My life apparently isn't busy enough. I am working 5 days per week, anywhere from 8 to 12 hours per day, I am spinning like a mad woman, I have about 15 rovings and 4 handspun yarns to list on Etsy, so what am I up to now? The Mystery Stole 3 KAL!See that teeny-tiny crochet hook there towards the bottom (the size 13 crochet hook)? That is used to get the yarn through the size 8 beads used on the stole. See the glasses over on the right? They are used so I can see the teeny-tiny hook on the crochet needle and so I can get the teeny-tiny hook through the center of the beads. Man, it really bites to get old... +1.25 correction (as in reading glasses, ewwwwww). I color coded the chart to make life easer for my ADD brain. I have also learned to count my stitches at the end of every odd row to keep from either tinking or heading to the frog pond.
Here is my progress so far, after about 37 rows. This is my first time doing any real lace knitting on lace weight yarn. So far, so good. I did the test swatch last night. I am using a really nice baby alpaca/silk blend on size 4 needles. The yarn overs show up very nicely so the needles were the right size. How many times have I frogged this puppy so far? Only 3. I am pretty proud of that. This pattern uses beads (another first) and I am hoping to keep up with the KAL during the summer. If it turns out well, I will probably take it with me up to Minnesota next June for my (ahem) 25th high school class reunion. We will be on a riverboat cruise (last I heard) going down the St. Croix River in the evening, so it will get a little nippy during the night.Why am I the only person who GAINS weight when I get sick? I spent 2.5 days this week with the stomach virus that has been going around work. Oh Joy and Rapture! When I am too sick to want to spin up any wool, I am not doing well... I am plying up the last of some BFL I dyed and will list it on my Etsy site. I started spinning up the Superwash BFL and it spins up like a dream! I am looking forward to finishing that and knitting up some lacy socks with it.
The spinning is going well. I am still knitting on some socks and this stole. The dyeing is a blast! I am finally getting off of my butt and getting samples into my own dyeing notebook so I know what I have dyed up. It's fun to experiment with colors and textures.
The weight loss is going pretty well. I got off of the diet for a while and now I am back on it. I started back in March and I have gone from a size 16 (at about 185 lbs) down to a size 10 (at about 160 lbs). I would still love to get down to a size 6 by next year. Once I get back on nights, I can start skating again. Until then, it's the weights and my usual run around the factory like a crazy woman.
This is Natasha. Somehow, she got herself on top of a 10 foot ladder and is trying to figure out a way to dine on canary for dinner. Godzilla (the canary) does not like the idea.July looks to be a busy month. My dear hubby got us tickets to Oz-fest later this month, we have tickets to the Rush concert and then we are taking the motorcycle to San Diego for a comic book/sci-fi con. It should be a lot of fun. Until then, I get to wait for the last Harry Potter book to come out in print (yup, this geek has a copy on advance order like 10 million other kids in this country) and knit some more on the stole. Tomorrow, DH and I will have a grand adventure putting up our new ceiling fan in the bedroom. We got the fan on Memorial Day weekend but we haven't gotten around to installing it until now. Well, we sort of needed the 10 foot ladder that Natasha was standing on to be able to install the thing. It will be nice to have since the temps are still in the 110+ F range. The floor fan just isn't doing the job any longer.
Enough stalling, time to get back to working on the stole and get some yarn plyed up. I have until next Friday (until clue 2 comes out) to finish 100 rows...
