Blue Thing 2

So far this is just a skein (or is it called a hank?). It will some day be the start of a Central Park Hoodie, but I’m still trying to get my bearings with Blue Thing 1 (see below). The yarn is Tahki Donegal Tweed. It’s 100 % wool and scratchy. But I like the different colors that help make it a tweed: there’s a little light blue and some lavender in it. A little cream color.  We’ll see how this goes! More as it happens.

Blue Thing 1: Baby blanket

I told you I was a slow knitter! I have started Blue Thing 1. It is a baby blanket. That’s a pretty enough blue for a boy or a girl, don’t you think? The yarn is so luxuriously soft! It’s Tahki Dakota. Very easy to work with. It’s 150 stitches wide, and I’m doing a basketweave pattern, with a garter stitch border. So far it’s going well, it’s just been hard trying to find time to work on it. We’ve been sick (bad colds) and then, upon recovery, trying to attend a couple of Cubs games. All of which left me and the Mr. thoroughly exhausted. I fell asleep at 8:30 last night! So I didn’t do much tonight either. At any rate, I just thought I’d show you the beginnings of Blue Thing 1.

You Know You’re Obsessed with Knitting when…

…you watch “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood” to see the cardigan(s) his mom knit for him. Today he had on a green zip cardigan with 1 cable along both sides of the zipper. It had ribbed cuffs rolled back, and an interesting collar for a cardigan, I thought. You can see the type of collar here: http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2003/03/me_and_mr_roger.html I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s the kind of collar that’s on the jackets my dad wears.

Ooh, I just found it. This is the sweater he was wearing this morning: http://www.answers.com/topic/fred-rogers-and-yo-yo-ma-jpg-1 It was a beautiful shade of green. This photo doesn’t quite capture it. It was a beautiful “kelly” green. His mom did nice work. I hope my sweaters will look that professional some day!

Anyway…have a nice day!

100 Books

Love to read. I saw this on another blog and thought I’d try it. Feel free to copy and paste into yours if you’d like. Put READ next to the books you have read, WANT TO next to the ones you’d like to read, AGAIN & AGAIN next to the ones you can’t get enough of, and leave blank the ones that don’t interest you. I may compile a similar list (can I get to 100?) of knitting and/or craft books. But for now:

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) WANT TO
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) WANT TO
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) AGAIN & AGAIN; HAVE TAUGHT THIS IN HIGH SCHOOL; EXCELLENT MOVIE!
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) AGAIN & AGAIN
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) WANT TO
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien) WANT TO
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien) WANT TO
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) WANT TO
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) READ; ALL HARRY POTTER MOVIES ARE GREAT TOO
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) READ
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling) READ
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling) READ
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) WANT TO
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) WANT TO
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) READ
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) AGAIN & AGAIN
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) READ; EXCELLENT MOVIE
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) INTERESTED
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) WANT TO; HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) AGAIN AND AGAIN
31. Dune (Frank Herbert) INTERESTED
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) HAVE SEEN MOVIE (sob!)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell) READ FOR SCHOOL LONG AGO
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) WANT TO
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) WANT TO
45. The Bible  READ MOST; WOULD RATHER READ IT FOR LITERATURE
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) WANT TO
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) WANT TO; LOVED THE MOVIE
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) AGAIN & AGAIN
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) WANT TO
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) WANT TO
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens) READ
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) AGAIN & AGAIN; FABULOUS MOVIE!
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) READ
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) AGAIN & AGAIN; ENJOYED MINI-SERIES
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) HEARD OF IT
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) WANT TO
69. Les Miserables (Hugo) WANT TO
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) READ IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) READ
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) GREAT MOVIE
76. Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith) HAVE IT; WANT TO READ
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White) AGAIN & AGAIN
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) WANT TO
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) WANT TO
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen) LOVE THE MOVIE; HAVE STARTED BOOK
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams) GOOD MOVIE; READ A LONG TIME AGO
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) READ
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) READ MOST; HARD TO GET THROUGH
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) READ
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck) WANT TO
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) GREAT MOVIE
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) READ
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) WANT TO

Blue Thing, Blue Thing

I’ve figured it out. I am working on a baby blanket in blue yarn for aforementioned baby due this Fall to a friend. She’s not sure if it’s a boy or girl yet, and I don’t think she wants to know, which is totally cool. I found some beautiful blue yarn that will work either way if it’s a boy or a girl. So I’m going to do a basketweave pattern and work on that. I’ll post a photo when I get enough of it to take a photo of! (I’m a slow knitter.)

The other blue thing I just ordered the yarn for. It’s the Central Park Hoodie that was in the Fall 06 issue of KnitScene. I’m going to use the recommended Tahki Donegal Tweed yarn, but instead of bright green, I chose the royal blue. I think one of my nieces will enjoy this.

Hope you all are enjoying good weather. We actually had snow here in Chicagoland this week! While snow isn’t totally unexpected here in April, it was still a surprise. The grass had been greening up really well, and plants budding out, but I don’t know how much damage was done by this snow. We got a couple of inches of very heavy, very wet snow. Fortunately most of it has melted already.

Deciding on a New Project!

The project I can’t tell you about or post (because it’s for someone who may visit here), is a green thing. That’s all I can tell you. It’s green, and made from beautiful soft Canadian wool (Shelridge Farms).

 But I have been trying to decide on a project that I can share with you, and I’m getting close. I’m trying to find out if an expecting friend’s baby’s sex is known yet — if so, I will try to make a baby blanket. Not knowing whether it’s a girl or boy makes it harder because I have some awesome pink (almost rag-wool) yarn to use if it’s a girl. And while there are those who would stoutly assert that I could make a pink baby blanket for a boy, it’s not that kinda pink, in my estimation. I think it is so beautiful for a girl, but it would probably bother the boy. Or someone related to the boy. Who needs to start out life with that much angst? So I may start a blanket that is cream colored. Or multicolored. In any case, I’m getting closer to figuring out what I want to make next.

And there is also the possibility that I may continue an orange thing that I started long ago. It’s a lightweight cardigan for summer time. Cotton yarn. Very easy pattern. I even bought buttons that cost more than the yarn to adorn it. They’re hand-blown glass buttons that I got at Stitches 2005 from a vendor there. So we’ll see. 

I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. Meanwhile, the green thing is progressing! (Doesn’t that sound like The Incredible Hulk?!?)