Saturday, February 04, 2012

New Year catch-up 2012

Phew - one month in on the new year and there's already been a bit of excitement -

1. A couple of projects finished-

Project #1 - a quick and easy cowl
Yarn: Sanguine Gryphon Codex in the Daughter of Huang Chow - a golden yellow with bits of green
Pattern: Simple Yet Effiective Cowl by Alexa Ludeman (free on Rav)

New Year's Codex Cowl 

and the before shot of the yarn-
SG Codex Daughters of Huang Chow Close

Project #2 - kind of a cheat, but not, because wips count as finished objects - finished my spectra.
Yarn: Handmaiden Mini Maiden in two colorways - gray-blue saltspray, and a magenta, pink, wine colour.
Pattern: Spectra By Stephen West

Started in the fall and it's very interesting to make the wedges and watch the color change for the first few - kind of fascinating, really. Then, it's just boring and crazy counting and re-counting, hoping you'll be done soon. Based on reading others' projects, I'd hoped to knit 80. I knit 68. I realized that when I wound the scarf around my head as planned, it looked like a huge egyptian collar, which was not the look I was going for; so I've decided to wear it just draped on my shoulders and hanging down in a coiled fashion. Here's a pic of it drying after blocking.

Spectra Shawl pic 1

3. Cardigan almost done

I'm making the button hole on the lacy part in the front; and prepping buttons. Pic so far:

Fall Forest Cardi Complete

2. A bit of unexpected weather - Jan 18th -
Snow day translation : "work from home or take a vacation day".

I worked from home.

Snow Jan18

and worked on digging myself out. I used up a 10kg bag of salt "salting" the driveway.

Path and Cul-de-Sac










It was back to normal by the weekend...

- pic still on my camera -


3.A bit of an arm issue
Last week's issue was my arm - no grip strength on my right hand, couldn't write, knit, or drive (yikes!). I was worried about carpal tunnel..but my doctor said it's fine, as he whipped my wrist around testing it. my shoulder on the other hand had a limited range of motion, and pain which caused pain in my hand, and a cold sensation running down the back of my hand.

...Seriously, my yarn stash flashed before my eyes.  I really stopped to question a lot of the yarn I have in my stash and found a lot of the yarn dropped to the bottom of the knitting list, pretty quickly.

Luckily, I was out of commission only a few days, so I'm back to plotting my rav q.
Seems to be back to normal now, but I'm trying to still take it easy on my arm, and take lots of breaks.

4. We started a new New Year - Year of the Dragon, the Chinese New Year.
As a colleague of mine said (who is also Chinese)
..we don't call Jan. 1 "white people's new year"












Believe it or not, the conversation evolved from a discussion I brought up when I mentioned that my mom makes a lovely meal called "Chicken with Chinese Mushrooms". I was speculating why we call them Chinese Mushrooms when my colleague started with, "You're right, we don't call the normal mushrooms "white people's mushrooms"; which I think is because the mushrooms are dried and are mainly sold in Chinese grocery stores. (ahem, there's that qualifier again).. I guess it would be like German Shepherd, and French Onion Soup?

~Happy New Year to you ! ~

5. A new shawl...with lovely little leaves:

Hawthorne Detail
















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