Midweek Post!

On My Hooks

I have put aside the Juliette Dress in favor of working on my sister's tote bag.  As such I won't spend much time talking about the dress today, but I do want to let you know that I am aware of the poor color quality in the picture.  It started raining the day I wanted to take a picture of the dress, it has been raining ever since, and it looks as though it will continue raining until the middle of next week.  Which means that I will not be able to get a picture of the dress in natural lighting until then, but I will try to post a better picture as soon as I can get that proper lighting to bring out the true color of the yarn.

My sister's tote bag has moved out of the design faze and is now in process.  I made a fair amount of progress on the logo side, but some of the color detailing just wasn't coming out right, so I had to rip back about 2 inches.  It was heartbreaking, because I knew it was wrong, and I knew that I should rip back sooner, but I kept telling myself that if I just built up the pattern it would look right in a more general way.  You know, if you took a step back, tilted your head, and squinted the logo would look perfect.  But, this is something I want my sister to be able to use so I finally had to suck it in and start ripping.

Each stitch coming out and each color change fading away felt terrible.  But I did take a picture of what it looked like before ripping.  This way when I get the detailing right I can look at the original picture and really appreciate that I made the right decision.  For some reason the blog program keeps flipping my picture upside down and I can't figure out how to fix it.  If I can I will edit this.  You should still be able to see how the center stitches of the M don't line up.

I have also picked up another project.  In my defense, the dress and the tote bag are a little much to carry around with me.  The dress takes a little too much of my attention to work on while walking and the tote bag has two to three colors active through the core of the pattern, way too much yarn to haul around.

My portable project is the Comforting Shawl, a free pattern available from Red Heart Yarn.  Rather than using the Red Heart Super Saver Jumbo, I decided to use Caron Simply Soft.  O M G I am in love with Caron Simply Soft yarn and I haven't had the chance to use it much yet.  So, since I had a skein of the Simply Soft Ocean, I thought that it would look gorgeous for this shawl, so I chained on. (Do you like that term?  I thought of it earlier today and I was just struck by it's appropriateness, but we can discuss it more later.)

I have had several kind of funny mishaps with this shawl and I really want to share them with you, but I think I'm going to save most of the story for a future post.  In fact, I think that my experience with this shawl so far is deserving of its own post, and I'm not done with it yet.  Who knows what other craziness might come my way before it's done!

This is Jeopardy!

I love Jeopardy!  I don't watch it every night, but I watch it many nights while watching dinner or crocheting. Or, sometimes, while cooking dinner.  The point being, after not watching Jeopardy! in over a week I was very excited to see Mary Harris, a knitting store owner from Seattle, Washington, on as a contestant.  Of course, I knew who I was going to be cheering on.  Mary wore a gorgeous sweater that I would bet that she either knit herself, or was knitted as a token of good luck by someone supportive.  At least, that's what I like to think.

Mary had a rough start, but pulled it out in the end with some smart wagers to be the day's champion.  I was super excited, what a good image to represent the yarn crafting community.  I mean, it would have been nice if she described the store as being a yarn store.  I looked her up and tracked down the store (I don't remember them saying the name on air) and the store is named The Fiber Gallery.  It would just be nice if yarn crafting other than straight up knitting was more recognized or identified by non-yarn crafters. But I digress.

I was looking forward to seeing a second sweater, or wrap, or something the second day.  I was disappointed.  She did not appear in anything knit the next show, though I suppose that could have been at the recommendation made by someone on set.  Mary had another rough start, though to give all of the contestants credit, both shows had some pretty terrible categories.  My fiance and I sat their scratching our heads much of the time wondering why on earth they chose the answers/questions they did.

Mary didn't win, but when Alex Trebek asked her if people still knit, my heart swelled with pride when she informed him that not only do people still knit, young people knit.  As a crocheter that gets teased about being "an old lady" at 25, it feels really good to have your craft defended as being a young person's game too on national television.  Especially on a show that reaches into so many homes.

I would post a link to her Winner's Circle video, but it doesn't look as though it has been posted yet and I can't find any clips from the show at this point.

Where We Are Headed

I want to touch base a little about my vision for the blog and for developing a more consistent and unified feeling to these posts.  I don't want to box these posts into a prescribed formula, but I do want things to be cohesive.  There is method in the madness, rather than madness in the method.

I will try to do an On My Hooks segment once a week unless I add something during the middle of the week and there is a midweek post.  This will help cut down on teasers such as you saw above about the Comforting Shawl, but I do think that it deserves a full story post of its very own that includes a pattern review.

Which leads to another regular feature I will be bringing on board: Reviews of Patterns and Craft Related Books and Products.  I'll have to come up with a catchier name for this, but I will discuss patterns, books, and products that pertain to yarn crafting, and occasionally other crafts as well.  You may have already seen the Mirror Mirror review in what will become my In My Ears and On the Screen entertainment review segment.  I will try to include at least one movie, song, or other entertainment review segment a week.

On the opposite side of reviews I will also do a Spotlight segment in which I will discuss crafting Blogs, Podcasts, Sellers, and Artists that I think are exceptionally cool.  I want to try to do at least one Spotlight a week.

I will also introduce you to my Crafty Family.  This will be an occasional segment to celebrate the amazing things that my very Crafty Family does.  My sister is a photographer and general crafter.  My mom has quilted, made the majority of my Halloween costumes, scrapbooks, and is currently playing around with jewelry making.  I got some really cool earring for Christmas.  Several of my aunts scrapbook, one just completed her first quilt, one has knitted almost every member of our large family an afghan, and they are all very creative.  I get a lot of handmade cards from family members that are jaw dropping-ly beautiful.

I am very interested in Crochet History and Theory and will do occasional trivia segments.  For example: Did you know that the first crochet pattern was not published until 1824?  I plan on learning more and doing more research that I will bring back here to share with you.

I will probably experience and share a few Nerdgasms here, because I am a huge nerd.  I love my comics, games, superheroes, books, etc.  Fantasy, Sci-fi, Alternate Reality, Science, Space, History, I love so much miscellaneous stuff that can be filed into this section and I want to share some of that with you.

Finding Time

Wow, I kind of wonder if I'm over promising my time.  As such I reserve the right to vary up the format and frequency, no less than one a week, until I find the stride that is going to work for both myself and you, my wonderful reader.

I'm currently balancing all of the things on my Wish to Do List, Must Do List, Should Have Done Yesterday List, and My Fiance to figure out a new way of balancing my time to make this a natural and regular part of my routine.

But now it is time for me to end this long winded post and give my fiance some of my attention.

Post at you later,

     Super Hooker