Tapestry Cowl - The Halfway Point

Today I hit the halfway point in the Tapestry Cowl. I was on my break at work, on hold with my health insurance company, when I finished the round. (I spent half an hour on the phone, and I didn't get my issue resolved.)

Today after work my company celebrated its anniversary by gathering at Dave and Busters. Now that I'm home, I need to be cleaning. Jules will be here in a little more than 24 hours, and I want things to be a little nicer for him.

I may actually clean tonight, or I may stay here and sit on my butt.

Either way, I'm excited, and I'm too tired too blog anything more significant.

WIP: Tapestry Cowl

I'm rolling along on the Tapestry Cowl. As they say on Knitting Daily, I'm trying to "make time for yarn everyday." That's the only way I've managed to make progress.

Right now I'm working on some online training for work that's taking up a lot of my free time. The courses aren't Mac compatible. (This isn't the first time I've had compatibility problems with my Mac.) So I'm trying to work on the break room computer at work and Aaron's laptop. That's cutting into my break room knitting. It also gets into the way of Wednesday night knitting group at Bluebonnet, because that's when I get together with Katie and Aaron to use Aaron's laptop.

So it's been a challenge, but I'm trying to do at least half a round a day before bed, if nothing else. (I'd say it takes 15-20 minutes to do one round. Double knitting tends to go slow.)

My goal is to finished the training by April 1. Then I can get back to knitting (and get my bonus.)

WIP: Tapestry Cowl (and some more loose ends)

I'm making steady progress on the Tapestry Cowl. I'm enjoying it, but I need to "activate" another project that requires less concentration. It's not a very good knit for waiting rooms. (Unless you're going to be waiting for hours, which hasn't happened. Yet.) It also isn't very good for talking with other people or watching TV.

Medical Crap

I think I've been spending too much time in my head with my medical crap. My family doctor said the sedimentation rate I talked about on Friday was something they'd watch, but probably doesn't mean anything. He also had me add iron supplements to my regimen, but that should be temporary. Now I'm just going to focus on my sleep study this Friday and getting on with my life. I'm making myself depressed.

I got this nifty little pill minder today to keep track of all my medications and supplements. The individual containers slide apart so you can carry one day of pills at a time. Sweet!

Crockpot

I have managed to stay on track with my crockpot. It's saved me a lot of money which I need, because I keep spending money on supplements.

This is the Brown Sugar Chicken I made earlier this week. Stephanie said her kids called it "Candy Chicken." It tasted more like a vinegary teriyaki when I made it. Most of the brown sugar slid off the chicken in the pot. Still, it was a pretty decent meal.

I don't blog about all my crockpot meals, but I take pictures of most of them. I created a Flickr Set that I plan to keep updating if you really want to follow what I'm making.

Parting Shot

Bunny Foo-Foo decided to try to get into the new bag of hay, rather than eat what she already has. Rather than stop her, I decided it would make a good picture.

Ravelry Weekend Awesomeness

Valentine's Day is tough when your significant other is in another state. So I was lucky that I had something to distract me. On Saturday, The Knitting Nest hosted the Ravelry crew, and people came in from all over to celebrate.


Here I am with Jess (left) and Casey (right). They were pretty cool. You can read the story about how they started Ravelry here.


And here I am with Mary-Heather, who is the third member of the Ravelry team, and Jess.


Former Austinite Caro of splityarn came back into town for the event.


The guests of honor (and Jess and Casey's dog, Bob) had Valentine's Day Stockings filled with goodies...


...a banner that everyone signed...


...and official status as Honorary Texans. (Sorry for the blurry picture.)


One group (from out of town, I think) brought special gifts for the guests of honor. A scarf for Casey and pasties for the ladies. This was the best shot I got of all four of them. They were surrounded by people taking pictures. (There's a better picture of Casey's scarf here.)


Of course, there was plenty of stuff for the customers. They gave out door prizes every 15 minutes, and I won the very first one! I got a Cascade beanie bear, a set of US size 8 needles in a very nice wood, and a skein of Cascade Lana D' Oro.


This was my first trip to The Knitting Nest since right before I went to the hospital, so I saw all sorts of new yarn that I hadn't seen there before. The Malabrigo Sock Yarn was the most popular by far. They had it right at the entrance, so everyone saw it when they came in. Some of the other highlights included Cascade Alpaca Lace, Queensland Collection Haze and Cascade Soft Spun.


They also had lots of Malabrigo Worsted in "Ravelry Red."


I finally got my mojo back with Double Knitting. I got going on my Tapestry Cowl again while I was hanging out.


Here's the yarn I bought. Jess helped me pick out the Cascade 128 on top. I'm considering it for the Montera coat. I had a hard time deciding which color. I had it down to the purple and an apple green. I asked several people, and Jess said she thought the purple was better.

I also got some Malabrigo Sock in "Impressionist Sky" and a skein of yarn to finish Jules' Gloves.

It was an awesome day.

You can see all of my pictures from the day here. Also, everybody's pictures from the event are on Flickr with the tag "ravelryweekend."

Tapestry Cowl Class

This blog has been lacking in knitting content recently, although my life hasn't. Time for some catch up.


Last week I took one of Staci's classes at The Knitting Nest. I learned double knitting and started the Tapestry Cowl.


Here's where I was at the end of the class. We practiced casting on several times.


See, it's pink on the other side.

(By the way, the gauge got larger when I did double knitting. It turns out US Size 2.5 is not too small for me. It's closer to five stitches per inch now.)


The first half of the class was Tuesday night. Wednesday night I cast on the actual cowl. I started with the magic cast on on two different needles. I put a stitch marker every ten stitches on both sides to keep track of things.


Then I put all the stitches on one needle, alternating colors.


And here I am, one row in.


Here's where we were at the end of class on Thursday. Fran's is on top. She spent a lot of time perfecting her technique and waited to cast on Thursday night. Jo's is on the left. She got a lot of work done between Tuesday and Thursday. I'm on the right somewhere in between.

I've done the first nine rounds, and the next round will involve colorwork. So far it's going pretty well, although my purls (the blue side) are bigger than my knits (the pink side.) I'll go more into my technique later. I'm still looking for the best way to handle two yarns at once.