Been a while, eh? Life rolls along and yeah, Facebook and Ravelry do take the edge off my urge to post to the blog. A couple of acquaintances have vanished recently off FBook abruptly, no explanation. That's the immediate prompt for resuming here. Also, I've been knitting up a storm lately and reading again after a hiatus with both. So I've got a bit of blog fodder if anyone is still out there?
Playing a bit of catch up, my wee, elderly kitty of 21+ years died a few weeks ago. Blind luck that we took some pictures of her about 2 weeks prior to that so here she is in all her little ballerina glory. My friend Leni always called her Ballerina because she walked with her feet turned out in 2nd position. If you're a horse person you'd have said she was cow-hocked, heh.
I do miss her furry butt. And yeah, that's one blue eye and one golden eye.
In happier news, I've started my first garden here and the weather has finally warmed up. Hopefully we'll have a long, warm fall and the veggies will have time to mature from their late start. So far, only the jalapenos are flowering.
Knitting you say? I'm so virtuous it's disgusting. I'm currently about 90% done on the Trellis and Keyhole Tank from the latest issue of Interweave Knits. The yarn is recycled linen/viscose from a too-large tank top I harvested from the Boulder Mall aka the free box. What a pain in the ass it was to frog that. Note to manufacturers: step away from the serger, plz. I had to cut the yarn into lots more bits than I would have liked, but the large skeins seem to be enough for the pattern I'm working on.
The color is growing on me. It's a bit bleached out by the sun in the above picture. Have never thought I looked good in green but maybe this will be all right. If not, can always gift the bugger. I was looking forward to the Hindu Pillar stitch after the long bits of stockinette but after the first couple of rows, meh. It slows you down considerably and as usual, I'm ready for this sucker to be done and on the body.
The above pic is the back.
Here's another of the entire back and partially knitted front.
Mods:
-- MUCH thicker yarn, had to completely rewrite the pattern. S.L.O.W.L.Y. Many stoopid math errors here
--Didn't wash and weight the yarn after re-skeining because I like the kinky-crunchy look of the once-knitted yarn. That crunchiness shows up well in the ribbing. See above.
--Had to decrease sharply after the ribbing due to completely different gauge knitting in the round vs. swatching flat. Forgot about the waist shaping and decreased all in one round. also very visible, hoping blocking will minimize the visibility. NOT ripping it out.
--Gauge got larger again once I separated for the front and back at the armholes. So this may be too large/too long for me.
--Forgot to take into account the weight of the yarn. Great drape but again, may be too long due to weight-of-yarn related stretching.
Yawn. Next...
