Thursday, May 04, 2006

Bohus vs Shrug vs Work,

Just a really quick post this time, this has been one of the more hectic weeks, it included
  • teaching monday afternoon,
  • teaching all day wednesday and thursday,
  • giving a lecture on 'good design' to a room of around 80 this morning, including 5 fellow staff which was a little nerve racking,
  • planning meetings all afternoon,
  • hairdresser tuesday night,
  • Book club wednesday
  • homework for my study tonight.
I have a full day of meetings tomorrow including one with my supervisor for my study,
so time seems a tad short this week. Things should settle down next week.

Blue shimmer
is looking good, I managed a little more progress on her. I must say Bohus Blue shimmer is a girl, at least in my mind she is. Here is a picture. There was a little more frogging, fribbit, fribbit. When reading the chart I found it really hard to see the difference between the two blues, 103 and 102 on the chart under incandescent lights. I initially thought I had made a mistake half way around the row, so frogged, then realised it was right and reworked it. I had a simillar incident of uncertainty a row or two latter, eventually I took a drawing pencil, 2B and carefully outlined the areas of each colour. That made it much easier, and I would strongly recommend that to anyone knitting at night from the chart.

This week I started the Girl Friend Shrug, working the rib on my vintage 2mm knitting pins. I inherited them from Mrs B, my MIL, who was a prolific knitter in her day. But she never knit socks, making my husband - Bear - only one pair and they were a new and significant experience for her in the 1970's. So significant they were remembered 20 plus years latter. I have no idea where the knitting pins came from or how they came to be Mrs B's, but can only imagine she saved them from another relative, her sister died much yonger and she had a lot of special things saved of hers. There are only 4 in the set but they come in a delightful vintage wooden tube, with size "14" carved into the side. to stop rust they are stored in talc powder, so smell all baby fresh and spill a fine dust whenever I open the tube to use them or to store them away. I do prefer to knit with a set of 5 dpn's so I have to add a modern Milwood needle, which is shorter and feels different. The knitting is not affected, but I always know when I am not working on the steel pins.

Anyway, GF Shrug grows well, I have decided to rib for twice the length in the pattern, so around 6 cm, this will allow my wee girl friend to grow somewhat over the winter. I have not yet decided if the sleeves will match in colour repeat or not, knowing how fussy I can be they most probably will. This image was scanned, rather than photographed, as my camera is at work. The colours are brighter or more garish than in the real yarn. If I was more photoshop savy I would remedy that, but I am not.

Book club, meet last night, we swoped the last book by Witi Ihimaera, Bulibasha: King of the Gypsies (1994), for Silas Marner by George Eliot. Bit of a difference between those two! I didn't get very far into Bulibasha, but wished I had after listerning to the group talk about how much they enjoyed the story. Witi has a wonderful way of describing people and situations, you can smell the environment it seems so real. It will be on my things to read over the christmas break latter in the year. They all said the first few chapters were really hard work then it became a 'can't put down' book and the story with its characters was great. I missed out, with being so busy I didn't stick around past the first 60 pages.

Of now to read a chapter or two on educational methodology and research methods, so I will be all fresh and know stuff for the discussion tomorrow.

2 comments:

Dee said...

Good going, Stell. Blue Shimmer looks great. I've been doing some pre-Bohus practice in color work, to get the floats under control. It goes slowly, but I feel I must get the practice, so my gauge will be even once I start whichever kit comes first. I'm thinking that the Blue Shimmer hat and scarf would be best as a first go at it.

Thanks for keeping us posted!

Dee

Stell said...

You will be fine, I found the swatch was much slower than the real thing, make sure you wash the swatch to get guage, mine changed, relaxed a little - but not much.