lisa’s place

So… the general crappiness that has engulfed my body lingers… not venturing far from my bathroom… but…

More progress on the knitting/crochet front (and a much cleaner living space).

The Chrysanthemum Tea Shawl starts to take shape (Wednesday night, maybe)…

A little blocking problem here … or… a little size problem with my blocking boards and teeny “dining” table. Either way, the damn thing just won’t fit.

My plan it to not worry too much about blocking it really well. The yarn is pretty floppy and the shawl is very soft and floaty, so I don’t even think that the block would “take.”

I am happy with the finished product at this point:

A big soft and smooshy doily that you can wear, what could be finer?

Finally cast on for those Monkey Socks with some really nice new yarn. This is a quick moving and pretty intuitive pattern to knit. I think it may take a while to memorize it, but it is pretty clear when you make a mistake (at least so far).

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a cool day lacking excessive bathroom visits Yeah, right.

Finally, finally, finally finished the Knit Picks CotLin socks!!!

I used Wendy’s Sportweight Toe-Up Sock with Gusset Heel pattern (one of my favorites – easy, perfect fit, and very simple to modify). I added a few stitches on each side of the instep about 2 cm before the heel began to accommodate this apparently larger-than-normal part of my foot. The top was finished off with a simple 2×2 ribbing (until I almost ran out of yarn on the first sock).

No idea why these took so long to finish. I was looking forward to the results and really liked the feel of the yarn. However, the yarn was pretty hard on the hands. Not a surprise, really, but it was extremely unforgiving (should have known from the cotton/linen blend) and made my wrists feel crappy. I like the finished socks very much and can’t wait to have some non-wool hand knit socks! Unfortunately, it is definitely going to have to cool off a lot more to allow wearing of socks of any type.

After the concert Saturday evening, we stayed in Florence, Kentucky. (Follow the link to see the “real story” of the Florence, Y’all water tower). On Sunday afternoon, we went to the Cincinnati Zoo. Such a pleasant surprise! The insect house was great and they had a bunch of mini aviaries so that you could get up and personal with lots of really cute and cooperative birds! Here are just a few:

Or… not…

So, I came home last night with the best of intentions and a great idea for how to spend my Friday nights. It always seems like I should be working that night but when I do, I am never productive (I am just very, very bitter about having to work when everyone else is playing). The general idea is this: I will only work to finish UFOs on Friday evenings. This way, I still get to do something I really want to do (knit or crochet or spin), but I will still make progress on something that I might not have made any on. (Hard to make progress on anything when you are having a pout-in at the office.)

However… I got some super soft and wonderful new yarn yesterday:

And… I just could not stay away from it.

The very, very strange thing about this yarn? I purchased it with a project in mind! I finally got this book. I love this book, but more about that later. For now, the project I had in mind is the Chrysanthemum Tea Shawl. Basically, you just crochet an enormous doily on a large hook and…. ta da… you have a pretty, round shawl.

As it turns out, this was SO much fun to work on that (while my intention was to start and then work on a pair of unfinished socks), I kept working on it until the wee hours of the morning (something like 3:30 am).

I do hope that this yarn will block out some of my messiness. If not, I can’t imagine I’ll care because it is SO soft and smooshy and nice.

All right, off to the concert!