Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Blogging Slacker

You know you are a blogging slacker when your own son starts pestering you on a daily basis to update the blog. I tell him he doesn't need to read the blog to know what's happening in our family, but he doens't care. Ah, well. It's nice to know that someone's reading it, even if it just someone hoping to see pictures of himself.

Hey, you know what? Since he's the one who really wants an update, let me write about him first. Should I post a picture showing the state of his room? No, that would be cruel. I can show you that he finished the root of his carrot.
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This is something he started last August before we went to Disney. Obviously, he put it down for a long time. Now he is working on the leaves which will be sewn on to the top. We have been teasing him that his carrot is ridiculously fat, but it's not his fault. Everyone on Ravelry who has made this pattern had the same problem. Oh well, it's a good lesson, I guess to check Ravelry first!

Over Easter break, we spent a couple days in the Poconos at a resort called Skytop.
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It was incredibly beautiful, and we had a very nice time. There were tons of cool things to do, including archery:
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We hiked up the mountain for a gorgeous view:
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We also hiked down into the valley to see some lovely waterfalls:
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The guys got to play golf one morning while Catgirl and I played some tennis and then relaxed by the stream:
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All in all, we had a nice time. I am sure that it is even more fun to go in the summer or the winter, because there would be lots more to do, but we did enjoy it.

In my own knitting news, I finished the Twist cardigan, and it turned out very nice.
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I have no complaints about the pattern at all--it was very well written and worked perfectly. The only modification I made was to lengthen the body a little, because I like my sweaters longer. The yarn, however, I have a lot of complaints about and will never use again. I regret using it for this sweater. It is very soft and all that, but I think I would be much happier if I had made it out of Cascade 220. That being said, it is a gorgeous sweater, and I may have done my best finishing work ever. Check out the awesomeness that is this sleeve seam:
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Not too bad, if I say so myself.

Another regret: I bought the most perfect buttons at Woolbearers one day. I brought the sweater with me, I brought Catgirl to give me her opinion, I asked ladies in the store for their opinion, and ended up with totally beautiful buttons that would have made this sweater sing! Then I got home, and put them somewhere safe while I finished up the knitting.

Where are they now? Not on the sweater, I can tell you that. I put them in such a safe place, that I could not find them when it was time to attach them to the sweater. I practically ripped this house apart looking for them. I still have no idea where they are. In the interest of getting the sweater done, I decided to use some buttons I had left over from a project I made several years ago. They are boring and a litle too small for the buttonholes, so they have a tendency to come undone. Someday, I hope the perfect buttons will turn up and I can change them out.

The sweater seemed to take forever. After I finished it, though, I zipped through a couple small shawls, because, like, they're uh, smaller than sweaters? I have no idea how, but they just flew off the needles.
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My Traveling Woman, made with Ella Rae Lace Merino.

This was a great pattern. The only things that bothered me about it was the first sentence of the pattern, which reads as follows,

"Being an indecisive individual, this shawl is named after two things."

Unless the author meant to say that the shawl was indecisive, I believe this is bad grammar. Infact, it bugged me so much, that it almost turned me off the pattern altogether--that's how nuts I am. I know it's a free pattern, and I shouldn't be so churlish. Being a bit of a grammar stickler, I can't help myself. (See, that's how you do it. Go ahead, hit me.) In the end, I was able to control my craziness, and get beyond that first sentence to a truly well-written pattern.

Here is is the other shawl I made:
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My Andrea's Shawl, made with Jojoland Melody Superwash and K1C2 Crockodye. They both turned out great and I love them.

Catgirl ended up wearing the Traveling Woman shawl when we went to my nephew's first communion this weekend. We had rushed out of the house and forgot sweaters or jackets for ourselves, and the day was a lot colder than we expected. We had just been having some lovely, warm days, and got a nasty suprise from the weather on Saturday! Luckily I had the shawl in the car, so she ended up wrapping that around herself and it kept her arms warm. :o)