca yarn is so soft, the Dallas Cowboys were on the TV, and I’d had enough of THE SOCK…so, OK…I just couldn’t resist. I kind of hoped I’d have more self-control with knitting than I do in sewing, but this is beginning to look familiar. Speaking of sewing…I’ve got a couple projects that need finishing.

Cruisin…

I have been knitting. Just don’t really have anything cool to share. I’m on … you know … SOCK NUMBER TWO and, let’s face it we’ve already seen it…down there on MP’s foot. I guess it does look a little different - because I don’t go to the trouble of looking for the right part of the yarn to start sock number two from to make certain that all the stripes are going to land in the same place as the previous sock. I leave that sort of thing to a miracle or two. I have actually matched plaids and checks on dresses by accident before - so I’m expecting knitting to happen that way too. I am nearly to the heel flap now. I think I have about another half-inch of the leg to do before I start the flap. How I finally got inspired to get the second sock started was: I was working on this, things were going along swimmingly, and then I got to a part where I have to THINK. Uuugh…OK…counting is fine, but THINKING? Really not up to that right now. My poor brain is too fried to actually think, due mostly to the Summer from YouKnowWhere and the psycho weather we’ve had. So…my hands were itching for needles, the project I had been working on was now requiring BRAIN FUNCTION, and there sat that nice completed sock without a mate, and my poor tired brain thought “hey…I know! let’s knit that other completely brainless exercise in tube-knitting sock!” OK…you call it what you want…I call it “inspiration.” That’s about the extent of my inspired moments until things start cooling off for more than a morning around here. Really though, I’m saving my “Lucy” yarn for sort of ‘yarn dessert.’ I’m picking out a pattern for it, from this book:

and as soon as I’m to the finish line on these other two projects, I’m casting on Lucy and a shawl that I’ve been planning. Well…you know…assuming that the weather has regained it’s sanity and my brain can function once again.

"You just tend to your knitting…."

That phrase, I used to hear often - from both grandmothers and occasionally my mother who was…after all…also raised with grandmothers and a mother who used the phrase. It was kind of a “mind your own business” suggestion. It came to mind again as I was poking around in the backstage info of Blogger this morning, reading about widgets and programming for the new beta interface. I started getting a headache just trying to wrap my mind around all of this new stuff. I, after all, have been known to build entire web sites from scratch “back in the day.” HTML and Java have zoomed on past me, and I’m back in 2nd grade again it seems. It apparently is not to one’s advantage to leave off doing anything in the web world or you become archaic all too soon. I will, of course, continue reading and digesting and may just find a way to tweak a little code here and a widget there eventually. But for now….I believe I’ll take my mother’s and grandmothers’ advice and just “tend to my knitting.”