A trip to Michigan in Pictures

Books were readThreadBear was visited (and yarn was purchased)

Official Photos were taken and not so official

I was shocked that Jenni suggested this trip and actually sat for a photo

Guitar Hero was played

Ali got quite good at playing the guitar (although I don't have any photos)

I didn't play Guitar Hero very much. I just can't get into video games (except Tetris). I understand why people find them fun, and I enjoying commenting on how other people are playing either critiquing or giving advice, but I just can't get into them. However, I have this week heard about a new "game" for the Wii that I might like, Endless Ocean. I put game in quotes since you can swim around and take photos of things or you can sit on the deck chair and stair out at the water all the time. There is no winning or missions or scores. So to play this video "game" can involve you knitting while you sit in a deck chair looking out at the lagoon.

B is for

Berry Banana

Just a quick post before I download the photos about the weekend activities. Hints may be found here or here

Iris Lornas Lace Jaywalkers revisted

Theresa over at Knitting Underway has started Time Machine Tuesdays -the idea is too look at some past projects and comment on their wear, did the yarn hold up or did it wear, is their lots of pilling. Is is it a plain jane sweater that is one of the most comfortable items in your wardrobe.

I am going to start off with my Jaywalkers socks knit in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport in Iris. Here is one that is almost finished, from March 2006.

A picture of the socks as they are today (with some leftover yarn) -with and without the flash

I am not impressed with how the Lorna's Laces has stood up to the test of time

• The yarn, especially the green sections, has faded
• The socks have shrunk - they are know very tough to get over my heel and some mornings they go back in the drawer since I don't want to struggle to get them on. The shrinkage is probably made worse with this pattern since there is no stretch in the bias fabric
  


• The soles have held up with no holes or other thin spots, although there is some light fuzziness that has developed.
  

This is the only time I have used Lorna's Laces and although other people love I don't think I will be buying it for socks again.

Two Birds in the Hand are

.. priceless

My hands now are wonderfully warm and toasty thanks to these



Pattern: Bird in Hand Mitts by Kate Gilbert
Yarn: Fiesta Yarns Boomerang (100% merino) in Alaska colourway and some stash 100% wool in white
Needles: I knit these with 2.75 mm - I have yet to measure the gauge. I started knitting - checked on my hand and they fit. What else would I need.

Notes
I have not done stranded knitting for over a year and this was a good refresher as there were a few things that I remembered as I went along. Knit loose is the first one that came back to me. On the right mitt the first couple of motifs are knit tighter than the solid colour rounds. The other thing is the whole yarn dominance -which yarn is dominant from the top or the bottom. For some reason this is not intuitive to me so after I realized on the palm that I should pay attention to this matter it takes me a couple of rounds to get that the bottom yarn is dominant and I should be having the white yarn as dominant.
Like Claudia found (although I haven't measured gauge) these mitts are a great width for me but are longer than I would have chosen. Although this does not distract from their job of keeping my hands warm on my walks. Which they have now for the past 3 days (I finished them up at a meeting on Tuesday). As I am writing this I realize I total forgot to take a close up of the birds. WHOOPS.

Next up...

A

Asleep Amidst Alpaca

Yes, I joined the ABC along.

This photo shoot was not as easy as it could have been - I decided to do this 20 min before dinner, which does not make my food driven hound sleepy. The white alpaca (White Gem) smelled good and Keeper thought since I was draping it on him it must be a toy and kept grabbing it.

The Wool House

The year is new and with that changes need to be made to the wool house.

I have never been happy with how the living room furniture has been arranged but have never bothered to do anything about it (something to do with removing all the books from the bookshelf and not knowing how to fix the problem). Well, that was changed this past weekend.

While we were moving furniture between floors - bookcases that were downstairs went up, upstairs bookcases came down and furniture. I decided to peel back a piece of carpet in the living room. I knew there was hardwood under there (under where?) but what shape that it was in was a question.


Looks good so far.


The decision was made to pull the rest of the carpet up. Refinishing the hard wood has always been on the books - we were thinking this summer.

The items that need to be fixed on the floor:

1. Remove paint splatters - this corner is the worst although the last time they painted the trim they didn't care if it got on the floor or not so there is a white band all the way around the room. If the paint is latex this shouldn't be a problem if it is oil based paint ...

2. Find an old grate - when new duct work was put in the house, they removed the old grates on the main floor and put in the basic grills. At this point in the floor they just filled the space with plywood and stained it. Our plan is to remove the plywood and put an old grate back on with a black piece of wood underneath.

3. A square (about 3cm x3 cm) also needs to be filled where another grate was removed from the floor/wall.
   
4. Two areas that have no finish on the wood. The thinking is that there was large pieces of furniture here that no one wanted to move when the floor last got refinished so they just refinished around them. WTF? Although they did get lazy in other areas of the house as well. ETA - it has been suggested that area rugs might have been glued to the floor in these areas.
   


5. All of the quarter round has been removed (typical)
   

The maple floor is in good shape, building up the trim with a baseboard piece and then quarter round will hide many of the edge problems, the refinishing will be a little more work but manageable.

So the furniture has been temporarily re loaded into the room until these repairs can be made. Although the books will not be put back on the shelf until the room is done.

Lack of an update

I'd love to show you pictures of my new sunrise circle jacket or
of pictures of my hardwood floor.

However, my cable modem is down, and has been since the weekend. With any luck Rogers will have it fixed tomorrow.

Maybe then I will tell you the story of my sunrise since it hasn't been posted here.

Happy 2008!

This past Christmas week has seemed like one event after another with just enough time between events to prepare food for the next event. Little knitting was completed although a fun time was had by all.

(I love this picture of Sarah that Emily took. My brother showed us a setting on our camera that allows you to take isolate a colour in a photo).

(Yes, Ali received a 4x8" poster for Superbad)

A favourite Christmas present that I received:

A beautiful wooden swift, which was dutifully put to use to wind this
for these.