I thought this look into Kerouac‘s “other” writing fascinating.
Dude. I think I’m going with insane.
The oldest man to summit Everest is from Spokane. And he did it Tuesday.
Has the missing link been found?
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I pre-ordered Wendy Johnson’s book, Socks from the Toe Up way back in July and was so happy when in arrived in my mailbox last month! What a beautiful book. Seriously. Love. it. I had been completely burned out by sock knitting until very recently. I have a tendency to wear holds in my socks very quickly and for this to happen with hand knit socks is depressing. However, I decided to do something about this. I found a great video on how to darn socks (I’ll post it at the end)! And guess what? It’s hella easy and quite quick. so, yay!
So. Back to the book and my current F.O. I decided, after reading the first part of the book that described various techniques, that I wanted to try my hand at the Magic Loop method of knitting in the round. So I ordered a very long size 0 needle from Knitpicks (and a ball of sock yarn) and was ready to go as soon as the package arrived. You know what? It was easier than I thought it would be. I’ve been knitting on two circs for quite awhile so I picked it up pretty quickly. I’m not sure I love it as much as two-circ knitting but I’ll keep going with it to get the hang of it. I like the idea of only buying one needle instead of two.
These particular socks are the basic short row heel and toe sock from the book. It’s pretty basic and straightforward. I didn’t like doing a provisional cast-on. I am generally not a fan of provisional cast on and avoid it like the plague. One thing I did do was picot trim at the top of the sock. I didn’t bind off in the traditional way. I sewed the edging down instead. It fits my leg much better since I tend to bind off way too tightly.Fun sock project! I am going to go through the basic patterns first before I jump into the more complicated ones. I want to use up my variegated yarns in my stash.
Here is the Ravelry page if you are interested.
And here is that tutorial on how to darn socks:
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My tree is finally starting to blossom. yay! Happy Friday!
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Image via Wikipedia This is a really sad local story. It especially hits home for me since the man who hit me was also an elderly person. And while I have forgiven the person who hit me (I know he didn’t mean to do it and I’m sure he feels awful) I do feel that he should not be driving. He is lucky that I wasn’t hurt worse than I was. I walked away with a few scratches but I easily could have been killed, especially if I was a little kid. The sad thing is that the man is a patron at the library I work at. He comes into the library and I kind of go hide because I can’t face him. I noticed last winter, when the roads were really icy, that he was here alone. I deduced that he drove here. By himself. On the icy roads. That frightens me. My thought is that they should have taken his license away. Frankly, I don’t care how old you are, if you fucking hit someone while they are crossing the street should shouldn’t be allowed to drive. If you can’t fucking handle your vehicle then you shouldn’t drive.
O.k. this is not cool at all.
I thought this blog post was fascinating! I am one of those who does judge a book by the cover. I am attracted to book covers. What can I say? (Pretty! Shiny!) I loved Story of a Girl and I loved the story behind the cover. Melissa Walker posted stories of other YA book covers this past week, so go check it out :)!
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I went on a sewing bender this weekend. I stumbled upon all of these great sewing blogs this past week and couldn’t wait for the weekend to get started on some projects! The first project was a bathmat. I found the pattern at the Sew Liberated blog. I thought it was so cute and decided that I had to have one for myself! So I dug through my small fabric stash and found a pack of charms that my MIL gave me a couple of years ago. These turned out to be perfect for this. I cut each charm into fours and they were the perfect size: 2.5 squared. After sewing them together I found an old terrycloth town and used that as the backing. I really wanted to do the cute footprint thing but decided that was too much for my newbie sewing skillz. So I just sewed across three times, evenly spaced to “quilt” the mat. I love how it turned out! And it didn’t completely make me crazy, as certain sew projects do.
The next thing I worked on was this little project bag. You can find the pattern here and, I believe, it is published for free by All People Quilt. It’s the perfect little bag for a small knitting project, like socks. You can see the inside of the bag here as well as my current sock project inside of its new home. This was a little bit more frustrating for me. It went along fine until I got to the very end. I couldn’t finish the handles with the sewing machine so I handstitched the raw ends closed. It doesn’t look great but oh well. It will serve it’s purpose. It’s a great little pattern. There are pockets on the inside to stash stuff you might need like little scissors or measuring tape. You could probably get away with not using quilting batting. If I make this again I will use fusable interfacing to give it structure. I’m not sure I like how “puffy” it is.So anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing this weekend. I hope you all had a good one, as well!
