However, Wednesday is also the day that I weekly sit and ponder if I really want to return to the nurse boiler room operation for the rest of the week! The jury's still out on that one, but there's still a warehouse full of those gently used Flowbee's to be sold, so I guess I'll keep showing up there for the rest of the week until I figure it out....and keep in mind that I do like to eat and have a roof over my head....and buy yarn.....must remember the yarn...
But for now, Wednesday is still a happy, carefree day of doing whatever I want! And that also makes it sort of magical in my book. But what also helps to make it magical is this...
Got a new book last weekend!
I am a big fan of Cat Bordhi and her wonderful, creative mind and techniques, and this is her new book, hot off the press! I have had hours of knitting fun making moebius scarves and baskets from past books, and used one of her books to learn to knit socks on two circulars---the sock knitting technique I use almost exclusively now.
I have been waiting for this book for a while. I went to a 4-day workshop with Cat in Newport, OR in April of 2006, and the book was due to be out shortly after that, so it's been a long wait!This book is full of sock patterns with the foot shaping achieved in may new ways, both cuff down and toe-up. Not that I've exactly mastered the standard sock architecture so far---I still have not even done a toe-up sock. But I've been intrigued with what this book would hold since that workshop over a year ago, especially since we were given a little teaser of then top-secret patterns from this book and the two more to come after this one!
I haven't actually attempted one of the patterns yet---there is a baby-sized sock pattern for each new technique for learning. But I am getting prepared. I made these this past weekend...
These are my first attempt at making my own stitch markers by the way, so not quite perfect, but completely useable! Why the alphabet letters? Most of the patterns in this new book have you do increases/decreases at particular marker points on the sock to go along with the techniques used to build the sock, necessitating the need to know at which marker to knit a given instruction. (I made two sets because I like to knit two socks at once, being a sufferer of a serious case of Second Sock Syndrome.)
You don't necessarily have to have lettered markers to do the pattern, but since my powers of concentration are less than stellar at times, this definitely will make it easier to keep track of what I'm doing! For those who are lucky enough to still have half a working brain, you can keep track in any way you choose.
Cat mentions in the book that she has designed some lettered stitch markers, called Cat's Magical Markers, that are going to be sold by Skacel, but I haven't seen them anywhere yet. I've been meaning to learn how to make some stitch markers for a while, so this was a good project to get me started. (Besides, I really don't need to spend any more money to purchase what would probably be the thirty-gazillionth stitch marker in my possession...).
Oh, and about that frog pond tale.....
In case you didn't figure it out by looking at my progress bars, this was the true-life lace victim of the story.....sad but true...
The Mermaid Wrap, version 2.0, is no more. I'm beginning to think this was a project that was just not meant to be. I mean, after the irrepairable yarn-tangling debaucle of version 1.0, and having to switch to a variegated color from the desired solid which was no longer available, it may have been doomed from the start. Not to mention, I really wasn't feeling much love for those little colored boxy patterns were appearing due to the way the color changes came up in the yarn. I tried to like it, but I think those little boxes of color interfered with the vertical pattern too much.
I fully intended on finishing the wrap since I had put so much time into it already, but then came that ill-fated meeting with that rotten little frog and his pond, and so it went. I have salvaged the precious Sea Silk this time, and will find another pattern later that will work a little better with the way the yarn colors pool, to try to avoid the little-boxes look. Perhaps something with a lace leaf or flower pattern that has more curved shaping to it.
And no, in case you're thinking it---I did NOT will the wrap away to the corn field because I didn't like the color boxes! The frog just had it in for that wrap from the beginning, so I put the blame squarely on him. heh heh. bad pun.
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