Fiber Fool

Finally, some design stuff I can show you! On Wednesday while DH was at work and standing in line for the midnight showing of Indian Jones 4 I was swatching. I was looking for a good paw print lace pattern. Most of what I’ve seen in projects referring to paw prints look more like flowers to me.

So, I started playing off of the flower-like “paw prints” trying to come up with a good paw print on my own. I swatched somewhere close to 20 different paw prints. The first several I frogged, but then I started keeping them because I was changing little things and noting small, but significant differences. Things like using a decrease that leans in a different direction to open up the yos etc. Somewhere between 15 and 20 I hit the jackpot (though I swatched a couple more options just to be sure I had the best I could get). Once again I’m so glad that swatching has become part of the process for me and that I find pleasure in doing so. Otherwise, the design wouldn’t be as good and/or I would be cranky for having spent an entire days worth of work on swatching.

Thursday through Saturday were pretty busy with socializing or preparing for socializing so I didn’t cast on until Sunday, but I’m already about up to the cuff (the leg is a bit shorter than normal because the yarn only has 300m/100gm and I have big feet). Here is a little shot of the lace in action. The paw prints run across the instep and up the leg. I won’t give away more of of the design at the moment. In fact, I’m actually stalled until I get a response to an e-mail I sent last week. But I think it’ll be a fun design when it is complete.

I will say it includes a bit of beading. Not too much, so instead of pre-stringing beads I’m going to use the crochet hook method. I still need to go pick out the beads. In fact, I think I may do so today. What color would you put on a really luminous pearl gray?

When the pattern is ready for release (I’m hoping by mid-June at the latest, but it’ll depend a bit upon the e-mail response I’m awaiting) I’ll let you in on the inspiration for the design. And no, it isn’t Emma! Though she probably wishes it were.

Just a note to those who may be currently or have read recent headlines about all the tornadoes in Norther Colorado. Fort Collins has been left pretty much unscathed except for some power flickering. Windsor is said to have been hit the worst. Those who know Cathy, I have received a phone call from her and they are without power, but both she and M are fine, as is their home.

If you are wondering about more local coverage of the storm I suggest:
- http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_9344925
- http://www.thedenverchannel.com/weather/16321240/detail.html
- http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080522/NEWS01/80522035&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

Everything is going well, but I’m feeling a little “off” in terms of scheduling my day and such. With the new morning chores of tending to the plants I’m a little off my game when it comes to blogging. Add to it that I can’t show you the awesome project I just completed and there isn’t much motivation to find the time to blog either. I thought I should pop in anyway though.

This weekend I got to go to the park with Little Man and his mom. I think we all had fun. It was a warm and sunny day so no spectacular photos due to the bright sun and its harsh shadowa, but some fun snapshots.

A week or so ago the everbearing strawberries started flowering and now it seems the wild ones are also flowering. DH and I may actually get to share a picking this year rather than trading on and off!

I’m a little worried I’ve killed some of my seedlings during the hardening off period. I should have listened to my gut instinct and kept them in the spot where they get shade come about 11am, despite the fact that they were up to the point where they needed more sun. Some are looking good and I watered this morning and moved them to the spot with morning sun and afternoon shade in hopes of aiding their recovering from the hot weekend in nearly full sun. I have my fingers crossed.

The greens bed that Emma dug up after our planting is surprisingly doing much better than the second one we planted the next day. I’m not quite sure why. But that first one is looking good and growing by leaps and bounds. We have a handful of radish that have come up. Something’s wrong with the carrots and quite a lot of the radishes as well. I wonder if we didn’t freeze a bit too hard at the wrong spot in development? We had problems with carrots last year too. We only got two. Oh well, it’s all a learning process, right? And last year my first year and we bought a lot of our plants. So I’m taking big steps with year with seedlings and direct sowing and such.

The heat has arrived which is of course good for the garden, but not great for my mood or our sleeping. We’ve been in the 80’s all weekend and look to be for most of this week. The house even started the day out at 72 degrees this morning. That doesn’t bode well for late afternoon :-/ Next house has AC!

I got the north beds all weeded and nearly ready for planting the seedlings into next weekend. I just need to get some compost worked into them and get a lot more mulch than I used last year! I did manage to sunburn an interesting shape on my back, but the positive news is that it shows that my range of motion for both arms is now equal, which means PT has been a success, LOL! They really need to come up with a good way to apply sunscreen yourself to your back!

At the end of last week my cell phone spontaneously deleted the address book overnight. In an effort to restore all my phone numbers I launched iSync figuring it would be that easy to get all the numbers back in my phone. I was wrong. Instead, it deleted all of my numbers in Address Book as well. It retained contact names but I lost pretty much everything else.

If I got your contact since August or got updates to your contact info since August, please e-mail me (fiberfool at gmail) with your info so I can get it corrected in my address book.

On the plus side of this I took the phone into our local storefront and had good service. They couldn’t do anything, but they did say it was grounds for calling the phone number to get the phone replaced under warranty. I called Friday morning and my replacement arrived on Tuesday without paying the extra for a quick turn around. I am now mostly moved into the new handset aside from rebuilding my contact list.