Let the Games Begin!!

Well, like a cocky figure skater trying a triple lutz right out of the gate, I caught my toe at lift off and made an embarrasing sliding crash on to the ice. I prepared my swatch and my schematic to precision and then got the measurements all wrong.

Let's start from the beginning. I arrived at my local knitting shop, Knitting etc. at 6:00 (this was late into their 2:00-7:00 Olympic cast-on party). I had my eye on getting another ribbon yarn to start my sweater because the Lion Brand incredible was very stiff and I was wondering about wearability. Amy, nice shop person, showed me a cowled sleeveless sweater made in Berocco Zen and I loved it. I cast on a swatch of a shiny blue/matte grey and it was perfect. I cast on the desired stitches, met a bunch of nice people and ate scones and pineapple. I hated to leave at 7:00. So I paid more than I ever paid for yarn in my life and bought all 7 skeins of Zen in this pretty color. Here is my progress so far before the tragic exit onto the ice:



About 8:45 am EST I realized that I had the measurements all wrong on my schematic. If I continued in this way, the bust measurement would be a whopping 52 in!!!! Crash, burn, ice scrapes my face while all the world watches!! I redid my schematic and ventured on. I will go into the locker room and get bandaged up and wait for the next trial. For right now I have to pay some bills and do recycling. I will attempt my next cast-on later today.

Oh the agony of an olympian. Where's Bob McKay when you need him?

Sue

I've Joined the Knitting Olympics!!

well, I tried to but I think I signed up too late. I'm thinking about going to the local knitting shop to cast on Friday night with other Olympians. We'll see.

Here is the pattern I've decided to take on. I have been collecting vintage Vogue Knitting magazines and I've been wanting to make this sweater for a while. It's from a 1960 Spring VK and calls for ribbon yarn.



I'm doing a swatch with Lion Brand Incredible color Blue Shades and the guage is matching perfectly. I just need to adjust the pattern for my size and I'm set to go.

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

seeya, sue

Joni's Cat is sick!

Wow, I'm really glad I decided not to go to the Joni tribute at Carnegie Hall. It turned out Joni didn't go because her cat was sick! Hope you are feeling better, kitty. Plus the joniListas at jmdl gave the show a lukewarm review so if they didn't like it, it must have really sucked!! Saved by the universe again!

Great news from my friend, Les Irvin, at the jmdl.com website. Since jonimitchell.com's creator Wally Breese's death in 2000, his friend Jim has been keeping the site going ... but recently he decided to turn the reins over to Les and his Joni Mitchell discussion list site (where my guitar site lives). So the jmdl site is now jonimitchell.com. I thought this was so wonderful at first, but then it hit me: my guitar site is now on the OFFICIAL Joni Mitchell website. Les also gave me a new email address: SueMc@jonimitchell.com HOW COOL IS THAT!!

Well if you like Joni and like to play guitar I want to give you an introduction to the way I started playing Joni. It began with the song People's Parties off the Court & Spark album. I found Howard Wright's tabulature on OLGA (the outlaw website: On-Line Guitar Archive) in open D tuning: DADF#AD I started to play and it was almost like my fairy godmother hit me on the head with her wand. It sounded wonderful. I was determined to get an archive going of just Joni's songs played as Joni plays them. If you are interested, go to the site at the new URL:

Joni Mitchell Guitar Database

Listen to an mp3 of me playing People's Parties at the 2002 Jonifest at this site. It also includes my versions of an unreleased song, Come to the Sunshine, and Jericho:

Moon Over Joni


seeya, Sue