alisonknits

Life is just a chair full of bowlies

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. But you know what? My life is great, so lately I feel more like living life than blogging about it.

Here are the top 5 things I did since I posted last, in no particular order:

1. Celebrated my birthday on the 19th by having dinner with my husband and two other couples. It's rare that I have couple friends where I like both halves of the couple equally, and that's how it is with the four friends I celebrated my birthday with. It was just lovely.

2. The birthday festivities continued when Scott took me out to dinner on Tuesday, then to the Metropolitan Opera! We saw Carmen. It was good.

3. I took a calligraphy class at The Learning Annex. I've played around with calligraphy for years, but it was good getting some actual instruction. I've been diligently practicing all week, in preparation for the second (and last) session.

I plan to take more calligraphy classes, probably at the Society of Scribes. Unfortunately, most of their classes seem to be on Sundays, which doesn't work for me since I work at a church. But that brings me to...

4. I still really love my new job. I think it's the best job I've ever had. And I'm good at it! (Most of my job entails being friendly and making newcomers feel welcome, and I'm a pretty friendly person, so it's a good fit.)

5. This weekend I finished the Interlocking Rings top from the Interweave crochet issue. I like it a lot, and here I am modeling the sweater:

Gotta crash now... it's been a busy day (week, month)...

Ring-a-ding-ding

Some time ago, I was inspired to start Berta's Interlocking Rings top from the Interweave crochet issue, after she dictated the pattern to me and had me send it to the magazine while I was working for her. The top is very cute, but the knitted part was very boring - rounds and rounds of stockinette. So I got about 3/4 done with it then moved onto other projects. On a whim, I picked it up again yesterday and finished the knitted parts and began the rings - see:

The chain of rings goes all the way around the yoke, then there is a picot edge crocheted around the top of the yoke, and on the edges of the sleeves and the bottom edge.

The rings are fun and not difficult to work, but it's easy to forget to join them to the previous one (which you do when you've made the base chain of each ring, by inserting it into the previous ring before joining it in a round). And I even joined one to the wrong ring, and finished the whole ring before noticing!

Ah well...

Party Girl

I hung with a lot of cool knitters this weekend! First on Friday night I met up with a few friends for knitting, chatting, and pasta. And yesterday I had a blast at the Mason Dixon Knitting Afghanalong sew-up party. It was great meeting Kay and Ann in person, and meeting several other knitters for the first time, and seeing Lis of Curls and Purls, who I had met before when she took a class with me at School Products. It was a lovely group.

It was inspiring to see so many beautiful squares! - and I understand that what Kay brought to the party was but the tip of the iceberg. And then putting them all together, they made really stunning blankets. I'm sure they'll be posting them over at their blog, if they haven't done so already.

I spent most of my time there working on one that was mostly purples and blues. It was interesting how invested I got in this blanket, as I first worked on a strip, then took someone else's strip and sewed it to mine, then sewed that section to another section. I felt like I really accomplished something - which is good since I felt very guilty the whole time that I didn't knit a single square for this project. I'm glad I could make a contribution to the sewing.

In knitting news, I'm almost finished with my poncho. I'm still astounded as I walk around New York how ponchos are EVERYWHERE. A friend was telling me about going to Macy's to buy one as a gift for someone, and they had them on three floors! I was in Old Navy last week and saw a heinous cable poncho that was obviously going for that hand-knit look but to me just looked poorly constructed and tacky. I have several ideas for ponchos, but I think this will probably be last last one I do, because, let's face it, this trend is due to go out of style any minute now. Of course, I've always loved ponchos, ever since I was a little girl. I had a blue crocheted poncho that probably came from a flea market somewhere, and I wanted to wear it every single day. I'm still like that with my favorite clothes. I just live in them. I guess it's kind of gross, but too bad.

All I have left to do on my lacy poncho is crochet a border, which I started last night. I think it will be just right for late September and early October. Unfortunately, I won't be posting a photo of the finished object, because this was one of the designs that I submitted to the Vogue Knitting On the Go ponchos/capes book. I think it would probably be okay to post a picture of a small bit of it, though, so you can expect that in the next few days.

Happy Monday, all! Hope your week is shaping up to be a good one.

I always procrastinate, when I get around to it...

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. My new job is getting into full swing (and I love it!), and I've been trying to put together a submission to Interweave Knits.

Originally I wanted to submit at least five projects, but I got a very late start. In fact, I didn't start making swatches until this past weekend. So I only ended up making three swatches, and I'm still working on the sketches. I should be able to get them done and write my cover letter and send the thing off priority mail before the end of the day. And while I wanted to send them more than three projects, I figure it's three times as many as I submitted last time I sent something in - two years ago.

Must get to work now, but I'll leave you with a progress pic of the swan sweater:

Have a great day!