Happy Memorial Day!

I'm at work today but I'm wishing all my US friends a very happy Memorial Day!

I'd also like to take a moment to thank all of you for the encouragement & positive words about my newest Pi shawl knit out of scrap sock yarn.  I hope you are all right and that it will tone itself down as it gets bigger.  Time will tell.

Meanwhile,

Happy Memorial Day!

Erasable!

Oh! My! Gosh!  I am SO excited!

Pilot Frixion

My new favorite toy was hiding in Wednesday's post.  My new Pilot FriXion Erasable pen.  Oh! My! Gosh!  It actually erases!

First,

smooth ink flow

 then,

erases cleanly

The ink is actually erased!  Not smudged, not rubbed into the paper until the paper disappears, but actually erased!  Pilot's Frixion line even has markers and .... get ready for it.... highlighters!  Erasable highlighters!  YES!  My world is complete.

And the excitement doesn't end there.  For the ex-homeschooling science experiment loving geek in me, the pens are a science experiment waiting to happen.  According to the packaging, if the pen is stored in temperatures above 140 degrees Fahrenheit, the ink will turn clear.  In order to return it to its proper color, you must put it in a freezer & let the pen reach 14 degrees.  I can not wait to play with that fun fact!

Meanwhile, in between purposely making mistakes in my writing just so I can erase it, I've been working on my Hasselhoff shawl.

Hasselhoff scarf

Not sure you can tell from that photo, but I've begun the third shade of blue & red.  I'm SO pleased with the way the two gradients are working together.  Almost as please as I am about my new erasable pens.

I'm absolutely giddy about my pens.  Sarah even got excited over them and stole the black one as soon as I showed it to her.  And now I anxiously await another Amazon package containing the markers, highlighters and another black pen.  Once it's existence is known, a girl just can't live without a black erasable pen!

Off my rocker

I'm questioning my sanity.  I started a new Pi shawl....

Scrap Sock Yarn Pi Shawl

.... using scrap sock  yarn.  Am I completely off my rocker?  It's either going to be the most hideous thing ever knit or it's going to be a gorgeous thing to behold.  At the moment, it's at the Really, Really Hideous stage that scrap yarn projects tend to experience in their early stages.  We'll have to wait & see how it turns out.  Whatever happens, I'm determined to use up a good chunk of my scrap yarn collection.  I need to make more room for the 'real' yarn stash.

While I knit around and around and around, I'm also reading Pressure Drop by Peter Abrahams.  Although I'm a little confused about the story line, I am enjoying the book.  I think my confusion is mostly due to reading myself to sleep after 14 hour shifts but.....  The story alternates between a deep sea diving accident (was it an accident??) and woman who decides to have artificial insemination using an anonymous sperm donor.  The baby gets kidnapped immediately after being born and I get the impression that the anonymous sperm donor may have something to do with both the kidnapping and the diving accident.  Another reason I'm a little confused about the story line is that I'm having trouble putting it down.  I tend to read until  I fall asleep still holding my Kindle. I keep waking up hours later, laying on the Kindle, unable to remember what happened over the last few pages.  Honestly, I'm pretty surprised I haven't rolled over on it & cracked the screen yet.

So, what are you reading? Knitting? Crafting?  Join me over at Kat's Unraveled Wedenesday post.

Hasselhoff

Remember this striped scarf/shawl?  I've made lots of progress.

Hasselhoff

First, I've knit far enough that I can now see the first gradient change in the yarn.  That change was a long time coming!

Second, it will be a shawl, not a scarf.  A very, very long, triangular shawl with the wide part at one end and the point at the other.

And third, it has a name.  Hasselhoff.  The orange yarn is called Lifeguard and the entire time I've been knitting with it, I've been picturing David Hasselhoff running along the beach.

SOS

I'm feeling a bit like I'm on a sinking ship these days.

Annis Shawl

I finished my Annis shawl last night . Do you notice anything odd about it?  Anything odd other than it's loose ends still hanging from it?

That'll block right out.

It's a little on the small side.  Obviously I didn't knit to the proper gauge.  Honestly, I never checked my gauge.  It's a shawl.  It doesn't have to fit.  Besides, the pattern called for lace weight yarn and I used fingering and a needle appropriately slightly too large for the yarn.   Big, massive mistake apparently.

Train Station

I thought about frogging it and starting over but.... I love the dark, smokiness of the knitted fabric and I really, really don't want to deal with all those beads coming loose so....  I'm thinking I might sew the ends together and call it a decorative cowl.  But then.... maybe, just maybe the magic of blocking will stretch that baby out.

And then there's the grapes.

Do you notice what's behind the grapes?  Yep, our garden gate.  Dammit!  Someone forgot to trim the grape vines back this spring.

Shipwreck

And last but not least, Shipwreck.  Shipwreck is a collection of Gloss Lace from Knit Picks that I bought as a birthday present to myself.  Between my love of all things nautical and my tendency to sink any boat I board, I thought it was an appropriate gift.  Now, if I could just decide what to knit with it.  Suggestions are welcome.

Cybernetic Spiders

Because my life is not strange enough, we now have a cybernetic spider living in our house.

So, yesterday afternoon, Sarah asks me if I've seen the weird spider in the office.  It has creepy blue eyes, she says.

Well, Sarah does NOT like bugs & goes into a full on panic attack if she sees even a tiny gnat.  There's no way she got close enough to a spider to see it's eyes.  I had to take a look for myself.

North American Jumping Spider

Sure enough!  Our spider has bright, fluorescent blue eyes.  I mean, they are seriously, bright, bright BLUE.  His eyes are so blue, you can see them from three or four feet away even though the whole spider is a little smaller than a quarter.  They are SO much bluer than that photo'd spider's. They are seriously creepy and there's no way they are natural.  He has to be some kind of cyborg spider.  Those eyes just can not be natural.  No way. No freaking way.

So now I'm left wondering, has he escaped from some kind of governmental lab?  DC is only 60 miles away.  Or maybe the government placed him here to spy on us.  Or worse, my husband is using him to track my yarn purchases.

And if cybernetic spiders aren't freaky enough.....

Beaded Annis Shawl

I was sitting out on the deck this afternoon, knitting in the bright, blinding sun when all of a sudden.... Max, our dog, comes strolling out of the house carrying a package of Pop Tarts.  He casually walked right past me, over to the steps, down the stairs & out to the shade of the tree where he began removing the Pop Tarts from their wrapper.

What kind of household am I living in??

Train Station

I couldn't stand it any longer.  I had to take a break from knitting mitered squares.  Actually, I just needed a project where I could see that I was making progress.  My slow progress on the mitered square blanket was starting to feel discouraging and no matter how much I knit on my To the Beach scarf, it never seemed to grow.  The solution?  Cast on something else of course.

Train Station

It's an Annis shawl knit with accidentally purchased Stroll Tonal fingering yarn.  A while back, using my tiny screened phone to place a Knit Picks order, I accidently clicked on Train Station instead of Raven.  I was in the mood to knit something beaded and purple. Raven is purply and I have beads that I think would coordinate perfectly, so I quickly placed my order.  Except I didn't.  I ordered Train Station.  But, as luck would have it, it turns out, I already had some pewter beads that look good with Train Station's smoky blackness.  Yay for having a bead stash!


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Mitered Squares

Goodness gracious! I still haven't caught up from working Spring Break week and I have the feeling the summer isn't going to help any.  I'm ridiculously behind in every aspect of my life and I can't seem to catch up.  Okay, mainly, I can't catch up because I'm spending all my spare time watching YouTube music videos and playing computer solitaire.  Yikes.

Mitered Squares

Somewhere inbetween music videos & rounds of solitaire, I've knit a few more mitered squares.  My stats are currently 276 knit, 108 still to go for a total of 384 squares.  I'm not even going to think about the tangled mass of ends I will need to weave in when I'm done. I'm channeling my inner Scarlet on that one and will think about weaving in the ends on another day.

I've also been reading The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone.  The book hasn't exactly taught me anything I didn't already know but it has been a good reminder that if I want to succeed, I need to put out more effort.  Admittedly, I'm sure I'd benefit much more from the book if I wasn't still suffering from spring break burn out.

Join me over at askatknits.com to see what others are reading while they knit.


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