Saturday, March 1, 2008

Argh.

Okay, so I fail at beaded knitting so far. The silk is fraying, the dropped stitches don't look the way I want them to and the beads just end up looking lost on them. So I'm rethinking the whole concept, I'll probably end up not doing any dropped stitches at all and just doing the whole thing in garter stitch. In the meantime to stop the silk from fraying too much, I'm gonna practice my beading technique on something else. But I can't do that until I start another beaded project, which I figure I'll do when I get the laceweight I ordered from Knitpicks. If I have time to make the Holi belt after I get that so that I can wear it for Holi, then awesome, I'll make it. But in case I can't, I cast on a different one, out of Sean Sheep Wildwood yarn in bright orange:


The color is actually a lot brighter than that... blame the crappy camera.

I'm using a no-frills garter stitch and drop stitch sequence, no beads. It's the same kind of yarn as I'm using for Sakura, but I could only find one ball of the orange, so I'm a little bit worried about having enough to finish the belt. So I guess this weekend it's off yarn-hunting for more orange, or for another alternative for the Holi belt... I'd use something else from my stash but none of it is bright and colorful enough for my tastes, except the Noro Kureyon:



I don't want to use the Noro since I already have a project planned out for it (plus it's felting wool, not quite the texture I want for this project). The Wildwood has shiny nylon thread through it, which is why I like it for this project. I hope I can find some more.


I still love the Recycled Silk though, even if it is fraying to high heaven. (Which is mostly my fault anyway for frogging and recasting and refrogging and recasting and... so on.) The best part is finding the little bits of red silk buried in the pink - a red sari is usually a bridal sari. It tickles me that I'm knitting bits of someone's wedding dress.

I'm slowly chugging along on Sakura, and I frogged Cuddles (...again) and recast it using my 9s instead of the 13s, they were too big for the yarn and the scarf was too unsubstantial. I seriously have to get spare size 9s, I use them for everything... But if I'm gonna get more needles I think I'll get myself some wooden ones instead of these plastic jobbies. My 9s are the needles my grandmother gave me when she first tried to teach me to knit, they're these cheapie plastic ones and they are way too long but dammit, they are my favorite size (width) needle that I own, so... yeah. I keep switching projects back and forth from stitch holders just so I can keep using them.



I just finished watching Matusalem, which is a French movie made in Quebec with Marc Labreche in it... (when he was still hot). It was one of my two favorite movies growing up, along with La Grenouille et la Baleine which I cannot find anywhere which makes me sad. It's about pirates and ghosts and it is incredibly campy, but man do I love that movie. There's this one line in it that makes me giggle every damn time no matter how many times I've watched the movie, even though I know the line is coming. I even start laughing ahead of time because I know he's gonna say it soon. (I'd write the line down, but... it really wouldn't make any sense to anyone.)

I know I had a point... But I can't think of it now. Clearly it is time for me to go to sleep.

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