First off, the camera problem has not been solved. I COULD conceivably use Gary's macintosh to upload photos & either burn a cd or transfer them to my computer but I NEED something that will allow me to take a picture & just plug the camera in, load the cam program if it's not already loaded & edit it & post it without all sorts of other acrobatics... I may be looking for another OS... not gonna go back to windows though...
The frog stitch can be QUITE a trusty one... albeit, it carries a lot of emotion, usually something along the lines of frustration...
I had my spring fling socks done to the point of having the toe, foot & heel done and about 1 or 2 inches of the leg and was just happily knitting when I tried them on & just did NOT like the fit...I decided to frog back to just before the heel & still have to decide what to do about the heel... will put them aside for a while and maybe do a pair of lacy socks with a similar yarn in a different color... haven't decided if I'll make Lolita toes socks, which is a lacy knitting pattern found here or if I'll try crocheting... I'll have to learn how to do a simple lacy crochet stitch, but I pretty much already know how to do the toe & would probably use the South Bay toe up sock pattern for reference... I need a couple of pairs of cool cotton socks, and would rather make them myself...though a pretty nail polish on my toenails might be better for the summer... I could buy some but bleah... would love to find a finer yarn just like fixation/esprit...
For the spring fling socks, I may do a short row heel or POSSIBLY Flor's combination heel... the afterthought heel I did was not comfortable and I probably COULD have just ripped it out & redid it to make it deeper, but decided not to... I think part of the problem is that it needed more stitches & I'm thinking maybe I should have used more of the foot/leg stitches for the heel instead of 1/2 but then wouldn't that cause more stretching on the instep? Gotsa think on this for a while.
As of now, the socks are back on the needles waiting for me to decide what to do about the heel & maybe talk to a few expert sock knitters about it....
Will talk about weaving & rubber stamping another time... I go back & forth between feeling inspired by seeing designs & weavings that others have done & feeling overwhelmed by life in general. Having a partner who's dealing with major depression is pretty draining at times... gotta catch myself & turn things around so it's not affecting me so badly... I've been on the depression fallout website and looking through their forums & find it helpful... there are some co-dependency issues there: I need to figure out where to draw the line between too much helping & just enough & taking care of myself & the boys & making sure we're giving them good examples for how to deal with stuff. Unfortunately, they are prone to depression themselves by virtue of DNA...
Reuven is making a bead necklace (using giant beads from a jar that a woman at Rethinking Education gave us last September) on an old guitar string... this is where I need the camera connection working!
I also need some kind of commenting utility that I can use with movable type to approve comments before they come in...
Meanwhile, I shall scoot & buy food...
Last night I sat down with my set of Prismacolors & the Briggs & Little color card & came up with a "set" of prismacolors to use for doing drawings for tapestry weavings & multicolor knitting projects.
They're not the SAME colors in the sense that the colors are not perfect matches, but close enough and it'll be much easier to refer to a drawing & then picking out the yarn for a project..
I'll post the list as soon as I get it sorted out neatly!
No progress on knitting lately, but hopefully I'll be able to get back to it soon...
how long it'll be before I can upload my photos from the camera..
Meanwhile, I'm waiting for some supplies for rubber stamp carving & this morning, since the Marvy markers arrived, I decided to carve an eraser using an exacto knife... I carved the word "HELLO" in reverse & colored in the letters with the Marvy markers... didn't come out great, but still was fun to do! It would've been better with a curved blade... maybe I should have tried pulling a pencil eraser out of the top of a pencil and shaping it for carving... not sure how well that would have cut the eraser though. I found out about this on this site...
I made a tiny bit of progress on the socks yesterday & tonite I hope to get a little done on the baby sweater... I hope once it's done, I'll be able to get the cat hairs out of it... a bit of the knitting was done while the cats where in full swing shedding mode when it was warming up...
Crazy spring: I had put away most of the long sleeved tops & one of the heavy blankets, pulled out some of the shorts & had to get the blankets & a couple of the long sleeved tops back...
I just spent a bit of time going through my webrings on the sidebar getting everything sorted out. HOPEFULLY all those links will work... I'll go through the other links in a day or two!
Letterboxing, a new discovery!
A couple of days ago I was reading some of my favorite blogs & found out about letterboxing. I had heard the term before, but yesterday I decided to look into it more closely.. if I'm understanding it correctly, in a nutshell, it is a treasure hunt where you follow clues to a letterbox (a (hopefully) weathertight container with a logbook & rubberstamp & info) and you take along your own journal to make a stamp impression & your own rubber stamp to leave your impression & then you re-hide the box... you can find more information about it here or here
I ordered some stamping stuff earlier, which hopefully will arrive during the week. I may have some tools from college that I can use for carving, but I bought some speedball tools from Stampeaze..
This may be a great way to find more things for us to do as a family (and hopefully my partner will get over the problems he's having with depression/panic so that we can all go...he's interested in it & already knows what he'd like to make for his signature stamp... he loves Linux, so...think Tux!)
Knitting & Weaving goals
This week's knitting goal is to make a fair bit of progress on the baby sweater: finish the sleeves & get a good start on the intarsia... maybe make some progress on the spring fling socks & get them done & On My Feet for once and for all!
This week's weaving goal will be to either work on another sampler or to design my own piece...
I also need to either order some more warp yarn (cotton OR navajo warp) or find the stuff I have... I also want to experiment with the tightly spun Jaggerspun yarn that I have: try washing it beforehand & see if it's still suitable for warp.
Walking
This week's goal for exercise will be to take at least 3 longish walks. Maybe one of the walk will be to find a letterbox. I know of 2 letterbox clues less than 1/2 an hour from here, and I'm not sure how much walking would be involved once we get to the site.
We bought 5 packs of matzo last week (25 pounds) and have 1 five pack left over... will be good for snacks! SO unless the twins are really eating a lot next year, 5 will probably work for us next year!
The weather has been cooler than the last couple of Aprils... no complaints here. The weird thing is that this weekend we're supposed to get some temperatures in the 30s (for the lows) and won't go over 60 on Saturday... again no complaints! The swimming pool is supposed to open in about a month after the public schools close for the summer...
Tapestry Weaving
I need to do some experiments with the yarn I'm using for my tapestry warp: it is some tightly spun stuff that I got from Jaggerspun (not sure if they have any more or not) and it does not hold knots well, but the yarn on cones are usually oiled & this one is. I'm going to measure out enough yarn to make a warp on one of the Paperback looms and wash it and see how well it does without the wax coating... should be interesting!
I did manage to finish the 1st sampler in Kirsten Glasbrook's wonderful Tapestry Weaving book, and may do the other sampler from her book on my Brennan copper pipe loom... I already have a warp on it (navajo wool warp) and I guess if I'm going to do more tapestry weaving, I ought to look at other warp yarn possibilities!
The instructions for each section of the weaving was very clearly explained & covered a good range of techniques. I've already done a couple of other sampler pieces (from Nancy Harvey's Tapestry Weaving book, also wonderful, clear & comprehensive) but it's been several months at least, so I needed the refresher.
Part of me feels like I'd like to just jump in and get started with something, but doing the sampler forces me to really learn the techniques. I was resisting doing the extra pieces in Nancy Harvey's book thinking that I want to do my own design, but I'm not quite ready for that yet, though I could do a design with similar features... I may try doing a little of that!
Knitting
The sleeves on the baby sweater are growing and pretty soon I'll work on the rest of the body & put an intarsia sailboat on one side & maybe a yellow duck on the other.. still not sure yet... that would definitely break up the monotony of the stockinette stitching!
Also want to finish my spring fling socks so I can WEAR them and start another pair, maybe in the lolita toes pattern here with Esprit print yarn from Elann... unless I find another fixation yarn I have around the house somewhere...
Also want to knit up a few dish cloths to use in the kitchen... made one but it turned out huge and found another which I will use, but want to make a couple more so I can do a rotation thing... or maybe even find the ones from the Fiberlings swap!
We had some computer problems earlier this week & we decided to put up Slackware Linux instead of trying to fix Debian... so no pictures yet...