MondayLunchCrew

I took a few days off from knitting given the most recent setback. I decided that I needed a cross stitch break and best yet, a simple quick project. So I went into my stash and found the Shepherd's Bush Spooky Sheep. It was started on Thursday night and put down after a few stitches. On Friday, I picked it up and it was done before I knew it. (Even managed to play video games and stitch... that's now easy it was.)

I followed the directions of 1 thread of silk over two threads of fabric and it was a mistake. I should have listen to my instincts and went with two over two. In any case, it's done, but as you can see, it's a little too little coverage for my liking. At one point, I went and did two over two on the sheep since I couldn't take it anymore. Sheep now looks strangely uneven. But when G asked why I don't go back to fix it. (since usually I would.) "I don't love the pattern enough for the extra work. It's done. Whatever."

Labels: Cross-Stitch

// posted by May @ 7/30/2006 11:34:00 a.m. 1 comments

I've been knitting a lot on my sweater, the end was in sight. I was abandoning all other projects for the sake of finishing my sweater. I think I knew what I had to do sometime last week. The body of the sweater looks small. I tired it on. I measured. I measure again. But I kept on knitting. Getting closer and closer to finishing. This is called denial.

Sign. Today, I could no longer do it. The sweater is 2 inches too short in width. So, I spent my lunch hour(s) ripping it all out. The pattern says to shape the neck hole to be 12 inches wide with 4 inches on either side and you'll have a 20 inch wide body. All in all, logical. But somehow, when neck hole is 12 inches, and shoulders are 4 inches, the body is not 20 inches! I believe I'm measuring it not in the way the pattern intended. Here's the before:

So, I rip it all up and wind up all the yarn. I carefully pick up all the stitches, match up the rows on the two sides, front and back and I end up with this:

Now, I've got to re-knit the half of the sweater again. It's a worthwhile pain I'm sure. Yes, it's like the pain that comes from going to the gym (not that I've been doing that.) Good pain.
I think.

PS - Yes, I did just notice that in my 'carefully' picking up of stitches photo, I'm splitting a stitch. I assure you that was quickly rectified but I was too lazy to take another photo. You must forgive my [understandable] lack of logic in the moment. It almost made me wish I was a drinking person.

Labels: Knitting

// posted by May @ 7/27/2006 05:56:00 p.m. 0 comments

StreetWars is going well and branching all over the world. Not my kind of game, but it does have it's intriguing qualities. Now, we've got a different take, SockWars. Knitting, socks mixed in with assassinations. It's definitely not for me. But all types of people are knitters and might enjoy a different knitting game.

Now, if I'm never in Germany, I've got to go yarn factory outlet shopping too.

And on the funnier when geeky side: iconfactory appears to be under construction and are entertaining us with quicktime videos of the progress.

Labels: Knitting

// posted by May @ 7/27/2006 08:36:00 a.m. 0 comments

In the past year I've been working on learning new knitting skills. Ever since the Knitting Olympics, I've made many pairs of socks and have learned a few different techniques:

• short row toe and heel
• making a sock
• kitchener stitch
• zig zag bind off
• old Norwegian cast on
• pick up heel

This recent transition to new skills in knitting reminds me of the time in my life not long ago when I was stitching only in cross stitch and decided to tackle speciality stitches. Somehow though, speciality stitches seems easier to learn, but then again, it's probably because I had fellow stitching friends to encourage me. That reminds me, I've not been working on any pieces with specialty stitches for a while. Maybe it's time to have a new start there too! Must resist...

Labels: Knitting

// posted by May @ 7/26/2006 09:18:00 a.m. 0 comments

When I'm watching tv, I tend to knit since I can watch and knit at the same time. To make progress on my cross stitch, I've got to listen to something. The ideal is to get sucked into an audiobook and I'll spend the hours happily on my couch crouched over my stitching and deep in a story. Most recently that book was was The Camel Club by David Baldacci, not one of his best but it did the trick. I made quite a bit of progress on my John Clayton Eiffel Tower piece. Here's how it looks now:

Most recent trip to Japan and Taiwan yield little for my cross stitch hobby. Granted I've still got stuff from my last trip to tie me over. In the meantime, here are some sanrio characters in cross stitch patterns that may be of interest.

Labels: Cross-Stitch, Taiwan

// posted by May @ 7/25/2006 07:33:00 a.m. 1 comments

I was reading the article on blender pen transfers last week on Photojojo and was really intrigued. I had images I could use and a bone folder, so all I needed was the blender pen. Since we were in the neighbourhood, G and I went to Loomis and picked up a blender pen. It's been said that photocopies worked best, but I was more interested in trying out magazine type glossy pages and inkjet printed ones. I had good success with the magazine pages and will be trying something with inkjet this afternoon after work. Now my mind is spinning on all the things I could do with this.

Labels: General

// posted by May @ 7/24/2006 08:57:00 a.m. 0 comments

I've been contemplating some argyle. I've always loved it as a sweater pattern but find it hard to get colours that works for me. But ever since checking out Moth Heaven I've been thinking about socks but not just socks. And colours that I want to make and nothing too traditional. It's something to contemplate and mull over in the back of my mind. Here's the tutorial for my future reference.

Labels: Knitting

// posted by May @ 7/23/2006 08:39:00 p.m. 0 comments

I made the effort of laying out the on going sweater for the blog. It's nearly done. It's getting to the stage where I'm about to decrease and start on the 2nd sleeve. But nothing in this house can be laid out on the carpet without a visitor coming by to check it out.

We see here, the left sweater sleeve and body. The sweater is knit from side to side in one piece. I love making a sweater this way. The worst part has always been sewing up and this time, I won't have to do much of that.

Very quickly, visiting the sweater became lying on sweater. I guess this means when one day I make her, her own blanket she'll like it.

Labels: Flour, Knitting, Westie

// posted by May @ 7/21/2006 02:58:00 p.m. 0 comments

Labels: Travel

// posted by May @ 7/11/2006 12:54:00 p.m. 0 comments

Romni is having a 20% sale off everything for the month of July. I decided to get out of the house today and go for a visit. I wanted to find out if they carried some yarns that I was looking for, for future projects and also wanted to get some prices jotted down. Was planning on coming out with perhaps a skein or two of Manos (on sale, no less) to add into my afghan and maybe a few skeins of sock yarns given the sale price.

What I ended up doing was finding out that there's no distributer for Artful Yarns or Classic Elite in Canada and Romni is going to stop carrying one of my favorite sock yarn lines: DGB. So, they had a lot of the sock yarns in the downstairs discount yarn section. As DGB is distributed by Phildar, I asked about that too and was told that they will also stop carrying them in the future as they don't sell well here. Not surprising but very disappointing to me. I guess I just have to make sure to get the Phildar that I want/need whenever I get a chance to go to France. Whenever that is.

So, with the 20% discount on top of the discounted yarn prices, I walked out with 20 skeins of DGB sock yarn and one skein of Manos. I think I did very well. Many many pairs of socks in my future and it'll be a lot of fun to make them as well. I look forward to it.

Labels: Knitting

// posted by May @ 7/09/2006 09:03:00 p.m. 0 comments

Since I've been home from the holiday, I've been working really hard on sorting, editing, picking out from our photos. I think the rough estimate is that I started out with about 1300 of our photos in a mix of mostly digital but also B&W, colour positives and colour negatives. Why so many photos? Well, first of all, I love to take photos and I honestly expect a good number of them to be thrown out, and I really like to experiment with different ways to take the same scene. But may be best explained by this:

We were lucky to have gone at the same time as other friends because we were all going to attend mutual friend's wedding. So for the first time, we had taken a holiday where exploring the city with friends was part of the itinerary. Other than fun, the other benefit is that when you forgot your camera, someone else has theirs and while you are usually unable to take photos of yourself, your friends are there to take photos of you. Why do we never use the timer feature on the camera I can't figure out.

After working many weekends and weeknights on both our photos and those we needed from our friends' cameras, the resultant set of photos have been uploaded to snapfish. It is my absolute favorite place to get my photos developed online since their prices are fantastic and the prints are great. G and I went to Picture Me on Cumberland St. and got 3 albums for the trip photos and memorabilia. Enough room for the 1000 or so photos and 'stuff' to make up the photo albums.

Photos were ordered today from snapfish, and should get here next week or so, and then we'll slowly work on the album. Eventually, we'll have beautiful albums to look at and it's a good way for us to enjoy the holiday for longer.

All my film from the trip was photo-finished and scanned at Downtown Camera and they did a great job on them. While it's far for me to go, I'm definitely planning on heading back to them to get other photofinishing done.

All photos in today's blog were taken by our friends Lenore and Aaron. Thanks!

Labels: Tokyo

// posted by May @ 7/04/2006 10:20:00 a.m. 1 comments