New IK In The Mail


I love it when the mailman brings me something fun to look at. Tonight, I am going to kick back and check out the new magazine in the mail today and Cardinal baseball which looks like it might be in a rain delay?

You know what that means? Late night baseball and knitting, ah I love it.

River City

I can't believe I did it....I am taking a Photography class. (Click on the picture to get the full effect) Two weeks ago we went to the riverfront on the East Peoria side of the river to practice taking panoramic pictures.

I doubted mine would turn out. With the help of a website from the instructor, I still doubted that mine would turn out ( I was thinking I was computer program challenged for a bit), but I cannot believe the results.

I actually took four pictures and turned them into one panoramic pic.

Not bad if I do say so myself!

Can This Be Considered?

Another new toy? After years of just basic cable, we finally upgraded. Now, there are truly too many channels to choose from. One needs to truly just scroll through the many options. I doubt that I will ever find all there is to see.

While scrolling around on Sunday, I found two interesting channels.
616 - Sundw, not for everyone but they were showing a series called "Be Good Johnny Weir". Being an ice skating fan, this was an intersting show. I am not a particular fan of Johnny, but this was an interesting take on his life as a ice skater. A great watch while doing a little knitting.

The other one was 219 Create. Part of the public television line, I happened upon Knit and Crochet Today. Fun to watch but not a whole lot of new episodes, but hey it's knitting!

A New Toy

Faint. After all these years of being a Palm carrier, I have switched. Baby Boy B and I got new Droids this weekend. I have been holding out for an iPhone, but was unwilling to give up my Verizon service for it.

So when at knitting on Saturday, Linda showed her Droid and with the buy 1 get 1 special going on, it took me about 5 minutes to decided to change. It is taking some getting used to and I have lost many apps from my Palm, but I'll get used to it and am sure I'll eventually finding new apps.

Only one small problem, don't try playing with the contacts and phone at 2 am.....had a couple of close calls on Sunday morning...barely got the phone turned off before I was calling a couple of people.....they would not have appreciated my early morning phone calls!

One Can Dream

I spend alot of time surfing the net and dreamin. When I do I sometimes stumble across shops that I really feel connected to. Then I start dreamin, if I had all the money in the world what would my shop look like? I think I've found one....check it out

http://www.purlbee.com/the-purl-bee/category/the-big-move

in New York City! Has just a little of everything.

Finally!

My brochure arrives in the mail....after the registration has been open a week.

Probably won't take any classes at first glance. We'll see though.

Can You Say Sucker?

All it takes is one person to say this is a good book, and I'm all over it. Actually, I looked at it when it first came out, and thought it looked decent. I, just wasn't sure if I needed to have it.

When I told someone I had bought it, they said that I must be going into this designing stuff hot and heavy....I laughed and said no, I'm just a collector! Seriously, it does look like it might have some good info in it.

Happy Birthday Baby Boy B and Baby Boy A!

They are 27 today, and for this post, Baby Boy B gets top billing...that doesn't happen too often!

Sometimes It Just Happens

Last year, I bought some cream Bellagio to go with a sweater I thought would be a good fit. Turns out the two yarns were together were too heavy. While trying to find a good match for yesterday's yarn posting, I figured I would swatch the Bellagio to see if maybe it was the yarn to go well with the sweater.

I don't know what made me think to just add it to the Florens that I had bought one ball of swatch, but something happened. I decided I really like the look of the two together! They both are similar in they have the same feel and shiny thread running through them. The gauge is slightly off, but I should be able to make that work.



There is a Debbie Bliss pattern that I liked the look of with two yarns used together in much the same way. I'm not actually using the Debbie Bliss pattern for, but rather the color thought as an inspiration.

The stitch is actually from a tank from the Knit Simple and I am not using the right side, rather the wrong side, which for me would normally look the right side anyway. I am not making the tank either, at least I don't think. This is one of those that I am flying by the seat of my pants on. I'll knit til I get to the armholes and see where that takes me. Maybe, some sleeves, we'll see how long the Bellagio holds out.

I'm lookin at it this way, not only will I have used up the one ball of Florens I bought, but also the stash reducing on the Bellagio....

I Started Out


looking for a yarn to go under this yarn. A couple of weeks ago, I had two possibilities which I swatched and blogged about. Today, I took them out to Knit 4 and sought other advice.

While there we tossed several of the ideas around. The consensus was that best one was one that the shop did not have enough of and unfortuately is discontinued.

Christiane sought Karyl out to shop for me over in Champaign and they too were out. Wonderful person that Karyl is, she volunteered to shop for me in Bloomington on her way back. I figured I might find something over in Morton so I did not have her stop.

As it turns out I found something and not taking my yarn in with me, brought it home knowing it would work. It didn't, so now I have enough of a yarn that will need something knit out of it. I'll blog about at a later date.

The search is still on. The over sweater is not finished yet, so there is still time...

Blog Fodder

Just a little review of things I have been reading about on other people's blogs.

Over on BrooklynTweed, Jared is now selling his patterns as PDFs. Updated and clearer grafts we are hearing...I wish I would have known that last Fall, I might have waited....okay so maybe now...but now do I need to re purchase some of them for better instructions/graphs?

The Stitches Midwest brochures are in the mail. I have not received mine yet, but you can look at it online as a pdf if you want.

Fellow Knit Camper, Janine Bajus (FeralKnitter) is going to be opening a store front online. Can't wait for that to happen later this Spring...I am such a sucker for new places to buy from. And Janine is a friend.

MN Knitter's Days in October. Sue and I met up with Sheryl Hill, the organizer, at Arnhild's last February. I had met Sheryl a couple of years ago at Meg's. She was telling us about a camp that she organizes in October in Red Wing area. Last year, Cheryl Oberle was the knitter of the weekend. So, Sue and I signed up for this years. It should be fun!

And finally, the house closing is done, the insurance cancelled, the water and gas off, it is almost all finished. Who would have thought it would take almost a year....and how did it become a year later?

A Yea and A Nay

A couple of things that I worked on last weekend that have been nagging at me.
First some Fantasy Naturale I thought would be good for Ivory Leaves from Cheryl Oberle's Knitted Jacket Books. Cheryl was right. The lace gets kind of lost in the variegation of the yarn.

So, I'll have to set this aside for now....I really want to do both, the Ivory Leaves jacket(the pattern really is really quite simple to memorize) and the Fanatasy Naturale (it is kind of a heavy worsted so that may take some more thought)

The Green Sweater. I have been merrily knitting along on it and realized that I really should have done some waist shaping on it. So, I ripped it back quite aways and am now finishing up with the waist shaping. I'll like it so much more...pretty soon I can proceed upwards toward the sleeve openings.

I am adding quite a bit to mine as I want it to come down over the little pouch.

Today, is just dropped dead gorgeous. I took the day off to hopefully close on the house! Ahhh, this is the life.

Not So Bad

After a tough start to the weekend, it turned out to be a pretty good after all.
Saturday morning was spent at Knit Four Together having a really nice time knitting. Norma managed to find a book I had been looking for which was a great find for me. More about that in a future post.

The rest of the weekend has been spent getting my knitting together. You see for a couple of weeks I have been sort of helter skelter on what I want to knit.

Spring is finally here and that means that it won't be long before Summer follows. And with knitting, it is important to be knitting a season ahead. That is if one wants to wear it when the season gets here.

I have spent last night and most of today, swatching potential summer sweaters and figuring just what I want to be knitting next. The result has ended up in this bag.

It feels really good to finally have a plan rather then flittin from one idea to another. And I am focusing. As I have blogged before, for me if I stick to one sweater at a time, then I tend to complete it and the end result is sweaters finished.

It's been a good weekend.

Do You See A Trend?

It would appear from my collage of yarn that my Spring/Summer knitting has a trend going. All the same colorway of sage green.

Actually, there is a little beige in there as well. It will all go with a great purse that I have.

Knit On Through All Crises!

Thats what I am doing today. Planned on closing the house today, but it does not look like that is going to happen. Yesterday there was a snafu with FHA, today the Underwriters and the Title Company. The plan was to knit this morning and then go to the closing at 1:00, then maybe take a trip to the Yarn Shop in celebration.

Since I am kind of on hold, I could do some cleaning, but I think it is best to do some knitting while I wait to see what happens next in this saga with her house.

EZ hit on the head, "Knit on, with confidence and hope through all crises." I think I will, with a little alcohol.

Only 1 More Day To This Week

I'm taking Friday off to close on the house. The appointment isn't until 1. Friday morning, I think I'll sit around and drink a whole pot of coffee and knit. I've got a couple of things I am itchin to try out.

One is my purple yarn from Camp and the other two are a couple of yarns I bought only one ball on that I want to test a couple of ideas around with. Maybe I'll even get something blocked!

Just Need To

Sew on the button.

And do some blocking.

How long do you think that will take me?

Perspective and Almost Closure

Today, I think was the first Easter in 27 years that we have not went somewhere for Easter. Baby Boy A, of course is in Memphis. Baby Boy B, The Tall Guy and I had Jimmy Johns while sitting and standing in Mom's garage. There was only some stairs to sit on and one lone chair left, so Baby Boy B had to stand.

There is just a small pile of garbage left in the middle of the garage that hopefully my brother will take care of early this week. The rest of the house is clear, I think. It's funny, when we have helped other family members move to new houses, I always wondered why some people just up and leave things. Now, I know why. This house moving stuff is work, and by this time you are just ready to be out of it.

The Tall Guy wasn't too sad to be done. But, Baby Boy B and I both had a moment there this afternoon as we were getting ready to leave. It was not the house I grew up in, and not really a house that had memories like the other two she lived in, mostly the memories were ones of declining health and problems, but it was where she last was.

Baby Boy B, though, had some history there. He spent alot of time there with his grandma after she had some health problems a few years back. He ate alot of lunches with her when he could, he cut her grass for her, took her shopping sometimes, and of course for the last 7 months he was living there.

And then we were home, and Baby Boy B in his typical fashion said, "Mom when something happens to you and Dad and you leave us your house here and everything in it, we are going to ..." you fill in the dots. I hope we get a chance to get rid of alot of stuff before that happens! We've got a lot of stuff....I hope we are around for along time so we have time to go through it. Downsize and throw away old records and crap!

Soon very soon some closure! For now, lets knit.

Happy Easter, Happy Spring, Happy Everything!