hello ~ hope your weekend was happy and relaxing! this is (finally!) my catch-up post, well almost catch-up, no pics of orangina or my hair (which at this point has roots-gone-crazy) but a bunch of others that i hope are interesting.
this first pic is of the backtack supplies i received a month ago (tsk tsk) and which are currently almost completely transformed into a nice gift for my backtacker – it was supposed to be in the mail thursday, but i’m horrible. it will be in the mail tomorrow, i’m determined. hopefully, the lateness of it won’t bother the participent cause she’ll be too wowed away by what she gets. about the stuff i got, isn’t the fabric cute? the buttons are great, plus the old-fashioned needle case is so fancy and pretty, i love it.
then we get to the baby top i spoke of earlier – i’m almost done, just have to finish the sleeves and seam it all together. it’ll be like the pattern picture in the corner but won’t have those mitten-sleeve-endings. don’t you love the colors?! so pretty. i was originally planning on making two of these – since this is going to be for twin girls – but my sisters, the original(!) twins, said they had never been too crazy about matching clothing and thought it’d be cute if i made different articles of clothing but in the same yellow-and-white stripes. what a great idea! i’ve already decided on this really cute hoodie from the same pattern book. plus, as fun as this pattern has been, i wasn’t looking too forward to doing it again – i realized knitting for twins risks the same hazards knitting socks can cause – you finish one and you’re so proud, but you really don’t want to knit a second.
the next pic is the most dreaded progress pic of all – and the one i’m most embarassed by. these measly 10 rows make up the hem of a really cute phildar pattern i’m working on along with winnie – but she’s so far ahead of me by now, agh! anyhow, for some reason, this hem is taking forevvvvvvvveeerrrr, and i can’t tell you how many times i had to re-cast-on, driving me frickin crazy.. but plow on through, and all that right? at least it’s in knitpick’s lovely shine. in the meantime, i’m looking around for the perfect jobless striping link. i found a few, but if you have any to recommend, by all means, do. i’m determined to catch up – though winnie’s finding all the problems with the pattern, so maybe i’ll stay just a few steps behind, hee. just kidding, winnie!
i couldn’t help casting on for this great phildar pattern that siow chin and marjorie are knitting. the eponge feels a lot like that lovely pingouin yarn i got from my <a hre”http://www.kimberlinewyork.blogspot.com/”>secret pal</a> and knitted up into the ella tank – i love it! now i’m just waiting on my replacement yarn. the pattern calls for phildar’s sunset but i don’t want to deal with the international shipping fee so i ordered instead YLI’s candlelight, which melinda of purlwise successfully substituted in a phildar cardi she made. since the online shop pics were pretty bad – it’s a metallic thread, so i wasn’t trusting the pics anyhow – i ordered the color card and boy am i glad i did. i was thinking inititally of going with the deep pink of maybe the lavender but now for sure i’m going with the lavender/copper/silver one, it matches perfectly. yay!
last but in no way least, we have some spinning. yee haw! last week i drove up to an out of the way lys i’d heard about, the weaver’s cottage. they were officially closed but the nice woman there said since she was going to be cleaning and dying there anyhow, it’d be fine for me to come up, so i did. and wowwowow! they had a decent selection of yarn, needles, and books, but the wheels! and the roving! it was inspiring and exciting and my credit card just shuddered and hid in my purse. as soon as she told me about the monthly intro to (wheel) spinning class they have the second saturday of every month, i signed up. four hours is $20, which sounds like an awesome deal to me. (and it’s this saturday, yeah!) to sum up: all of this renewed my long-held interest in spinning (though the girls over at knitbuddies have been keeping it alive for weeks now ) and so naturally as a result…
literally all day saturday i spent hours just spinning and spinning (ok, and dropping and cussing) on my long-neglected drop spindle. it was so so much fun and after about 40 minutes, i was totally in the zone, i swear! so great. and here’s the results, my first skein of singles. in the first pic, you see it on the spindle, in the second, that tangled mess is my rather over-spun-looking yarn before i bathed it and hung it to dry, and the last photo is of my yarn in all it’s lovely glory, sun-bathed and happy.
so there you have it – finally some pics! in other news, my computer returned from apple but won’t even turn on – needless to say, i was and am majorly pissed off. i’m dealing with apple now, but it’s just such a hassle i have zero time for and i’m really disappointed and disillusioned with apple. flppppp.
and now some good other news, on sunday i drove up to the sequoia forest national park and it was just flat out gorgeous. i loved it and had so much fun – it’s like a four hour drive from l.a. but the whole way up and down was incredible, with loud music, happy talking, and eating delicious sandwiches. and the park itself was thrilling and amazing. ah, a total detox and just what was needed.
one random thought: while up there, i kept having to force my eyes to readjust, in a way, at least that’s what it felt like. in this city, at work, at school, i’m always focusing on details right in front of me, be it text, stitches, images on a screen, whatever. the only time i take in bigger stuff is when i’m driving, but even then it’s usually only the car ahead of me. up north, i felt like i was feeding my eyes – sounds scary, but do you know what i mean? like my eyes were just drinking in the largeness of it all, the trees, the sky, the mountains, the snow! on the mountains, the birds soaring in the sky, ah, i loved it. i felt streteched and limber and i didn’t want to come back.
about the stuff i got, isn’t the fabric cute? the buttons are great, plus the old-fashioned needle case is so fancy and pretty, i love it.