How do you pronounce her name?

I'll be back to knitting things next week, but for now:

The lecture given by Dr. Zahi Hawass last night was an absolute hoot. The man may be the most renowned archaeologist on the face of the planet, but he could easily ditch that job to become a traveling comedian. He kept us in stitches for the entire night.

There was only one problem. The man wouldn't frickin' keep still, so I got a lot of pics like this one:


I did get a less blurry (but not by much) pic of him standing at the podium:

This was the clearest of the night and it was a pic of the slide projection screen he used during the lecture:

I was kinda disappointed to see him in a suit. I wanted him in the blue shirt and fedora. oh well.

He is a fantastic public speaker and his job may be the most fascinating job ever. He was so cute, absolutely passionate about his career and the history that he is literally uncovering.

He seems very sweet as well. He had been corresponding with a 10 year old little girl and her parents and he called the girl up on stage with him. Then he astonished her and her folks by giving her an all expense paid 10 day trip to Egypt with him as their guide. It was all I could do not to stand up in my seat and scream "Me too! Take me too!" :)

We did not stay for the book signing. I wish we could have, but it was around 10pm when we left and there is no way we would have gotten home before 1am. The Fox theater was packed, and I do mean packed (between 1500 and 2000 people -way more than I expected would be there), and everyone of them grabbed the book they had either brought or purchased while there and ran to the room where the signing would be. Practically a stampede.

But wow, was this guy fun. I would like to have met him. Maybe one day.

He spoke on all the excavations he has going currently all over Egypt. He spoke only briefly about Tut, most of it was about other mummies and pyramids. So cool.

By the way, some geeky trivia for you via Dr. Hawass: If you ever need to remember how to pronounce Queen Hatshepsut's name, just think "HotChickenSoup" and you'll have it. Told ya it was geeky.

Productivity for a History Geek

Today is looking fairly productive, just not knitting and craft wise. I haven't had time to pick up the knitting in almost a week. I'm starting to get the shakes.

But despite the shakes, I managed to have a Venison stew in the crockpot by 9:30 this morning, the house picked up of toys and vacuumed by 10:00. Technically, the second part should have been quicker, but the Youngest was "helping". By 10:30 I had a batch of refrigerated bread dough put together from scratch and rising. Damn, that's not half bad is it? Especially from a lazy couch potato like me.

Tonight, my inner history geek will be in fine form. I'm going to see Dr. Zahi Hawass speak at the Fox Theater in downtown Atlanta. If you aren't familiar with him, he's the top dude in Egypt dealing with antiquities. He has a prettier title than that, but you get the point. Nothing, but nothing, happens within Egypt's tombs/pyramids/museums that isn't approved by his say so. He also wears a cool hat. If you have ever watched an archeology program on Discovery or the History Channel, you have seen him. He manages to make it into just about all of them. He will speaking on Tutankhamun and other subjects. This is all due to the King Tut museum being here in the ATL right now. I've already seen it and it's awesome. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Dress complete!

Okay, I know that I've teased you for two days about my new little black dress, but now, now you get to see it in all it's little glory. I'm so tickled with how this little number turned out. I've been prancing around in it for the last fifteen minutes or so, squealing (quietly - the kid's down for his nap) for joy.

Lookee:


It fits me better than Endora here. Evidently Endora is well endowed with broad shoulders. In this shot, I couldn't get the dress zipped up all the way, but you can't tell it from the photo.

I had a devil of a time trying to get a photo of it to show you, which is why I put it on Endora. My official photographer is not home from school yet, but I did get a shot of it on me. Behold the ubiquitous bathroom shot. Notice my fingers balancing me on the countertop as I stand on tip toes in order to show the flowers at the bottom of the dress:



We're doing a sixties number for the upcoming show that I'm in and I'll be wearing this and a pair of white go-go boots for it. Otherwise, I'll be wearing it every chance I get this summer and I've got several sets of sandals that will go with it nicely.

I love the A-line dresses! They are incredible flattering on us pear shapes - smaller on top than on bottom. ahem. When the pattern was cut I opted for one size larger on bottom and the dress absolutely could not fit me better.

I think without the flowers, this would be the perfect little black dress for going out in.

Finances and The Hobbies

I've mentioned that I'm saving up to get a Fancy Kitten Drum Carder. The one that I want is the Fine cloth 90/120 carder without the brush attachment. I just can't see paying $50 extra dollars for the brush attachment when I can run to Home Depot and get a wallpaper brush for way less. And just maybe, I can figure out a hack that will hold it in place for a couple of bucks too.

I really want this now! I could run out and put it on the ol' credit card, but in the long run I would pay a lot more for it due to interest since right now, we can't pay the cards off in full.

Money has been pretty tight around here for the past several years. I could put the blame all on my husband (left a big buck job to work as a mortgage broker at the dumbest time ever resulting in $0 income for 2 years. He's since gotten a new job, but it still pays a lot less than in the big buck days.), but morally I can't do that. I know that my spending has contributed to the problem. While I cut back my spending in some areas, in others I was still living like he was still pulling in the big bucks. Very dumb. We plowed through all of our savings (which was fairly good sized) in no time flat and now have nothing to show for all the work that we put in before having kids.

In the past two months I've been on a saving money and budgeting kick. I'm trying to get us out of debt by using the Dave Ramsey Snowball Method.

I've also been tackling my grocery and Walmart spending. Do you know that we were spending between $600 - $800 a month in groceries? Mostly processed junk. The family had a conniption when I cut those out. At Walmart alone I was spending about $400 a month on crap I didn't need. We were also eating out at McDonald's once a week and that was costing us about $800 a year.

So. Out went the McDonald's and Walmart spending. That's $5600 a year saved right there. Ouch. In one month I've already gotten the grocery budget down to $300 a month for a family of four and I know I can do better there, but it's a good start. So that makes for $9200.00 saved a year so far. I've been tired of living with little to no money but, Wow. What were we thinking by spending so much on junk? Maybe there's a reason we're poor. What else are we doing that's dumb?

Now, back to the frugal drum carding point. My hobbies are fairly expensive. Knitting and Spinning and the required equipment and supplies for those ain't cheap. When I decided to buy my drum carder, I started selling stuff on Craigslist and EBay to finance it. It's going well. I only need $30.00 more in sales to get my new toy.

If I can ever get my act together (which is difficult to do with a precoscious three year old running around the house "helping" me), once I get the carder I would like to begin selling some of the bats that I card. I won't get rich doing this, but maybe I can finance some of my hobbies in a way that won't take a big chunk out of the family budget. I have an Etsy shop, but I've never stocked and used it. Why? I don't know. Maybe I haven't had the confidence in my abilities to make and sell things.

I'm sure I'm not the only person out there to realize this stuff, even if it did take me so long. I've put together some more links for those in my situation that are financially challenged and I've done it by category:

Personal finances (general) - these blogs offer some sound financial advice:

Get Rich Slowly
Bargaineering
The Simple Dollar

Sites that help stretch a dollar:

LifeHacker
The Dollar Stretcher - I get a real kick out of digging around in the archives of this site. Some people take frugality to an artform, but I'm not planning on going to that extreme.

Hobby Related (spinning/knitting): I'm planning on using the two spinning links extensively soon, or at least $30 dollars from now.

R.H. Lindsay - wool wholeseller that sells to anyone at wholesale prices. Great prices!
Sheep Shed Studio - Mom and Pop style business with Wonderful service and quality fiber. I'm planning on using them quite a bit when I get my carder. The grab bags and big bags are particular fun and cool. Especially if you enjoy dyeing fiber and carding it all together. Can't say enough about this wonderful company!
KnitPicks - for yarn and their fantastic Options needles. Good quality, inexpensive yarns.

Anyone have any links similar to these, but for jewelry making supplies? I'd like to get some jewelry made and start selling it as well, but I desperately need cheaper supplies than what Hobby Lobby and Michael's charge in order to be more profitable.


I'm sure there's tons of other wonderful links out there. These are just a few to get you started.

I know, I promised pics of the dress that I'm sewing, but this article was just begging to be written today. I still have to hem it and add appliques. I'll have something for you in tomorrow's episode.

New Jewelry!

Blogger and I don't seem to be on good terms today. For some reason, it kept not taking my email and password and I spent about twenty minutes just trying to log in so that I could post. Jeez.

I went out of town this weekend and did a tiny bit of knitting, but not enough to show off. I did, however, make some more jewelry while I was there.

The necklace that I've worn all day:



And two others:





I also made a dragon necklace for the Eldest, but he won't take it off long enough for me to get a good pic of it.

I would like to begin selling some jewelry as a side business, but the only problem is that I keep becoming quite attached to what I've made. The teardrop shaped pendant necklace will probably go in the sell box, but I really like the other two. How do people that sell their wares detach themselves from their products enough to sell them?

I've also not finished my dress. I completed most of it and the lining. Now I just have to get these two to a bar for a nightcap so that they can hookup. Once the kids get to bed and the margaritas do their magic, hopefully things will start to happen and I'll have some progress to show you tomorrow.

Sewing Fear

I wish I wasn't feeling about twelve kinds of stoopid right now. I wish I were a brave and fearless seamstress. Alas, I'm not.

Thank God for the endless source of sewing knowledge that is my Mom. I just avoided a horrible mistake by second guessing myself and calling her up and begging for correct answers.

This is where I was an hour ago in the process:


Not very damned far, I admit. I'm trying to double check everything and it's slowing me up terribly. I now have everything cut out and will begin pinning and sewing. Endora the dress dummy will finally be used as her maker originally intended. I'm going to pin and check the fit before sewing.

I seriously need some "sewing for dummies" lessons, or I at least need to sew more often to get my confidence up. It scares the wits out of me.


With knitting or crochet, if you screw up, you rip and begin again. No harm done, just wasting lots of time, and I'm okay with that. If you screw up in sewing clothing (especially the cutting part) you might as well dump everything in the trash. There's not much room for fudging and no room really for going back. In my past experiences anyway. Now when I've quilted or made bags, yes, I could go back and fudge the heck out of it and make it work. But in sewing clothes, if you want the garment to fit, no fudging.

What is it about this whole sewing thing that makes a college grad gibber in fear?

Sewing!

Once again I have wrecked my dining room/office/craft room. This time, with sewing crap. I have yet to have more than two days of this room being clean. There's always some project scattered everywhere and then the kids come barreling through leaving destruction (toys/shoes/socks/etc) in their wake. Never a dull moment around here, or a clean one for that matter.

I'm performing in a show in two weeks time and it's a medley of different era songs. We're responsible for getting our own costumes. I've got a poodle skirt lined up for one, and I'm making a cute little A-line dress for the sixties one. I'm totally getting some go-go boots too, I've always wanted a pair of those. My mom should be shot for getting rid of hers. I mean, come on now, didn't she think her daughter would want those? :) I don't have a clue what to do for clothing from the 1700s (Les Miserables). Any ideas?

This is what I'm putting together for the 60s costume:

(the one with the flowers)

The dress will be black, but the flowers will be done in the fabrics in the photo.
I'm hoping that this will all work out. A fabulous seamstress, I am not. My mom? yes. Me? Not so much.

Meanwhile, I've wrecked the room again. Everything is spread out all over the place. Fabric, ironing board, flowers, toys, basically everywhere.

Does anybody even use a formal dining room nowadays? We might use this room once a year for dining. Mostly it's my office/crafting area and I swear that this one little room is used more than 90% of the rest of our house. We might as well live in a two room hut. Cause, where Mommy is, that's where two boys, two cats and three dogs all want to be at the same time.

A sleeve

The Sleeve, it groweth:


The long suffering arm model is The Eldest. How scary is it that a sleeve meant for me fits on an 8 year old that's eating us out of house and home (weighs 75lbs) and already comes up to my chin in height? I'm 5'6, about average, so not way tall, but still. Children are not supposed to grow that fast. Are they?

Dino knitting photograpy

To amuse the Youngest, we had a dinosaur photoshoot today to showcase the owls progress.

But I seem to have cut one of them's head off: (I think I was channeling my Mother-In-Law, she cuts everybodys heads off in pics.)
But at least you can see the waist decreases and increases at the back of the sweater fairly well. I like this method of inc/dec at the back. Lately, everything that I've made has had the shaping at the sides. This method gives my tummy a little more room. It's not the size it once was, bless it's heart, but maybe a little weight watchers will help. To the left, under the headless dino is the first sleeve.

I've been working very slowly with this sweater. Last week was packed with school conferences with teachers (one good - The Eldest, one not as good - The Youngest - but what else is new?), there was a basketball award ceremony to attend, boy scouts meeting, a rehearsal for upcoming musical at church and children's consignment sales to both shop, sell and work at, not to mention cooking dinner occasionally and watching my house go to pot in general. So if you were wondering where I disappeared to, there ya go. A bit busy.

Hopefully, and I'm saying this with fingers crossed, this week will be a tiny bit less busy.

Tertiary Yarn

So yesterday I mentioned that I had been spinning. There is a Ravelry "Spin-a-long" that has us spinning tertiary colors.

Here's a mini color theory lessons for you:

Primary colors - red, yellow, blue
Secondary colors - Mix any of two primary colors - ie: green, purple, orange
Tertiary colors - Mix one primary with one secondary - ie: red-violet, yellow-orange, red-orange, blue-green, etc.

In order to get my tertiary colors, I had to mix some scraps of roving(dyed with Kool-aid and Wilton's) that I had left from previous spinning adventures:




Then I got to mix them up, one primary and one secondary. Here's a pretty poor example, poor mainly in the photo quality, but still, it shows the mixing fairly well:


And then here are the singles, looking very unimpressive by themselves on the bobbin:


I opted not to Navajo ply as I had previously decided, mainly because I wanted enough yardage to do something with it. So I decided to spin some black singles and then 2 ply it up with the tertiary mix. I also threw in the primaries in three different places because I didn't like the color combinations without them.

Can I just say that I absolutely loooovvveee the result?


Now I wish I had more. damn.

After I finished, I still felt like playing with the spinning wheel. I had a bunch of different unplied singles just sitting around with no plan for any of them. Some are from a spinning study that I half-heartedly joined and never finished. Some were from when I first started spinning. None of them by themselves were long enough to do anything with. Therefore, I decided, in an artyarny sort of way, to combine them
all in a sloppy 3 ply.

This is what came from it:

Click to enlarge for details

I'm really curious to knit something with this to see how it knits up. Should be interesting.

I only got about 130 yards off of both skeins, but it should be enough for some small fingerless mitts or a hat or something.

bummer

Well, I was going to show you some of the stuff that I've been working on, but my camera battery died. It (the camera) was residing in my purse and I think it got turned on without my knowing it and now the battery is d.o.a.

Which is, I suppose, okay since the knitting project doesn't look much different than it had previously. It's gained a few inches, but that's it. I've got about 2.5 inches to go before I begin the yoke section.

I've also been doing a little spinning. I'm working on blending different colors of roving to get tertiary (where you combine one pimary with one secondary) colors based on the monthly spin-a-long on Ravelry. Should turn out pretty cool (I hope.) All in all, it's been a great experiment with color blending with handcards.

So I can't show you those projects. bummer.

Last night, we had the last Monday night basketball event, yeah! It's really been cramping my blogging on Mondays. Anyway, They lined up a bunch of weight lifters as the entertainment. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they really were entertaining. The kids absolutely loved them. The Eldest (on the far left of the kids) got picked to become weight for this guy in red who holds some kind of record for bench pressing over 600 lbs:



This morning, I came **this** close to getting the drum carder that I've been wanting. Someone beat me to it by a hair, danggitall. I would have saved about $75 bucks too. I'm still trying to sell stuff to get the money for it. I'm so close, it's killing me.

Carrot-A-Rangs

Betcha didn't know that Batman has a Carrot-a-rang did ya?

I'm not sure why he's having an obsession with Carrots right now and I'm not asking. If he's happy, playing quietly and not throwing tantrums, he can have all the carrots he wants to play with. Not one of them is making down his throat, but that's okay with me. Some days you have to pick your fights and this is not one of those days.

Have a great weekend!

The Faux Woven Scarf

Sorry for missing yesterday's post. I got into a major depressive funk and just wasn't feeling up to it. I also didn't pick up my knitting either. I don't knit well when I'm upset or depressed for some reason. But I'm feeling much better today!

This helped. He's been walking around for the past hour with a carrot saying "What's up doc?" over and over and over...


I've got an older project to show you today though. I dug this up a couple of days ago when it was cold:

Click to enlarge for details

It's a Faux Woven Scarf. It's so easy and fun to make. You don't use any knitting needles or crochet hooks to make it either. You use a sewing machine!

I gathered together a bunch of odds and ends of different yarns and ribbons, trying to get a good ratio of color to texture with a base color of black. I know there's some lion brand homespun and some novelty eyelash yarn in there along with some thin black ribbon as well.

The magic ingredient in making one of these is some water soluble stabilizer. Sulky makes a great one. This is commonly used with embroidery machines to stabilize the fabric that is being embroidered.

Now, get out your sewing machine and thread. That's the last of what you need to get started.

Figure out how long and wide you want your scarf to be. Cut your stabilizer to that length and width. Then, cut your pieces of yarn and ribbon to the same length.

Begin sewing the pieces lengthwise onto the stabilizer using a zigzag stitch on your sewing machine. I used black thread to coordinate with the other pieces that I had chosen.

Vary the space in between each of the pieces that you sew on. You want this to look very loosely woven in order to get the look above. Of course, no one says you have to match it exactly. It's your scarf, play with it until you get the look you want!

Once you have filled the stabilizer's entire length all the way across and the yarn and ribbon feel fairly stable on it, you can begin with the horizontal stitching. Change your stitch to a straight stitch. Beginning at the top of the scarf, start stitching across. You are going to stitch all the way down the length of the scarf. Again, vary the length in between your rows and make sure these stitches go on top of every piece of yarn and ribbon.

Don't worry if your stabilizer has bunched up a bit, you're not going to be looking for perfection here and it's going to disappear in the next step anyhow.

Once you have completed the sewing part of the scarf, it's time to get it wet. Run it under warm water and dissolve the stabilizer completely. I used acrylic yarns for this, so I didn't have to be gentle with it. If you use wool, handle it with care in order not to felt it! Although, that could look cool too with this technique. I might have to try it sometime. :)

Spread it out on a towel or other blocking surface to dry completely.

There! Simple huh?

As always, if you have any questions on this technique, let me know. I'll be glad to answer.

Worry about Owls

The Eldest's last basketball practice of the season was last night, and I actually had a pretty good time. While I was sitting there working on the Owls sweater, I looked up and noticed a small crowd of little kids around me, watching me knit.

They started asking questions and before I knew it, I was teaching two four year old little girls the knit stitch. They were so cute. I'm sure once they walked away they forgot what I showed them, but maybe later on they'll remember the strange lady that showed them what knitting was while their brothers played basketball and they'll want to take up the hobby. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.

I was working on the sweater this morning while watching the show Treasure Quest on Discovery.com. I'm such a fan of that show. It's a lot of fun to watch. I'm into archaeology and treasure hunting stuff and love shows like that. So there I was knitting and I looked down at my project and started getting worried.

I'm not used to making a bulky sweater and this one looked awfully small. It felt tight and on the needles, looked way too small for me. I'm making the S/M size. I wanted a little ease built into the sweater to accommodate my nice little poochy tummy. Camouflage is your friend. (I'm sure exercise and dieting are too, but unlike Janice, who's an exercise fiend, exercise and dieting and I are just barely slight acquaintances, not really true friends.) Maybe I'm allergic to things that are healthy?

I ran a lifeline through the loops and put it onto my friend Endora. Have I told you how much I'm enjoying having Endora around? Yes, I could try it on my body, but it's nice to put it on her and walk around and get different perspectives on how the sweater is coming along. I even got out the destructions (instructions for most people) and a tape measure to make sure that me and my gauge were going to be happy with the results so far and guess what?


I'm pleased to say that my eyes must have been playing tricks on me. Fits fine and there's still a tiny bit of ease. Phew!

OMG! SNOW!

Yesterday, out of the blue, we got a mini-blizzard. When I left the house to go to church we had rain with a smidge of sleet mixed in. When I left an hour and a half later, there was at least three inches of snow on my car. Talk about weird.

We almost never get snow here. At the most we get one snow a year with about two inches accumulation. We got over three yesterday in an hour! That may not mean much to the people above the Mason Dixon line, but here, it's an event of huge proportions.

The kids bugged the snot out of me until I let them go play in it. It took the Eldest about 10 minutes before he had decided that he had had enough and he came racing into the house. We had to drag the Youngest inside. He could care less about physical discomfort.

Here's what it looked like on my drive back from church. Yes, Mom, I know that I shouldn't have done this, but I did still have two hands on the wheel as I clicked the pic.

I also did something really stupid. When I got home the car looked like this:


I pulled into the garage and went inside, stupidly forgetting that all that snow would melt and that the garage floor would be flooded. The hubby had a primo fit over the small flood. :)

Thanks to the folks who totally vindicated my knitting hatred! The dreaded Zara Cabled Pullover thingy has now been frogged and I've begun my Owls sweater. Details to come tomorrow.

A Knitting Quandary

It's nasty rainy here today in Marietta, GA and we're supposed to get even more. Two of the testosterone members of this household have decided that it would be great to go camping this weekend in it.

I've come to the conclusion that Testosterone = Stoopidity. That leaves me stuck with the last little testosterone filled menace. I'm going to try and pawn him off on his grandmother for a while tomorrow to get a little peace and quiet.

Anyway, the Youngest and I decided to go look for yarn today in that nasty rain. I want to make the owls sweater that is taking the knitting world by storm. It's a bulky yarn and I don't have any of that in my house, so an excursion was called for. We went to Joann's and found nothing. Then it was over to the lys and we found more nothing. Wasted all that gas for what? nuthin'. :sigh:


So I have this sweater that I've been working on for far too long and it has a far way to go before it's finished. Remember yesterday's discussion?

Do I:

a) keep plugging at it, it'll look great on me when I'm 84.
b) burn it. the red color will look lovely in the fireplace.
c) frog it to use in another sweater that's more appealing.

That's the quandary that I have at the moment.

You know, if I frogged the bajillion cable sweater and held two strands together, it would make a lovely owl sweater, wouldn't it?

What does do you think? Please, if you lurk here occasionally, come out and give your opinion. I'm feeling guilty about the hours already put into that damn sweater, but I don't want to keep on working on something I'm beginning to hate and that hurts my wrists.

I think I need help. Perhaps a beverage would help?

The cursed project

So I picked up my long time nemesis, the Zara Cabled Tunic, again. I got about two more measly inches done before my wrists began aching again.

This cable stuff should be easy for me at this point, right? Am I tensing up my wrists? Holding them and my arms at a bad angle? I just can't figure it out.

You have no idea how badly I'm wavering between trying to get this thing finished or frogging the whole damn thing. It's kind of a love/hate relationship we have going at this point.

Anyone got any tips for working on cables without wrist pain?

I'm cabling without a cable needle. I've never learned how to cable with a needle and think this would slow me down worse than I'm going now on this thing. Maybe I'm getting tense everytime I have to pull the needle out of a couple of stitches, leave them loose and cross them before putting them back on the needle.

I did not have this trouble while working on Rogue. This is the only cable project that hurts me. It could be caused by the eleventy bajillion cables on this sweater. Couldn't it?

Is it me? the yarn? the cursed project? the world working against me? what. is. it. ???

Designing

Look-y what came in the mail today:


I joined Swaptree in order to swap some of my other craft books that I have no intention of ever re-using for some cool knitting stuff. I saw some stuff over on Ravelry that people had made using the inspiration in this book.

There's some truly wild stuff in this book. Designers do some odd things sometimes. Most of the stuff is unwearable "art", but the profiles on each of the designer/artists is pretty cool.

I can understand how the designers that make patterns and sell them either in books/magazines or self publishing make a living, but i can't for the life of me understand how the so-called artists do it. If I made some of the stuff in here and called it art, I'd be a laughing stock inside 20 minutes. really. There's no way people would "cotton" to this kinda stuff in the community where I live. There's very few artsy folk here, mainly snobby, wealthy "old Marietta" types. No, I don't qualify as one of those, nor would I want to, except for the wealthy part - that would be nice. :)

I have been tinkering with designing. Wealth will most never come to me by designing. But I am trying! Here's a pic of what I was working on (fingerless mitts) in my spare time in SC this past weekend:


The paper in the pic is pretty washed out, but you get the intent I hope. The knit on the right is a prototype that I wasn't quite happy with. I'm working on the corrected version now, but haven't been putting a whole lot of time into knitting the past few days. Give me a few days and I'll be back in the swing of things, I promise.

Rogue FO!

Sometimes I'm convinced that technology conspires against me.

My brother gave me all sorts of computer pieces and parts. So yesterday I took apart my pc to plug what I could use into it. Turns out, I couldn't use a dang thing. Either the stuff wasn't compatible with my pc or it couldn't be secured into the casing. I'm so bummed. So if you were wondering where I was yesterday, I had my pc spread all over my office.

Today, I took some pics of my finished Rogue Pullover. Guess what? More pc problems. But, I finally got things squared away and now bring you this:



I had help during the photoshoot as well:


He thought it was hilarious that Endora has now grown a purple head.

I finished piecing the sweater together on the drive up to Florence, SC this past weekend and got to wear it while I was there. Of course, not one person noticed, but I loved it. It fits like a glove and is incredibly flattering on.

Despite the trouble I had interpreting the pattern, I would highly recommend this pattern to anyone. It's fun, doesn't get boring at all and looks great on just about anyone. If you don't believe me, head over to Ravelry and look at the photos of over 900 finished Rogues and you'll become a believer too.

We had a great time seeing family, both boys behaved and so did my nephews and that alone, my friends, makes for a great weekend. I also got to do some geeky family genealogy stuff and visited a graveyard and got lots of info. about dead people. Doesn't that sound like fun to you? :)

Ta-Da?

Can you say "Ta-Da!" when the project isn't exactly together?


I've finished knitting the pieces and sewing in most of the loose ends. It's blocking right now under a heater vent and next to a dehumidifier, so I expect it to be dry fairly quickly.

I figure that I'll have five hours in the car in which to sew the sleeves and set them in. No problem, as long as the kids are somewhat behaving anyway.

I did find out while setting it out to be blocked that my row gauge was a bit off. The sleeves are about an inch too long. I'll either have to adjust it as I set the sleeves in and hem or I'll just have extra long sleeves to pull over my cold hands and fingers. Either way, it'll work out fine. I'm an optimistic soul, can ya tell?

So, Ta-Da!, sort of anyway. :)