“Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.” Italo Calvino



Back in a while.

N=4

Monday already? 4 days left to finish packing, run the errands, and head for the hills. If I buckle down today, I can probably get the bulk of it finished.

I'm still hanging on to this as my excuse for being a less than motivated blogger. That, plus not too much knitting going on.

This is my latest - ages and ages ago, I started the Lizard Ridge Afghan from Knitty. Still think it's a cool pattern. Still love the color effect. Think it's a beautiful thing. Will never, ever, ever attempt to knit it again.





I completed about 6 squares of the blanket before giving up. Then I used the rest of the yarn into a garter stitch blanket. I kept 4 of the squares from the original project, and blatantly copied an idea I saw on Ravelry. I seamed the 4 squares together, then started seaming them together at the corners. My seams are wonky, but it's a pillow, and doesn't show that much. (I used mattress stitch, more or less.) When I was almost done, I folded some batting into a shape close to the pillow, stuffed it inside, and them jammed polyfill into the pillow until it was roughly pillow shaped. I finished seaming, then attached 2 buttons to the front and back of the pillow to give it a more interesting shape and to hide the join at the center front. It worked pretty well, although evidently I kept my first square attempt at LR, which has some interesting interpretations of short rows. It's not really obvious though, and the colors hide a lot of sins.

I am actually very fond of the pillow, but I don't have the patience for a project of the scale of the afghan. I strongly prefer the afghan in lots of shades of Kureyon.

Back to packing - the end is in sight. I can't tell if I'm taking hardly anything, or way too much crap. Something inbetween, probably.

I'm all about the bug photos.

Photo from a short family walk on the 3rd of July, off at a sadly underused park where there are endangered red wolves. I don't have any good shots of the wolves. They're really shy and solitary, and the fenced-in area had a screen as well as glass, which makes photographs challenging. There were an amazing number of butterflies and dragonflies out.

Today we went for a family stroll in the county park. If I had been there, I would have photographed the banana spiders. I love these guys - huge spiders, with amazing webs. (I took a photo of one that lived outside my living room window when I first moved in.)


But I think most of you are more interested in fiber than in my shots of bugs, so here's some screaming orange roving from Julie. (Although I could take a snap of the palmetto bug crawling near the ceiling. Yuk.)

I'm pretty excited about this fiber, but I want to get some more practice spindling before I mess with this. I think I also want a lighter spindle for sock yarn. I've been eyeing this. (No, Julie, a wheel is not in my immediate future.)

It was great not going to work today. The packing thing was decidedly less fun, but I assume I'll get there eventually. Up soon are some photos of finished things. I'm still knitting, but the move is definitely cramping my style a little bit.

Ehhhhh....

Ok, I just sewed in the ends of Ishbel. It's pretty. It feels nice. It looks really stupid on me. Worn with the point in back, I look dumpy. Worn like a bandana, it adds a huge amount of weight to my front, where I'm already topheavy. Not a good look. Kind of slung to the side, it looks like I'm trying too hard.

I finished a pair of socks tonight. They're a full inch too short. Knit top down, after repeatedly trying them on. How did I miss that? Plus, they're more red than orange, and I really wanted orange.

I ripped out a lace scarf tonight. I just wasn't liking the project, it had stalled, and I decided it needed to go.

I was about to start another pair of socks, and I'm not sure I like the yarn.

I'm on a roll. Maybe I should just give up and go to bed.

Might as well finish the post with a photo of the black widow spider who took up residence near my back door a few weeks ago. She's gone now, as it wasn't a good place for her to be. The little spiders nearby I think are males. Click on over to see it bigger, if you like. (Or run away, if you don't like spiders!) I thought she was a beautiful spider, but it just wasn't safe to let her hang out too close to us.