Darn I Missed It!

We were sitting in the park on Friday night, waiting for the Pep Band, and Homecoming Court to arrive. 10 minutes after the appointed hour, they hadn't arrived. 15 minutes and they hadn't arrived..... It's only two blocks from the school to the park, (though the procession generally wends its way down to Main Street, and back, for a total of about 7 blocks.) So what was the delay? Turns out there was a bit of an accident at the head of Main Street, involving a squad car and a tractor pulling a wagon load of manure. (Not part of the procession, mind you.) And I missed it! Darn, darn, darn, darn, darn! Still the fireworks show after the pep rally (new this year), was satisfyingly impressive.

We were out of town on Saturday, so completely missed (in Mr S's view, avoided) the Homecoming parade and game. We drove to a suburb north of Chicago to attend the memorial service for a good friend's mother. We overestimated the amount of time needed to get there, and ended up with about 45 minutes to kill, so stopped in at the local library. I was blown away. They had a coffee shop at the front entrance. The fiction room has a large reading area with gas fireplace. There is an entire room of music and videos. Many foreign language items in all categories. Our entire little Blanchardville library could fit into the reception/checkout areas alone. I headed upstairs to nonfiction to check out the knitting selection. About 4 shelves, including not one, but two copies of The Principles of Knitting. Oh yeah, and the Alice Starmore Fair Isle Book. Ai, yi, yi.

No new knitting pictures. I finished off and blocked the Red Scarf today, then worked on more swatches of a stitch combination that is almost but not quite doing what I want it to.

Another New Trick

I generally don't mind working with a cable needle, but I've been swatching a stitch combination for a sock. Since I'm an unreconstructed dpn user, that leads to close quarters with a lot of needles ends already. I didn't feel that I wanted to introduce still another. So I decided it was time to learn a new skill - cabling without a cable needle.



I spent some time with Grumperina's tutorial. It took quite a few pattern repeats of blind following before the logic of it sunk in. Now I can do it pretty smoothly, though it isn't quite automatic yet. It does seem quicker than picking up and putting down (and then searching for) the cable needle. So having semi-mastered a 2 over 2 Left Twist, my next challenge is to progress to a Right Twist.





*********

My tulip bulbs arrived yesterday, along with some crocus. Planting bulbs is my annual "faith that spring will come" ritual.





This lot includes some purple, some orange and a bunch of mixed color Darwins.

Reading Virginia W

Prowling the house for some bedtime reading last week, I came across my old copy of To the Lighthouse. I had forgotten how much I like this book. I'm what Virginia Woolf herself would call a "Common Reader", so I can't give a literary analysis. The best I can do is to say that it's about memory and change, the fleetingness of time and impressions, and the persistence of feeling. It's elegiac and lyrical and beautiful.

So I've ordered some other things from the library. The first I've started on is a collection of her complete short fiction, arranged in chronological order. This is very interesting, because the opening stories "show promise", as they say, but are a little trivial or a little flat, compared to the novel, which only makes sense. She was a beginning writer. But some of interests are there already: exploring what the past might have felt like when it was the present, examining the lives of women who are bound by traditional roles and imagining women who push those boundaries. I think I'm going to enjoy watching her develop. After that, I will move on to Mrs. Dalloway.

Finished Objects

"Rainy Day on Dear Waves"

Opal Socks

This 'n That

Ravelry. It sounds terrific, so why haven't I signed up? Scared of the amount of time I would end up spending there, mostly. Something tells me I may be leaving myself out of an important loop, though. So if anyone is on board, what feature(s) to do like best/use the most? Are there features you don't use at all?

Vista/Windows 2007: Given that Word is the most basic application that I (and I suspect most people) use, you would think that they would have made the transition in this area absolutely seamless. Unless, of course, this is a deliberate part of the evil Microsoft world domination plot.

I can open my old documents in the new system, but it messes with the formatting a bit, which is a pain when the document I want to open is a knitting pattern that I want to print out for sale. Not a big mess up, just cutting off the footer where I've included copyright and contact info. I can deal with it, I just don't want to have to deal with it.

Of more concern is the question of emailing documents created in the new program to anyone in the vast majority who are still on XP (lucky devils). I can save in "compatibility mode", but the instructions come with the caveat that this could affect formatting as well. This won't be an issue for patterns I sell online, as they are all converted to PDF. But I can imagine other cases where it could be a pain.

Let's just call this "Clip Art Friday" and leave it at that.

Red Scarf Project Pattern

Well, I thought I might as well write up what I'm doing for the Red Scarf Project. I chose a reversible stitch pattern The New Knitting Stitch Library (Lesley Stanfield, Lark Books), and worked two repeats with a garter border. While the 16 row repeat may look daunting, this is a very logical, easily learned pattern. The sequence of stitches remains the same. It just shifts to the right for the first eight rows, then to the left for the next eight rows.


You can click this picture to make it larger.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the pattern is a rib variation and draws in while working; but when done in 100% wool blocks flat very nicely. The pattern stitch was originally given in charted format only. I've translated to line by line directions, but there's also a chart at the end.

Approximate Size: 8 x 59 inches

Materials:

200 gms/440 yds of worsted weight wool (I used Cascade Quattro)

Size 8 (5 mm) knitting needles or size needed to obtain gauge

Gauge:

16 sts = 4 inches in pattern stitch after blocking

Pattern Stitch

Row 1: k6, (k4, p1, k1, p4, k1, p1) twice, k6.

Row 2: k5, pl, (k1, p1, k4, p1, k1, p4) twice, p1, k5.

Row 3: k6, (k3, p1, k1, p4, k1, p1, k1) twice, k6.

Row 4: k5, p1, (p1, k1, pl, k4, p1, k1, p3) twice, p1, k5.

Row 5: k6, (k2, p1, k1, p4, k1, p1, k2) twice, k6.

Row 6: k5, p1, (p2, k1, p1, k4, p1, k1, p2) twice, p1, k5.

Row 7: k6, (k1, p1, k1, p4, k1, p1, k3) twice, k6.

Row 8: k5, p1, (p3, k1, p1, k4, p1, k1, p1) twice, p1, k5.

Row 9: k6, (p1, k1, p4, k1, p1, k4) twice, k6.

Row 10: k5, p1, (p4, k1, p1, k4, p1, k1) twice, p1, k5.

Row 11: k6, (k1, p1, k1, p4, k1, p1, k3) twice, k6.

Row 12: k5, p1, (p3, k1, p1, k4, p1, k1, p1) twice, p1, k5.

Row 13: k6, (k2, p1, k1, p4, k1, p1, k2) twice, k6.

Row 14: k5, p1, (p2, k1, p1, k4, p1, k1, p2) twice, p1, k5.

Row 15: k6, (k3, p1, k1, p4, k1, p1, k1) twice, k6.

Row 16: k5, p1, (p1, k1, p1, k4, p1, k1, p3) twice, p1, k5.

SCARF PATTERN

Cast on 36 stitches.

Knit 10 rows.

Repeat Rows 1 - 16 of Pattern Stitch until scarf measures approximately 58 inches, ending by working either Row 8 or Row 16.

Knit 10 rows.

Bind off.

For those who prefer a chart, here it is. The stitches between the red lines are worked twice on every row.

Blank squares are knit on the odd numbered rows and purled on the even numbered rows.

Squares with a dot are purled on the odd numbered rows and knit on the even numbered rows.

I this can also be enlarged by clicking on it.