As The Yarn Turns

Happy St. Patrick's Day

My MacCubbin ancestors wish you a happy St. Patrick's Day. I'm not knitting anything green right now, so I will substitute my Shetland Tea Shawl on a green towel. I'm just a few row into the Diamond Madeira pattern.

I tell you what, 574 stitches is a long round to knit and the Diamond Madeira pattern in this shawl requires a lot of concentration, for me at least. I'm trying to do at least one row every night. This pattern is actually easier than I thought it would be, not that it's an easy pattern by any means. In a lot of lace patterns every other row is just plain knit or purl. This isn't one of those patterns. At this pace I think it's safe to say I won't be starting the next shawl in the EZasPi Knitalong this weekend. The next shawl for the knitalong group is a Stonington shawl. I would love to knit one but I'm way too scattered right now and need to finish something first. So it will have to wait while I plug away on the pi shawl.

Our ferret Balt says the Shetland Tea Shawl makes a perfect sleep sack for those dressier occasions.

Have a great day!

by Sydney  |

A Field Trip to Birmingham

Well I didn't do the knitting I planned, but I had a great time this weekend nonetheless. We ended up going to Birmingham on Saturday to visit with some magicians who are part of a "club" called PMZZ, short for Painting My Zig Zag (long story). Go ahead and check it out. I know you're curious. (My part in the illusion building is usually painting and finishing, especially if it requires a painted design.) Now road trips are actually good for knitting because Rick usually likes to drive the first leg which gives me plenty of time to knit. In this case I took along my long suffering May socks in Cherry Tree Hill yarn. I'm almost finished with one sock. As usual, I've adjusted the pattern. I'm not overly fond of textural patterns that go over my foot so the foot is plain stockinette. With any luck at all, I may finish these by May. I'm just not saying if it's going to be this May or next May.

On the way down we were listening to one of the baseball channels on XM radio and the announcer mentioned a good baseball song by John Fogerty, "Centerfield". Now I've never paid much attention to John Fogerty and I'm terrible at hearing lyrics, but I had no idea that was a baseball song. (Rick can't understand this because there are not many things more important than baseball to him.) For example, a main part of the lyrics is "Put me in coach". To my ears, I could only hear "Put me in co....". The final letters just got lost in the music. My brain just made up those final letters to make it "Put me in cold." No wonder the song never made much sense. So to my high school choir teacher who every day emphasized that we should over-enunciate those final letters, I finally understand.

Anyway we met at Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q for lunch and had way too much fun. We created quite a scene to the point where people were coming up asking who we were. I'm the one on the left in the olive green shirt.

After lunch we went to Woodcraft. If you aren't familiar with it, and I wasn't, it has all kinds of things related to woodcrafting, whether you carve wood or make furniture. They also have a good supply of nice wood of all kinds. I have only the simplest woodworking skills - drilling, nailing, sawing - but wood carving seems to be calling me. I don't really need another hobby but I might have to try it one of these days. Another woman in the group carves horses of all sizes up to life size. (Yes you read that right.) They are quite beautiful too. I've painted almost all of my life but haven't dabbled much with 3-D work. So there's my next thing to try.

by Sydney  |