About a week ago the planets and stars aligned correctly and I had a chance to sit on a blanket in the park and just relax. Usually when I have time it rains, and when it's sunny it's too hot, etc. I thought I might get rained on, but it was OK for the hour I was there. That's how long it takes before I get restless with just laying on a blanket and relaxing. I know. I didn't say it made sense.

Here's my spot. It's at the bottom of Art Hill, at the basin. Soooo pretty. Up the hill is the Art Museum, to the right an extremely picturesque bridge, under which pass people in paddle boats. Nice, tranquil, lovely. Still hot. I only knit one row, then spent the rest of the hour reading comic books.

I've been cloistering myself lately, for good reason, so my posting has been negligible. I've been knitting, though. My bedroom is a cat-free zone so while I was doing my Camille imitation I got lots done on the Monk-in-the-Desert Afghan. Well, not lots, but a full color row, which is a lot considering it's 32 rows, 5 feet across. I've finished the green and have started on the yellow. (For those playing along at home, it's Knitpicks Andean Silk in Cinnamon, Bluebell, Barn Red, Lettuce, and now Mustard. Five more colors to follow! Stay tuned!)

I also started a new wrap with the yarn I had bought for the Sunset Wrap that was not really suited for that purpose. I'm loving it - pic soon. I gave up on using the Alpaca Cloud (Tidepool) for it's second (failed) intended purpose. Giving my difficulties with Madli's Shawl as well, I'm wondering if I should be using lace-weight yarn yet. I'm just not very good with it. I fight with it the first few rows and then the love is gone before the getting is good. I'm thinking about using the two hanks I have (thank g*d I didn't buy more!) for the lace scarf/shawl thing in Scarf Style. The triangular one. It's blue. You know what I mean. But not for a while yet.

So, the Spinster is still here, and still knitting, but will probably be out of touch for a while. I've got a thing going on at Spinster where I post an interesting pic and challenge the usual readers to caption it. Feel free to join in!

The monk has been on my mind lately, so I'm working on his afghan. A little progress has been made, but not much. The main problem is that he's allergic to cats, so I have to work on it outside the home. Here it's draped on my office chair after the 2 rows I completed today. During the average lunch hour I can get 2 rows finished. So...ugh, math...it should take 283 lunch hours to finish, so that's... 56.6 weeks. Obviously, that's just not going to work. So, I'll be out knitting during the evenings for a while - at least until I'm tired of this and want to work on something else. Anyone else have a do-or-die project that they'll be working on intensely over the next few weeks? I think I'm going to try the Kayak's SnB on Sunday. Tomorrow I'll probably drag it to Cine 16. Tonight, if it doesn't rain, would be a great night for knitting on a picnic blanket somewhere pretty. Anyone game?

My Secret Palee (seriously, what do you call the person for whom you are a secret pal?) got her first package from me on Friday. I am not a slacker - I swear! First of all, I'm into themes. I had some ideas in my head, and then I had to find the stuff. Then some questions came up, and I needed answers. Then I had the whole thing packaged up, and it turns out that I had more-than-slightly overdrawn my account, and I couldn't afford to MAIL the darn thing. Yes, I'm a loser. That's why Thinster exists - for me to get my messy life in order. Funny thing is, her second package has been ready to go too, but I don't know whether to mail it now or wait until the end of the month for the big reveal. I'm thinking mail it now. I can't wait - I'm like a kid that way when it comes to gift-giving. I love it. I could probably come up with another themed box-o-goodies by the end of the month, anyway. What do you think?

yarn...that leads...to a...sock. I got the second ball of Trekking XXL Color 68 in the mail. I started unwinding it to find where the color matches the spot where I began sock #1. It's gonna be a while. I thought I'd found it at one point, but that wasn't it. This is a job for a time of patience and good lighting, which probably won't happen again until NEXT weekend. I just hope I don't have to go 1/2 through the ball before I find it.

I'm hating Madli's Shawl. I was looking forward to it for almost a year and now that I've started I detest it. I've had to restart twice because I keep ending up with the wrong number of stitches. Gah!

So I started on Sunshine from the Debbie Macomber baby blanket book that ties in with her first novel. The Monk's afghan is calling to me, though. In a bad way. I may have to get it out tonight.

Well, the first sock is done, and I absolutely love it. But there's a problem. I want the socks to match. I want the same colored stripes in the same place. It's really hard to see in a picture, but if you had the actual sock in front of you, you'd be able to see that the stripe at the top of the sock is repeated somewhere around the middle, and then again (unfortunately) at the toe. The red stripe at the very toe should be the top of my next sock. But I have big feet, so there it is. Which means that I would have to bypass the yarn for 1/2 a sock to get to the same colors again to start the next one, which just can't happen. So I had to order another ball. Hopefully the color I need will be somewhere near the beginning and I might squeak out another pair with the left-overs from both balls. If not, these are very expensive socks.

OK, there's enough of the Striped Felted Bag to show you how I was going to make the corners more "cornery" and how I failed. I'm not unhappy with the result - it's just the exact opposite of what I was going for.

The plan, the pattern, the design, the folly was this: knit along the side, do a left slanting decrease, a left slanting increase, a purl, a right slanting increase, a right slanting decrease, continue knitting along. I had hoped that the slanted stitches would cause the purl column to "pop" out a little more and make a nice sharp corner. Nope. I seemed to have forgotten everything I know about ribbing. The purl stitch recedes! So now I have a kind of a corner pleat. Four of them, actually. But, like I said, it's not bothering me. It was just an experiment.

How fun are these????






Smoking in a knitting pattern book?? The Horror!!!

I'm really liking this one, and was excited about the pattern being listed in my size until I saw their conversion:




Yikes! Sizes have changed a lot, huh? I'd heard that Marilyn Monroe was a size 12, but this puts that in a whole different perspective.

And where, you ask, did I find such vintage goodness? eBay? No. Used bookstore? Nope. On my doorstep! My Secret Pal struck again, and she has perfect aim! Not only did I get these fun books, but she also took lots and lots of TIME to search for twin set patterns that might be my size. How kind and thoughtful and attentive is that? I am really looking forward to meeting this amazing person.