Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Isn’t she lovely?


(And yes, I will be singing that song in my head for the rest of the day, thank you very much.)


Anyway, here is the third and final installment of "Fun with Bronze Knitwear Models." This gorgeous lady is Sara the Sauratown Woman. She is one of the three statues that greet visitors at the front door of the North Carolina History Museum. She is the forensic reconstruction of how anthropologists believe a seventeenth-century Native American woman from the Saura tribe would have appeared.
I thought that it would be appropriate to feature a Native American in a posting so close on the heels of Earth Day and at the end of Earth Week. Native Americans have a direct and spiritual connection with nature and the earth. Sometimes I think all of our efforts to be more "green" are, in some ways, an effort to recapture something that Native Americans understood deeply. If only we could regain just a small portion of their perception, understanding and respect for our natural environment.

Speaking of green, Sara is holding in her hand the triangle kerchief that I knit in a sport weight 100% silk yarn from Sundara in the "Evergreen over Lime" colorway. The pattern is from Last Minute Knitted Gifts . Easy peasy. I love this little kerchief. I used just about every bit of yarn in the skein. Here it is in progress:







I did not like the rough edges of the triangle, so I added a little crocheted picot edge on two sides.




It feels lovely. The colors are brilliant. I will be looking for any excuse to wrap it around my neck or head. And I like to think that Sara blessed it for me.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Where did I go?

This photo has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the subject of this post.

I’m in the middle of stealth gift knitting for the moment. Hence the lack of yarn blogging. But I thought today I would pop in and say a few words about . . . well . . . hmmmm. I guess I really don’t have much to talk about in the yarn world. I could discuss why I have too much yarn and not enough time to play with it. But that dead horse might come alive and kick me if I beat it again.

Oh, I know! I could talk about the UFOs (Unfinished Objects) that are gathering cobwebs in my knitting baskets. Perhaps we could all do a little psychoanalysis on why I cannot seem to pick them up. That could be fun. Here’s one:


It’s my first sweater project. I have been working on this for WAY too long. It’s for the hubster. I think he’s given up hope that I will ever finish it. It’s about 85% done. I only lack a little more of the back panel and then the neck and sleeve ribbing.

Theory as to why not done: I think the color BORES ME TO TEARS. I just love color. Lots of color all smooshed and swirled together. I mean look at my sock yarn stash:

There is a veritable feast of color in there. Plain old taupe works like an anesthetic on me.
But this lack of color does not explain why I cannot finish the mate of this sock:

There’s plenty of gorgeous color in there. I love the yarn. I KNOW how to make a sock. I just can’t seem to pick the stupid thing up. Dang.

Finally, we have this lovely little softie:

It’s a crocheted chevron scarf out of Malabrigo lace weight. My lack of progress on this project is quite clear: A big ol’ effin KNOT in the yarn. I wound the skein into a lovely little cake. But as I pulled a little on the working yarn, out popped the worst knot of my knitting career from the center of the cake. (Note: This knot is a result of my winding and not the fault of the yarn maker.) I have tried desperately to untangle this knot. But the way that this yarn is spun makes it felt together the more you handle it. All of my efforts have only made the knot worse. I hate to cut the knot out because it might interrupt the lovely color distribution that’s going on and introduce the pooling virus into the fabric. Dang again.

Okay, that’s all on the UFOs. I hope this post wasn’t too much of a yawner. It was quite liberating for me. I feel a lot less guilty.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Not pouting . . . really.

Okay, so as mentioned previously, my dear hubby got a new lathe. And he was using it to make me things. And he was planning to make me MORE things. Specifically, some lovely shawl pins out of exotic woods that he had purchased for that purpose.

But last night, he used that lovely wood to make these for the boys:


Yes, those are handmade wands. And they each contain a four-leaf clover in their cores to make them magic.

And I’m not jealous . . . much. It was really worth giving up the shawl pins for shawls I have yet to knit to watch the boys wielding various spells at each other. But I did have to scold the youngest one for casting a cruciatus curse on his brother. (That’s an unforgivable one, and I am their mother.)

So, while the lovely wood was hijacked by my boys, at least they will stop using my knitting needles for wands.