I've Hit the Wall, Knitting Wise

    I sure have. I screwed up my lace stole project a few days ago, and haven't figured out yet where I went wrong. I haven't frogged it, I still have hope that either I can figure it out, or my friend the knitting expert can.


    In the meantime, I have been crocheting. I'm trying again to do the skull colorwork potholders, from the Stitch n Bitch Crochet, The Happy Hooker book. I tried once before to make these for my friend, but I wasn't happy with how it looked. Since then I have watched her make some, and decided to try again. So far, I am happy with how it looks. Even though I'm using my least favorite hook, the size G. This hook size, I consider my nemesis.


    So for now, I am crocheting. I will post photos of my progress. I am really not too happy that to make the potholder, I have to make two of these fracking things. Grrrr.

    And for a double Grrr, as I am looking at the photo, I see the eyes are off center, which means I have to frog the last row that I did. I didn't notice until I looked at the photo! Oh well, at least it's not a whole bunch of rows...


    Tattoo update!! It has now been 8 days since my tattoo, and the last little bit of crust has finally come off. It's still itchy, and I'm still lotioning the shit out of it. I know it seems early, but I have always healed quickly. I am told the color looks awesome. I can't see it myself without mirrors. I think I'll ask Hubs to take another photo of it.


    Crap, I see it's almost midnight. I better get my crap assembled and publish this, or it will show up with tomorrow's date!!

The Picnic in the Park

    Every year, my son's karate school has a big picnic, at a local town park. There is a swimming pool, a big pavilion, and a large flat field where they set up a net for badminton and volley ball. Sometimes they get a touch football game together.


    It's a potluck affair, so everyone brings food, and there is usually a contest for the best particular food. One year it was chili, and this year was wings. They only had two entries, so they didn't do the judging.  The instructors are the judges.

    I only took a few photos, as my camera battery is getting low, and I was afraid it would die on me. The above photo is a shot of one of the food tables. Salads, desserts, chips and drinks.  The next one is a photo of part of the pool, with lots of kids in it!

    My daughter and son-in-law came too, and here they are:

    Right next to the pavilion, there is a really adorable little copse, with some trees and rocks. I always think it would make a good photo, so I took one of it.

    And that is my day. I sat and ate, and watched the kids swim and talked to people. I was so very tired, so after a few hours, I left. I felt bad leaving early, but Julie said she would watch my taboule salad, and bring me home my bowl after the picnic was over. They were just here a little while ago. There was still salad in the bowl.


    Like I said, I was so tired, when I got home, Hubs was in the shower, he had just gotten home from the Fishkill house. Then we went into the bedroom, and took a long, well deserved nap. I got up about an hour ago, Hubs just got up a few minutes ago.


    I took my knitting with me, but didn't work on it. I made a booboo, and really, just didn't want to deal with it. I couldn't devote enough of my attention to it, to find the mistake, and possibly attempt to fix it.

Here's how my day went, with a little knitting.

    That's right, nothing happened today. I got up this morning, and I was going to go out as we need coffee. I discovered we have more coffee than I thought, so I don't need to go today. It isn't a good idea to go to Adams on the weekend. At all. You can spend hours just trying to find a place to park...


    I truly did nothing today. It's very hard to breathe, as it's so fracking humid. I did go down and turn on the pool filter, but that was the only time I left the house. It was very traumatic, though. As I was walking towards the pump house, to bleed the air out of the filter, I saw something moving in the grass. I stopped when I realized it was about a foot long section of a snake's tail. He was going  behind the diving board, which is on it's long edge, on the ground, leaning against the pump house.


   I carefully peeked into the pump house, and saw part of his body, then spotted his head, watching me bleed the filter. I finished, and very carefully backed the hell outta there. I had quietly moved the diving board so I could get a better look at him. He was about four feet long. No wonder we haven't had any frogs in the pool lately. He looked very well fed. I just hope he isn't eating my little chipmunks.


    I finally did end up going to the grocery store, as we really needed milk and half & half. I picked up a few other things we needed too. I didn't have to go to Adams for those things, but that's where I have to go to get my coffee. I also like to get meat and produce there.


    At one point I did try and knit a few rows on my stole, but I fracked it up. I started by doing the wrong row, but kept going anyway. After the wrong side purl row, I did the row I should have started with, and ended up being one stitch short. I cursed for a minute, then put it away. I told you I can't try to knit lace and watch TV at the same time!


    So now dinner is in the oven, and we are going to be eating late tonight. It was too hot to cook earlier. Now, the temp has gone down, but it's still really humid outside.


    Tomorrow is the karate school family potluck picnic! I am really looking forward to that. The kids love to hang out and play with their instructors. They have it at Hackett Hill Park every year, and the kids can swim, and they play touch football, and all kinds of games. It looks like Hubs won't be attending with me this year, he has to go to the Fishkill house and do some work on the back deck. He has the use of some tool-thingie for the weekend only, so he has to do it tomorrow.


    I will take my camera, so hopefully I can get some good photos of the picnic.

Shawl/Stole Progress Update!

    I am making slow progress on the lace stole. I am trying to be very careful, so I don't frack it up, as I have done in the past. I took a few photos this morning, here it is from a distance:

A little bit closer:

And even closer!

    I seriously considered getting my blocking pins out and pinning it down so you can see the pattern better. But then I thought it would be better to wait until it's all done, and blocking, and then I can take a great photo! So these are just teasers.


   And of course, I worked on it a bit while Miss Malia was napping today, so it's even bigger now.

I Found a Great Pattern!

    After searching Ravelry, which has waaaay too many patterns available btw, I finally found a pattern I thought I could do! All this happened last night. So I downloaded the pattern, found a circular needle, and set to work!


    The pattern is called Easy Lace Stole, and it's from Arlene's World of Lace. I cast on the 61 stitches, and did the first four rows to get me started. I am looking forward to this one, as I have yet to master lace knitting.


    I put the pattern on my little stick drive thingie, and have to take it somewhere and have it printed out at some point. I also put the pattern in my documents on my laptop, so I can take my laptop with me babysitting later, and still work during nap time. I will take a photo when it's further along, so you can see how it's coming.


    As for my new tattoo, it's healing up nicely. Today I start applying the lotion to it, according to the directions I was given. Yesterday, I washed it gently three times, and patted it dry with a paper towel.

The Trauma of My First Frogging

   For the first time, I've had to frog a WIP. I knew in my heart that it needed to be done, I knew that there was nothing to be done to fix it. This is my first lace shawl, my first knitted lace ever. One good thing is that I wasn't terrible far along, and another was that I was resigned to the frogging. I was only maybe 15 rows into it, and it starts small, in the center of the top, and gets bigger from there. I hadn't yet gotten to any color changes yet. That would have been worthy of tears!

   So I frogged, and wound the yarn back onto the ball, and took a deep breath, and started again. This time, I got it! I am remembering the YO, K1, YO before the last three stitches at the border.  I have even remarked to Hubs that now that I have this section down, wouldn't the whole shawl look cool done in this stitch? He told me that NO, I wasn't going to cheat, I was going to follow the whole entire pattern. He can be such a killjoy. 

   The rest of the pattern involves all these charts, and I am not a chart reader. I even hate crochet charts! Never use them! If it isn't written in words, I don't want to do it. This shawl pattern is written in words, too, but the words say to follow the chart! AARRGGHH. Guess I'm gonna have to learn to do charts. It's a really good thing I have very good friends who are expert knitters! I have their encouragement and support for this, I would never have wanted to do this shawl on my own.

  Now for the new photo! This I just took a little while ago, and shows my actual, up to the minute progress.

   This kind of makes me giggle, the stitch markers look like googly eyes, and makes the whole thing kind of look like a pink monster! It looked more like a monster when it was a bit smaller.  But I giggle anyway.  It doesn't take much to amuse me. Just getting the stitches in the right order can make me giggle too.