LACE

So I have never knit a large scale lace project until now. It took me about 2 months of on and off knitting and I'm quite happy with the end result. I blocked it on my bed before I left for work this morning (tuesdays are my looooooooong days). I'm so excited about seeing the end result when I get home from work this evening, and it will definitely be the best part of my day to see the finished lace. Now I feel like I have the confidence to knit even more complicated lace projects, maybe even charted ones! This is also the first project I've ever really blocked properly...if you consider how I blocked it proper. My bed seemed like the best place to do it, and thats what the yarn harlot suggests.

Finally some pictures

So I have Maya and the wonders that are Facebook to thank for these pictures. I still need to take my film in, but I will have loads and loads of time to do that tomorrow.




Both of these pictures indicate that we danced a lot at the wedding but will not be entering any dance competitions any time soon. Matt was dancing so hard, we had to get him a towel to wipe the sweat from his face. I think he was auditioning for the remake of flashdance.

Things are winding down...

So after the last two weekends away things are now winding down for fall.

Two weekends ago I went to RHINEBECK to go to the NY Sheep and Wool Festival. We had the most perfect weather as the sun sparkled off of the fall colors. The Hudson Valley is definitely a beautiful place and I would love to go back and visit. The festival was a lot of fun, even though I tapped out my budget in just 2 hours. I did get enough yarn to knit two sweaters! The plan is start the first one as soon as I finish my February Lady. The Ravelry party on Saturday night was a blast. There were so many people there and it was really cold, but everyone had a great time anyway. On Sunday we decided not to go back to the festival (since I spent all of my money) and to tour Hyde Park instead. Matt really enjoyed seeing this bit of history and I enjoyed seeing the views and gardens. We also drove through the Vanderbilt Mansion grounds, but decided after seeing the massiveness of the house that we would never have time to tour it. So we will have make a trip back up to the area to tour the Vanderbilt Mansion as well as Val Kill, which I would love to see.

This weekend we went to Holly and Ben's wedding. On Friday we got to see and stay with Kristen and Greg. Unfortunately the weather was not as nice to us this weekend. We had an overcast drive on Friday and hard rain on Saturday morning. Friday evening I arrived at the rehearsal and there were some surprises, which is usually the case. The rehearsal dinner was really, really nice. It was definitely the nicest rehearsal dinner I had ever been too. The downfall of the night was when I spilled on myself....what I can I say I have a history of doing that. I've come to the conclusion that I should not drink red wine while wearing anything I would not want red wine spilled on. (now I'm trusting a dry cleaner) Saturday went well despite my nerves! The wedding was short and sweet and everyone looked BEAUTIFUL! Between the wedding and reception we checked into our really nice hotel room and I got to knit on my lace stole, while Matt snoozed for a few minutes. We caught the bus to reception which was also beautiful. The food, company, dancing and drinking was all good! Matt and I had a really good weekend together and I felt more connected to him, which made saying goodbye a hard thing yesterday. I look forward to the day when I don't have to say goodbye to him on Sunday night.

I'm getting some pictures back in the next couple of days and plan to post them as well.

I should really consider a digital camera, I guess....

Pulling my hair out...ohh, I mean yarn

So I have started the ever so popular February Lady Sweater. So cute, I have the nicest color for it and I thought it would be great to knit. Well I have ran into more problems with this sweater than I have ever dealt with in knitting.

First this lovely expensive Dream in Color Classy Yarn started rubbing its dye off onto my hands. So my hands could match the beautiful color or my knitting....right!?!?

Then, I had gotten through most of the raglan increases to finally figure out how to do the buttonhole correctly, this was after 2 tries. So when I did get the button hole to look nice, I put it on the wrong side of the sweater....opps!

Then I started the lace portion, which was tricky to get the hang of at first. And I either dropped a stitch or forgot one of the very important YO's.

So, after these disasters, I made the difficult decision that the easiest thing to salvage this sweater was to rip it out and start over. So this is what I ripped out


And these were the two buttonholes during my, I don't know what I'm doing stage.


And finally here is the buttonhole that I had figured out, but put on the wrong side.


So I hope that all of this fretting and ripping out is worth it for my finished garment. Stay tuned for the results!