Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Flying Fingers

Almost a month ago, I was invited to join a nearby knitting group called Flying Fingers. It's located in a complex dedicated to seniors about a mile away from where I live.

I went to one meeting, missed the next, and then Dottie forgot to pick me up for the next one, but I've been to two more since then.

At the meeting last night, a lot of the members were missing because there's another nearby knitting group that they went to. I'm guessing that that group is only once a month, instead of every week like Flying Fingers. I did get to meet one of the people from the other group (besides Dottie) last night, and was invited to speak at one of their meetings. I don't know what they want me to talk about, but it sounds good.

During the meeting, I worked on binding off the shawl I've been making for my friend, Louise. She has a "craft class" at the apartment building where I live. They pretty much exclusively do paper crafts, almost always greeting cards. Once a month they get together and make two or three cards each. I used to do paper crafts, and had a lot of rubber stamps, but they went to New Jersey, and I'm not interested in putting any money into rubber stamps at the moment.

Because of the paper crafts, which Louise does all the time for herself, she regularly goes to either JoAnne's or Michael's. She generously offered to give me a ride to one or the other of those two places when she happens to be going there. I live near her, and she only takes me when she's already going, so it's not out of her way.

I wanted to give her some money for gas, but she insisted that she would be going anyway, even if she didn't take me, so she wouldn't accept money.

What we did agree on was that she wanted a shawl to give her sister in law for Christmas, so she bought the yarn and I knit the shawl. That's what I was binding off at the meeting last night. It was a picot bind off, so it really took a lot of time and yarn. When I was completely finished, there was a five inch tail of good yarn and another inch of frayed. I used exactly all the yarn that I had! I have some tails to darn in, and I'm debating about blocking it.

The yarn is a heathery beige-tan in worsted weight. She chose Wool Ease in Mushroom.


I started at the point at the bottom, increasing each row, and put a fringe around the two short sides. There's a big Saint John's cross (sample below from a different project), and I finished off the top with a picot bind off.


You can barely see a sample of the picot bind off on the right in the photo above.

The photos are from a completely different project, because I don't have a photo of the shawl yet, but I plan to take one and have a picture for you real soon, now.

I really have to go to the library and pick up a book, but I'll try to do another post again sometime very soon.




Friday, April 13, 2012

Friday the Thirteenth!

Today is Friday the thirteenth, and the second one this year. We still have one more to go, so don't think you're off the hook yet.


Oddly enough, a lot of people regard Friday the thirteenth as a lucky day, so I've chosen to look at it that way, too. You might want to try it. It's much less stressful.

So, have a happy, lucky Friday the thirteenth!




Sunday, April 8, 2012

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

I hope you've been having a happy Easter!

The temperature in my apartment is getting up near 90 degrees (again), and I finally gave up and opened the window. Happy allergies! I feel like I have flu most of the time.

I hope you're enjoying all the great Easter movies on TV, but don't miss Once Upon A Time
tonight!




Sunday, April 1, 2012

April Fool's Day!

Happy April Fool's Day!

For those of you (like me) who haven't really seen anyone today on which to play an April Fool's Day prank, I give you the following link to a list of the most notorious April Fool's Day pranks ever played.

Having been a typesetter, I especially appreciate number 5, about the itinerant island chain of San Seriffe, with it's punctuation-shaped islands and it's capital, Bodoni. The two major islands, Upper and Lower Caisse were a nice touch, as was the second cousin of the president, "Che" Pica (you have to hit the "more" button and wait for a while to read all of the story).

I also particularly enjoyed the article about Alabama changing the value of Pi. The story about the left-handed Whopper was beyond belief. Additional gigglers include the conversion to metric time, the "bomb" dropped on a German camp during WWI, whistling carrots, drunk internet use, the predicted death of an astrologer, diseases in teddy bears, footprints of a flying man, and, in a twist on the metric time prank, there's Big Ben being converted to digital. I only got up to number 50, but there's lots more if you're interested.

If you happen to be wondering how April Fool's Day started, you can read an explanation here, from some people who are probably as confused as you are.

Whatever, I hope you have a fun day!