Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Bead 1, Knit 1

Somehow it managed to get to Tuesday without me even realizing it. I try to blog on Tuesdays and this week it seems to be flying by and I don't feel like I have anything interesting to show for it.

I'm knitting a border on Evenstar. It has beads, it's taking forever. If I do 4 more repeats I will be halfway. That's 200 more beads. Kinda scary sounding isn't it? I'm trying to do 2 repeats per day but the last couple of days sort of got away from me so instead I'm trying to catch up. For those of you who don't know, Evenstar has 56 repeats of the border around. There are 5 beads on each beaded row which is half of the repeat (on the wrong side rows). Each repeat is 20 rows. That means 5 beads per repeat x 10 rows with beads in each repeat = 50 beads per repeat. Yup, it's scary that math. It's going along pretty well but like I said there are a lot of beads. That slows me down a lot.

I have a system in which I load my crochet hook with 5 beads, knit the right side row and then the wrong side row with the beads then load more beads. It seems to be working but it looks pretty boring. Do you really want pictures of that?

I'll go bead and knit for awhile now. Maybe pictures later this week.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Shepherd's Harvest 2012 Recap

Last weekend was Shepherd's Harvest Festival. It was a blast! My friend WoolPrincess and I went down on Friday afternoon and luxuriously (for us) stayed in a hotel. It's luxurious because we usually camp. It was a great time. Very relaxing and lots of knitting got done.


WoolPrincess was taking classes but I decided not to. She has lovely baskets to show for it. She took 2 basket classes and has 4 baskets. Well, a couple aren't woven yet but she's excited about it anyway.

Prince William came along and he had a great time too!

He briefly considered living in a Yurt. We decided it wouldn't have enough room for all our furniture. It was for sale though.



 He got a little wild and took his hat off for the Hammered Dulcimer player. This guy was great! He had a cart with instruments on it and he moved it around and played various instruments. The lady who whooped and applauded extremely loudly when he started up with the banjo was a little disturbing though.


He checked out my friend Karen's booth. It has lots of lovely dyed yarn, fiber and homemade jelly. We brought home a jar of homemade jelly. I keep forgetting to try it though. I know she makes wonderful stuff!
 
We even spent some time knitting outside. Even in beautiful sunlight I cannot get a good picture of this yarn. It's much, much brighter green that that. I was knitting shorter socks to wear in the summer with capri pants and such. I say was because they are finished but the final specs will have to wait.


We capped off the amazing weekend with knitting at Caribou with Audrey! That's my friend who moved far, far away but is back for a visit.
 
I was pretty conservative but I did bring home a few goodies. (Please ignore the package of epsom salt on my kitchen table. It's for plant-watering.)

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend and a well needed rest. Back to the grind this week of course though! I'm spending my week putting the house back in order and debating beads for the Evenstar border. More on that later too.





Wednesday, May 09, 2012

A Monogamous Knitter?

Once again my computer and camera seem to be having a spat so instead of fighting with them, I've decided to just use a crappy cell phone picture again.

I've actually been pretty monogamous with my knitting lately, it's so unusual for me but I love the progress so I can't complain. I'm working on Evenstar, as I mentioned before. The pattern is so beautifully written and I'm absolutely loving watching each element emerge.

It makes it worthwhile to just sit and knit on one thing.

This weekend I will be attending Shepherd's Harvest Festival in Lake Elmo, MN. I'm leaving on Friday so this may be the only blog post this week but I'll be bringing Evenstar and maybe a couple of socks to knit, that's all. I intend to finish this baby soon!

I'm still debating the beads in the edging. Yes, they would be gorgeous but they take forever, I would have to buy them because I don't have the right ones right now and I'm just not sure. We'll see what happens when I finally get to that point.

I did go to see the Avengers this past weekend. If you know my husband, you know why but I loved it! I started a new sock project to knit during the movie. (My husband was appalled. He actually asked me: "Are you really going to knit during this movie?" I said: "Have you met me? YES!") Since I couldn't knit Evenstar during the movie and my current sock projects are patterned, I dug out some yarn and started something else. You'll have to wait and see and see the boring plain socks I'm knitting, I can't get a decent picture with my phone. The color is washed out no matter what I do.

In the meantime, I'm going to knit on Evenstar some more and pretend that I'll have it done by this weekend. (Hah!)

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

A Sweet Little Pig Story

I was going to tell you about how I am making great progress on my lace. It's Evenstar by the way, for those who care about such things.

Instead I'm going to tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a guinea pig. Her name was Nellie and she was in her late middle years (which is 5 or 6 for a guinea pig.) She was passed from a boyfriend/girlfriend who broke up and no longer wanted her, to a nice lady with other guinea pigs but really, it was too much for this lady to take care of another one and so when the opportunity came up, Nellie went to live with another family. This family lengthened her name to Nellie Kellie so it was more like her new guinea pig sister Henny Penny and tried to do what was best for her. They tried to give her a bigger, more open pen so she would have room to run. Nellie was set in her ways though and she hated it. They tried to get her to be friends with her piggy sister and live in the same pen, nope not up for that either.


Eventually this new family decided to let her be what she wanted to be and allowed her to stay in the pen she were used to, with her aqua pigloo and live her little guinea pig life.

Occassionally she got a bath because let's face it, she was a pig and then she had to tolerate being snuggled.

She put up with it pretty well, but she didn't love it. Not like her piggy sister loves to be snuggled.

One day, a few months ago, it occurred to her human mama, who she had been living with for over a year, that she was getting on in piggy years. She didn't move quite so fast, she didn't flip her pigloo quite so much and there were a few days where she slowed down a great deal. Her family was worried about her so they watched her really close but she still ate and drank and pooped, the greatest measures of guinea pig health so they just kept a close eye on her and fed her a few more treats to keep her eating.

She seemed to perk up and act like her old self a lot more so the worry mostly passed, although her human mama kept it in the back of her mind.


As hard as it is to remember, our pets are only on loan to us and eventually they must cross the Rainbow Bridge. Last night, Nellie crossed the rainbow bridge.

Today I will be snuggling with her Piggy sister and trying to remind myself that we did the best we could for her but I have to say, I don't think I'll be doing too much knitting.