Where have I been?

Well I got back into town a couple days ago. I spent the week at Bangrila with my family. We had so much fun! We had 90 degree weather, spent time in the lake, Greg drove the boat so the kids(and adult kids) could intertube on the lake. We ate like crazy and just laughed a lot and cheered all the Olympic athletes on.

We even had our own version of the Olympics. We had a table top tennis aka ping pong event hosted out in the front yard. We had seating as well as a full awards ceremony. The nieces made the medals and made a medal stand so the winners could stand properly as we sang the National Anthem(cover your ears)!

Well, as promised I finally have some photos for you of my final project for Nihon Vogue year one. Here is what the chain 3, slip, chain 3 looks like. I am not a crocheter but this crochet edging made me want to enahance my crochet skills for finishing.

This little edging was perfect for this project because I didn't want a full button band because the fit of the sweater was a little bit bigger than I had conceived. You can see more details about that below. The edging made it possible to have a nice finished edge AND have buttonholes for my little buttons.

Here is the final sweater.


I attempted bust darts with this project as well as doing a tiny bell at the bottom of the sleeves and changing needle sizes to get a bit of flaring in the lace area. Overall I am pleased with the results.

What I would change if I were to do this over again(which I won't) is to raise where the stockinette area changes to lace. I thought I had measured *accurately* where the bottom of my bra was so it would be more empire waist-y. I would ask Jean to help me measure this so it would turn out as I imagined. I would not use alpaca/silk which tends to grow length-wise(but I wanted to use something from the stash)

I would also not put any ease into the body. I put in 2cm ease and this caused the body section to not hug my body as I had hoped. That said, if I would have taken the time to really *think* about it I would have realized that in order to get the body hugging result I would either add zero ease or even possibly have negative ease.

I finally finished the Hemlock Ring Blanket while at Bangrila. I used 6 skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca Dyed Cotton. It is very soft and cozy. As Ellen predicted, the bind off for this thing takes a LOT of yarn. So if you are making this, keep this in mind!

Of course Chase has to get in on the action:



This is sitting on our guest bed which is a queen size bed. This will give you some perspective on the size of it. It almost spans the width of the bed.


The transition to this new chapter in my life has been interesting. I'm adjusting and feeling a tiny bit out of sorts, still.

I was at my monthly massage appointment a week and a half ago and Mimi and I were talking about life. She's going through a big life change and so am I. I was lying there all relaxed and telling her about some health concerns I've been dealing with. My doctor suggested I take up meditation or yoga, something to calm the type-A tendencies. I proceeded to tell her "I need to work harder at relaxing". Mimi cracked up! She said, "Did you hear what you just said? You need to work harder at relaxing".

Some habits are hard to break!