- ~~~Sorry, but I am not getting on this bandwagon. Shutting off all the electricity for an hour at 8:30 p.m. is stupid. For one thing, it screws up my two favourite Saturday night shows, Heartbeat and Midsomer Murders. I hardly watch any TV but I never miss these. And for another thing, I think every day is Earth Day. After all, that's where we live. Right? So I intend to continue being as eco-conscious as I always am in my day-to-day life. I re-use and recycle more than most and I am very aware of my energy consumption. Lights off, heat down, limited use of energy suckers like the dryer, all my appliances are energy savers, etc. etc. etc. And one more thing -- what happens when everyone flashes all their electricity back on at 9:30? Surely that's not a good thing, is it? ~~~ there I said it.*
On a lighter note - I made this adorable dress and hat for darling granddaughter's second Easter:
The dress is the Jane Austen dress from Mason-Dixon: Knitting Outside the Lines and the hat is the Rosy Scalloped hat from Tot Toppers . Both very simple patterns. I took the advice of other Ravelry knitters and made size 4. I think size 2 would be too small for my little munchkin. As she doesn't live nearby I'll have to wait for pictures of her wearing it.
* please don't call the Power Police
I have been sewing up a storm this past few days. I wanted a tote/carry-on bag with lots of pockets for our upcoming trip to England. Something that I could manage easily, get all my airplane necessities into (books, knitting, neck pillow, travel papers, etc.) and still be able to use as an all-purpose bag for shopping (Liberty of London, here I come!) and trekking around. This is McCall's 5871:
Inside view:
I am very pleased with how it turned out. Setting in the side pieces was a bit of a wrestling match due to the stiffness of the multi-layers but I won! The pattern is very easy to follow, well-written. I didn't use as many different fabrics as the pattern called for as I felt four was plenty.
Next post: Darling grand-daughter's Easter outfit.
This has been bugging me for a week now so I'm going to have a little rant. I took a class last weekend which involved sock-making. My friend and I both had self-striping yarns for our socks, mine being a Regia that looks like this:
Pretty, n'est-ce pas?
Well, the instructor seemed to feel it necessary to comment during one of her talks that this type of yarn "offended" her. Obviously she is of the hand-dyed, hand-spun, hand-everything ilk. More power to you. I, however, have more eclectic tastes and if I feel like knitting my socks with shredded plastic bags I will. I was very offended by that remark, especially since she had been around the class and seen what everyone was working with. She made a similar comment about machine knitting. I really dislike this kind of snobbery where if you didn't raise the sheep yourself in your organic garden, shear it, clean and card it, spin it, knit it on needles carved by aboriginals in Timbuktu you are not quite a "real" knitter.
I knit because I love it. It relaxes me, satisfies me, soothes me, boosts my ego, entertains me....I could go on and on but you get my point. I love to knit.
Sometimes I work with luxury yarns like cashmere (Sweatermaker) ~ Piano Mitts by Catherine Ryan:
or bamboo (Sirdar Flirt) ~ Coraline by Ysolda Teague:
or hemp (HempWol) ~ Amelia by Laura Chow:
and sometimes I like to knit socks with a good sturdy self-striping (so it looks pretty) yarn. So there!
Oh, and one more thing ~
don't be complaining that the "endless garter stitch" or "rows and rows of stockinette" drove you crazy in a pattern. Did you not look at it before you started and see that the entire front, back and sleeves were garter/stockinette? Kind of like complaining about the rain in the Pacific Northwest. Okay, I do that a lot.
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