Sarah's Ramblings

This Bud's for me.

Summertime and the livin' is easy . . .

I have not been writing much lately! This was really brought to my attention the other day when my "friend" that I will not name here except maybe I will give her a pseudonym and that pseudonym is MELISSA told me I was pretty much a non-blogger. I must concur. But I have an excuse. Or two.

See, I started a new job about two weeks ago. I don't want to talk about it much, partly for fear of being dooced, but also basically because of privacy and safety issues. I'm now a clerk at a liquor store, and just the other night another liquor store in town was robbed and the clerk was beaten up. So you may see why I want to play this one close to the chest. Also, apparently I am a good worker (or they are really hard up), because this part-time, just for the summer job has me working 47 hours this week.

So you can see why I may be having a bit of trouble writing. Partly because of security, partly because a lot of my energy is focussed on one thing that most people probably wouldn't find interesting, and partly because I'm working more than either of my parents.

But a benefit to not posting for a long time is that there is knitting that just sneaks right up on you!

I'm not sure if I've blogged about my mom's Christmas slippers yet. Oh well, if I have, too sad. I made my mom a pair of Fuzzyfeet for Christmas this past year, and she liked them so much she walked right through the soles in a few months. I've learned that socks are a great thing to knit for my mom. She crafts a lot - she makes the most beautiful quilts you've ever seen - so even though she doesn't knit, she understands the work that goes into them. (These Broadripples were her Mother's Day present. Yes, I did make them and save them, I just blogged them ahead of time. I didn't wear them until the day before and then give them to her off my stinky feet!)

So anyway, I made Mom slippers, she liked them a lot, she now has no slippers. Clearly the situation must be rectified. I found a really cute Fiber Trends pattern in my Ottawa LYS for felted ballerina slippers. How cute? Cute enough that I had to make a tester pair.


I call these my Tim Burton slippers because of the colours.



Beside my foot for scale. Check out my toenail colour, the striping on the bottom of the slipper, and my mom and dad's fab-u-lous new flooring for the kitchen and family room. And yes, these have not been felted yet.

Now, I knit a lot, and I've been knitting for a while, and I like to think of myself as a decent knitter. Now, there's a TON I haven't done. I am not a Knitter. I know all the basics, and I firmly believe that once you know the knit and purl stitches, there is nothing - nothing - that is truly hard. There are quite a few complex pieces of knitting. But that's it. Knit, purl, and variations thereof. (Actually, that sounds like an awesome title banner.) So why haven't I lived up to my claims yet and knit real lace?


Here it is! The Cobweb Doily from A Gathering of Lace. Looking very non-lacey, and more like a jellyfish. Excuse the flash - the photo with natural light was blurry. Not that it would really change what you could see of the doily anyway.


A profile shot! I didn't notice until I was uploading this photo that there are three cat toys in the background. That's sort of my house at a glance.

I'm just making it in Opera crochet cotton. Cotton on metal dpns . . . sigh . . . smart move, eh? The way the doily is set up, most of it is done in a pattern that looks like little leaves or diamonds surrounded by eyelets. There are seven repeats of this pattern, separated by borders of eyelets and ssk's, so that the borders curve as the doily grows. The edging is scalloped leaves. You knit the first chart once all the way through, then only part of it again, then the edging chart. Except . . . this is where my "not hard, complex" theory is proven. Boy did I prove it. See the thing is, I completely misread the instructions. Instead of doing lines A to Z in the first chart, then K to R before moving on to the second chart, I more like did K to Z. Z!!!

Smooth. I guess other part of knitting is knowing how to freakin' read. Do I sound a little upset?

So now I guess I have to frog this. Did I mention the cotton thread? Bye-bye, cobweb doily.

This calls for something more relaxing. How about mohair?


I know, I know. But it's basically the easiest cardigan ever known to knitterkind.


It's the Mo Jacket by Fleece Artist. It goes incredibly fast because it uses 7 mm needles. I love 7 mm needles. Such a useful size. Because the mohair is so light and airy though, it doesn't feel like a chunky-weight sweater. For those Browncoats out there, I've always wanted to make the sweater River wears in the episode "Safe", but have had to content myself with the fact that I would probably not look good in an oversized tunic-length assymetric ragged hot pink mohair pullover. (Be quiet. It's science fiction.) Well, this is no longer the Mo Jacket. It is now my River cardigan, because it's as close as I'm ever going to get to that hot-pink mohair pullover.

There ya go. Three projects in one post. If you average it out, I'm quite verbose.

posted by Sarah @ 3:00 AM