Is there anything more therapeutic for stress than buying new yarn? I got the new Elann newsletter and while I was looking through the newest stuff I realized I haven't knit a blanket for our newest bundle of joy! The Endless Summer Collection Sonata yarn looked perfect for a blanket. I prefer cotton yarns for baby blankets. They're great year round and easy to wash. I bought the Polar Icecap print and Cream, Angel Blue, and Glacier Blue solids to coordinate. I'm surprised Elann suggested Cream instead of White, though, because it's definitely white that's in the print. I don't mind, though. I prefer cream with the blues and it should blend just fine.
I've started on the blanket and the yarn really is perfect. I'm doing a checkerboard garter stitch blanket with the solids and will use the print for the border. It's knitting up beautifully. Mercerized cotton always looks so great in garter stitch.
But I'm such a lazy knitter. I'm always amused by what great lengths I will go to to avoid sewing at the end. The pattern I'm knitting is meant to be done in five strips that you knit together. I figured, why not just use 5 skeins at once and do the horizontal squares while working vertically? No sewing!
I cast on with just cream before I started attaching the other solids for squares. Well, obviously, the first problem is that when you switch yarn at every square you wind up with five squares that aren't joined together, except the fact that they're all attached to the cast-on row. But I've gotten around this! On wrong side rows I'm knitting the last stitch of one square together with the first stitch of the following square and then increasing one into the next stitch. This looks surprisingly neat on the right side. When i'm working on the right side I just criss-cross the yarns when I switch between squares. The criss-crossing could be done on each row and that would also join the squares, but doing the increase/decrease every other row makes for a much stronger join.
It's not just laziness that prompts me to avoid sewing. Seams unravel so much more easily than knit stitches. The more seams in a baby blanket, the higher the risk of it coming undone. And if there's anything more boring and unsatisfying than sewing seams, it's FIXING them! Besides, I don't especially want to try for the perfect seams that will give me a lovely checkerboard. It's too easy to wind up with gauges that vary slightly from strip to strip. Doing it all together ensures that my checkerboard will be perfect.
Mostly I'm surprised at how good it looks. I think it actually looks better than seams, particularly from the wrong side. But don't worry, Mom, I still want to learn your method for sewing sweater seams! I always prefer to learn "correct" methods before I start finagling.
I also bought some splurge yarn. You know, that yarn you buy just because it's so very luscious even though you really can't justify it. I bought the Classic Elite Zelda Space-Dyed and it's every bit as luscious as it looks online. I bought it in Winter Sky and I LOVE it. What I didn't notice in the little swatch picture is that those aren't whites, they're varying shades of winter grey. Also, what I thought was dark grey in the picture is actually a piney-dark-foresty sort of green which is just awesome. The lavender is much bluer than the picture looks, too (which I was hoping for). The colors are just so raw. Sometimes I prefer that to the bleachiness of perfect white or the technicolor vibrance of most dyed colors. Actually, I usually prefer that, although my head is easily turned by a seductive jewel tone or particularly cheeky print.
I also bought this pattern to use with the Zelda. I already have this pattern, which I bought a long time ago to use on a bunch of teal lace yarn my mom gave me. The Zelda shawl is ostensively to prepare me for the Fiber Trends shawl. Yes, I realize that the challenge is in the lace, not the shawl, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
Don't judge me! You know you've come up with some pretty sad justifications for yarn and pattern purchases! Remove the 40" addi turbo from your eye before pointing out the regia sock needle in mine!
hee.
But at least I'm being good and I WILL finish Ben's blanket before starting in on the oh-so-yummy Zelda. I just hope Ben doesn't surprise us by turning into a Charlotte between now and delivery day...
Alas, my knitting still suffers as home improvement jobs beckon.
I've been learning a lot, which IS one of our goals with this house. Mostly a lot about paint. Mostly what not to do with paint.
First I decided I wanted to use the technique of sponge painting in the living room. All the examples I saw had a light/medium base coat with a medium/dark coat over it. I, of course, decide that I would use two dark colors. Sure, there were no examples of that, but there was nothing saying I couldn't do it.
I'm using Behr paints from Home Depot. I decided to do the base color in Warm Brownie and sponge over it with Burnt Tile. You can check out the colors here, but their representation on my monitor is awful. The colors are basically very warm brown and brownish-burgundy. I want a mottled brownish-dark red look on the walls with dark red as the predominant color, toned down by the warm brown. I prefer the depth of sponging to the flat look of a single color.
So we painted all the walls Warm Brownie. Following instructions, I mixed one part Burnt Tile with four parts Faux Glaze and began sponging. Badness ensued. The Burnt Tile took on a distinctly pink look - dark mauve at best. I stopped after doing a section of wall to see how it would look dry. Once dry, you couldn't even tell I had sponged on anything...unless you looked really closely and then you could see faint hints of Dark Mauve.
So. Dark color mixed with glaze over dark color does not work. Hmm. Tonight I experimented with 3 different sections of wall. I'm still using the Burnt Tile color. One section is straight paint sponged on, one section is straight paint sponged off, and one section is the previously mixed paint/glaze sponged off.
I'm still waiting for the sections to dry thoroughly, but so far the sponged on paint in section one is barely visible...more visible than my last attempt at sponging on, but still not the effect I want. Sections two and three are significantly better. You can at least see the second layer of paint. It's still more translucent than I'd like in section three, but the addition of glaze definitely makes the sponging off much more even.
Tomorrow I'm going to try a 55/45 mixture of paint and glaze and see how that looks. I'm hoping it'll be enough paint to be dark enough but enough glaze to make the effect more even.
I've got some really cool things planned for our room upstairs. Rather than a door, I've decided on a heavy velvet portiere (fancy word for curtain) in deep green. We're going to paint the knee wall in Forest Rain (a deep forest green, also Behr). We'll be colorwashing the sloping eaves that form the ceiling with a base of Debonair Blue and combined glaze colors of Beautiful Fountain and Parisian Sky. We'll be doing the washing with a Woolie to give it a subtle cloudy sky appearance. Eventually we want to find a vine-textured carpet in a suitable green. We saw something that might work at Home Depot. We'll also be doing baseboards and trim at the top of the kneewall that have a vine pattern. We're going to stain them a dark walnut (think tree branches). We're hoping for an overall woodsy effect without something as obvious as painting trees and clouds in the room ;)
It should be neat....especially once we've put in the skylights. Hopefully I can get some good pictures, too :)
You are Melanie Hamilton. A true lady. You are
generous, loyal, giving and can see only the
best in people. You are willing to go out of
your way to help anyone, even if it's against
public opinion. You can be surprising firm if
the occasion calls for it.
Which Character from 'Gone With The Wind' are you?
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