Monday, September 24, 2007

The mother of all updates

I, lomester, hereby swear, that I will, from now on, not subject you - my 5 loyal readers - to any more crazy updates. Instead, I, lomester, promise to continuously update my blog, thereby eliminating remarks such as "update your blog all-ready" from such friends as Reese.*

Phew - now that that is over! Let the updates begin!

From my last post *ahem -tease* you guys might have deduced that I went on a trip! Tony turned thirty this past July (gulp!) so, being the amazingly wonderful girlfriend that I am, I treated him to a little 7 day cruise in the Eastern Caribbean!

It was such a nice, relaxing time! First we stopped in Old San Juan, where the humidity completely messed with my camera and I almost cried thinking that the poor machine was broken. The day turned out to be absolutely perfect. We really enjoyed walking through the streets of this little city, and although completely packed with cruisers wanting to buy sou verniers, we managed to find a nice quiet little restaurant where we had some Puerto Rican and Spanish tapas, and a nice bottle of Sangria. The best part, the waiter was Argentinian.Next we spent a day in St. Thomas. Again, as soon as you get off the ship you are overwhelmed with how "turisty" the place is. Everyone is trying to sell half off diamonds, and perfumes and makeup and jewelry, and it is all stuff that you can get at home. So, we asked a local what beach we should go to where there were not a lot of people, and he suggested Sapphire Beach. We got in a cab with another couple going to the same location, and headed on a 30 minute bumpy windy drive. I am not sure if I will accurately describe the cab, but picture a big golf cart that fits 10 people. The roads were so hilly, and I had not had a drop of rum. My recommendation, have some rum before you get into one of these. :) The couple we rode with ended up being a blast to hang out with. They live in Chicago, but vacation in the same exact Virginia Beach location we go to every year - at approximately the same time! What a small world!

I did get some knitting done in St. Thomas, as y
ou can see above, but not much. Why "not much" you ask? More on that later. The picture on the left is the view from my beach chair, then there is me knitting, and my Kusha Shawl.
The last place we went to was St. Maarten. St. Maarten, for those of you that do not know, is split up into French St. Maarten and Dutch St. Maarten. We spent the day in the Dutch side, but did have lunch in a wonderful (although horrifically overpriced) little French restaurant.

The whole vacation was absolutely perfect. When Tony and I go on vacation, we always want to see this and do that, and go here and explore there, and we never get the chance to just... be. This was the point of this vacation. To not plan on going snorkeling, or rock climbing or mountain biking...just to be. This being got my pant size in trouble, cause being mostly meant hanging out by the pool having the Royal Caribbean drink of the day, but I see a Detox diet in the future.

For all you nosy people (I am one of them, so this is not an insult), you can check out the rest of the birthday celebration extravaganza here.

Now th
at the "life" portion of the update has been completed, here is the "knitting" portion of the update.The pictures above are of a little "habu party" we had at Olga's a few weeks back. Isel's best friend was very very smart and got married in New York. Therefore, we made Isel go to Habu and get us some stuff. You know, just a little somethin' somethin'.

It is always fun to hang out with these girls, and when there is some lovely yarn to play with, even more fun. Isel brought me back a Kusha Kusha Shawl kit. I was so excited! I stared at it, and looked at it, and told everyone about my lovely steel and merino shawl that was coming up! I did not want to cast on or do anything until I went on the cruise, so I patiently waited. Then when the day came, and we were waiting to board the ship - I took a deep breath and cast on. My one way of describing this was : painful. I had bought some addi naturas since my steel addis would have not worked well with the silk and steel, they would have just slid off the needles. But the naturas were worse! The joints are not good at all. My work kept getting all tangled up, and the steel kept falling off the needles. I cast on 4 times. I was so disappointed that my vacation project was not going as easily as I wanted to.

Things got a little easier when I worked in the merino. The fact that it looks so pretty made me want to persevere. I still do not know if I want to felt the finished project, or leave as is. We will see as I keep going. I think it may be a while before you see this as an FO. I do have a couple of FOs to show you, but I am not too happy with my Royal Caribbean buffet look right now - so give me a few more days. More pics coming soon!















*this disclaimer is subject to people from work not having any more children which make me not have time to update my blog, any subsequent audits at work, and frankly, the amount of amusing anecdotes in my head. (Yes, I am not always this witty).

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Thursday, August 30, 2007

Habulishious Tunic

I have had a love/hate relationship with Habu. As I spoke about in this HabuTextile post, I hate spending money. Habu is not, what you would call, a yarn that you can get on sale at Michaels. However, Olga (my friend, enabler, and huge reason why my credit card bill gets bigger) got me HOOKED. Like, addicted, I would almost say I am nearing crack addict status, but I strive for a PG rated blog, so I will not go that far.

The Habu Tsumugi A-1 for this tunic was actually a left over Olga had. I had always wanted to make this Tunic in the Rebecca #31.
However, this yarn did not yield the same gauge, so I had to recalculate the entire pattern. I am fascinated with this yarn. It is completely organic, and the result is a nice and flowy and (dare this wannabefashionista say it) utterly comfortable! There is this boho look and feel that comes with this tunic, but I am going to see if I wear a white tailored shirt underneath, and some dress pants how this looks.

Project Details

Project name: Bramble Tunic from Rebecca #31
Yarn: 6 skeins (double stranded) of Habu Tsumugi A-1 2/1 Coloway 83- Cork
Needles: Addi Turbo's US 5
Modifications: Umm... I recalculated the entire pattern to fit my gauge. Time consuming, well worth it.
The only problem is...what Habu project will I do next... trust me... more of that to come. BTW - this is my 100th post!

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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Seriously PEOPLE!!

I don't usually rant and rave much (hahaha - that was such a lie!) but I have to rant and rave now. I have told you all about ravelry. I love it, it's a fantastic site, frecklegirl and casey are awesome. There may be some of my lovely readers that are patiently waiting to get inside ravelry. However, it seems that there are some people that are not so patient. To that, I want to say, please be the considerate nice knitters that I know you are - please! frecklegirl and casey devote their free time to making this site all nice and pretty for all, and they need to do some things to make it able to hold this wonderful ever expanding world of knitters. So be nice, and wait, and then you will say "yay! frecklegirl and casey are so awesome! ravelry was worth the wait!"

end of rant - beginning of rave

I have the best knitting friends ever! Look what Olgita gifted me for my bday:
Isn't it the bestest, cutest little bag ever? I still am trying to decide what to store in there since its super special. What? You are jealous out there in blogland? Well, don't just sit there! Go get yourself one! Sheesh!

Also, I gave myself a little birthday knitting gift (there were also birthday non-knitting gifts as well). Delishiousness! Habu Tsumugi Silk that I just stare at and sniff. Yummie yum yum! I am such a Habu member now - it is so pretty! I want to make a nice tunic from it, but it will have to wait.

I am working on the Knit Cafe's Baby Kimono for a co-worker. I swear, it is such an easy knit but because I cannot stop thinking about how I want to finish my redgina, and I want to figure out the front of my free people cardi, and I want to make a secret project for Ava, and I have so many other ideas, it is going soooo sloowwwww.

But keep your fingers crossed that I will finish it by tomorrow so hopefully I will have it done this weekend. I have a special visitor coming to hang out with me and I cannot wait to get a chance to visit some yarn shops together. Maybe we will run into someone we know!

Oh and thank you to all that wished me a happy birthday and that I did not get a chance to personally respond to. I hate that blogger does not let you just hit "reply" and send an email back. My birthday was awesome! Let's see how I look when I turn 30!



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