I should have posted on July 31st
I was tempted to go ahead & post as if i didn't forget & change the blog date, but I couldn't do it.... so I'm admitting my guilt & shame for missing an important date that celebrates 3 special events.
I can't believe I missed my blogiversary/blogirthday... :( Oh well... I've been blogging for 4 years now, since 2003, when another blogger had her blog link in an email to me.. I read hers & was like "hmm, how can I get one of these" and got started right away...
I have been knitting & crocheting a bit lately so at least I've been faithful to my projects!
MOST IMPORTANT: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY WONDERFUL, GORGEOUS SWEET SISTER CAROL!!! sorry this is late...and thanks for reminding me...
Oh yeah, happy birthday to Harry Potter... (anyone know what year he was born??) I'm reading book 6 right now, I'm more than halfway through: somehow I forgot to read book 6: we bought it the day it was released, Gary read it first, non-stop until he was done, taking a breather for meals & bathroom, I don't know if he slept! Then Evan got it, when he finished it, I started it, got busy with other things & next thing I know, book 7 was about to come out! I looked through it & realized i never read it... now that I've been reading it, I realize that I would have remembered it...love it. We saw the movie 2 weeks ago (and yesterday when we drove by the theater, we noticed it was STILL showing!)
MS 3, the beautiful stole...
I've got the Mystery Stole 3 in progress, I'm almost through with clue 3... (I'm proud to be a slow-bee, beesides, if I wasn't, I'd be a bad mama... my kids need me, so I gotta put the stole aside because it's a pretty concentration-intensive project... tomorrow clue 5 will be coming out & the theme will be revealed then as well... wheeeeee!
Hopefully tonight I'll get clue 3 done and a good start on clue 4: what's holding me up a little on it is that I would like to add more beads to the section of the stole that covers the back (I don't get the princess & pea award since the beads won't bother my back... no biggie, who would wanna be that ultra sensitive anyway, LOL)... a few others have posted different ways to put the beads in:
1: put it in what LOOKS like the middle of the rosette section
2: put it in with the double decrease
3: put it in between the rosettes (as opposed to in the middle of them)
but I've found a slightly different way to position the beads that to ME looks like dead center:
4: put the bead on the center PURL stitch above what looks like the center of the rosette..
I swatched with my purple (grape jelly) knitpicks lace yarn & determined that #4 is the best way to go, I tried all except #3 and #4 looks best... I'm still glad that I didn't use grape jelly for the stole...
I don't think I'll put the bead in ALL of the rosettes, just scatter them randomly, but I have not yet decided how and haven't seen a lot of discussion about that because most people just followed the pattern as is.
but I can not see myself doing over 100 rows ONLY putting beads on the side of the stole, I WANNA PUT MORE BEADS IN, it's FUNNNNNNN to put them in! I look forward to the rows that require putting beads in, especially when there are 3 or more beads to put in & even though putting beads in is a little bit fiddly, there's something magical about putting them in, holding the crochet hook, picking the stitch off the needle, holding the yarn tension while flicking the bead off the crochet hook and watching it nestle onto the yarn...... plus it is SO cool to see the shiny glittering coming from the beads as the fabric moves while I knit...
Little toys... amigurumi
I've become enamoured by amigurumi & other small knitted objects... I did a dishcloth based on a pattern by my friend Ann... if she decides to post it for all to see, I will share it. I've made this snail by Tamara Bower-Snow and an also going to make a few finger puppers by Kerrie Rycroft and have a few other patterns I'd like to play with. I'm hoping to also come up with a few designs of my own that I can take to the Rethinking Education conference on vendor night (or write for permission to use some of the patterns I've found here there & yon)...
Baby sweater progress (not)
I'm stalled on the baby sweater, but maybe I'll accelerate progress on it once I've gotten a few small toys knit up...