Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Tangled Yoke Cardigan


It's the Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knits Fall '07. I've been dying to knit this one since I saw it a year ago, and it's finally on the needles. I bought the yarn -- Silky Wool -- on sale (40% off, not too shabby), so the color choices were limited. I thought grey would be a good neutral and go with a lot of my clothes, but looking over the project gallery on Ravelry, I was just drooling over the reds and roses and greens that others had used for this sweater. *sigh* Oh, well. Guess I'll have to knit a red sweater soon! ;D

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Mosaic

I've been wanting to do this project since I saw Jo's in July. I tried a few weeks ago, but one of the photographers had restrictions on his/her photos and so the mosaic had one empty box in it, and I had to start all over again but couldn't find the time. Well, now that Jamie's napping more reliably, I thought I'd give it another go.


Here’s how you do it:
1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page, pick an image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.


These are the questions, and my answers (and commentary):
1. What is your first name? Kim
2. What is your favorite food? Sushi (this was a hard one -- how do you pick one favorite food?)
3. What high school did you go to? Theodore Roosevelt
4. What is your favorite color? Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Connor Trinneer
6. Favorite drink? Coffee
7. Dream vacation? Ireland (Also hard. There are so many places I want to go.)
8. Favorite dessert? Hazelnut mousse (from Richter's Chalet in Dearborn, yum!)
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Content
10. What do you love most in life? Cats (again, seriously? It could have easily been music, yarn, books...)
11. One Word to describe you. Competent
12. Your flickr name. Nualacat (I had to cheat and enter Nuala cat as two words because I got no results for my user name as it is.)

Saturday, October 11, 2008

It's got to get better

Just a note, added later: Upon rereading this post, I'm noticing that it's very "me, me, me" -- especially the parts about the funeral. I just want to mention that the family was very gracious when I spoke with them and apologized (profusely) afterward.


So I've had a hacking cough for a few days now, enough to be annoying during the day and keep me awake at night (as if having Jamie in the house wasn't enough).

Yesterday I started to lose my voice after playing and singing (and coughing through) weekly Mass with the parochial school kids and a funeral immediately after.

There's a hole in the knee of my favorite jeans.

This morning I had to play another funeral at a neighboring parish. I thought it was at 11:00. When I got there at 10:20, the priest was already singing the Gospel Acclamation. Without accompaniment. Because the organist (me!) was late. Because the funeral apparently started at 10:00.

I dashed up the stairs to the choir loft and proceeded to announce my presence by dropping a hymnal on the keyboard as I was frantically trying to set up for the next song. I am not kidding. I dropped a freaking hymnal on the freaking keyboard. Can you imagine the lovely sound that reverberated through the nave? It's a good thing Fr. Mike likes me.

I croaked my way through the rest of the service, and redeemed myself fairly well until ... well, let's see if I can explain what happened next. I was to play a lovely song called "Eye Has Not Seen." The accompaniment books at this other church do not have the full organ arrangements, they only have the melody and chords. But "Eye Has Not Seen" has a beautiful introduction, and I've played it enough that I know it by heart. So I started playing the intro, then realized that I was not playing the intro to "Eye Has Not Seen," I was playing the intro to a completely different song, and not only that, but this completely different song was in a completely different key than "Eye Has Not Seen." So it went kinda like this: play play play play (me: oh, this is great, I'm so glad I'm remembering this beautiful introduction) play play play play, start singing (me: oh crap, this song is in two sharps, why am I playing in three flats, oh NO that was the intro to "We Have Been Told" guess I better just start playing the right song) complete tonal shift play sing play sing. What a train wreck.

Then I grafted the toe of my first Charade sock knit purl knit purl instead of knit purl purl knit so instead of a lovely invisible seam, it's got a row of purl bumps across the toe. I could scream.

But this morning Jamie laughed out loud for the first time, and hearing that after a sleepless night was like a tonic, and hearing it again this evening before his bedtime routine got started made the whole day go away.

It sounds like I'm complaining and I'm really not. The day just got to a point where it was just ridiculous how wrong things were going. I just had to laugh and list them all down because it truly was unreal. I'm grateful for these little problems, especially when I realize that if a few sleepless nights and embarrassing moments are all I have to worry about right now, then I am truly blessed.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Some cute kids

If I do say so myself...




Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Done and done

So I finished both the Garter Mitts and the Chevron Scarf last week, Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, respectively. It took all weekend to get the pictures taken, and then this long to have a half an hour to myself at the computer. I'm disappointed by the color in this photo; it's not quite accurate. The photos in my last post show the purply-greeny-bluey blend a lot better.

They're lovely, mooshy, smooshy, comfy mitts and I can't wait until it's cool enough to wear them. Actually, I could have used them last night!

I did have to frog the scarf back a bit to finish up the mitts, but it still ended up being 70 inches long. The pattern called for a 77 1/2 inch scarf. I think it's quite long enough, though.

It really blocked out well. I love the changing waves of color. This pattern was an absolute pleasure to knit, especially in the current state of my life. It was just interesting enough to keep me coming back to it, but mindless enough so that I could set it down at anytime and come back to it at anytime. I could have kept knitting this for a while, which is really saying something for a scarf made from fingering weight yarn.

It's likely I'd use this pattern again; I liked knitting it that much.

So I've started swatching for the Tangled Yoke Cardigan -- so excited! And still slogging along on the Charade socks, sigh.

Hey, Happy October! I love the Fall!