Yum, that was good!
—————-
Listening to: Florence And The Machine – Kiss With A Fist
via FoxyTunes
15: Dinner dinner dinner
Tag: photos
12: What I’ve been knitting
I’ve been doing a bit of knitting… although I need to go and cook soon. Anyway, these are what I’m working on right now:
I’m a little worried I won’t have enough yarn for two whole socks, which is why I’ve stopped just short of the toe decreases (yes, my feet are that small) on the first one and started the second. I’m going to see how well the yarn seems to be doing on the way down the leg of sock 2, then decide whether I’ll need to rip back the first one and only have 3 pattern repeats for the leg instead of 4. Hopefully I won’t need to…
11: New hair
I forgot to mention, I had a haircut the other day. It’s gone from half way down my back (a few months ago it was all the way down my back, but then I had about a foot chopped off) to this:
9: Finished skeins – no.2
And here’s my second finished skein of yarn:
As you can see from the collage picture, the original fibre was turquoise, navy, and red. I rather like the way the colours blended, both in the spinning and plying process, to give a blue-purple final yarn (with bits of red). The fibre is Limegreenjelly BFL … and I don’t know the name of the colour. Anybody have any suggestions what I could call the finished yarn?
It was a lovely yarn to spin with – not as soft as the merino I’m using now, of course, but I think that was good since I was trying to spin it a little thicker, and since I’m still learning. It came out bulky weight once plied, by the way. The one in the last post is aran weight. The meino should be lighter weight – perhaps DK after plying?
8: Finished skeins – no.1
Still working on the bipolar post (I should stop faffing, really), and I’ve also realised that I seem to somehow be a post behind. So, here are a couple in quick sucession. I haven’t posted on here yet about the yarn I’ve spun, and since now is a good a time as ever… here is My First Yarn:
This fibre (Forest Fibres Corriedale Top) came with the starter pack I got with my drop spindle, but this is spun on the spinning wheel. I spun about 50g of the navy and 50g of the turquoise, then plied the two colours together. Ta-daa!
5: D’oh, reboot!
Well…. bother. It looks like I have to restart my browser. It’s all gone a bit wonky. Back shortly, I hope! Have a picture of the weather to keep you going:
3: A yarny post
As I said the other day, I’m not only going to be talking about bipolar, but also about the knittng and spinning that I’m doing. I’m even hoping to get some spinning done during the event (because if I sit on this computer chair for 24 hours straight, I may never get up. It also occured to me that today might be a good day to do some finishing: sewing up and blocking of some of my knits that only need that doing for them to be finished. Sewing at the computer is probably easier than knitting at the computer, right? Although I could try that too. I know last time that didn’t work out terrible well, since I need two hands to knit and two hand to type… and don’t have four hands (dammit).
In preparation for doing spinning, the current view directly to my right looks like this:
And the view directly behind me looks like this:
On Giving In Gracefully
So, back in March I made some bloggy resolutions about what I intended to do for weekly posting goals. Obviously, I haven’t kept those up… and then I started feeling like I was in catch-up mode all the time with myself, and oh noes, panic!! Which is bad, since this blog isn’t supposed to be a duty! Therefore, I have Made A Decision: I’m giving myself permission to “give up”. In actual fact what that means is that I’m going to forget about Project 365 this year, since taking the photos already wasn’t working out – maybe I can go again another year, but I’ll see how it goes. I’m still going to do the Friday 5 whenever I feel like it, but not necessarily every week. I am going to try to post more about knitting and spinning and things in general. This way, it’s more of an adjustment of my goals to something more realistic, rather than really giving up.
Another thing that I’ve decided to let go of is taking strict part of the Sock Knitter’s Pentathlon ’09. I haven’t been knitting very fast this year, and I’d ended up knitting nothing but those socks and still not finishing them. It all got a bit too much like hard work! So even though I love the patterns for the first two socks, and I really like the look of the third one which has recently been released, I’m not going to start #3. I do intend to finish the first two socks, but not as my most immediate projects. Instead I’m going to go back to my other knitting works in progress and try to get those finished off. They’d been pushed back while I was knitting just socks. That’s meant that I’ve now almost finished the shawl I’ve been making for Emily (I’m casting off at the moment, but that’s deadly boring so I’m just doing a few stitches at a time then putting it down again *g*). And I’m really looking forward to picking up the projects I’ve been neglecting and making some real progress on them. Hooray! I don’t even feel like starting something new, because my old projects are almost like new ones by now.
I’m also thinking about giving in using Coppermine for my photo album software. Yes, I’ve been using it for years on this site, so it seemed like a more sensible decision to keep using it and integrate it with WP rather than migrate to something else. But there’s a good photo album plugin for WP, and the integration plugin for Coppermine doesn’t do precisely what I want it to do – it’s a great plugin, and it’s probably perfect for everyone else… but I’m picky! Also, I do have to do some tweaking of the source code every time it updates because of the way I have my Coppermine set up, and… well, in the long run it might just be easier to change to using something more integrated with WP. It’ll mean not having to theme Coppermine to match WP, too. I’m going to ponder it a while more, but I expect I will change over.
Why am I mentioning this, when no-one but me cares? Because it kind of fits the theme of the rest of this post: I’ve been hanging on to some things that I should have gracefully given in on a while back. Letting go and making a few small changes will make things easier. Note to self: change is good, and giving up on something doesn’t necessarily equate to failure. There we go, that’s my deep personal insight for the day. Now I shall stop rambling, let go of this post and send it into the big wide world (= hit the publish button)! TTFN.
Spin spin spin
Today is 4th July, which means it’s the start of the Tour de France for this year, and therefore also the Tour de Fleece. (I understand the date also has some link with Americans blowing up aliens with fireworks, but I’m not really sure about that.) And what that means is spinning along every day that the Tour de France is on. I’ve joined up to the Ravelry Group for it – this is my first time, which puts me on the Rookie team and I’m also in Team Jelly Legs, which Jo set up. That’s appropriate in more ways than one, as spinning every day will no doubt give me jelly legs, and I’m going to be using fibre from her etsy shop, Limegreenjelly.
This is the fibre I’ve started with:
It’s Blue Faced Leicester, and it feels absolutely lovely to spin with. I shall post progress photos when I have them. And do what I said I would yesterday and give some updates on what I’ve been up to in general!
Conquering entrelac
Or so far… not. Heeeeelp! I’ve been going backwards and forwards on the first half-inch (the setup triangles) of the entrelac sock pattern that is the second pair for this year’s Sock Knitter’s Pentathlon. I was getting great big gappy gaps between the triangles and after I looked at this tutorial / pattern [Ravlink] for an entrelac scarf that someone on the mailing list recommended, I came to the conclusion that it was because of the extra two rows at the top of the triangles in the sock pattern – they didn’t ‘attach’ to the sock cuff. (The triangles were made by knitting increasing short rows, using one more stitch from the cuff every time until you get to six. I don’t think I can describe it any better than that, but the scarf tutorial has pictures.) The scarf tutorial, which starts the short rows with knitting one stitch instead of two like the sock pattern, solves that problem. So that’s what I’ve now done with those.
[thumb:1122:l:l=d:t=]Pattern: buttercupia: Noro Entrelac Socks. [Ravlink]
Yarn: Posh Yarn Emily in ‘Troubadour’.
Needles: 2.75mm DPNs
Ravelry Project Page: SKP09 Pair #2
However! Now that I’ve done all the triangles, I’m a bit stumped. I have to pick up stitches to start the rectangle / diamond section, and it says to work left to right. But I’m not sure if I’m sposed to turn the work before I do that, or go “backwards” on the right side, or what. Aaaaaaah, confusing! I think I’m just going to have to experiment and see what happens. I should have knitted a swatch first. Oh well!!
Other than the entrelac socks, I’ve been doing some spinning, actually remembering to keep up with taking Project 365 photos (I’ll post those soon), and… um… also doing other stuff? Oh, I know – I have new glasses which is great because now I can see what I’m typing (always helpful), and I’ve also been reading a fair bit. In fact, I’m thinking of doing Dewey’s Read-a-thon, although I should probably make my mind up soon if I am going to join in. If I do, I don’t think I’ll commit to the whole 24 hours because I don’t want to mess my sleeping patterns up again just as they seem to be improving, but I could do 12 hours easily. I would say more, but it starts at 1pm BST (the site says GMT, but they mean current UK time by that, not actual GMT) and that would make my finishing time too late. And in fact, since it’s just past 1am right now, I think I’d better go to bed and get some kip! Night.
How many voices, now?
Huh, yeah… you remember how I was babbling about different voices. Or ranges / registers in your voice, I suppose. Well, my chest voice is now still about as much use as it was the other day, but my head voice has taken itself off as well. D’oh! I probably sound rather silly. However, I feel quite a lot better, so yaaaaay! I haven’t gone back to knitting anything because I don’t want to cough over it and make it all germified… although I spose if I do my Pentathlon sock it won’t matter since that’s only for me anyway and the needles should be perfectly washable.
Anyway, here’s what I did get done for Christmas:
Some fingerless mittens as a surprise for my brother, since their flat is really cold! He also thinks they’ll be good for when he’s on his bike. [RavLink]
And some rather less finished….
… mittens for my sister-in-law-to-be (I have got to find a snappier way of phrasing that, but “brother’s financee” is almost as long to type!). I did actually finish this one, but I forgot to take a photo. D’oh. Anyway, I gave her that one as an “IOU”, and as soon as I’ve stopped being all yuck, I’ll get the other one done. At least I now do know that I had the sizing right! [RavLink]
I think they both liked them – I wasn’t quite sure what my brother would think about a (*gasp*) hand-made present, but he actually seemed pretty pleased :-)
On different voices
Did you know that people have two (at least) voices? “Chest” voice and “head” voice*. I guess most people only use one most of the time, or don’t notice when they switch from one to the other. Mainly, it’s your chest voice that you use for speech. When you sing, you’re much more likely to leap from one to the other, particularly when there’s a large difference from one pitch to the next. A lot of singing training is to do with getting those different sounds to be consistent with one another. Not to have an obvious bridge moment where you suddenly go into high-squeaky mode or back down into your lower register. If you’ve ever played a wind instrument you’ll know what I mean: it’s much the same thing. It’s got to be smooth and without any odd swoops or jags or squeaks.
Anyway! The point is, right now I have very little chest voice. Speaking is all over the place. There are definitely swoops and jags and squeaks. Unless I deliberately pitch my voice into my head register. Singing, needless to say (particularly since I’m a soprano), is perfectly do-able. Not great-sounding for some things, but do-able. I went to Christingle service at my Mum’s church, and she was most surprised. I’m not going to talk in my head register, though, because it makes me sound about five! I’ll get by – I feel pretty much ok, I just sound croaky.
Huh, that was a sudden swerve into music geeking, wasn’t it? Um. Have a Christingle:
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!
* This isn’t breath support: that’s another thing. Which comes from the diaphragm and… oh never mind ;-) I’ll shut up!
Future changes…
I’ve spent most of today playing around with the new version (2.7) of WordPress with a view to moving this site and blog over to using it in the new year. I love it! I liked the previous versions, but this one is even shinier, and so much more intuitive to use than the newer versions of MT for me. Sorry, SixApart… I’ve been using MT for almost exactly five years, but it’s just not for me any more. I’m going to keep my LJ though, so I’m not completely decamping ;-)
The main trouble with the changeover is going to be preserving permalinks for my blog entries, and recreating my tags. Those, I can’t import. Everything else seems to go across fine, which is good. I’ve already imported the entries from my old blog to test it out, and installed a few useful plugins. Next thing is to create a design / theme. Whee :-)
Of course, I’ll also have to re-theme my photo gallery… I should probably upgrade the version of that, too. I wonder if it’d be easier to do that, or to use a WP gallery plugin and run it all from the one place. Hmmm. It’d muck up all the images on this blog if I changed the gallery to something new, though. Oh dear, the agony of choice!!
Project 365 #9, Days 68-82: 17th – 31st March
Back to the catching up! Here are days 68 to 82 of my Project 365 photos. If you want to see all the photos so far, click on the Project 365 category link, or check out the Project 365 folder in the photo album. Or for the most up-to-date version, try my Flickr set.
On to the pics (click them for the full sized versions):
Continue reading “Project 365 #9, Days 68-82: 17th – 31st March”
Project 365 #8, Days 52-67: 1st – 16th March
Stiiiiiiiill catching up: here are days 52 to 67 of my Project 365 photos – the first half of March. I’m going to post them in chunks of half a month at a time until I get caught up, now. If you want to see all the photos so far, click on the Project 365 category link, or check out the Project 365 folder in the photo album. Or for the most up-to-date version, try my Flickr set.
On to the pics (click them for the full sized versions):
Continue reading “Project 365 #8, Days 52-67: 1st – 16th March”