Posts from — July 2008

What is your personality color?

Pale? Turquoise?  Sounds kind of “blech”…  Perhaps we could have called it “Soft blue-green” even “Light turquoise”.

Ah well – there you have it.  Nothing exciting, but pretty interesting how the personality analysis comes close.  Another fun quiz online to take.  The link is at the bottom of this Pale Turquoise box.

Hey!  Something finally worked!  I had some Cascade 220 leftovers, and I had this pattern I’d been wanting to try, so next thing I knew, I’d made a hat!

It was interesting how the spiraling happened even before the decreases started.

It came out not a lot “slouchy” on my head – but I have a big head so that came as no surprise at all.  It’s not for me tho, so it should be fine.   My gauge was pretty close to the pattern specs.  I might use a size 7 needle (instead of a 6) if I knit it for me.

It’s a nice easy knit.

Here’s the designer’s “Flickr set” for this hat.

That word could actually describe my knitting of late. The lace weight Clapotis became “crapotis” – so I ripped it out. I started a lace weight Faroese shawl from Myrna Stahman’s book – same fate – rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrip-it – so, since I was in a frogging mood I went ahead and frogged the part of my Pretty as a Peacock that I had been avoiding for the past few months – so we’re back to the lifeline for the umpteenth time on that one. Even the last dishcloth I knitted from the KAL was puh-thetic – mostly just I wasn’t all that enamored of the design chosen, but also because I accidentally turned about six rows of stockinette at the beginning into six rose of reverse stockinette – so the design came out correctly – but the background was ***. Plus, I ran out of yarn and had to just use leftovers from other balls, so it’s a cloth of many colors. Works fine for a dishcloth, but it won’t be posing for any blog-shoots.

So anyway – as a means of diversion here – I just found out about “oobleck”…

Also known as a “non-Newtonian fluid“. How did I live half a century and never hear of this stuff? Probably because we didn’t read much Dr. Seuss when I was young – those books creeped my mom out so we didn’t read them. Read plenty of others though, just not Seuss. Anyway – there’s a Seuss book where a bunch of “magicians” make oobleck theirs is green. Still, I wouldn’t have thought it was actually something a person could “whip up” in the kitchen even from that story. However, oobleck can be had! And, apparently 6th grade science teachers see some value in it – although this science activity has it made with other ingredients than cornstarch and water. You gotta love a science teacher heh? ‘Let’s see…how can I complicate this just a bit?’

A couple of neat videos on how to make (and play with!) oobleck:

The Amazing Oobleck! – More bloopers are a click away

And, not to be missed (no REALLY it’s cool!) – watch what happens when a geek with a subwoofer gets hold of a halfsheet pan and some ooblek.

These are in no particular order – just listing them as I think of them!

Of course, these are just ten of a WHOLE BUNCH of “Favorites”.

The pattern for this cloth can be found at Knitting Memories blogspot. I’ve been meaning to try this one for a while. What self-respecting coffee swilling household shouldn’t have one of these??? It comes out to about a 9 by 9 inch square for me when I knit it on size 6 needles (4.0 mm). I believe this is likely the next to the last dischcloth for me for a while. I’m down to the last of the cotton worsted yarn, and using it to knit this KAL with this week. So, that should wrap things up for the dishcloth flu.

Meanwhile…speaking of catching fiber bugs, I think I’m one of maybe 10 online knitters in the world who have not made Kate Gilbert’s Clapotis. I have always thought it was an intriguing pattern, but just never got caught up in the whole “oh I HAVE to knit that!” thing where it was concerned. That is until I saw this one. And she really hated using lace weight yarn to make it. So I’m not sure if maybe I’m just nuts (possible) or just like to blunder in to doing projects that defeat me (likely!) – but now I think I’ve gone from catching the dishcloth flu to catching the Clapotis…because I cast on my merino lace yarn and started this baby soon after I stumbled across her project on Ravelry.