Archive for September 19th, 2006

success!

Posted in holiday knitting '06, family life, knitting on Sep 19th, 2006

I guess the third time is the charm!  The first was ripped; the second, the one with the three needle bind off, was turned into a headband; but the third is just like Mary Poppins: “Practically perfect in every way.”  OK, maybe that is an exageration, but I am pleased as punch!  I grafted the band together, in pattern even!  Thanks to those of you who told me not to give up.

I know I said I was going to leave it alone, but it was laughing at me.  Taunting me.  Thumbing it’s nose at me.  Flipping me a giant bird.  So Saturday night I cast-on again using the instructions at knithelp.com for an invisible cast-on done over the cable of a circular needle, and finished it up on Sunday while watching the pilots of Buffy and Dawson’s Creek (shut up, don’t judge).  That cast-on made all the difference.

I have been doing a bit of thinking about the Holiday Knitting.

I’m making Evelyn Clark’s Swallowtail Shawl from IK as part of the Holiday Knitting.  I need to make two shawls and I am not sure what pattern to use for the other one.  Swallowtail is a smaller shawl/scarf and I want the other one to be about the same size, but a little more comples than, say, Lace Leaf or Flower Basket.  The two patterns I am thinking of shrinking are Icarus or . . .

Lotus Blossom (with a little photo tweeking)
 

What do you think?  Any other ideas?  Please, I have been looking all over but I just haven’t been drawn in like I was with Swallow Tail.

By the way, have I told you how much I HATE spiders?  It is more than hateing them it is a full fledged phobia.  *sigh*  In spite of my phobia, I realize that spider are good things in the whole ‘circle of life’ so I try and keep my spider Karma in a good place.  I don’t kill them, I make Hubby catch them and take them outside. 

Actually, I don’t mind them outside, as long as I don’t actually walk thru a web or get one on me, that would be a whole ‘nother thing entirely.  It would involve screaming and running and crying and possibily removing clothing if I thought it had gotten into my clothes.  Not pretty.

Ok, back to the point.  I found this in my house yesterday.

Hubby caught it and took it to the guys at the bug lab (at the zoo) on his way to work and they identified it as a False Black Widow.  Which is better than the Brown Widow that it looked like . . . yuck yuck yuck!  It is now living out it’s life at the zoo, in the shrubs outside the bug lab. I won’t be going to visit.