Knitting Some, Playing Lots!!

This weekend was busy, busy, busy!! I had the dinner party - which was fabulous and went without a hitch!! I made homemade gravy (what some people, including my family calls pasta sauce), with sausages and meatballs, homemade manicotti (shells and all), homemade eggplant parmesean, a salad, bread and bought dessert (there is a limit to what I can do in a day.) The production team was appreciative and a good time had by all. Bear in mind, that we all worked at the theater that day too.

I'll show the knitting portion of my post first so those of you who don't want to read about the theater portion, can surf on out!!

Here is another 'bowl' I felted. The only thing that disappointed me was that the stitches showed through. I knit it with Lambs Pride Bulky and put it in the washing machine for at least 25 minutes and still.....you can see the stitches. Hmmm.


Ok, here's a picture of some of what I also accomplished this weekend. We are gearing up for the opening of "The King & I" and here are pictures of the progress so far. Although the pictures don't do it all justice, you can still get an idea of what it will look like. Also, do you remember I talked about sewing a traveler curtain for the show? And do you remember me saying I'd share a picture once it was hung? Well, here it is. I wish the picture was better, because it is very stunning to look at. You can't really tell by the photo, but it is hung at least 10 feet from the front of the stage. It is basically used to mask scene changes while giving you a decent playing area. If you were to use just the proscenium curtain, you'd only have 2 1/2 feet of playing space - not enough, believe me.

Here is a picture of the shoji screens before they are painted or mounted on the platform. And a pix of the platform before the stairs and facing.


This next picture is the painted shoji's with the uncovered louvers and the facing on the platform before the painting. Notice too the temporary stairs. The guy in the picture is Jon - he designed the set.


Now, these are the real stairs. They will be painted black and marbled for effect!!

Here is a picture of the shoji screens (there are 10 of them), not much to look at like this but they are backed with a white fabric and slide along in tracks for different configurations. They will then be lit from behind with different colors during different scenes. The guy in the picture is my hubby, Christopher.

This is a picture of one of the louvers covered with really interesting fabric. The general colors to the set are (as you can tell) red, black and gold. It's very ornate looking and with the lighting design . . . Magnificent!! Notice the painted portions of the facing. That is the first coat.


Doreen and Jim are shown here reupolstering the chaise I mentioned in the post "Not Much Knitting". It really came out nice. I do wish I'd taken a picture of it before we stripped it.


Here's a close up on it practically finished.


Whew!! I'm exhausted just looking at the pictures, never mind working on all the projects.

Hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures as much as I enjoyed sharing.

Sock Gone Wrong?

I have made progress on my first pair of socks and I think there might be something that I did wrong. Here is a picture of my progress and the problem. The second picture is the heel. Doesn't it look funny. It sticks out (orange part) and I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to. Hmmmmm. Any ideas?












I've also made some progress on my bamboo multi-directional scarf - remember the picture of the yarn I bought at the LYS? Well, here's my progress. I'm really liking working with this yarn.


Also, here's my cardi sleeve that I've been cursing. Not bad, just a few more inches to move on to the next step.


Here's my green bowl finished. I ended up giving it to my sister. She thought it was cute. I think so too.



That's all I have today. Sorry it's not much but I'm tired from rehearsing every night and tomorrow night, we're having a dinner party for all the production staff and I've been cooking and cleaning like a fiend.

Until next week.

Yarn and progress!!

I went to the LYS this morning, looking for Blue Heron Yarn and BLAST, they didn't have it, though I did get some 1/2 priced goodies. Here's my haul: I'm going to make scarves with them all. The blue varigated is bamboo yarn and I'll do a multi-directional one out of it and the red and orange are 100% Egyptian and I'll do some combo scarf with those.

Progress on the Cardi from (H - E - double hockey sticks). Notice, no twisting. I did a lot on it last night. I had the night off from rehearsal and it was glorious just sitting and knitting. Of course, it's almost always glorious when I sit and knit, but doing it at a time I usually can't do it, ahhhhhhhhhhhh, now that's the life!!


Ok, now remember the blue/green bowl I was going to felt? Well, (drum roll please), it is DONE. Here's a picture of it.


I brought it to rehearsal to show it off and one of my dear friends said he'd love to have it, so I gave it to him.

I LOVE to felt. The process is a hoot and I can see more felting in the future. In fact, I've felted a little clutch - I got the pattern out of "One Skein". Isn't it cute? And it's QUICK!! I'll be doing another one with different colors and I can't wait. Here's a picture of before and after:


And lastly, here's a picture of some dansko sandals I love to wear, but they're in bad shape, so I thought to myself, "Self, why don't you spruce them up with a new look." Here they are:


And here's a picture of the finished project. I still have to bring them to a cobbler to replace the inside pad because it's all torn, but I'm happy with the results. Please ignore my funny looking feet.

EGADS! Not again. Troubles with Knitted Cardigan

Oh boy! This is the 3rd time I'm going to have to rip out this freaking sleeve. I HATE when that happens. Here's the picture of the blasted thing. Notice where my fingers are that it is TWISTED. UGH!! Why I didn't notice it before is a mystery.



I went to the LYS today to pick up some needles to start my socks and blast, they were out of my size.


Who else out there dislikes gauge swatching? I do and sometimes I cheat - I'm sure it will nip me in the butt sometime - hopefully not with this blasted cardigan - I cheated the gauge on it and I think I'm in the clear. I was thinking of cheating the gauge for the socks. I knitted about 1 inch and measured the width and it's correct. Has anyone else done that? Can I get away with it and make a pair of socks? Anyone? Any advice will be helpful.

On an up note - I started another bowl with this gorgeous green wool. Here's a picture of it. I still haven't felted the other bowl. Maybe today. I'm supposed to be learning my lines for K & I but I'm a huge procrastinator. And I have to blog, right? Right? I can't go tooooooo long without blogging, now can I?

Not Much Knitting!!

This week and weekend were busy ones. We rehearsed all week, then Friday night we finished sewing/grommetting a humongous traveler curtain for the show. It's in two pieces. Each is 30' wide. Once they are hung in the theater, I'll post a picture of it. I'm pretty darn proud of the things. It took 4 of us to do it - Christopher (hub), his sister Sue - big help, Me, and Jennifer - who was a tremendous help.

We then returned to the theater on Saturday to strip an old stuffed chaise. Doreen, Jim, me and Christopher worked on it and boy, was it a mess. I kept kicking myself that I hadn't brought my camera so we could have a before, middle and after picture. It's a great piece. One thing we (really Jim) discovered when we got it down to the bare wood - AND pulled out every nail and staple - (there were hundreds, no lie) after a little fixing, the piece could raise and lower on both the head and foot, just like a beach chaise. Dear ole hub went dumpster diving on Friday to get cushions so we could replace what was there and reupolster it. It's half done and we worked at least 4 hours on it. The things I do for my art. ;)

We then had a dinner party on Saturday - had a rip roaring time though I tipped my hand just a little too much so Sunday was a slow day for me.

Now here's the knitting - what you really came to read about!

Here's a scarf that I made with some novelty yarn. I got it on sale for $2 a piece. I made this for a dear friend and I'm surprising her with it tonight.


This next picture is the stash I recieved with the loom. Remember, this isn't my whole stash - just the loom stash. It was STINKY - it's been in storage for a few years. So what I finally did was lay it all out in the craft room and febreeze the crap out of it. I LOVE THAT STUFF! It took all the stink away and now I have lots of yarn to play with! WEHAW!!

Here is the 'finished' bowl - pre-felting. I can't wait to have enough time to felt it. It's going to be adorable when it's done. I will post a picture when I finish.

I did a little work on my multi-directional scarf, but not much more. I guess that's all I have to talk about today.

Knitting Progress!

Yup, I actually got some progress done on my knitting. Though I have to say that I was quite frustrated with my cardigan sleeve and I have to rip it out. That's okay, it's great practice. Right? Yeah, that's it. At least that is what I keep telling myself.

I was able to get away this weekend. We had to 'babysit' Christopher's sick elderly cousin - she's in end stage cancer. So off we went to Waltham, MA. We had a nice time even though she slept a lot - but she's still a lot of fun. We also traveled to Leominster, MA to visit C's aunt whom we haven't seen in 3 years. That was fun and relaxing because there was a POOL. But DARN it! I got a little tan even though I wasn't trying to and took as much precaution as I could - but having the Italian skin doesn't help matters. So now, I have to think of what I'm going to do when the musical goes up and I have to wear the strapless ball gown.

Here's the progress on the multidirectional scarf. See how long it is from the last picture. OOOOOO! I love knitting this pattern. I almost feel as though that's all I want to knit but I'm being good to some of my other projects by working on them too. But darn that Cardi sleeve. Oops, I said that already.


Here is the bowl I'm working on. I'm hoping that the multi thickness of the yarn won't mean a hill of beans difference in the end product. This is home spun yarn from Urugray and I love it. It's cute, isn't it?