Multigenerational Bakti

Mom and I are each knitting a Lacy Baktus with Edge by the pool.


Things could be worse.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Having a blast

Shuttle launch.

Hours of waiting. A few minutes of excitement.


TOTALLY worth the effort.

p.s. Duck!

I have some knitting time coming up; I feel sure of it. And the Ingrid cardigan requires too much concentration for some situations, and the lacy Baktus is nearing the end. So rummage, rummage, rummage. Now, there's not much in my knitting bag, so you can imagine my surprise to find this little ditty in there:

It's Saroyan, a lovely free pattern in that Baktus-ish shape that I am finding so very wearable this winter. Perfect, I thought, and just enough underway to have all the kinks worked through and be ready to rock it out.

Wasn't it nice of me to, at some point in the past, set this up for exactly this kind of situation? It's like in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, when their future selves left a note for them in the past, telling them where to look for the car keys and to Duck!

Whew.

Be excellent to each other and knit on! :::strikes air guitar riff pose!:::

flounces

As has been the case for so many days this winter, yesterday's weather conditions caused plans to be scrapped, so the kids and I shifted to Plan B, which included a romp around NYC. We visited a science center that had a traveling exhibit we specifically wanted to see, then met up with one of my old friends for a visit with his family (baby snuggles!) and then out to lunch at an Indian buffet. While wandering around his neighborhood afterward and taking in the sights, sounds, and scents of businesses of many ethnicities, Leah ducked into an Indian sari/fabric store.

Ooh, the silks, the beadwork, the colors, the light-as-air cottons, the textures!

After a few more hours of cruising around the city, back onto the train for the start of our trip home. I did some more knitting on the Lacy Baktus du jour while the Goob oohed and ahhed over the lovely blue satin evening gown of our trainmate-in-drag. He was a totally pleasant guy who was entirely decked out for a big evening in the Big Apple, including pearl earrings, a fur jacket, and vintage evening purse.

When it was his turn to get off the train, the elbow length blue satin gloves he pulled on completed the entire ensemble. Leah admired his dress. I admired his chutzpah.

Here's a gown Leah's presently working on, made of velvet rec'd in a swap with our Rav-friend Michelle.

It's far from being finished. As a matter of fact, she's unhappy with enough aspects of it that she hesitated to let me post this pic, but I think it's beautiful, and I think she's beautiful, and, well, there you go. Seamstress, age 12. Verklempt mom who definitely needs more sleep and less work, age 44. :-)

between the lines

In the past week or so,

Leah decided that sewing another hoop skirt entirely by hand, mid 1800s style, was just a little bit nutso and turned to a modern day convenience to move that job along a lot faster.
Scott's b'day, raw gourmet dinner, spinach manicotti, linzer torte.
Pre-game Super Bowl bash at Webs.
Super Bowl with the Steelers Fan Club of CT at a restaurant near here.


Scott made some more orifice hooks with glass bead handles, partially as experiments and partially to include in a swap.
More work than I've had in a long time, holding at this pace x 3 weeks now.

Sledding.

Blood donation.

Pottery class.

Leah finished her second iteration of African Flower Hexagons. We think there's an error in the outermost round, so she tore that back and, instead of DC, sc, DC where the points should be, she did sc, DC, sc. Much better. I think this is planned to be a pillow.
Laser tag.
Two afternoons spent lending a hand at a client's office.

Visited an exhibit of 19th century clothing.

Evolution of a remote-controlled rocket-powered 24" snowmobile, made from the bizarre collection of things in Jesse's room.

Sleeves separated out, I'm only about 10 rows away from waist shaping on my Ingrid cardigan. Loving it. Also missing it, since I haven't touched it in over a week.
To NY for lunch at Pure Food and Wine, a dance performance, quest for durian, and approx. 14-mile trek with some of my favorite peeps.
Reached what I weighed when I was 17. Culled one-third of my current clothes for the donation bin. Again. :-)
To Northampton with my three favorite kids for Ukes and Yoyos, ice sculptures, and a rockin' good time.

antidote

Everything outside is white, gray, or brown, but Leah and I know that colorful projects are an antidote to the winter blues!


She dug out a bunch of yarns to do African flower hexagons. Because the yarns are of slightly varying weights, some are turning out bigger than others, so she's not sure if this project will go much further, but she's had fun playing with the color combos and the pattern anyway.

I was intrigued by the unspun silk mittens that the Yarn Harlot blogged about lately, so my perpetually frigid fingers dug out a bag of silk sliver to give it a go. I think because it's sliver, not silk hankies, it's a little slicker and more breakable in unspun form than would be optimal. I'm loving the silky goodness, though, and of course the colorway is one of my favorites, so I might pass this little bag of silk off to Scott to spin into some pretty yarn. I found a silk cap/bell and a couple of silk hankies in my stash, but not enough of any one colorway to make a pair of mittens, so maybe I can combine a couple of colorways to have enough silk. Good experiments.

Three cheers for the stash that made all the fun possible this week without needing to head out onto the icy roads!

But, hey, those roads are clear(ish) now, the sun is shining, and my clients are quiet, so I'm going to plug in some good tunes and take a nice long walk. Happy weekend, everybody!

oops

See that leftward crossing cable to the left, four rows back? It should be rightward crossing. D'oh.

Luckily(?), I screw up like this all the time, so I have had lots of practice with fixing. I could tink back those four rows, but given that this is a top-down, heavily cabled sweater with set-in sleeves, all knit at the same time, there are MANY stitches on the needles and unknitting that much would be a bummer. I much prefer dropping down just the involved stitches, however many rows, and knitting them back up correctly. (Demo of this technique here: Part 1 and Part 2.) It's a little fiddly, but much less so than the alternative.

Woot! All better!Elapsed time: 11 minutes.

I wish all my knitting mistakes were so easily fixed.
:::sigh:::