sweetgeorgia

Yarnovers

Two of the yarnover swatches are done… “yo k2tog” and “yo ssk”…

Plans for the weekend…

Ah, it’s dark when I get up and it’s dark when I get home from work. I love this time of the year because everybody has their Christmas lights up, but it’s not exactly lighting that’s conducive to photography. That’s why weekends are so vital. Weekends are full of daylight!

Saturday morning, I’ll be seaming up my Ribby Cardi (!) and hope to have photos posted by Monday. I couldn’t find a two-way zipper that was the correct length for the cardi (all the two-way zippers at Dress-Sew were over 24″ long). So instead, I bought a plainer separable zipper that is about 2″ shorter than the front length… This way when I wear it zipped up, the zipper doesn’t zip all the way to the bottom of the front pieces… It’s like always leaving the bottom button unbuttoned — it’s a good thing.

Saturday afternoon, we’ll be at Aberdeen Centre in Richmond for a dance demonstration… But ah, being in Richmond just means that I have an excuse to go to the yarn store at Yaohan! They have packs and packs of Filatura di Crosa Zara, so I might pick up a bag of this… A truly failed yarn dieter here.

Sunday afternoon, one of my girlfriends is hosting our first SnB and I’ll be teaching another girlfriend to knit! She was slightly distraught when I saw her yesterday, saying “OMG! Everybody knows how to knit except me!?!”. Well, we’ll lick that problem.

And finally Sunday evening, we’ll be doing our first kung fu demo… with our parents in the audience. Why does this make me feel like I’m still eleven years old? Anyhow, just pray for me that I don’t fall off the stage in front of 500 or so dinner guests. That wouldn’t be good.

Winter Knitty

The new winter edition of Knitty is up and leave it to Stephanie Japel to design the best looking, most interesting sweater…

It’s a finished Willow!

Oh, the button drama with this sweater… There is a tiny (but packed) button store opposite my office building, full of antique buttons (some from the 1920’s and 30’s!), nice new buttons (like vegetable ivory and horn) and crazy buttons (like buttons in the shape of elephants). It was so difficult to find a button that would appropriately match the colours in the Rowan Ribbon Twist (beige, grey, blue, green, ah!) but I ended up buying some grey Mother of Pearl buttons…

Willow project notes and such:

• Rowan Ribbon Twist makes a wonderfully warm fabric when it’s knit up. I wore this all day yesterday, without a jacket, in 10 degree weather and was just fine. It’s actually too bulky to put something over anyway, so it’d better be warm on its own.
• Enough with big yarns and big needles, I’m switching to 2-ply and 2 mm needles. Ok, that’s probably extreme, but US 17 needles are clunky to work with.
• Even though the buttonholes are only 1 stitch wide (yarnover, k2tog) they are HUGE. So my top button keeps unbuttoning itself. I don’t want to get huge buttons, so I think I may just sew up the buttonhole a little more. The buttons I bought are already more than 1″ in diameter…
• The collar is very very wide. It might have been better to make my collar about 1″ shorter than in the instructions. I suppose the model must be very tall or have a very long neck to offset the collar.
• There are a lot of other yarns that are extremely similar in style and weight to Ribbon Twist… probably a lot less expensive too. For some reason, I always thought that Rowan produced yarns that were completely unique and so I was very adamant about not substituting yarns — but now, take no prisoners, substitute away!

Painted House

As much as I wanted to finish those darn ribby sleeves, I wanted a freshly painted living room more. The DH and I prepped the room on Friday night, spackling and taping — it made all the difference. The next morning, we got up at 6:30 am to be at Home Depot by 7 am, picked up the paint and started painting by 8 am. We painted the living room a nice light but muted apple-green colour — it’s called “Crisp Celery” at the store.

My parents rented this house when my dad was a grad student at UBC in the 1970’s. They subsequently bought the house and twenty-six years later sold it to us just this past summer. My mom really likes that dark moss green colour that the old tenants used to paint that odd indoor scalloped awning, so I’ve taken pictures for historical reference… in case she asks us to paint it back the way it was before!