ArgoKnot

Author name: ozweaver

>Photos

>In a few minutes I will download the most recent photos on my camera. There will be shots from the Philadelphia Flower Show taken during our visit on Wednesday last week, there will be shots of boat projects that my husband is currently doing, and there will be shots from an event we hosted on Friday evening at a restaurant in New York…..what there will not be is my son’s 24th birthday which we celebrated with him yesterday. Ask me if this makes me sad, and I’ll have to say yes. I’m feeling very sorry for myself right now that I let that landmark event go unrecorded. And please don’t ask me how many birthdays I didn’t record as it will just make me sadder still. We had a lovely day at Rob’s house, but today I find myself so sad that I have nothing tangible to mark the event. I took the camera….I just never got it out of the case. Why is it so easy to photograph projects and so hard to photograph my family?

So, as you might guess, I’m in a bit of a funk today. I knitted for a couple of hours, working on the Shetland KAL that Elizabeth Lovick is leading for members the of EZ as Pi yahoo group. It’s my first traditional shetland shawl, and so far, since I’ve only got 320 stitches in each round now, I find the knitting easy. It’s more logical than anything else. Let’s see if I say that when there are 1,000 stitches on the needle and the pattern gets algebraically more complex!

The highlight of my day was spending an hour weaving the clerical stole while listening to an episode of Cast-On. I’m deliciously behind on listening, so I might be able to weave the entire stole while catching up. It’s hard to sit at the loom and mindlessly weave when all the color choices, warping, beaming, threading, and sleying are done. There’s nothing left now but the rather tedious process of weaving off the six yards of material. In my funk it was very hard to go down and do it….but Brenda Dayne made it pleasurable!….and got me out of my funk for a whole hour!

>In Progress

>I’m making progress on some things, and it feels like a new beginning! I guess my internal clock feels the stirrings of spring. Whatever it is, I’m so glad to end each day with satisfaction that things are progessing!

Here’s the minister’s stole. I had already cut off a sample and washed it. It has a good hand!

And here is my little man in the boat. He looks like such a cartoon character with his pot belly and watchman’s cap. I need to focus on this project most of all and get it done!

And yesterday I gave this shawl away to its new owner. Boy, did she look great in it! My friend has such flair and grace, she looked wonderful in this! I totally recommend this project (Swallowtail from Interweave Knits, Fall ’06) because it’s a fast knit and looks more involved than it really is!

>Swallowtail

>

The Swallowtail is done! I took a quick photo, and now I’m about to block it. I’m very hopeful it will leave my hands at the end of this week or early next week and finally go live with my friend who should have had it back in Sept. After trying three different patterns for this yarn, this knitted up so quickly it almost makes up for all the other trials (and errors!)

I’ll photograph again in a couple of days when it’s dry from being blocked!
Well, I had to show it being blocked too, didn’t I?

>Another Eclipse

>Just a year ago I wrote about an eclipse here, so having another one this week made me realize I’ve been at this for a little over a year. Naturally, I expected to do a lot more with this blog than I have! The photos alone are a big learning curve for me, and I haven’t got the faintest idea how some of the bloggers I most admire do such interesting things with photos!
(Empire State Building with Lunar Eclipse)

It’s snowing hard here, and the birds are singing so it’s quite a contrast. I will have no photos because my camera is on a holiday in Colorado with my husband and older son, the homebrew master. Trust me, it’s beautiful outside!

I have finished the body of the Swallowtail shawl and am partway through the first larger border. The next border is only 10 rows, and then I’ll switch yarn to the violet for the final border. I really, really want this done by March 1, so I can give it away to my friend before she has her reconstructive surgery. I can’t believe I’m not sick of looking at this yarn yet since I’ve been fussing with it in various patterns since August! (from Knitting Daily photo gallery)

Earlier this week I learned that Elizabeth Lovick will be leading a KAL (knit along) on one of the yahoo groups, EZ as Pi. Liz is the woman who sent me the wonderful Ronaldsay which I spun and knit into Chris’s gansey which should show up on the slide show to the right. I’m going to join this one, and have been looking at the Jamieson and Smith site lusting after all the colors and weights of Shetland. The KAL starts next week, so I should just go through my stash, especially since I do have some wonderful lace yarns…..they’re just not real shetland…..sigh…

>Beware the "Power of Seven"

>Hmmmm…while I was happily knitting away on my new Swallowtail Shawl with my twice frogged Art Yarn called Alfabeto, I was tagged by the mysterious “Power of 7.” Unfortunately I have to pass along this curse to other bloggers who’ll be named shortly. It was very sneaky BadCatDesign who got me. Go take a look at her blog, where you’ll be happily lost in lace knitting for many hours!

Here are the rules for us ‘taggees:’

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
The evil spirit who got me is BadCat, who is extremely interesting and I suggest you go read about her!
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

Here are 7 things you may not know about me:

1) In what feels like another lifetime entirely, I studied both ancient Greek and classical Latin. I got degrees in both. I also learned to weave then….it was the mid 70s.
2) I love to sing. I’d rather sing than talk any day. I’ve had the good fortune to sing with some great conductors in some great halls, like Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher, and even NYState Theatre where I sang while the Mark Morris Dance Co. danced!
3) Someday I’m going to learn bobbin lace. Really, I am. When I do I will weave a lovely linen square and surround it with bobbin lace for a handkerchief.
4) Not so surprisingly, I am a cat person. All my cats have had Greek names, which has been the greatest use of my many years of Greek studies. Also, I give boats Greek names.
5)I am very right brained. It’s hard for me to figure out a sequence to accomplish anything, but I somehow manage to finish a few things every now and then by what seems like magic.
6) I’m a terrible housekeeper, perhaps because I’m right brained (I can’t figure out the order in which to accomplish good housekeeping). However, most people don’t realize this weakness in me because I hide things whenever people come over. These hidden items are often lost for years.
7) And almost no one knows this about me: I was born in Texas. I come from a lllloooonnnggg line of Texans on both sides of my family. I moved away just before starting school, but was back in Texas for a few years during middle school which was in the late 60s, so I was part of the first attempts at desegregation. I was bused from the “good” part of town into the less desirable part. There were no school buses for this, so at the tender age of 12, my friends and I braved riding the city bus across town until our mothers panicked and formed a carpool. In hindsight I realize we were too young to be afraid of the situation, and too young to understand how our parents felt. There was a lot of violence in the beginning, and I think most of us knew to keep it under wraps or our parents might die of anxiety. In the long run I found it a valuable experience.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

Hmmm….Like my tagger, BadCat, I might opt for less than seven. Here are the unfortunate chosen:

Cally Booker

Kathy Spoering

Jennifer Lovallo

Rob Osborn (the amazing homebrew guy!…and my son!)

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Okay, I’m off to warn the taggees of their taggedness.

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