This Reverb Shawl was a test knit for Melisa McCurley. I knit it up in some really gorgeous Fiber Optic Foot Notes sock yarn that is an intense purple. Unfortunately, my camera doesn’t show purples, so it comes out as an intense blue in the picture.
It’s a modern looking pattern in an asymmetrical shawl.
In 1992 I went to see Phantom of the Opera in London and was – er, haunted – by the Phantom’s voice, a deep grumbly growl and so far away from the somewhat nasally whine of the much-vaunted Michael Crawford performance. I’ve been trying to figure out since then who played him. Lost my program.
I think it was Peter Karrie. So now I won’t forget.
Yet another shawl. In case you’re wondering why I’m making so many shawls, I have two answers for you. First is that here in Texas, we don’t get very many genuinely cold days, so shawls are perfect to wrap around your neck when it’s cool out. Second is that I’m participating in a 10 Shawls in 2010 challenge on the knitting site Ravelry — and this one is number eight!
This is my Spring Is In the Air, made from Wollmeise Twin in Petit Poison Nr. 5. I ran out of yarn twice on this shawl, which was a minor tragedy because this is German unicorn hair wool and very hard to come by. Happily, I found a kind Raveler who sent me a few extra grams of the same colorway she had – only to run out of yarn again 10 stitches away from binding off the entire shawl. I made use of my cast on tail and managed to bull through it all, only to realize that for whatever reason, the bind off was too tight and I couldn’t block out any points. I suppose I could have called this my Comedy of Errors shawl, but I did persevere and make a halfway decent garment.
Here’s my Abrazo. I picked out the yarn – Knit Picks Gloss, combo merino and silk, very nice – and brought the leftover beads from my Shipwreck Shawl with me to New England and thought it would be a relaxing bit of vacation knitting. Ha. Instead I ended up doing the 367 stitch cast-on three separate times before it stuck, since this shawl is knit from the bottom up, and I couldn’t talk to anyone when I had a piece of floss strung full of beads dangling from my mouth. However, once the lace was finished, the stockinette portion zoomed by, and the short row construction was very cool.
Here’s a detail shot from my Gail Shawl. I made this for myself to wear as a Matron of Honor shawl for my very longest-time friend’s wedding in New Hampshire this August. The yarn was Handmaiden Sea Silk, which is made from silk and sea weed, and perfect for a wedding at sea (although trying to buy two skeins that 1) matched and 2) looked like the color on the manufacturer’s website was, in the end, impossible).
This shawl is enormous. I can use it to hang glide.
This is possibly the silliest thing ever. I wrote this for a Ravelry contest in the Selfish Knitter’s group. An ode to all those tired of ripping, tinking, and frogging. Sing it with me (to “When You Wish Upon a Star”).
When you rip upon a scarf
Makes no difference where you are
Every stitch of that attire
Will come unglued
If you come upon a seam
No hard tug is too extreme
When you rip upon a scarf
As froggers do
Fate is kind
She brings to those who tink
Ample reasons to think
They’ll be reskeining
If it’s laceweight or it’s bulk
There’s no reason you should sulk
When you rip upon a scarf
Your seams stay true.
After three years of the original iPhone, we upgraded to the iPhone 4. My take? It’s lovely – quick, responsive, solid-feeling, and a pleasure to work with.
Do I have the signal strength issue? Yes, I do. And it’s more than cosmetic; a 3G speed test is 10 kbps down/1 kbps up/27414 ms ping when I lay a finger across the little black stripe on the lower left corner. When I remove my finger, it’s 1409/1265/293.
For now, I don’t notice the issue because I have a case on it. I had been considering moving to screen protectors though. I think that’s off the table for the moment.
Is it worth it? Well, with the new phones, we switched from T-Mobile to AT&T. And there’s been a noticeable difference there so far: less dead spots, like the one that was in my office; the ability to use data on Mopac; heck, the existence of 3G. And it’s just so darned much faster than our 2G iPhones. Plus, I took video the other day that just blew away the video quality from my Canon camera. So yes, worth it.
Last summer I was totally and horribly addicted to Harper’s Island (warning, spoilery Wiki article), this terrible schlocky murder mystery show where a character got bumped off every week. I mean, really addicted. To the point where I was a total spoiler hound and went to try to find bits of the Canadian broadcast which aired a couple of days before the US one did and then when the finale aired, we were down in South Texas and actually went to a REST STOP that has WiFi to see if we could get the damned episodes (we couldn’t).
So there was this one very very emotional scene when one (well, two) of the characters died to the song Letters from the Sky by Civil Twilight. (Here’s the scene, if you want to see it – spoilers, duh.) And I was so caught up in the moment that I went and bought the song and rated it high in my mp3 library and played it over and over for a couple of weeks.
And promptly went and forgot about the whole thing.
So in the last several days, Letters from the Sky has been getting a ton of airplay on the local alt radio station, and I would get all tingly and adrenalined and couldn’t figure out what was up. Finally tonight, I heard it again and started shouting, “That song — television show? People running? Something big happened? What WAS IT!!” and went and looked it up on my phone and realized what it was.
Isn’t it funny how wrapped up in Harper’s Island I was last summer, and this year I couldn’t even remember the character’s names or who died when? How fickle I am.
