Happy Summer!

No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Just been sidetracked. I finally got to put my boots on and get out to water the garden. It felt really good to be getting back to what passes for normal around here. I even slept with only a light sock on my foot last night – no bandages! It’s healing up very well. Whew.

Backing up to where I left off last post, I ended up getting my own bandage supplies on Wednesday. Walking wasn’t too bad though I was happy to get my rubber clogs off when I got home. Thursday evening I went to my weavers’ guild meeting and potluck/show-and-tell. It was a lot of fun though I spent most of it running around in my handknit socks. We showed off some of the pieces that will be in the Hanji paper exhibit, including my Papyrine Wrap. The others were all woven scarves and incredibly beautiful and surprisingly wearable. There was also a woven bag with paper fabric trim and lining and a coat sewn from Korean paper/linen fabric and lined in silk. Yum. This is going to be a lovely display in August and I hope to get photos to share some of the highlights.

I controlled myself and didn’t put away the chairs at the end of the meeting like I usually do. It was hard to let others do that stuff instead. The maintenance guy at the community centre where we meet (Aberthau, a wonderful old heritage home) put the last of the chairs and tables away for us. Grumpily. I think he was trying to get rid of us because it was nearly 10pm and he wanted to close up! Guess we were having too much fun.

I also finished the Secret Project #2 and it turned out way better than I had hoped. Wish I could blog about it. Not yet. You’ll have to be patient! I then started swatching for another project because I can never have less than 3 or 4 going at once. I was again being Goldilocks only this time with crochet hooks and was trying some of the afghan squares in Jan Eaton’s “200 Crochet Blocks” book. I didn’t like the first one because it was too floppy and holey, but the second was better and crocheted with a smaller hook. I’d show you but I don’t have a photo yet.

I was annoyed at the crochet hooks I have. I love the Clover Soft Touch but I only have one in size 4mm. I tried it but wasn’t happy so needed to go down to 3.5mm. I tried a Boye and it was awful (why did I buy these?) and then an old grey Aero, which was much nicer. Maybe I need to make it a polymer clay handle to resemble the Soft Touch? I need to see if any of my Fimo is functional first. I haven’t used it in a very long time and it does have a shelf-life.

Oh, why am I making afghan blocks? Because I want to make a Franken-Blanket from my sock leftovers. I have lots of little scraps of various yarns both hand-dyed and commercially printed. I know I could knit them into Frankensocks but I’d rather use new yarn for socks. Besides I’ve pretty much saturated the socks market at the moment. If the squares turn out too ugly as is, I can always overdye the whole thing to mellow it out some. Just something to work on in my spare moments. Heh.

Meanwhile, in my other spare moments, I’ve picked up my Seaweed Shawl (aka Laminaria) again. Poor thing was languishing while I finished playing with paper. I’m nearly finished the last row of the Blossoms chart and can finally get on to the first border chart. Yay! It’s very slow going because the alpaca yarn I’m using is very fine, like knitting with thread, and the pattern is quite tricksy. It uses every double-decrease in the knitting book: k3tog, sssk, sk2p, and s2kp. And yes, those last 2 are different! Slip one, knit 2 together, pass slip stitch over vs. slip two (together as if to knit), knit 1, pass 2 slip stitches over. The first slants left and the second is centred. And we won’t even talk about the 3-into-9 star stitch. Yikes. Not hard really, just must be careful so it’s verrrrryyyy slooooowwww.

And that’s not all! I’ve got the Beaded Bias Scarf on the go too. It’s mostly mindless so good for busy situations where I need my brain engaged elsewhere. Though I did have to tink a few rows when I was at the guild meeting…

Do you like my new Ravatar? I got tired of the old one. Plus I had lots of time to play on the computer in the last week. I actually had a damselfly land near me while I was sitting on the deck so I was inspired to create this. Though it does look like she’s trying to fly away with the yarn!