Saturday, July 29, 2006

Hi,

I have one Jaywalker sock and I'm almost finished with the back of Sonnet. Today is the 29th so I have the weekend and Monday to finish. It's funny how life goes. I'm thinking about this knitting project because it's so much less stressful than the fact that my 27 year marriage is ending. :-( I always thought of knitting as therapy but this may be something not even knitting can help with!! I am reminded of Brenda Dayne's podcast where she talked about the Memory Muse (if any of you listen to her fabulous podcast "CastOn") Knitted garments take you right back to where you were when you were knitting them. I'm hoping my Jaywalkers remind me of the beautiful vacation I had down at Topsail Island and my blue sonnet sweater will always remind me of being so sad while listening to Joni Mitchell sing "Hejira."

There's comfort in melancholy
when there's no need to expain,
it's just as natural as the weather
in this moody sky today

take care, Sue

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

I'm at the Beach!!

Hi,

I'm on vacation with my family down at Topsail Island, NC. What a blast!! The weather is perfect and we have 15 Tierneys in two cottages. The median age here is about 19, so we have a lot of carousing going on. :-)

On the knitting front, I brought Sonnet and the Jaywalkers and I'm in the process of finishing the first sock.



I've adjusted my July Challenge on Stashalong so I can finish Sonnet and Jaywalkers by the end of the month. I don't think I'll have a problem with the Jaywalkers, but when I get home next week I'm really going to have to concentrate on Sonnet.

Back to my routine of swimming, sleeping and eating!! (and knitting of course)

sue

Thursday, July 06, 2006

New Design In Progress: A Fringed Tank

I'm on vacation (YEAH) and I started designing a new sweater. About two years ago my sister, MB, gave me a cone of cotton chenille that she bought on ebay that looks very suede (color called champagne). I started a couple of projects with it but frogged all of them because they didn't fit the "suede look." Being an old hippy, when I think suede, I think fringe. So I decided on a boatneck tank with fringe. I have started experimenting with drawings in Illustrator, and here is my sketch of the tank:

I'm still deciding just how much fringe I want, front and back every three inches and at the botton edge and collar edge or just up to the bust in the front and along the bottom edge and plain on the back. I'll see how it goes. All over fringe might look like a flapper shirt (although that might be cute). I'm using an eyelet pattern every three inches on front and back which will either attach the fringe or just be a pattern if I decide not to fringe all over.

The eyelet pattern goes like this:
Row 1: K, Row 2: K, Row 3: K1, *K2tog, YO* end K1, Row 4: K. Row 5: Repeat Row 3, Row 6: K.

Here is my progress on the knitting so far:

I added fringe to the botton edge to see if a three-inch hang would work. I like it. I'm using size 5 needles at 5.5 st per inch. It will be size L (40 in bust).

This is going to be one of two projects (including Sonnet) that I will try to finish by the end of July for the Stashalong July Challenge.

Wish me luck!! One more day till I go to the beach!!!! YEAH!!

sue

Saturday, July 01, 2006

It's time to get back to Stashalong

Hi,

I had a successful two months on Stashalong, and then took June off. My buying of yarn came back uncontrollably and as I hit "BID" today on 10 skeins of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed I realized again that I was manic about buying yarn. I've had this yarn on my ebay search list for a couple of months because I really want to make this Jo Sharp design from Interweave Knits: Silkroad Cardigan. Does anyone know if this sweater has a Knitalong? If not, I might start one this fall to make this sweater. I got 10 balls of brindle and I'm looking for two skeins of Silkroad DK tweed in pulp.
This sweater is so beautiful and I can't wait to start it. In the meantime, I'm going to stick to Sonnet this week and join Stashalong for another 2 months tomorrow.

Keep the faith!!!! Sue