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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