Sometimes I Wonder if I Made the Right Choice.
I began knitting Madli's Shawl early last summer. I picked out the pattern, bought the back issue of Interweave Knits and scoured the internet for a suitable yarn. My mom bought me that yarn for my 25th birthday and I was all set to start. I knit the first edging and 5.5 repeats of the center pattern and set the shawl down. In August. And I did not pick it up again until shortly after Christmas. At which point I made a goof. And my closest lifeline was 3.5 repeats down. So, I ripped and reknit two of those repeats. Only to discover that I had somehow swapped out my size 5 needle for a size 7 when I picked the shawl up again. My yarn-overs, they were gaping. So, I resolved to reknit and tucked it back into my purse. I decided that I needed to buckle down and work on it so Friday night I pulled it from the bag. And discovered this:
The black spots are ink. A pen exploded in my bag. The horror.
I gasped, and then I assessed. All of the ink was in the two repeats that I needed to rip out anyway. I have three times as much yarn as I need [due to a total mistake on my part--a happy mistake it turns out] so TheBoy held the clean end while I ripped the knitting, getting ink smears all over my hands. I cut the yarn, attached a new piece and away I went. I've knit back those two offending repeats plus one more. This brings me to 5 of 31. It's a good thing that I have a lot of time yet.
Spin to Knit
I am participating in a swap sponsored by Interweave Press to promote Shannon Okey's book Spin to Knit. I received my first package on Friday and I would like to thank my partner for sending me this Cormo yarn. It's about 84 yards, and is navajo plied then overdyed with Kool-aid. Thanks pal!
She also sent some handmade lotion.
Splotch!
This morning TheBoy and I headed over to E's old apartment to help her load up some things [clothing mostly] to move it to her new house. Turns out that the person who owned it before her did a spectacularly crappy job a. with the painting and b. with the cleaning up. So, we spent a mess of time cleaning out cabinets and drawers and preparing them for other things to go in. Then, we started to mask the mouldings and cabinetry in order to allow her to prep for painting. The office has two very large white splotches where the previous owner just stopped painting and instead just pushed furniture in front of it. And there is nary a 90 degree angle in the entire building, which makes getting a clean line between wall planes difficult enough that the previous owner just painted a stripe downward. E negotiated the repainting costs though before she bought it. So that's good. At any rate, I was masking the baseboards in the master bathroom, wedged in next to a toilet and I'm pretty sure that's where I got bitten. I'm not sure, but it was definitely there by the time I finished the baseboard and worked my way around to the mirror. And now, for at least a few days I'll be sporting this:
Tel-Ewe-Phone
Sheep sculptures. As far as I can tell, their bodies are wrapped with telephone cords. I like this a lot, both in direct imagery [the cord makes a great wool-y texture] and also in the artistic implications of a flock of sheep made of telephone parts. I'm not entirely sure who created these, I found them using Stumble Upon which is an extension for both Firefox and Internet Explorer that lets you "channel surf the internet." Very good for when you're waiting for an enormous file to save at work.
Mind the Clutter
New Ink! When I first moved from blogger onto catharticink.com TheBoy decided to spend some of his free time writing an application for me to blog with. Now that he spends his 8.30-5.30 writing applications he's decided that he just can't keep up with rewriting the blogging application, at least not without sacrificing quality time with me. And as I told Fyberduck earlier, I am very selfish of our time together. So, out with the old, and in with wordpress. This is not without some little glitches. Firstly, the old rss feeds won't work anymore, please point your readers at http://catharticink.com/?feed=atom Bloglines can bite me quite frankly, but you can go here to subscribe via Bloglines. I think. It might not work just to spite me. The other thing that changed is that I discontinued use of Haloscan for commenting and so the comments are gone. As such, the first person to leave me a comment wins a little prize! Be sure to leave your email if I don't have it.
I didn't design the site, but the images in the header are mine. There are seven so refresh if you want to see them all. They rotate randomly. The design is an open source theme made possible by Marten Timan. TheBoy and I will be working on new themes of my own, but I would be surprised if that happens before the wedding.
There are a few housekeeping things to do yet that make the site a little empty, but not unusable. I'll be getting to tidy those things in the next few days.