pointysticks.net

This is a mohair shawl that I was working on for a little while last winter. One of my cyber-friends inspired me to join a shawl knitting list, so out comes the shawl. I’m about half way through it.

And just in case you’re afraid that I’ll run out of mohair, I assure you that I have more than enough.

On another front, I have a bit of a rant coming on, I have thought long and hard about this coming rant. I have weighed it out, I have ruminated over it, I have considered it and it’s a long time coming.

Am I just too old to ‘get it’ anymore? I would post the link that has spawned this question, but I really don’t want to get into a war with another blogger or hurt someone’s feelings by being critical and bitchy. But be aware that there is a woman out there with roving and a drop spindle that should not be allowed to use them unsupervised and that is selling the resulting product– I don’t mean that she has the product (I will not call that abomination “yarn”) for sale on a website, I mean that people have actually purchased it. It looks like someone got drunk, got mad and put a sheep in a blender. It’s awful.

Hideous.

Horrid.

She calls it “art”.

See why I didn’t put up the link? Because I don’t have anything nice to say about her (eh-hem) skills. I’m not a mean person, pleeeeease don’t think I’m a mean person– I’ve tried so hard to find something even remotely resembling “art” in the product. I know that art is objective and all that, but Oh Lordy Mamma
it does have to have some artistic merit, some level deeper than a teaspoon, something. Anything.

Oh, I’m a bad person– let’s all face the facts: I’m just not getting the proverbial “it”, and that freaks me out.

You appear to be a Knitting Goddess.
You are constantly giving and are unconcerned with
reward, you simply want others to love knitting
as much as you do. If someone wants to knit
miles of novelty yarns, you are there for them.
If someone wants to learn short row shaping,
you can help. There are no taboos in knitting,
only opportunities to grow. Everyone should
have friend like you around if they want to
learn to knit, and there’s a good chance that
your passion has rubbed off on a few others.
http://marniemaclean.com

What Kind of Knitter Are You?
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This came flying off of the knitting needles last night:

And I’m feeling quite proud of it. There’s only one little daisy on the back and one on the left shoulder, I think it gives a balance to the spray of flowers. I’m not one for much flat knitting because I don’t really like sewing the pieces together, however, I didn’t do too bad on the seams this time so I might try another flat sweater in the future.

I can say one thing for Hoppy, she certainly is a friendly little thing. Here, she’s helping me read my email and reset the spam filters.

Actually, more than one thing: She is an excellent companion to Josey, he has really bonded well with her and it’s good that he has a pet that likes all of his activity and chattering as much as he does hers.

I finished knitting and fulling the ‘bug rug’ for Lexi, it’s meant to be a car blankie for cold weather but it seems to be a car blankie for near arctic temperatures since it really insulates.

Playing around today, I have a vintage pattern pamphlet that I dug out and offered to send to a friend because she’s looking for a cute baby blanket to make for the holidays. The pattern stitch looks woven and that makes the blankie rather unique. In reading the pattern I wasn’t quite sure that I understood the stitch so I decided to knit up a swatch with some scrap yarn and see.

It appears that I did figure out the stitch, so I wanted to see if I could carry the illusion further by adding a second color.

If you want to try the pattern use large needles 8-11 US and two strands of baby or sock yarn(I tinkered with it a little to make the edges nicer): CO any even number of stitches, purl first row. On the right side slip the first stitch and K1, then *skip a stitch (without sliding it to the other needle) knit behind 1, then knit the skipped stitch– now let both slide off the needle, repeat to the last two stitches and K2. For the purl side, slip the first stitch, then *skip a stitch purl in front of the next stitch, and then purl the skipped stitch, repeat to the last stitch and knit that stitch before turning.

For the colored knitting, I carried the second strand with the first separating the two with my knuckle, then alternate colors using color A for all the ends and every other stitch, and color B for the alternates. It’s actually pretty easy to keep track of which color goes where, because in the previous row a pink loop is where I put the new pink stitch, and the same for green.

So now I have to tinker further, I’m thinking of a carseat bunting for the Lexi bug, that shouldn’t be too hard to do even though it calls for some shaping and the mother of all button holes (where the latch goes between baby’s legs).

Okay, double trouble: A cute kid and bird picture. This is the afore mentioned Hoppy the baby parakeet. She has her budgy voice, a “wotwot” call and what sounds like a very speeded up love-bird song. Very interesting bird, she’s also amazingly friendly.

Busying my self with some spinning and charting out some new motifs.

Just finished the update on Omnilead.com but haven’t gone back through the new pages searching for typos and prettying things up yet. So if you want to check it out please do– but be merciful on my grammar as it is poor and weak and often punctuated by pathetic spelling.

I’ve been wading through 120 pages of the Patriot Act II, the sequel to the ever popular Patriot Act. As most sequels are simply dutiful spin offs of the first, this one breaks the mold– it goes completely overboard and the plot thickens. Hmmm.. those boys over at the Bohemian Grove have really out done themselves this time. If I wasn’t a conspiracy theorist before, I certainly am one now.

No, it has nothing to do with the election because I’m positive that if my candidate had won he’d probably endorse this bit o’ trash that reduces the US Constitution, privacy rights and civil liberties to so much toilet paper too. I usually keep my politics to myself but if you possibly have the time I would strongly recommend reading the proposed amendments and extensions to the Patriot Act– it makes George Orwell look like a daisy pickin’ optimist.

On the brighter side, we have a new addition to our family. Her name is Hoppy and she’s a baby parakeet. Josey is absolutely fascinated by her and loves letting her walk all over him. (BTW he was the one that named her Hoppy.) Today was his first time cleaning her cage and he did it with just the slightest amount of fussing but he did it. I’ll post a picture of her later.

Sometimes it’s a little frustrating, I try to get Lexi’s attention with a brightly colored toy or a cookie and she just ignores me and keeps on reading.

Josey has promised to help me make some more cookies– since there were only a few pathetic survivors this morning the guys decided to finish off the batch before breakfast.