quote from the Once and Future King by TH White

(from Book 1, the Sword in the Stone)

"Sir Ector has given me a glass of canary," said the Wart, "and sent me to see if you can't cheer me up."
"Sir Ector," said Merlyn, "is a wise man."
"Well," said the Wart, "what about it?"
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn--pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics--why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough."
"Apart from all these things," said the Wart, "what do you suggest for me just now?"

princess seams instead of side shaping

I'd been working on a cardigan out of Peace Fleece and wanted to try to use princess seams instead of just side shaping. Well, the photo above is from a month ago and the shaping was successful! It looked and fit way better than when I'd just done side seams. But my gauge was off, so that I had 6" of ease in the body with the cardigan buttoned, and had run out of yarn to finish the sleeves. I sighed, thought about it, and after a pint of beer, decided to take the whole body out and then did it before I changed my mind again. That was last week and now I'm a third of the way down again.

A few lessons I should learn from this:

-Don't start new (large) projects while traveling, especially if you can't be bothered to swatch!
-Don't eyeball and push on when you have a sneaky suspicion that your size is way off!

I also found a couple of good articles about shaping bodices, for future reference ;-)

*knitting harpy
*knitting daily

st. louis

It's spring break! I decided to visit a friend who moved to St. Louis over the first weekend, not too far away and still warmer than here sounded like an overall good deal.

We checked out the Arch (which does not span the river, contrary to what I thought) and were glad it wasn't a windy day.


Went to the MO Botanical gardens...




And checked out the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, with all of its great beer themed ironwork as well as the beer ;-)


Unfortunately, I was trying not to buy craft supplies for lent (I'm not catholic but giving up things for a limited amount of time appeals to my not-sure-what-to-call-it nature) but on the other hand decided to check out some local yarn stores and wound up getting a couple of skeins of Fleece Artist, some roving, and a book on ganseys. I think I should probably reflect on my unnecessary expenditures while finally doing my taxes...

January - February 2009

(I'm a terrible blogger, from now on I'm setting myself a goal to blog at least one every couple of months)

School has been busy, but I think the busier I am the more I manage to get done in all aspects of my life. I've organized my stash and sold off some more stash yarn. This was in part to justify buying a drum carder secondhand, but the carder needs a little adjusting before I start using it in earnest. I'm been spinning more regularly and the practice definitely helps. Now I just need to finish my taxes... ;-)

This is some Ashland Bay Merino Top I purchased at MDSW in 2006. I finally started spinning it and my goal is to knit myself a handspun pullover out of it. I'm aiming for a heavy worsted to chunky 3-ply yarn.


I just finished spinning up a total of 7 oz of singles divided evenly onto 2 bobbins. That's about a third of the total I think I need. I've never knit with my handspun before and I'm not sampling. I have been checking the rough wpi time to time by doing the fold-onto-itself method (does this trick have an official name?) but I still consider myself a newbie and my spinning is only just starting to even itself out. So with a tiny bit of apprehension, I'm still very excited!


I have a couple of knitting projects going on the side, a vest and fingerless gloves, but compared to the spinning they really aren't getting much attention at all. Hopefully I'll have those FOs to share in a few weeks though since Spring Break is coming up;-)

Flick review: 2008

Just a quick review of the movies I've seen, either in the theater or on DVD, that were released this year. You may see a trend; it's quite comedy heavy.

In theater release order:

• 27 Dresses (Plane) (4/5) :Actually liked it quite a bit. Would probably watch it again.
• In Bruge (DVD) (4/5)
• Definitely, Maybe (DVD) (4/5)
• Be Kind Rewind (4.5/5)
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall (4/5)
• Baby Mama (DVD) (1/5)
• Iron Man (4.5/5) :Had to love the special effects.
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (3/5) :Was pretty bad but it's still exciting to see an Indiana Jones movie, shrug.
• Get Smart (DVD) (3/5)
• The Dark Knight (5/5) :Favorite movie of the year.
• Step Brothers (2/5)
• Pineapple Express (3/5)
• Tropic Thunder (3/5)
• Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2/5)
• Zack and Miri Make a Porno (3/5)
• Quantum of Solace (4/5) :Also not so great, but still love Daniel Craig as Bond.
• Seven Pounds (4/5) :Good, but too heavy.

Reorganized by rating:

• The Dark Knight (5/5)
• Iron Man (4.5/5)
• Be Kind Rewind (4.5/5)
• 27 Dresses (Plane) (4/5)
• In Bruge (DVD) (4/5)
• Definitely, Maybe (DVD) (4/5)
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall (4/5)
• Quantum of Solace (4/5)
• Seven Pounds (4/5)
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (3/5)
• Get Smart (DVD) (3/5)
• Pineapple Express (3/5)
• Tropic Thunder (3/5)
• Zack and Miri Make a Porno (3/5)
• Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2/5)
• Step Brothers (2/5)
• Baby Mama (DVD) (1/5)

baby quilt done, plus some knitting and embroidery

I'm coming off the end of my week-long thanksgiving break, it was very relaxing and I may actually be feeling ready to go back to work!
I had a few things I wanted to finish up during the week, the first was a long overdue baby quilt that just needed to be hand-bound. It came out pretty well, the pattern is loosely based on the six and one half dozen (?) quilt in last minute patchwork + quilted gifts. You can find more photos on my flickr page.



I've also been doing some embroidery, this is an ikea pillowcase (first of a set) with skull and crossbones done in cross stitch.



And this one was done maybe a month ago, the long suffering clapotis in a 4ply weight yarn (that was probably a bad idea). It is a little short after everything, but still pretty warm.

fall update

I'm sad to have to admit that summer is pretty much over. We finally harvested some tomatoes from the garden last weekend; it took a bit for the plants to recover from the deer.



We went on a little walk to enjoy dusk on one of the last days of summer.



This guy was hanging out on the front porch the next morning, perfectly camoflaged on the grey paint.



And I have been catching up on a project, started during the Olympics. (You can also see my duct tape double finally in action after a whole year sitting on the floor of my bedroom)

stash yarn for sale

Hi, the following yarns are for sale from a non-smoking, single rabbit home. All yarns were stored in plastic containers away from the bunny. I can take cash-funded paypal only, and domestic 1st class USPS shipping is included in the price. Please email me at lazysaturday(at)gmail(dot)com if you are interested!

ALL GONE

Thanks!

Sweden

I've been doing a lot of traveling, and these are some fibery photos from the last trip, to visit a friend in Sweden. It's been pretty busy around here, I was hoping it would be a relaxing yet productive summer (not sure if that's even possible) but so far I've been feeling behind on everything. Oh well, I'm just going to have to make the best of the month or so I have left before fall semester starts.
There was a nice baking exhibit at the Swedish History Museum, sorry about the somber expression but it was thunderstorming outside and my battery was about to die. By the way, princess cakes are quite good, in small doses of course (they are pretty sweet).

The next day I visited the Almgren Silk Weaving Mill and Museum, it was a small exhibit but still pretty nice. They only had tours in Swedish but the lady at the reception desk popped in the English version of the short DVD on the history of the mill for me. I did get to see the resident weaver do her thing. I'd love to learn how to weave one day.


The Swedish National Museum has a permanent exhibit of Swedish design, and there were some nice pieces in there. I like this rug by Marianne Richter.

And finally, walking around in Gamla Stan, I found the Oleana store. Their Norwegian sweaters are stunning. I love the neckwarmer as well, the prices were too much for my wallet but I'm definitely going to try to knit one at home.

FO: lace blouse + socks

The lace blouse, in the end, turned out pretty well.

I'd been working on it for a long time, or more like hadn't been working on it for a long time, so that it was hard to pick back up again. The yarn was originally purchased as a Kim Hargreaves kit, but I decided I didn't like the kit pattern (Buttercup) after I'd started knitting it.

I used random buttons of the same size, bought in a big bag off ebay.

I used a single-crochet seam, on the outside so the seam is visible.

And I like it! It can be worn open...

or closed!

Lace Blouse
from Romantic Knits
(July 2007 - March 2008)
Yarn: Rowan 4-ply cotton
Modifications: I knit everything on the larger needles. After finishing the garter stitch border on the bottom, I decreased stitches during the first row of the lace pattern. This is because I could not get my gauge for the lace pattern to match my desired size without doing this. After trying various different ways of attaching the buttonband, I decided to do it in two separate parts, on either front, rather than go all the way along the edge, including behind the neck.

And last but not least, I finally finished my first knitted thing for the BF, socks. I started swatching for his next handknit, a vest.