A few recent learnings, and an announcement.
First, the announcement: The rumors are true. HWWLLB is blogging. You can read his musings and join in the discussion at yclept. I keep waiting for a post on how various spaceships look when they explode, but so far it's all been pretty high-brow stuff (comparatively).
On to the learnings:
1. I really shouldn't try to knit with multiple colors when they don't belong to a color family that I particularly like. I can't be trusted to put decent-looking colors together.
I've been making this hoodie for a friend of mine who is about to turn five. She looks great in bright, pastel-tone colors. They aren't colors that I like or understand, but I make things for her with them because they look so good on her. So I've been slogging along on this hoodie, which I've been calling the Fruit Stripe Hoodie, which will be purple with pink striped sleeves. Sounds good, right? But the pink stripes are kind of reddish-purplish, and though they look perfectly fine to me, well-meaning (and trustworthy) people keep politely asking me whether I actually meant to put those colors together. As if perhaps I'd made a mistake and not noticed that these two yarns clash horribly. Well, truth be told, I hadn't really noticed, because pink and purple are kind of a mystery to me, so I figure they just look sort of generally bad because I don't like them - not because they actually don't go together.
This is a new rule: Don't knit with colors you don't like. It's not that much fun. Also, the thing will probably turn out ugly.
The rule has a second part, which might be Learning #2: Don't knit with fibers you don't like. It makes the not-fun even worse.
Did I mention that this is acrylic yarn? Well, it is. I was going for easy-care, trying to be nice to the parents who do this kid's laundry... well, forget nice. I like knitting with alpaca and merino and silk, and that's what I intend to do from now on.
The Fruit Stripe Hoodie, by the way, has been wadded up in a plastic bag and shoved to the back of the yarn cabinet, never to be heard from again. And I don't even feel guilty. Except that this girl's birthday is coming up soon and I need to figure out an alternate plan... maybe a sock monster?
Learning #3:
If you intend to ride in a bike race around downtown on a Saturday night, use your flashers, and don't even think about riding the wrong way on a one-way street.
Aside from the bicycle-complaints-related tickets that were handed out to some unfortunate bicyclists (including Heather Why! Poor Heather), we had a blast at the Back-to-School Alleycat on Saturday. An Alleycat, in case you didn't know, is sort of half bike-race, half scavenger hunt. Mitzi was my partner - we raced all over downtown Raleigh following clues, performing silly feats of trivia, and generally having a great time. For all you lady bike lovers out there in the greater Raleigh area, the women-only Pussycat is coming up this weekend. Don't miss it! (P.S. I haven't posted links because the site seems to be down... I'll try again later)
It's now back-to-school time for me, and though I have loved these last two weeks of no homework and no evening hours parked in front of the laptop, I do realize that sitting in front of the computer does mean more blogging, blog reading, flickr tomfoolery and other productive modes of procrastination, and I'm glad for that. Hooray for productive procrastination!
um... his blog made me cornfused... truer words never uttered about acrylic colors you don't like and the bike race sounds like a hoot! good luck with back to school, and keep on keeping on!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletehave you ever made mockups of your pieces on say photoshop, just to play around with diff colors? I mean prior to all the unraveling? just a thought, me i mockup everything, i'm working on my outfit for tommorrow right now, and I just finished doing a mockup of what my perfect dog would look like... shhh, but it has the head of a cow and wears baby booties!
ReplyDeleteWhat is the meaning of HWWLLB?
ReplyDeleteOk, first of all, I'm laughing because my friend and I use the term "learning" in the same way that you do here. I thought it was just us, but clearly no. I love it! Now, re: said learning, I couldn't agree with you more about working with colors and fibers you don't like. I think we've probably all learned this the hard way. At least I did. and lastly, yay for productive procrastination! :) I'm gonna check out HWWLLB's blog...
ReplyDeletealice,
ReplyDeleteHWWLLB = he who wears LL Bean
(i had to ask too)
:)
and fpea
i am so
excited to read
his blog....
if i ever find the time!
xoxox
The Alleycat sounds like a blast! Mick got a citation this week for riding his bike through a red light. He did the old slow down, look, and pedal on through. I think I yelled at him more than the police officer.
ReplyDeletemmm... productive procrastination. i do love that and am going to try to sneak it in wherever i can :)
ReplyDeleteand heck yes to the acrylic and color issues. i have unceremoniously dumped a bag of horrible squeaky acrylic into the trash after struggling with it for weeks... just no fun. superwash merino sounds like it would be just the thing, no?
xox