Road Trip!

Heather (from knitting group and the pub) and I went into Lawrence today. We stopped by the Yarn Barn and then went to Knit!Lawrence at the City Mercantile (the local organic co-op grocery).

Here's the result of the pub and road trip knitting:


This is a design that I picked up as a kit. It's by the house designer for The Yarn Shop and More in Kansas City. Cute hat, cute colors, but a metric butt-ton of ends to weave in and I have to get some ribbon for the ties. I HATE it when kits don't have the finishing material in them. Also, the yarn isn't listed on the materials list - another major growl.

After consultation with the folks at the Yarn Barn, I think it may be Mission Falls cotton. It's the weight, but much softer than standard dishcloth cotton.

I think I'll knit it again in a single color and rewrite the pattern. It's not very well written, though it is well designed for the most part. Those are two very different skill sets, I have come to discover.

When I was at the Merc, I had a very nasty encounter. I was going to grab some fruit and snacks, since I hadn't had lunch, and while I was walking around the deli case, an older lady was there and out of the blue she turned to me and said, "YOU don't need any calories." I was stunned, and hurt. I blurted out, "Madam, what I eat is none of your business!" and stalked away. If she thinks I'm fat now, she should have seen me 50 pounds ago! Honestly, though, what was she thinking BAM! drive by insulting????

Time to get back on the diet!

Kilts - some assembly required

I'm in SO much trouble. Here's several hundred dollars of wool from Scotland.

The top length is for a skirt for me, it's 10 ounce tartan. The bottom piece is for a "tank" - a hand sewn, traditional kilt - for JC in the heavy kilt weight Strome (16 ounce wool).

He's really started to get in touch with his Scot's heritage. I think, in part, because KT is so proud of her Irish heritage. That's a good thing, I think, but it brings with it a ton of new potential fiber addictions LOL.

Despite the difference in the intesity of the green stipes, they are the same tartan, the variance is due to them being from different mills and different weights. The tartan is MacKenzie, ancient colorway.

USMC Seal decision point

I'm at the point where I MUST decide what I'm going to do about the lettering on JC's USMC Seal. We both agree that the lettering as charted is terrible. "Unsat" (i.e unsatisfactory) is how JC describes it. The designer just used huge straight stitches - and so it doesn't look anything like the real seal.

I've been talking to Kimi and asked her if she'll rechart the proper font and letters over one for me. Hopefully she'll have time to do that for me before this come up in the rotation again.

Quaker RR fill in - May

The Quaker RR piece is filling in nicely. I got the left hand side pretty well finished over the last couple of week. When I get back to it, I'll work on balancing that over on the right side with three or so more motifs.

FINALLY some knitting content

The bee fields shawl has been humming along in the background at the rate of a row or two a night. Not enough to take pictures very often, though the rows are mounting up.

Here's the second section "Bee swarm". As usual, unblocked lace only hints at the glory to come.

USMC Seal - border

It's coming along. I'm backstitching it as I go because I really hate getting to the end of a project with the color stitching and then basically having to start over on part 2 with the back stitching. It's the same issue as second sock syndrome. When you are done, you want to be DONE! LOL

Tartan Day 2008

Today I went to Kansas City for the Tartan Day celebration!

The venue was EH Yourg Park in Riverside Mo. This is also where the Kansas City Highland Games will be held in June. The Tartan Day celebration was cosponsored by the Highland Games and the Kansas City Saint Andrew Society

The day started out chilly, I was glad I brought a jacket during the flag raising



and the parade of clans


After the flags, the festivities were kicked off by Glenfinnan, a local Celtic rock/folk band


There were demonstrations of Highland Dancing - from wee ones (I think she was about 6 or 7):


Up to quite grown up lasses:


The men also got into demonstrating:



(I wasn't about to tell this guy that his shirt and kilt clashed!)




(sorry for the quality on this one, I had to photoshop it quite a bit - I couldn't get very close and forgot to use the zoom on my camera.)

There was also a demonstration/lecture on historic weapons, but my camera battery died right about then.

And of course there were kilts


and kilts


and more kilts

(the guys from X Marks the Scot kilt board left to right Mark_Kenny, Beserk Bishop, Chatten Cat, Rogerson895)

I got sunburned, I ate a "haggis pup" (sausage hot dogish type thing), I sampled the local brew pub's wares, I got to meet in person people from the celtic music and kilting boards that I hang out at. It was a GREAT day!