I feel like ass

I don't know what it is, but I felt like ass all day today. Hopefully it will go away overnight. I say that because Dec. 24th I felt like this too, but when I woke up the next morning I felt fine. Is is allergies, I don't know. I really wanted to go letterboxing today, but didn't feel like moving off the couch or bed.

On the knitting front, I am working on starting a new knitting group. The one at Black and Brew in Lakeland has been really great and we have had a great response. So, I am going to start a second one in Winter Haven. I have a few people who are signed up on the CFS yahoo group that will be able to make it to Winter Haven but can't make it to Lakeland. Here is my new CFS Winter Haven poster...(work in progress)

I will continue to tweek it until I am done playing. That is the problem, I love to play with scrapbooking elements on my posters.

I don't know if I mentioned it but, my Mom got Sweater Wizard program for me. I am loving it! I have been keeping an idea book thingy with different sweater ideas that I have had and swatches of the stitches I wanted to use. But my math (like my spelling) is not so good and I was never comfortable trying to figure out a pattern. Now, just plug in the schematics and it generates a pattern for you. Even estimates the yardage needed. I am currently working on a very simple pullover pattern to try out some of the features. We will see.

12-23-07

SQEEEEE!

Paul and I found our first 2 letterboxes. And in the first one, we found a hitchhiker! Letterboxing Crack!

So what do you do after finding your first two letterboxes...

We went to Disney

Had some Funnel Cakes.

And, saw the beautiful Christmas lights that were on the castle!

12-19-07

Here are the stamps that I carved for Paul and I. Need to get log books for us. Paul needs to register with Atlas Quest. And we are off! First stop the park in downtown Winter Haven, the one across from our coffee shop. Hope to go to Disney this weekend and hopefully find the 2 boxes there.

I am so impressionable

Just so you know this is all Violet and Karen's fault. Have you heard of Letterboxing? I hadn't. But I have now and really want to do it. As directed by Mrs. Violet I went to Atlas Quest and found that there are 31 locations within 25 miles of my zip code. One just happens to be near our coffee shop. Tomorrow I am going at lunch to the local stamp store and buy a carvable stamp and tools. I don't know if I am going to make my log book or buy a nice journal type book.

Dec. 11, 2007

The work continues here at the house. This is Paul replacing the fixtures in the tube/shower. Which could also be considered both home improvement and good for the environment. That fixture has dripped for years and just recently started a steady stream. There was alot was wasted water. But, it is fixed now and no more leaking.

Bottoms Up

Before I start on how much I love the bottom-up construction of this sweater, a note on the progress of the hourglass sweater. I found that as I was decreasing, it was not decreasing quick enough and felt that it would have been too big. So, I decrease the size of the needle and went to work. This worked out great, no more baggy yoke portion of the sweater. I did continue to decrease a few more rounds before the purl round, as many have suggested.

So I used to think that top-down sweaters were my fav to knit. But since working with the Hourglass Sweater from LMKG I think for me bottom-up construction will work better for me. I have in the past had difficulty determining the cast on for the neck when working top-down. Inevitably it would be way too many stitches and the neck was HUGE. I was using some calculation that just wasn’t working for me. But, with bottom-up it seems less difficult. Maybe my brain just likes it better; I mean it is sensually the same thing just different direction. When I think about shaping and such, it seems to be easier to determine were to put darts. Also, my past top-down sweaters ended up with big arm holes, meaning that I continued knitting far to long before joining for the body. I don’t know it just seems easier for my brainy bits to understand and make a better fitting garment. It just all makes sense with bottom-up. I also like the sleeve joining process. With my past top-down the underarm was just nasty and ugly, thank god you don’t see that area very much. With bottom-up the sleeves are done, all I have to do is graft some stitches. I am sure it is no harder or easier than top-down, but like I said for some reason my brainy bits just wrap around this concept. So, next sweater project is for Paul. He wants a cabled sweater jacket. As much as I love my DH, I am dreading this a wee bit. We were looking through some stitch dictionaries and he of course picked out some very complicated cables. There was one that looked like a chain, but each time you crossed the cable to create the chain you had to cut the yarn. Ummm, NO! It will be my new found love bottom-up raglan shaped with cables and a zipper closure. I don’t know if there were be pockets. Maybe some side seem pockets so that it doesn’t interrupt the cabling.