Breast Cancer Knitting Calendar 2009

I joined a group on Ravelry that designs and knits dishcloths. I'm not a designer, yet, but have aspirations. When I joined the moderator had just started breast cancer treatments and wanted to put together a calendar fund raiser. I was fortunate enough to get to test knit one of the designs. Mine is the little lace cloth in the bottom left corner. There are 12 new, never before published patterns that are perfect for gifts or for yourself. Click on the link in the side bar to order the calendar. It is a direct download that you print out yourself and can then have spiral bound at your local office supply store. If you have questions or would like more information email me. tschrock@swbell.net

This and That - Has Spring Finally Sprung?

4/5/08

It was a cold and blustery day.... We were at the park photographing a high school senior and these balloons were stuck high up in a tree. I want to believe it was a balloon release at the end of the party to celebrate. My fear is they escaped in the wind and there were many tears shed by the birthday child.

4/6/08

I officially started the Mystic Light KAL. I keep reminding myself this is my first true lace, my first real cables and my first KAL. The KAL part isn't turning out so bad. Of course I would like to be keeping up with the clues but that was never a real part of the plan. I simply don't have that much knitting time and truth be told, I have way to many projects on the needles at any one time. As of today I am all the way up to Row 17 but I have an uncrossed cable 2 rows back. I need to talk my courage up to tink those four stitches back and fixing the cable. Something I have never done. Wish me luck.

4/7/08

I married out of a family that doesn't cheer for any team past the local high school level into a family of diehard Kansas Jayhawk fans. When the Jayhawks and the Wildcats play each other I cheer for the Wildcats and become rather obnoxious about it just because it stirs up so much trouble in this family. But when the Hawks are playing anyone else I support them 100%. The final four was particularly exciting this year. This is a screen shot off of my TV. I did a fair amount of knitting during those games but it had to be mindless and on big needles.

4/13/08

The 13th was my birthday. One of the big ones that everyone seems to dread but I was kind of excited about turning 50. I'm not sure 60 sounds so hot but I have 10 years to sneak up on that one. For my birthday I chose to go to Manhattan, home of the K-State Wildcats, where my two kids attend school and/or work. My son works at a printing company and has a new press that he wanted to show us. He handles all those buttons quite well. What he was printing surprised me a bit or rather seems quite odd. He was printing door hang tags for a famous pizza company. They use them for when they deliver a pizza and the person isn't home! It reads some thing like "Sorry we missed you. Call the following number and we will redeliver your pizza". Do people order pizzas and then leave? He was doing a run of several thousand so this must happen at least occasionally. While in Manhattan we ate at Old Chicago, met my son's girlfriend (very sweet girl. She gave me a bouquet of flowers for my birthday.), had ice cream at Dairy Queen and in general enjoyed the day with my kids.

4/14/08

I won't go into the long story of why my husband has to dig this area out to fix a leak around the sewer pipe but it involves two dead squirrels and rain. We need to relandscape the front of the house anyway so here he is tearing out the bushes. What does he find under the bush he is working on here? Four newborn kittens. Mama had been at supper the night before but not at breakfast so I wasn't surprised that there were baby kittens but now what? I put them in a cardboard box and brought them in the house while the digging was going on. When he finished I sat the box back where he had found the kittens. By 11 pm they had all been moved to an undisclosed location. I am pretty sure there are more than four as Mama appeared to have swallowed a medium size mixing bowl and she is historically a rather prolific Mama. Would anyone like some cats? Please.

First Flowers

These were the first flowers in my flowerbeds this spring. I now have more but there is too much wind to photograph them properly. I worked in the beds for about two and a half hours this afternoon and everything looks much better. All the broken limbs are picked up and most of the leaf trash is gone. The wind was helpful in that it was blowing new leaves in as I was removing the old but that is always a problem when you have as many trees as we do.

Mystic Light Swatch

4/2/08

I haven't started knitting the Mystic Light shawl yet but I have reknit the swatch a couple of times. This is my first attempt at what I consider real lace, my first provisional cast on and my first time reading a chart. I missed a cable, changed needle sizes a couple of times and made a few unintentional design changes but other than that I think I am ready to start knitting the shawl. I found in knitting the swatch that I need the house quiet and maybe even empty to do this very well. That may mean this is a very long term project.

New Yarn in the Mail

It is so much fun to see a package on my desk when I arrive home from work. If I order anything for my husband that needs to be a surprise I have to have it shipped to another address because he always gets to the mail before I do. That also means he knows how often packages arrive for me and where they come from. I'm glad he is the understanding, supportive guy that he is.

3/3/08

 

I have joined the Mystic Light KAL and this is the yarn I plan to use. This is not at all the yarn I had planned to use but I couldn't find what I had pictured in my mind and I was on a bit of a budget. Since then I have found a couple of yarns that would have mirrored the picture in my mind quite well. The budget issue is still there but not wanting to spend a lot of money on yarn was based more on the facts this was my first KAL, my first lace knitting and my largest project to date. I did not want to put a lot of money into a project I wasn't sure I was going to like. The swatch instructions were released last week and about 10 minutes into it I knew I loved the yarn and was going to like knitting lace. I was having trouble with my needles though so what did I have to do? Order new needles of course! That means there is yet another package winging its way toward our home. That also helps me justify not spending too much on yarn since I HAD to get new needles. The first clue will be released on the 26th. My needles will be here by then, my swatch completed and I will be ready to knit lace.

 

3/4/08

Since I was ordering yarn anyway I had to check out the clearance section that a new friend on Ravelry pointed me to. We both liked this lovely little yarn and the price was just too good to be true especially when you divided it by two. I can bust a yarn budget wide open without really trying. This yarn doesn't know what it wants to be yet so it has joined the stash to contemplate its future. I know it will want to become something wonderful. It will also be fun to see what my new friend's yarn grows up to be.

Coming up:

FOs

Road Trip