Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Hello Again, It's Me - I'm Back

After several crazy works of being too busy to do much of anything, I started missing blogging the last couple of days. As you can tell, I'd already deleted all my previous postings out of frustration a few weeks ago. But I'm starting again. And I've already had trouble with Blogger this morning posting my photos. I hope this time I'm able to get those photos back up.

Knitting wise, I haven't been very productive, but I did finally finish ONE, yes, ONE toe-up sock from Chery's toe-up sock pattern. If you go along her sidebar, you can find the pattern and download it for free - it's under 2socks/2circs and it's a PDF file. I had taken this class a year ago, and now I think I finally "get it." It's a pattern that can be knit on any size (from adult/children and any length foot, with any type of yarn), and the beauty of the pattern is that it uses a Turkish Cast On which is a wonderful way to start a toe-up sock. For the easiest way to learn Turnish Cast On, I suggest going to Deb, Fluffer Knitter's site and finding her tutorial. It stepped me through it easily, even though it had been nearly a year since I last dabbled with this pattern or attempted this nifty cast-on. Try it, you might like it. If you don't like it, then FER GIT ABOUT IT, okay?

Here is my completed sock, using DK weight Cleckheaton Country Prints yarn, color 16. It looks very summery in the skein. My Mom says it looks like a bouquet of pansies. I think I like these very much. And the yarn is fatter than usual fingering weight yarn, so I was able to knit them on size 3 needles and they go pretty fast. I'm already up to nearly the instep of the second sock. Here's a photo of the work in progress:



Unfortunately, due to the "busy-ness" of my early summer schedule, I haven't been able to attend Sip N Knit these past few weeks. Bummer. But here's a photo of some members of the group the last time I was there, maybe two weeks ago? Not sure. Here is Mary and Laura. You can see Laura working on her very creative and gorgeous Watermellon Shawl, the pattern of which she may decide to share with us. Go to her blog and bug her to finish it:



then we have Maenwyn and Sherre:



Finally, Maenwyn supplied a door prize - a set of crocheted coasters she made herself. Thanks Maenwyn. And now she's off somewhere in Indiana busting all the yarn shops and probably going broke hitting their sale bins. I tried to post a photo of her lovely coasters, but Blogger refused. I'll try again tomorrow, when perhaps I'll have more patience. Patience? Me? Yeah, right.

I don't get in these Sip N Knit photos myself because I'm taking the darn pictures. Next time I'll have to have Em or one of the girls snap my photo too. It's nice to have a teenager who still enjoys tagging along at her Mom's knitting group. That must be pretty rare, but I'm flattered that she does.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Temporarily Away

I may return to blogging later, but for now I'm taking a break. See you again soon.