Kung Fu Knitting

Finally! It was a very frustrating knit and I am glad that it is done. I followed the pattern pretty religiously which is odd for me. I think I just wanted to prove that I could follow one. The only alterations that I made were in the heel. I used a strap heel and it knitted the cable and rib pattern down the back of the heel. One thing that I really liked about doing this is that when I picked up and knit the flap stitches it blended in really well with the purl background. The cables look like they pop up out of nowhere. I knit the toe as directed and I like/don't like it. At first I thought the triangle of p2togs on the toe looked strange and then I really started liking it. I might try it with k2togs and SSK sometime. The thing I dislike about it is that I can feel bumps inside the end of the toe. I think it might be from the P3togs at the very end. I have no "princess and the pea" issues with knots, purl bumps, and the like in my socks. So I think this might really ...

I'm half way there with flourish. On a side note, if you want to make just a spiral scarf with kidsilk haze, one ball will do it with a size P hook. Just chain 121 stitches and follow the spiral scarf directions. I never thought I would say this, but I just got some 100 percent cashmere yarn from ColourMartUK on Ebay. The price was great and they offered free shipping from the UK, too if you mentioned their add on KR. Can you believe that it came in less than a week? Not only that, but it was packaged up really nicely with a card giving the yardage and "color" as you can see. I bought this yarn to make a scarf for my dad for xmas. The name of the color-blend is nutmeg and it's brown black and grey. It's just right because he has a black wool coat and a camel colored one and I wanted it to match both. I think I am going to make the scarf in Farrow Rib (K2, P1 across with multiples of 3). I think it will look conservative and classy which is just his style (sans t...

Erica , who has a really cool blog tagged me yesterday! Now I get to play a little game. Here are the rules: 1. Go into your archive. 2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to). 3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to). 4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. 5. Tag five people to do the same. Okay, so this is what I've come up with: Last night at kung fu class my forearms got really beat up. Now I have to find some victims.......

I shall soon be on my way to finishing my reproduction of Flourish! I ordered this yarn from Janette's Rare Yarn on ebay. She's in the UK and it came in a week with free shipping. Woohoo! You can't beat that. After I had petted and oggled it a bit I left it on the kitchen table to finish some cleaning. I heard a bunch of crazy cat playing going on in the kitchen and came back to find one skein pretty well mangled and slobbered on by my energetic cat, Tina. It's the one on the left. Duh! I saw her scoping it out as I left the kitchen, too. Sunday I worked a little on Eris. I finished the first side and picked up stitches for the second side of ther collar. I didn't do the greatest job of it, but oh well, the knitting is going better. I've just resolved that this is going to be a learning project and that I need to accept the frustration bound to come my way. It's not going to be perfect. Blah, blah, blah In the meantime I had been consoling myself with a bit...

I haven't been writing about that lately. One reason is that my shoulder is injured so my training is all messed up. K, my teacher, decided that I shouldn't use it for a month because it was getting worse not better even though I was being careful. So when I am in class now I tie my right arm to my side with my super-long, white sash. It was really hard to deal with at first, but now I am doing everything with one arm: forms, drills, and sparring. I've also been learning my broad sword form with my left hand. I am imagining that someday I will have an Inigo Montoya moment where I do it with my left with a lot of pizzaz and just when folks think I am done I toss the sword into the air, catch it with my right and go to town with it. There is something I must tell you....... I've been working a lot on strengthening my legs, too, since I can't work the upper body very well without using my shoulder. K made up a stance sequence for me to do. I have been holding each one ...

This place hasn't been updated for a while because it seems like my knitting projects have been blowing up in my face and I couldn't work on them because I was getting depressed. I had to leave Eris alone for a week because I was pretty upset by my knot-work efforts. It just looked so sloppy. And I had been working very slowly and diligently on it. However, I took the half collar out the other day and it's not as bad as I remember. I love Andean Silk, but it's hard to work cable magic with. My rib and cable socks have been a disaster. The heel was horrible so I ripped it out and used another one. Unbeknownst to me I had somehow dropped a stitch when I frogged (though I had the right number of stitches to reknit the heel) and when I tried the sock on after knitting most of the foot, I was left with a run. I caught it in time and it's quite fixable. I decided to try the toe from the pattern because it looked nice in the IK picture. Well the varigated yarn covers the ...

Right now it's all stuff from this year. I still need to add in some. See it here . Or check out the side bar. Cheers!