Furry blue iPod case

On one of my all too infrequent trips to the gym, I pulled out the ratty little plastic baggie where I keep my iPod. "Well", I said to myself, " this just won't do, here I am the proud owner of Queen Bernina, the best darn sewing machine on the market and I don't have even have a proper case for my iPod" So, that very night I perused my stockpile of odds and ends of scrap material, and what did I see, but this awesome electric blue furry fleece in just the right amount to house the iPod!
After sewing a few simple seams, I now have a very unique iPod case! It even has a separate compartment for keeping the charging cord, a little flap to keep everything inside and folds over for a tidy little package. As a bonus, I can locate it in the gym bag by feel.

Another Convert

Saturday morning was gloriously sunny but quite a bit chill (37F when I left the house at 9am). I met up with friends at a quirky cafe in Davis, Delta of Venus. It looks like something from the 60's with Art Deco murals and band posters everywhere.

We has ourselves a nice little "Stitch & Bitch" session, Mary working on her Mobius scarf/cowl (here is a link to a KnitPicks mobius pattern, one of the many patterns and examples on the Internet). Mary's is made of a green and green worsted weight yarn. The brown yarn is actually from one of Mary's neighbors, West Valley Alpaca, from an very nice creature named "Pi" pictured below.

Jardee and I are still working on the Swallowtail shawl, although she is quite a bit farther along, having already completed all 19 repeats of the budding lace and starting the exciting Lily of the Valley pattern (this is where we get add the beads!). I am on repeat 11 of the budding lace, slowly but surely getting there. I try to do a little bit everyday.

A friend from work, Kathy, joined us to learn how to knit. This is her making her first official stitch under Jardee's tutelage. Yess! another convert!

New Year's Resolutions

2009 New Year's Resolutions

1. get backyard landscaped
2. volunteer
3. lose 10 pounds (starting at 138 pounds, see log on the right side frame)
4. get PMP certification
5. sew a complete outfit (top & bottom) that fits

so I'm thinking I will have to spend less time in these

(my all time favorite "dino feet" slippers)

and more time in these, moving them!

Swallowtail progressing

I've been making good progress on the swallowtail shawl, one might almost say it's been swallowing all my spare time. It is really kind of addictive.

As of Saturday I've made it to row 8 and still have all the hair on my head, have ripped and made wonky repairs on many rows, but the good news is I’m learning and understand the pattern now. My goal at this point is to complete at least 1 budding lace repeat without errors : )


As the rows get longer (this pattern starts from a 5 stitch row and expands every row thereafter to create large triangle), the prospect of ripping back one or more rows is getting more unattractive, and so I have been trying to make repairs where I can. After the umpteenth repair where I just kind of bumbled along adding/deleting stitches somewhat randomly to make the stitch count match, I've started really looking at the pattern after every right side row, marking where the mistake is with a safety pin, then fixing on the wrong side row (all purl stitches).

I finally hit on the bright idea of photographing what the correct stitch should look like in order to recreate it from the wrong side (WS) row. Above is what a correct yarn over looks like just before purling on the WS row.

this is how the pattern looks after correcting the yarn over and purling through. I cannot express how happy I was to catch the mistake and actually fix it so it looks perfect!

I am finding this pattern pretty addictive, it's kind of fun to do the pattern correctly, but even more compelling is if I do find a mistake I feel like I have to complete at least 1 more row in order to fix it before I forget there was a mistake.

New year, new project

To start the new year I am starting a challenging new project. It will be a beautiful lace project using a pattern loved by many on Ravelry, the Swallowtail Shawl designed by Evelyn Clark. The pattern can be found as a .pdf from this site, Portfolio - Evelyn Clark. I will also be making a couple of popular modifications, using beads instead of knitting the nupps in the Lily of the Valley pattern and doing 19 repeats of the Budding Lace pattern instead of 14 to make it larger (thanks to some help from MintyFresh for the modification math)

8/0 venetian beads, to be added as needed with a size #13/14 (0.90mm) crochet hook.

Material list:

• Malabrigo lace weight yarn (100% merino wool)
• size 5 knitpicks circular needles
• split stitch marker
• concentration
• focus
• patience, patience, patience

Using the knit picks needles is working well for 2 reasons:

1. they have nice sharp points which makes it a little easier to get into this really delicate yarn and,
2. bonus benefit of making it super easy to insert a lifeline (this is a piece of string or waste yarn inserted through any row that makes it much easier to unravel stitches when the inevitable mistakes occur). Check out this great tutorial video on how to do lifelines with and without the KnitPicks needles for more details.
   
   

   this is a nice weight lifeline to use for the lace weight yarn and it is pretty easy to thread through the KnitPicks needle hole
   

More helpful hints from my knitting expert friend, Jardee:

1. use the charts, not the text and note that the symbols sort of represent how the finished stitches look (for example a yarn over is represented by a circle (hole) and the right slant symbol is a right slanting knit 2 together decrease)
2. put in a lifeline after every pattern repeat (for example, this shawl uses the budding lace pattern (a 6 row pattern) 19 times, so put a lifeline after every 6 rows).
3. Tie a loose knot in the lifeline after insertion just in case the lifeline snags on something, this will prevent it from accidentally coming out.
4. use 3 lifelines; insert at repeat 1, at repeat 2 and when you insert the lifeline for repeat 3, check everything looks OK and then remove the 1st lifeline. This is the most conservative lifeline strategy, but I will definitely follow this for my first lace project.
5. use a sticky note to cover the rows above where you are working to make it easier for the eye to follow the current row, the pattern and not accidentally start on the next row.
6. how to use a crochet hook to insert beads instead of having to pre-string all the beads. See Jardee's great little instructional video below (this is her first video tutorial, doesn't she sound like a pro!)
   

Holiday Handyman continued

Craig is making good progress on dry walling the garage, here he is putting up the last piece (not going to do the ceiling). As he mentions in the video, the hardest part has been moving all the stuff around to access the walls. I really need to find new homes for a lot of this!