Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Home again, home again, jiggity jig!

I'm back! We left last Friday for a mini-vacation to Vermont to visit Zeb's grandmother and some of his family members, and got back yesterday. We had lots of fun but the time off was much too short, considering we spent most of Friday and Tuesday in transit. Oh well, serves us right for going Greyhound. It may be cheaper but really, you're better off paying the extra money for a train or a plane if it means you get to your destination quicker and have more time to enjoy your vacation. Anyway, we really enjoyed ourselves so it was worth it. Zeb's relatives were all extremely nice and hospitable. We ate lots of good food, went kayaking and fishing, slept in a tent, played board games and, thanks to Kuna and Tony, came away with enough chocolate and candy to last us for months (ha!). I'd post some photos but, absentminded fool that I am, I kept forgetting to bring my camera with me whenever we left the house and so I only have a few photos of Zeb and his family taken on our last night. Hopefully, Kuna will post some on her blog soon.

I didn't do any knitting while away, although I brought Lady Eleanor along for the trip and enjoyed showing her off to Zeb's relatives, who oohed and aahed over her gorgeousness. We also visited a yarn store in St. Albans called Gwen's Antiques and Wool. The owner had a nice selection of yarn at pretty good prices. Unfortunately I didn't buy anything because I didn't have my yarn shopping list with me and didn't want to buy yarn that I wasn't planning to use for a specific project. But it was nice just to look around.

In other exciting news, I am officially a member of the New York City Knitters ring (check out my ring code on the bottom right side of my blog) ! Or at least, I think I am. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to get some sort of official confirmation e-mail or something but I'll just assume I am until I get an e-mail stating otherwise. I'm so excited by this you'd think it's a huge deal but it really isn't. All it means is I'm part of an online group of New York City knitting gals and guys which makes it easier for anyone looking for NYC knitters to find my blog. Cool, huh?

Monday, August 21, 2006

Tabula rasa

Yes, faithful readers, I've changed my template again. The old one was just not working for me and I grew tired of cringing every time I visited my blog. Actually, the new one isn't working for me either but at least it's plain, simple and spare and so it'll do until my HTML skills improve and I can create a layout I can live with. Damn Blogger for having such a crappy template selection!

Anyway, on to the knitting...oh wait, there isn't any. At least not anything new; I'm still working on Lady E. but I'll spare you the play by play. I will say that I'm not progressing as fast as I'd like because I've had so little free time to knit. Now that Zeb's working six days a week, I've actually had to (gasp) COOK for myself. Oh the horror! While he was out of work Zeb prepared nearly every meal we ate and so I was a bit spoiled. I'd forgotten how time-consuming cooking is. Even the recipes that supposedly take only 30 minutes to prepare take me at least an hour. Thankfully, Zeb has two weeks off from work and so I'll get a reprieve and some much needed knitting time.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Waste not...

Buying yarn before you have a specific project for which you will use it is a bad, BAD idea. I came to this conclusion while digging through my yarn basket over the weekend, when I realized that I have absolutely no idea what to do with the 25 skeins of yarn sitting in there. About 15 of them are skeins of boucle yarn that Zeb bought for me on ebay, after I salivated over pictures of them. Of course it didn't occur to me at the time that buying 15 skeins of boucle yarn wasn't very wise because there are only so many things you can knit with boucle. Things like scarves, throws...and scarves. Another useless gem is a cone of what appears to be 5, 000 yards of cotton yarn in a nice aqua shade. Okay, I'm exaggerating; it's only 1,000 yards but still way more aqua cotton yarn than I will probably ever need. Hmmm, maybe I'll knit some nice aqua dishcloths for everyone I know...

Monday, August 07, 2006

Mystery Project #1

Here's a clue:

Mystery Gift #1

Give up? Well tough nookies, because I'm not posting the answer until the recipient has received his/her gift, which means this mystery project will not be unveiled until the end of the year. Neener, neener, neener!

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

River revisited

The past several days have reminded me how much I despise summer. It's fucking hot, people. I grew up in Nigeria where every day is either rainy or oppressively hot and even I am wilting in this heat. Besides being uncomfortable the constant heat makes it very difficult to do anything that requires being more than 5 feet away from an air conditioner for over 10 minutes, which eliminates any activity that requires leaving our apartment (working and exercising excluded). Bad for my social life, wonderful for my knitting. So wonderful, that I've resumed work on a project I abandoned 5 1/2 months ago:

River

The name of the pattern is River and it's one of the many lovely patterns featured in Rowan Magazine Issue 38. I'm knitting this in Kidsilk Haze which despite it's ethereal beauty, is a total bitch to work with. It is 70% mohair, which makes it very delicate and the resulting stitches are so thin that I sometimes knit into two stitches instead of one. And forget making a mistake: I learned the hard way that unravelling Kidsilk Haze is an exercise in futility. When I first began work on River I made a mistake and tried to unravel my work so I could fix it. I unravelled for several rows only to have the yarn snag and break. I repeated this stupid behavior every time I made a mistake because I foolishly thought if I was extra careful and ripped it very s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y I could unravel it successfully. Ha! After I found myself holding a little ball of wasted yarn for the fourth time, I gave up and decided to keep trudging along no matter how many mistakes I made. Some more photos:

Close-up

I spy with my little eye...

Blowin' in the wind

My River is going to be more of a scarf than a shawl because I'm not the shawl-wearing kind of gal. Hopefully it'll be done in time for fall.