The other front

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Suzanne

Apologies to non-knitters. But I have to share.

As a quilter, I have done my share of unsewing. Reverse sewing. Frogging. Whatever you want to call it. Tedious? Absolutely.

However. I did not know the meaning of tedious until I had to rip out some rows of my sweater yesterday.

When you are ripping out quilting stitches, you get to use a nice sharp seam ripper and whack the thread to bits and get rid of it all.

When you are ripping out knitting stitches, you have to preserve the stitches from the previous row, so not only are you taking out mistakes, you are freaking out that you are going to drop a stitch.

I managed to get back to where I had made my mistake without tearing too much hair out (and without dropping any stitches, thankyouverymuch. I ended up getting some scrap yarn involved and threading that through the stitches I wanted to preserve, and just had a fun old time yanking out the stuff that had to go away).

I was so proud of myself. I kept knitting for qiute awhile last night, even though there are a million other things I probably ought to be doing.

If I’d been doing one of them, I wouldn’t now have to rip out several more rows.

I read the instructions for the M1 increase as “insert the left needle from the back to the front.” I read it several times. Turns out what it actually says is “insert the left needle from the front to the back.

About 1.5 hours of knitting, down the drain.

Does this make me a real knitter???

Solid rain

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Suzanne

Sunday night at our house is movie night, and it’s usually popcorn and cheese and apples in front of the TV. Last night we split up — the boys stayed home with Grandma and watched Iron Man. Mark and I came downtown to go to the movie theater (Burn After Reading). Before the movie, during our drive, we noticed this weird stuff floating in the air, coming down from the sky.

I’ve tried to convince all of my family that it was solid rain. Because it couldn’t have been snow. It’s not possible. I refuse to accept that it could be time for it to snow.

I can’t get anyone to agree with me. They insist it was snow flurries.

Damn.

Completely unrelated: I bought a new box of bandaids when we were at the grocery store Friday night. Actually, I bought two. One for home, one for the shop.

Good thing, too, as I’ve needed not one but TWO bandaids today. I was boxing up a mail order and managed to cut myself on the cardboard. Think of a papercut times 50. Yuck.

And finally, I’m quite proud of myself: I have the front left and right and back of a sweater knit! I have to seam them together and then pick up stitches along the bottom in order to work on the “skirt” part of this sweater. And then I have to pick up stitches around the neck to create the collar. And knit the sleeves. I did get one seam sewn together, and don’t know why I thought that part was so scary.

Right now it’s kind of a lumpy mess. And the color is prettier than the picture.

Eventually it’s going to be this:

But in Green, obviously. And bigger, since I’m not a stick like the model.

(The pattern is from Interweave Knits, called Tilted Duster. My mother tells me that it is quite popular in the knitting community right now. Clearly I have good taste)

I’d better try to get back to work. It’s been busy here in the shop. One of the things I like about being here is that I never know what a day is going to bring.

Suzanne

Pet Peeve

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Suzanne

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my biggest pet peeve is this:

That’s how we’ve always done it

(or some variation on that theme)

It just makes me want to scream or say something obnoxious like:

People used to use outhouses, shall we go back to all of the old ways?

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in learning from and respecting the past, but for the love of Zeus, people. Use your imagination and give something NEW a chance.

Rant over. You may return to your regular Thursday adventures.

Randomly

Posted on October 22, 2008 by Suzanne

1. I’m surprised by how many hits I get on this blog from people who have searched for Western Salad Dressing. Seriously. At least once a day if not more. I feel like I ought to be posting more recipes using it to provide a useful service to the community of folks who are searching for it. Hey — I might have to post our family’s secret dip that uses Western dressing…it’s a recipe my Mom’s side of the family MUST have at every family gathering. My husband and children thinks it’s gross.

2. I have ladies coming Wednesday morning to learn to knit. THey are making felted bags, and of course I have to be making a new one along with them. I started with a brown base for the bag (purely because it was skein of yarn that had been wound into a ball as an example when we get the ball winder and had to test it). I totally horked up a skein of pink last week, so after I untangled it, I decided to use it with the brown. I was going to just do brown and pink stripes, but now that I have one brown and one pink stripe done, I think I might need to add in cream stripes, too.

3. On the way home, I saw a man walking a Beagle puppy. OMG. I want a Beagle puppy.

4. I don’t seem to have a concussion, but I do have a sore spot from my head injury. And my sister-in-law can attest that you can actually see the mark where I whacked myself. My guardian angel works overtime. One of these days I’m going to hurt myself very badly, purely out of clumsiness.

5. I haven’t talked about digital scrapbooking in awhile (because I haven’t been doing any…imagine that…) but coming up here soon is an opportunity that you should think about if you have any interest in the subject at all. The classes I’ve taken in the past have been with Jessica Sprague — and starting on the 9th she is offering a free class called Stories in Hand. For all of the info, you can visit her website: http://www.jessicasprague.com/ — the details are on the home page. You do NOT have to be a digital scrapbooker to do this class, the class is about developing a way to capture the stories you want to record and remember, whether you are a scrapbooker or not.

6. I have to work on feeding my boys. Those three boys. They think they need to be fed every single day.

Later -

Wanted: a new UFO

Posted on October 21, 2008 by Suzanne

I finished the machine applique on this bugger over the weekend. I bought this as a kit, I don’t remember how long it’s been. Awhile. Several years. I had trouble thanks to the fact that the kit did not have enough fabric, a fact I did not discover until it was too late to do anything about it. I found some replacement fabric, but then I think I made a cutting mistake (if it’s not one damn thing, it’s another). Finally, though, the appliques were on, and then it sat. And sat. It’s only 74 by 74, but that’s still kind of a pain to shove around underneath the arm of my Bernina to blanket stitch those flowers.

I cut some fabric for a backing, but I’m sure it’ll be awhile before I actually quilt the darned thing. I do have the binding cut and made, so at least that’s ready. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it when it’s done. Throw it in the closet with the rest of them, I suppose.

Now that it is in the To Be Quilted pile, I feel justifed in starting something new.

Like maybe with this awesome fabric that just came in the shop.

It’s called Knit Pirates. The crossbones are knitting needles. I also ordered a bunch of red and pink tone on tones and have been folding fat quarters this morning. The combo of the black and white print with all of the pink and red fabrics are making me swoon. At first I was thinking just the pinks, but some of the reds have red AND pink, and I’ve decided what they heck, I might as well throw caution to the wind (cripes, I’m thinking about using fabric with skulls on it…) and use RED and PINK together.

But what do I make? What do I make? I’ll come up with something…there’s an opening on my UFO list you know.

(the new fabric isn’t on the website yet, my darling sister is working on the scans for me…)