finally back from chicago ...

... and i'm damn glad to be home! unfortunately i was unable to make it to the knitter's meetup at ALA last friday. i was in a meeting that ended shortly before that and i was pooped so i went back to my hotel, took a shower and was asleep before it was even dark outside! i did manage to get about 8 more inches knitted on the red scarf, though, so it's nearly halfway finished. yay!

yesterday i started another baby project from the stash yarn that one of my online knitting friends gifted me with. in the box, she also included a mostly finished 5-hour baby sweater (which i will give to a friend of mine). turns out that i have the exact yarn that the sweater was knitted with, so i cast on yesterday for a matching hat. i have NO idea about what size babies' heads are, so this will just be my "best guess." we'll just see how it turns out!

i have this dilemma about what to do with a BUNCH of afghan squares that i have. they were all made 2 years ago when i was in a square swap. i've never done anything with 'em, and i haven't yet had the time or the desire to join them into an afghan. they're rainbow colors (that was the theme of the swap), and i joined it because i was going through a bad emotional time. i figured knitting and crocheting all that bright cheery yarn would help me get happy again ... and it did. i guess the squares themselves could serve as reminders of the drama i was going through and that those clouds really do have silver lining, right?

Knitting Librarians at ALA

If any of you knitters are also librarians ... you may be interested in joining other knitting librarians at a knitter's meetup in the lobby of the Sheraton Towers hotel at 7pm on Friday June 24.

I'm definitely planning to be there!

countdown to the big 3-0

YIKES!!! i turn 30 in just less than 2 months. this is a big deal for me, and i've been thinking about this milestone for over a year already. so i thought i'd ask my knitting friends to tell me about when you turned 30. what were you doing at that time in your life? work, school, marriage, kids? how did you feel about turning 30? how did you celebrate? any advice you want to share? got good recipes or knitting patterns to pass on to a martha stewart wanna-be? (hey i figure rather than be all depressed and angst-ridden, i'll ward off the bad vibes with good food and good knittin'!) tell me, tell me! i'm thinking of making a scrapbook or something to commemmorate the "real" beginning of my adulthood :-)

red scarf redux

you may remember that i was having trouble with the red scarf i'm knitting. welllllll, i decided to make a long skinny scarf, to make it easier to keep track of stitches -and- easier to find any mistakes. it's turning out well! sorry for the crappy picture. i think the hearts will really stand out better once the scarf is properly blocked. i love the seed stitch border! my next challenge is to find an alternative for the "k4tog" that forms the humps of the heart. i'm thinking that if i knit 2 together twice, then pass one stitch over the other, that should do the trick, be a lot less of a PITA and be a little faster.

all done!

before...

and after...





a friend of mine whose daughter works for locks of love in texas, says that african american children are often given straight-hair wigs because of the lack of hair to make appropriate wigs for them ... please consider donating your hair to fill a very special need.

the final countdown

last night i was so geeked about getting my hair cut today that i could hardly sleep. yeah, i know, i need a life :-) this morning after my shower i took a very unofficial measurement of my ponytail and i think it exceeds the minimum 10" length by close to an inch. i washed it and ponytailed it, so if my stylist simply cuts the ponytail off first, i should be all set to put my "locks of love" in the mail this weekend. i plan to take pics at the salon, as SOON as i'm shorn. when i get home i'll put 'em up on the blog.

in knitting news, i worked on clapotis last night but made a mistake and had to tink back about 2 rows. i think i still had an error but i fudged a fix and am moving right along. this project is #1 priority, the red scarf is #2 (i haven't yet restarted that), and the baby stuff is #3. i need to, in the words of the inimitable james brown, get on the goodfoot!

i'm a hair machine

at least that's what my best friend calls me. here's why...my hair is well below shoulder length, after having been only a couple inches long 2-1/2 years ago. well on sunday, i decided that in my effort to minimize as much of the drama and stress from my life as possible, the long, high-maintenance hair has to GO! i'm tired of spending a bunch of time every morning combing and styling my hair, and pulling hair out of my shower drain, etc. plus, a large part of the reason i grew it out was because my ex loved it so much. i am so excited i can hardly stand it. wish i could get it done now LOL but i must wait until tomorrow at 3pm.

i love my hair long, but i love it even more when it's short (we're talking less than an inch of hair left!). it's cute, it's incredibly sexy (to me, at least) and best of all it's low-maintenance! this time, though, i've decided to donate my hair to Locks of Love, a non-profit organization
which donates hair pieces to children who are suffering from medical hair loss.

i've already taken a "before" picture; tomorrow i will post that and the "after" pic.

now for the obligatory bit of knitting content, yay! i was planning to work on clapotis last night but realized i left my knitting bag here at work. DOH! that's a damn good place for it, huh? i hope to have some knitting time this weekend. i would like to:

• knit more of clapotis
  
• re-start that red scarf
  
• start the baby sweater or booties
  
• maybe work on red sock #1. i'd like to practice doing short-row heels on this pair rather than heel flaps.

and now, back to your regularly scheduled work day.

challenges with red scarf

i like knitting simple lace, i really do. but i don't like when i make a mistake and can't find it in order to fix it. that's what happened with the red scarf. so i ripped it all out and will start over. :-( i think i will make it skinnier (2 hearts across instead of 3), which may help. plus then i can make it longer. and the red scarf can't be a project to work on while i'm chatting with friends on the computer! i brought clapotis to work today, maybe i will sit outside and knit for a while today. i want to get her finished so i can gift her, then start #2!

red scarf

a while ago i signed up for the red scarf project. honestly i kinda forgot about it until recently, so i decided to cast on. i borrowed a book from the library called "adventures in knitting: more than 100 patterns, from easy to intricate" by barbara aytes. a pattern jumped out at me, so i dug through my stash to find just the right yarn (plymouth galway in color 44, which for all practical purposes, i will call red).


this is after about one and a half pattern repeats. the pattern doesn't really show up too well. i'm sure it will open up more once it's off the needles and blocked.


against a white background, it looks pretty cool, huh?

bonnet's done

i finished the bonnet this morning! it is now blocking on a measuring cup, for lack of something better (and more appropriate). all that's left to do is add the ribbon ties, which i'll do when i find -just- the right ribbon. i love it ... and so does baby's mommy!

damn glad it's friday

what a week! i woke up on tuesday with a sore throat. it felt all red and hot and scratchy. by wednesday i was starting to get a little congested. on top of all that i was getting all crampy and cranky due to, well, "girl stuff." yesterday i felt like i got hit by a mack truck, i was all achy and hot and my head throbbed something awful. i was in bed by 8pm (which is a little extremely early for me). of course i was wide awake by midnight and was up most of the rest of the morning. surely my body doesn't really believe that 4 hours of sleep is enough?! anyway, i dosed myself with sudafed around 4:30am so i could breathe. i thought about taking a sick day but the sudafed is still working so i should be good for most of the day, i hope. after work i'm going to NAM's house for dinner and ice cream (YAY!) and maybe i'll knit some more of the baby bonnet. then i'll go home and get my sick ass in the bed.

baby bonnet lace

i FINALLY got it right. if you look closely you can see one little boo-boo ... on the row above the eyelet row i knitted instead of purled so i have a lovely little garter ridge there but by the time i realized it i was near the end of the row and didn't want to bother with frogging back and dealing with all those yarn overs. so i'll call it a design feature. if i feel so inclined (which i doubt i will), i'll repeat the mistake in the sweater and booties too so it will all match.

whispering from the stash...

i bought this yarn in march from another blogger who bought it in new orleans (where, incidentally, i will be going later this year). anyway, during my recent move, i really forgot all about the yarn until recently i came across a box, and i'm like, "hmmm what's in here?" so i opened it up and found the pretty hand-dyed yarn. and believe it or not, it told me it wanted to be clapotis #2. so let it be said, so let it be done ... but not until i'm finished with some other stuff!