Just Fluttering Thru

I have been busy as a bee with my knitting and for the most part staying out of trouble. I finished up with the 2nd pair of short socks for Katie just yesterday and have not bothered to take pics yet but probably should before they go in the mail. But my biggest news is that the body of Audry II is finished!!!! Praise be to the knitting gods cause if I had to knit one more mitered square I think I would end it all. But the little icord border that Shelly Kang put on hers in 3 days?? Well I think mine will take just a tad longer, maybe 3 weeks?? I am not sure why she was able to get hers done so fast. She mentions that she flew thru the parts where she had used a provisional cast on. I had 2 short segments where I had live stitches and I found those to be the slowest going. So I am glad I did not do more provisional cast-on and stuck to cable cast on for those edges. Another stumbling block for me was just figuring out the best way to do an applied icord for this project and finally after many false starts, decided to do mine with 4 stitches, knitting the 1st each time thru the back of the stitch, slipping the 4th, knitting a stitch up from the edge, and passing the slip stitch over. Oh and working from the back side. But then after finally getting about 6" done I decided I did not like the yarn color I chose. So I took almost a whole afternoon to dye a skein of yarn that I thought would work. It was quite a labor intensive dye job and until I was finally able to knit in onto the edge, I was not sure it was even going to work. But again, the knitting gods blessed me with the perfect yarn and I am finally off to the races. So next post I should have a picture of AudryII and maybe I can finally call her a FO!! Oh-And get this. My DH who never says a lot about any of my projects-let alone compliment one of them-actually told me it was way to pretty to be a regular old afghan!!!! I almost fainted when he said that. But a regular old afghan is what she is and I can't wait until it is cool enough to use her for the first time.

I have gotten started on dyeing my new cone of fingering weight yarn for a sweater project I will be starting soon. Today I did cochineal and along with dyeing my fingers red, I got 2 shades of pink and 2 almost identical skeins of rich true red. One of these needs to be maroon so I am thinking of overdyeing it lightly with walnut which is the darkest brown I have access to. I think if I just give it a hint of the walnut it will be different enough from the true red to work in the sweater. This weekend I plan on doing the browns, using the walnut extract, the aged pecan hulls I picked up at Ft. Sill and coffee. I need a cream so I think that I can get that using the spent pecan dyestock. Then I am going to do a dark green using some black hollyhock blossoms I have been squirreling away for weeks now in the fridge. Then I will be ready to start knitting. Well-except I promised myself to finish the aran cardigan first.......darn those pesky WIP's that hang around and haunt you.

Everything else is "same old-same old". The house is still up for sale with very few lookers. The weather is unbearably hot, Dh is a grouch because of both and I need a vacation. Which leads to my upcoming trip to the Nashville Quilt show. I am excited not just to see old friends and new but to stay at the one hotel in the whole US I have always wanted to stay at. I am staying at the Grand Old Opry hotel and convention center. I probably have the 1 room furthest away from everything but I am OK with that. I will put on my walking shoes and walk every single step of the gardens and atriums and probably take a million pictures. AudryII is going with me so she can have her picture taken one last time at some place really really cool. And I sure hope the weather is a tad bit better than here-oh hell it just has to be.. Til next time-stay cool and stay crafty!!