Monthly Archives: August 2007

I'm Horrified

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There is an article at MSNBC that talks about how technology is being used as a tool of power and control in situations of domestic violence. It’s a very informative article and the things discussed are some I never would have considered.

But what gets me are the comments that were made on this article. Many of them are extremely negative and supportive of the abuser’s actions because they somehow interpreted the article to be about spying on a cheating spouse. That the husband had a right to spy on his wife if he thought she was cheating and that she was probably asking for it. The issue isn’t about a cheating spouse. The issue is about an abusive relationship and how the husband used technology to keep track of his wife’s actions. Just another way of exerting control and power over her.

How they managed to take this article and turn it into something completely different and controversial amazes me.

Homespun Hatred

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I’m beginning to hate Lion Brand Homespun. I’ve had nothing but back luck with this yarn. In my first project one skein had pooling in the color, horrible, there were sections where one of the colors in the mix was missing so instead of being a bronze-y color it was miliary green with a pinkish hue! I thought maybe I had a different dye lot, but the color problem occurred within the same skein.

With this project, I’m getting towards the end of the first skein and it looks like the yarn ends and all I’m left with is the single strand of thread that holds the fiber together. How frustrating!

I think this is the last time I do anything with this yarn! Had I known how bad it would be, I would have just fixed up my other project and given it to my sister, so I wouldn’t have to use this yarn again. But I’ve got 9 skeins of this crap and I’m determined to make this afghan and make it right. I don’t think I’ve ever been more committed to a project. So it will get done, but it will be the last time I use Lion Brand Homespun.

Slight Changes / Slight Knitting

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If you’ve been here recently, you’ll notice I changed the layout. I wanted something simple, so I found a decent WordPress theme that I liked and am now using it. It’s been tweaked every so slightly. I customized the header, of course, and changed the wording in a a few places. This was so much easier than trying to create my own theme and plug it into WP. Because I already had a two column layout, it was easy as pie to tweak my code to fit into the theme. Since this is a knitting blog, it only made sense that I had a “blog” theme. And I’m pretty happy with this one. I may at some point change the colors and if I’m feeling adventurous, add some scripting so that you can choose which color you like better. But I’m not sure if I’ll go that far.

In knitting news, I’ve made it to the gusset on sock on of dad’s thujas. I think the 3rd time is the charm on these. The fabric feels much stretchier but also like it will fit snuggly on the foot. I’ve finally (after many start overs) have made it past the first square of sis’ afghan. I’ve got 2 squares done; 10 more to go. But these are going to be better than the last “squared” afghan I made. These are the same # of rows and the same # of stitches across. *And* these will be pieced together the same way, so when I sew seams, I’m sewing rows to rows and stitches to stitches, so I think it will be much easier. You learn from your mistakes and this time around I have to say, I’m doing much better.

But I’m so amazed that I’ve started these two projects so many times over. I’ve never done that with a project to get it right. I guess I’m actually learning a thing or two in my knitting and “getting” gauge is something I’ve been trying to finally get right. Let’s hope this trend continues when I start working on something that really needs accurate gauge, like a sweater.

Home-made Blocking Board

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I made my own blocking board. It was so easy and cheap. Here’s how I did it:

I went to the fabric store and got 3 yards of 1″ gingham fabric. Total cost of fabric was around $7.

I went to Home Depot and bought two ceiling tiles. I found them in the building materials section over by the insulation. I got the ones that were rectangular instead of square. They are a little bigger so they can hold larger items. total cost was just under $10. I wrapped the edges of the tile with duct tape. This was to help smooth out the edges and to keep it from falling apart as easily.

Next I used a right angle tool to make some marks on the board. This was so that I could make sure that my fabric was somewhat squared up on the board.

Then I lined up the fabric on the marks I made and smoothed it out. Once it was fairly straight, I stapled it down and folded it over to the back side of the tile. On the back I also stapled it down and covered the edges of the fabric with more duct tape.

That’s it. I repeated the whole process with the second tile. I still have some fabric left over but I definitely needed the 3 yards for coverage. Below is my final board with some granny squares blocking on it. To view the whole series of photos check out my flickr set: knits.blocking board

Rapid Teeth

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Last night I had a dream. Everyone keeps telling me that when Amelia’s teeth start coming in, they will all start coming in at the same time. In my dream, this is exactly what happened. And we sat there and watched them shoot out of her gums like a flower in bloom on fast-forward. Of course she was fussing and we mentioned that we needed to stop and get some teething tablets (we were on our way somewhere). But suddenly Amelia had 4 teeth on the bottom and 4 on top. Like within 10 minutes they were all there. It was so bizarre, but I remember feeling sad, because her cute gummy smile of babyhood was gone. And I also remember thinking I was going to have to post about her teeth on my blog.