This is not a real blog entry. There was very little accomplished this week other than a shocking amount of marking, building a lot of paper pyramids with my students, and some reading. A project was finished but needs to be blocked before it can be revealed, and a project will be started despite the fact that I am swimming in WIP. I have cast-onitis and finishitis all at the same time, so this week could be interesting!
End transmission.
Drum roll please--I just finished the 8th chart on my scarf of doom, and now have only two and a bit till it is complete! Here is the chart 8 section,
And here is a close up of the section that I adapted to include the rune for 'd' like the map in the book has.
I also finally finished off the third tribble which is destined as a gag gift for someone. They're multiplying!
This morning I started an alternate birthday present for someone here because I'm not sure that she would wear the Noro scarf I started for her. So here is an 'oatmeal' sort of project--simple and comforting. I had some Wool-Ease I had forgotten about in a lovely gray color, so I started a cowl.
Finally in other knitting news, I finished the first of the blue socks that I really wish were done now since my toes are so often cold, and have started the second one.
Last night I made baked apples since I had the oven on already for bread and supper. Hollow out an apple, pack the core with raisins or walnuts, drizzle with honey and some brown sugar, bake, and it's heaven in a bite!
Yesterday was the winter solstice here in the Southern Hemisphere, and while there is a part of me that loves snuggling in my warm knitted things, I really wish I had a way to heat my home a bit. Oh well--it will be hot season all to soon!
Parting shot: I've put out my magnetic poetry for my kids to play with, and one of my 6th grade girls wrote this yesterday.
I did want to post some pictures of the things I cooked last weekend. I tried out my pop tart maker, and was pleased with the results. It's actually a really good system. You cut out the top and bottom with the one part, then you put the crimper inside the cutter and seal the ham inside, so your edges end up nice and neat.
I tried, and found that the results were even toaster safe!
I made a raisin pie for the time ever; pretty good!
And I made pirogi's for the first time ever. Verdict--easy, but fiddly. Worth the effort though!
So, that's life in the bush this week!
So, last summer I made hat. I was going for ‘juanty and beret like—maybe that will look good on me!’ This is what it looks like from the top:
Not to bad, right? Perhaps a tad bigger than it needed to be, but that’s live withable, right? Well, look what the bottom does.
No, look. What was supposed to look like a nice smocked band instead does this:
Yeah, I can’t live with that. Frog it is!
Since I love this yarn deeply, and it was the only skein left at the yarn store, I decided to try again with a hat. I found a pattern that I like, and I’m knitting from the unraveling ruins of my not so great hat. Hopefully I’ll end up with something wearable! I suppose I have only myself to blame for ‘hat fail,’ but you would think that if I can knit socks that fit, I could manage to cloth my head…
The only other thing of note that I’ve been working on this week is this scarf that is a gift for someone out here who’s birthday is coming up. I had a bad case of cast-on-itis around half-term; it took some doing, but I managed to reign myself in to two items. I’ve finally found what the Noro yarn was born to be—I’ve had it sitting in the stash for several years now, and after an aborted sock attempt I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Noro yarn is ‘slubby’ (think and thin) and features a lovely color progression, so it had to be something where the yarn could do the talking. Enter this scarf:
The picture doesn’t do it justice by half, but I’m enjoying the pleasure of the very simple pattern and the color shift ever two inches or so. Since this is knit down from a provisional cast on, I divided the yarn into two balls before I started. I’ll pick up the live stitches from the middle of the scarf and knit down the other side when I finish with the first half of the yarn. I think I managed to divide it in a way that will make sense with the colors…we shall see once I start the second half. It’s the little things in life!
