| Tuesday, July 01, 2008 |
| and then there were four... |
Yes folks, another dishcloth has sprung forth from my needles. I feel like all I've done all week is knit ballband dishcloths- you'd almost never have known that I had my mom's retirement dinner on Wednesday, went to the West Island knitting meetup on Thursday, went for dinner with Yannick, Jakob, Maaike and her daughter on Friday...well, you *would* have known about that stuff if I'd posted better over the week. Sorry!
Friday after dinner Maaike and her daughter came over, and once the kids were in bed we popped in Meet the Spartans on DVD and knit and laughed. (Nothing is better than Kevin Sorbo's "whee" after a particularily amusing skipping dance to I Will Survive!) I cast on for this dishcloth and got through about half before going up to bed. Saturday I had off, so I managed to finish the cloth during Jakob's afternoon nap, while we watched Walk Hard. (It was cute, but Meet the Spartans was laugh-out-loud funnier).
 Same pattern, same yarns, different color. All the details are already up on Ravelry, but I'll post them here once the full gift basket is complete.
 Depending on how much time I have by Saturday, this 4 will be matched with 4 others. If I really run out of time, I'll split these 4 up into the two parts of the gift that I wanted to have dishcloths.
 We'd rented 2 more movies when returning the first 2, so Saturday night I got more knitting done during Beowulf. It was much more entertaining than I'd remembered from reading it in university...although I'd read the early English, 11th century (or whatever) version, not a funky modern version with a smoking-hot Grendel's mother and some major storyline changes. It was an odd feeling to keep thinking I was watching an extended cut-scene in a videogame, but it was a good movie, all and all.
I took the time to fix and finish Velvet Oblivion. First I made a small cut and unpicked the joining round of the black Boa border. Once it was detatched I made sure that the mask itself wasn't cupping- it wasn't. It was huge, but relatively flat. Good. Next I picked up over double the amount of stitches I'd picked up the first time. Instead of following the pattern, I picked up stitches as frequently as I could around. I knit 1 extra row with the Boa to add a little extra depth of the border since my mask was so much bigger than the finished size of the actual pattern. Once that was done I bound off with my fingers crossed. It worked- there was no more cupping.
 I haven't unpacked my black elastic I'd bought for this project years ago, and wanted to finish the pattern without waiting until the next day to run out to the store. I was afraid to attach a single tie and have the mask gape at the outside of the eyes or down on the cheeks, so I came up with (what I think is) a good idea. I took a really looooong length of yarn and folded it in half. I tied a knot about 7" down from the fold, leaving a skinny loop. I left that loop to be the tie, and sewed each of the other ends in a V shape to one side of the mask. I repeated it on the other side, and when I was done I had a mask that held nicely over the temple and near the cheek, with ties that joined together near the back of the head, with the loop after the knot being the length to tie the bow with. (Clear as mud?) The reason I'd tied the yarn in half before attaching it to the mask, as opposed to just tying lengths to each side, is so there would be no cut end of the yarn exposed that could fray over time. The yarn itself could wear out, but I think it would take longer than a cut end.
Labels: Ballband Dishcloth, FO, Velvet Oblivion |
posted by Jennifer Lori @ 10:17 am   |
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| 2 Comments: |
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Clear as mud, that about sums it up (while reading, I was like "huh?"). I loved Beowulf, I watched it on the plane on the way back from Japan. It felt weird to be commenting about Beowulf's butt (since, you know, he's not real!). But you know me and my fictional characters!
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Despite the tricky ties, the mask did turn out to be pretty cute. I hope the recipient likes it!
Hmm, I may have to check out Beowulf now. I had heard it wasn't very good, but critics in SoCal tend to be extremely harsh.
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Clear as mud, that about sums it up (while reading, I was like "huh?"). I loved Beowulf, I watched it on the plane on the way back from Japan. It felt weird to be commenting about Beowulf's butt (since, you know, he's not real!). But you know me and my fictional characters!