a grand slam idea?

the seattle mariners' "stitch and pitch" certainly sounds like a home run!

ok enough with my sad attempt at using baseball terminology to describe the event...but it DOES sound like fun, even for those of us who aren't necessarily baseball fans...gives "take me out to the ball game" a whole new meaning, doesn't it? :-)

additional details and pictures can be found at ryan's blog...she brought the game to the attention of her readers back in june, and the blog even got mentioned in the above article :-)

a heel corner has been turned...

finally...a reasonably current update on my sockapal2za progress!

since taking a pic of a sock on my foot is damn near impossible rather difficult to do gracefully, i borrowed someone else's freshly shaven and showered foot to use as a sock model (thanks ginger!)...fear not, oh sock pal (if you ever find your way here), i promise to launder your socks before sending ;-)



Details:

Pattern: Mermaid socks from Lucy Neatby, "Magic Loop" technique on size 1 and 2 Addi Turbos

Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts "Socks That Rock" 100% Superwash Merino from the guys. their first shipment of this wonderful-to-work-with-and-gorgeously-colored-hand-dyed sock yarn nearly sold out the first week it was in the shop (SERIOUS depletion of selection occured the first day lol)...and no i am NOT confessing as to how many skeins yours truly is hording for future sockly projects managed to get her hot little hands on ;-) i believe there's another shipment due yet this summer...mwahahaha

this pattern is very easily memorized, and is going a lot faster than i'd expected (i am, at best, a pokey sock knitter, and have "second sock syndrome" issues), which was a pleasant surprise. i have a feeling it might be a little more confusing if done on dpns, with the way the 'ribs' spiral, but it's easy as pie on the magic loop, especially heel placement. this is my first 'real' short-row heel (have done them in practice but never in a sock before) and i wasn't too sure about how a garter stitch heel would look, but it went easily and i think it looks ok. lucy suggests using a variegated yarn with strong contrasts for this pattern, and i do like the way hers turned out--but i'm really happy i decided to stay with this colorway. it's more subtle, but there's a 'pattern-within-a-pattern' that's developed that runs on the opposite diagonal to the 'ribs' that i really like :-) confoozled by my attempt at explanation? click the pic for a larger view...i think you'll see what i mean.

i've gotten a bit farther down the foot than this picture shows, but don't have a more recent shot, so this one will have to do til i can find another footmodel. i've been told to consider this my 'second' sock of the pair so i don't get bogged down with the dreaded SSS, but i think at this rate i should be finished by the mailing date :-)

i'm not far enough along on my summer of lace projects for decent pics yet (so many projects so little time? lol), but my threadybear sweater is moving right along, so there should be pics of that, and a shop model project that's nearing completion to share as well...so those will probably be fodder for my next post.

a little funny...

...to at least make it look like i'm doing something with this blog instead of neglecting it the way i have

heard this story on the car radio the other day, and about ran off the road laughing. both of the people involved sound to me to be prime candidates for these...no one was killed but ya still gotta wonder what was going thru either of their heads lol

will try to post again soon...i'm behind on classwork for my threadybear sweater, and i've got to get at least marginally caught up before monday night! also need to read up on why blogger wants to put my buttons down so low on the page, and how to do thumbnails so i can bore my non-existant readers to tears post some project pictures without overwhelming those on dialup.

the closest you'll probably ever see to me making a public "political statement"...

...there is NO EXCUSE 'good' enough to justify the murder of the innocent.



remembering those injured and killed in london today...and thankful for the safety of a friend

a beginning?

well...i've done it

i've finally succumbed to the lure decided to create a blog...good grief...

(seeing if i can edit this so the original post shows as july 1st...if not, at least i know i began it on that date :-))

it's a kind of an interesting coincidence (at least to me) that i began this on july 1st...it was my mother's birthday, and i'm hoping that bodes well.

mom felt she was a "frustrated artist" and when i was in college, she took a big step and decided to take art classes. after various successes in different classes, she finally settled on watercolors as her media of choice, and was, at least in my opinion, good at it. i wish i'd told her that more often.

she left us abruptly, taken by cancer 12 years ago...so many things left to do...but at least she'd tried...and i really respected her for that...which kind of leads back to why i thought my starting a blog on her birthday was interesting (consider yourselves warned...i do tend to take roundabout routes to make points!)

where i've used my 'artistic' skills in one form or another (no comment on my "success") over the years, there's always been a little part of me that wanted to write--not that i thought i COULD write well--but there seemed to be a "need" to try, a bit of that "frustrated" feeling that mom had about art, but that i never acted on...until now.  it seems fitting to me to have started on her birthday, though it really wasn't planned. bit silly i suppose, but i hope somehow mom knows that i am, in some odd way, taking that same leap she did, and that she'd understand.

don't worry (if anyone actually reads this)...this blog will be about fibery things (at least at this point about knitting and spinning) not a place where you're subjected to crappy amateurish experiments in literature ;-)...i'll just be using blogging as an excuse to ramble 'on paper'.

i took this picture years ago of a rosebush in our backyard. it was called 'pristine'...it's long since gone to the dump compost heap, and cannot be replaced as apparently jackson-perkins doesn't cultivate it anymore, which is a pity. it was lovely and figured in some of mom's artwork...the pic reminds me a lot of her.

happy birthday mom...i miss you



more soon...i'll have to try and come up with a bit of an introduction, some background, and maybe a little glimpse of the zillions of projects i have going...thanks for stopping by :-)