Pretties

Last weekend, I discovered an A.C. Moore in Bowie. They had a sale on shiny sparkly beads and of course I caved. I decided to make some stitch markers (fuzzy picture alert!):
They all fit a size 9 needle, though the ones with fewer beads on them can fit up to a 10.5. Next time, I'll use longer head pins, maybe 2.5 - 3 inches, so the markers can fit larger needles. I also have to work on how to twist the wire so it looks neat. Otherwise, not bad for a first try.

My doggie made his own discovery: a new place to look pretty in!
This box is destined for New Zealand, sans doggie of course. It's a care package for my cousin and his wife who are emigrating there. Since New Zealand, unlike the Philippines, actually gets cold weather (I keep having to remind myself that it's winter in the southern hemisphere), mom included some nice warm jackets and I knit up a couple of scarves. Gotta share the warmth with other tropical transplants!

Happy Friday!

My cousin's darling new baby at one week. I swear he's winking at me.

Icarus is in good shape. Here it is after Chart 2:
As I was starting chart 2, I realized I had been short changing each of the chart 1 repeats by 2 rows ('cuz I can't read charts). I forged ahead anyway ('cuz I'm lazy). It may be shorter, but I'm almost guaranteed not to run out of yarn. At this point, I kinda wish the shawl had more lace and less stocking stitch. My opinion may change if I run into trouble with the next two charts.

More garden-fresh purplyness: violets and hostas.

Sheep and Shakespeare

On Saturday, I went to the open house at the Textile Museum on my way home. They had some increadibly intricate Greek embroidery on exhibit, plus they had some tents set up with special activities for the weekend. I tried my hand at rughooking, which seems to me like embroidery with a crochet hook. And I saw shearing in progress (sorry, I got more shearer than sheep):
along with the end result:

Happy news: my cousin had her baby last week. Hooray! Mommy and son are doing well. I'll post a picture as soon as I get one. I finished sewing this up for the new arrival yesterday:
I knit it at the same time as the orange last minute pullover and took even longer to get around to finishing it. The pattern is called "Classic Cable" from Family Circle Easy Baby Knits. I'm not sure what possessed me to pick such a serious color. I guess the little guy can use it for his pre-school early admission interview :). Gotta get 'em in the rat race early.

On Sunday, I went with my brother to see Pericles at the Shakespeare Free-for-All. It was a really nice production plus the weather was great (it was almost chilly once the sun set - unheard of for June in Washington). The plot was just crazy. We're talking random pirate attack crazy. The set was great and I loved the way they hid props in drawers in the walls of the set. Since photography was forbidden, I'll leave you with this:
That's my brother, trying to look pensive as he waits for his pupusas and stuffed squash at Ercilia's. If you're ever near Adam's Morgan, you should stop by and try their food. It's really yummy!

Cheating

Here's the Bea cable, both on some practice yarn and the real deal:
When I was having trouble with it last week, I took the wretched cable pattern to knitting group for commiseration and advice. When I got to knitting this Wednesday, the ever-helpful Claire, our knitting instructor, confirmed that (a) the pattern was hard to follow (this book's a joy to browse through, but a pain to read - gray font and small charts - ick!) and (b) it didn't work. She had even redrawn the chart by hand, but to no avail. Claire then told me this great story about when she had written to Julia Child because she couldn't get one of Child's recipes to come out right. The chef wrote back to say that she had "cheated" with the recipe, i.e. it really only worked if you used a specific kind of flour from a certain supplier with such-and-such gluten content, etc. Claire suspected some similar fudging was going on with the pattern.

So I contacted Rowan for help, particularly with how to handle the decrease rows. Those kinda leave you hanging, since you have to start in the middle of a cable. Their advice was to knit the extra half-cable thingie (my words, not theirs of course) at the start of the row as plain stocking stitch, then cabling. I guess you could just call it going off pattern for a stitch before resuming the cable. Yup. Cheating.