Happy Memorial Day and Towel Day!

Happy Memorial Day!

I wanted to make that headline red, white and blue, but the white wouldn't have shown up and I had to settle for red and blue.

In honor of the day, I have some clippings from the Maple Shade Progress that I just scanned this morning about me. They fit right in with the Memorial Day theme. If you click on them, you can see them large enough to actually read the text.

The first one was published around the end of October, or the beginning of November in 1962.

The second one was probably published in December of the same year.

If you notice, the second one has a credit for the photo--the photographer asked me to be in the photo partly because I was the only woman in the Aero Club at the time, and partly because he wanted to meet me. We later got married, so I guess it was a good way to meet me. 

Flying was one of the most fun things I've ever done!

Check out John's Steve Canyon blog, because he said he's going to write a Memorial Day post, and going to put my photos in it! That's a generic link to the blog because he hasn't gotten the post up yet. I can't wait to see it!

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Holly and I went out yesterday and visited Michaels, where I got a really nice, tiny vacuum cleaner made especially to pick up spilled beads and other small craft parts, and JoAnn Fabrics where I got a plastic container to replace the broken pencil case I've been using for holding small knitting stuff.

We also stopped at WalMart for a while and I bought a copy of the book with the story of the new Star Trek movie. I had been thinking about going to the movies to see it again (it's soooo good!), but the book was a little cheaper, and it was written by a friend of mine, Alan Dean Foster. John and I met him at MonCon in West Virginia in late Winter or early Spring right before the very first Star Wars movie came out. 

He and John and I were doing advance publicity for the movie. He, however, had been out to the studio where they were finishing it, and he got to talk to a lot of people that were involved that John and I hadn't gotten to meet. The thing that seemed to tickle him most was that the banthas were actually "elephants in drag." That's the way he expressed it. They told him that the elephants seemed to really enjoy dressing up!

One of the best things about meeting him was meeting his wife, JoAnn. She and I got along well.

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Here's where I had gotten to on my shawl two days ago. I was inspired to take the photo because it's about one quarter done in the photo. Yesterday, I did the 8 pattern rows that put 42 flower designs across in one row. I'm a real Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fan, and couldn't resist noticing that.

Today is also Towel Day, by the way. Fans of Douglas Adams traditionally carry a towel with them all day on the 25th of May, and you may remember that I knitted a towel in the Towel Day KAL last year.


As is usual with lace, it looks like something that was wadded up and left in the trash for a week. The true beauty of lace doesn't emerge until it's blocked, so the photo is mainly to show how big it is at the moment. In the photo above, it was sixteen inches, measured along the front edge, and stretched to approximate the stretching that will happen during blocking. 

As of last night when I measured it, it was over 18 inches, and I've done some more knitting on it today. Considering that it averages six more stitches for each right side row, it goes pretty fast in the beginning, and slows significantly as progress is made.

It's intended to be about thirty six inches long measured along the front edge after blocking, so you would think that eighteen inches would be half way, but the halfway point is really at about twenty four inches as measured by yarn usage. The rule with these things is that a section that has a certain measurement uses enough yarn to knit the next section to half of the previous section's length. 

I'm into the second of four balls of yarn that have about 44o yards in each ball. And I'm more than 1/4 of the way through, so I think I'll have enough yarn, with just a little over to make it comfortable instead of close. I'm not so sure about having enough beads, though. I just used 1/4 of the beads that I bought, but I plan to use a pattern for the border that's more heavily beaded, so I may (or may not) need more beads. We'll just have to see.

After two days of perfect, fabulous weather, I woke up to rain today! And the forecast says that it'll be raining for the rest of the week! I'm glad Holly and I got to go out yesterday instead of today.

 

I hope the weather where you are is better than it is here! Happy Memorial Day! And don't forget your towel!

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Addition:

I just read a tweet by Neil Gaiman, and he said something about a show on Sundance tonight called Dreams with Sharp Teeth, and mentioned Harlan Ellison. Read more about it here.

A Little Progress

I've been swatching for the shawl I'm knitting for the Harry Potter House Cup KAL on Ravelry. Well, I've been finishing up some Mrs. Figg String Bags and swatching.

I have the pattern settled for the beginning of the shawl, but I still don't have a good pattern that I like for the border around the bottom, and haven't even started to try anything about the edging that I'd like to put on. I could, conceivably, just do a picot bind off, but I'd really like a nice edging.

But I finally got impatient with not starting. We're more than half way through the month, and I have to be at least a quarter of the way through the project by the end of the month. I'm doing an OWL for Charms. OWLs are a three month project. So, I do have time, but still have to be about about 18 inches along, measured on the front edge by the end of the month.

Since I do have a pattern designed for the beginning, I thought I ought to get started on it. Here's what I've got as of this morning:

I'm using Knit Picks Options needles with the nickel finish, but I'm thinking I might like to use Harmony tips for this because they'd be just a little less slippery, so I ordered a pair of tips in size 6 today. Getting another set of tips in the right size will let me experiment with stitch patterns for the border without having to keep switching the tips from the shawl to the swatch, too.

I already did a project for the regular charms class, and I have another small project planned. They asked for projects that could be worn in the muggle community without making the wearer look odd to muggles, but that would identify that person to the magical community as a witch. I'm planning to make a lucet cord which can be tied into a bow around almost anything that the person is wearing/carrying in blue with silver knitted stars on the ends. It seems obvious to me that tying such an article to my handbag (which is blue) would identify me as a member of Ravenclaw. Not to mention what a great Christmas ornament it would be!

I'm planning to make another project for muggle studies. We were asked to make an item from muggle TV or movies to help us look more like muggles and blend in. While placing my order at Knit Picks, I ordered three skeins of Merino Style yarn in fog to make a hat like Hermione will be wearing in the  new Half Blood Prince movie which will be out this July. 

This is the only photo I've been able to find of it so far. There are instructions for copies of the hat that I've seen, but I didn't think that any of them looked enough like the photo to suit me, so I'll be designing my own for this one, too.

Sorry to put all the science fiction and stuff in yesterday's post and all the knitting in this one, but that's the way it worked out.

Have a great evening! Oh, and there's a new The Mentalist on tonight along with a new Reaper!

String Bag

I started a string bag to take with me to the MSWF, but, since I started it so late, it became a project to knit at the festival. While I was there, I saw another bag that I liked better, and today I finally got around to frogging the bag that I started. The more I looked at the new bag, the less I liked the way the first one was turning out.

The bag I saw at the fest, was the Earth Day Bag from Ravelry. I think that link will only work if you are on Ravelry. The construction of the bag is ingenious. I love it! I don't really like the way she wrote the instructions because of ambiguity, and she chose a stitch pattern that's (in my opinion), needlessly complicated and that I don't find attractive.

After some searching, I found out two things. 

First, Ravelry doesn't have an on-line stitch dictionary. This surprised me because they've had every other kind of information that I've ever looked for there. But after a bit of thinking, I realized that it could take years and years to get all of the stitches up there.

Second, after a search through my own stitch dictionaries, I found two stitches that I think would be more attractive, and are simple enough that you can memorize the pattern after a couple of repeats. I'm finishing up my test run with one of them right now, and so far, I like it much better than the stitch pattern provided.

The stitch pattern in the Earth Day pattern is 8 rows and not intuitive. I had to keep a strict count and read the instructions for each row all the way through (except for wrong side rows, which are "purl across." This stitch pattern also biases. The framework of the border and handles helps cancel that out, but why even start out with a problem? 

I knitted a sample of the pattern I was thinking of using, and after the first few rows, it was not only memorized, but obvious what row I was on, so all I had to do was knit it. So far, I like mine better. The only thing I still haven't been able to test is whether it will stretch out too much, mainly because the bag isn't even finished.

I finished one bag according to the provided directions and used it yesterday, and it performed well.

Photos in my next post.

More knitting news on a different topic: I finally got the OK to go ahead on my Charms OWL project for the Harry Potter House Cup KAL/CAL I got a message today that I have passed the written portion of the OWL.

OWLs run for three months, and are big projects. The Charms OWL this semester includes shawls, so I'm going to do the beaded three panel shawl I've been designing. There have been photos of this on Ravelry, and there will be more as it progresses. So far, I'm still in the swatching stage.

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I want to apologize to Holly. I got it all wrong. She didn't have a muscle problem, but torn ligaments. That sounds very painful to me. I got a text message from her saying that she's feeling better than she was except for the haze from the massive amounts of ibuprofen prescribed for her.

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The SciFi Channel will be showing a Eureka marathon during the day on Sunday. That's Mother's Day, and I don't know how that relates, but I really like Eureka, so I'm not complaining.

Tonight, we will have a new Ghost Whisperer, and the season finale of Dollhouse! And it will be more fun for me because I know that my sister will be watching them, too.

Don't forget that BBC in America is rerunning Torchwood. There will be two episodes of it on Saturday, along with more Doctor Who.

Have a great Friday night! TGIF!

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Addition:

You have to read the Panopticon today!

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Another Addition:

For fans of Dollhouse, check out this post on io9.