Big Birthday (slipped by...)

Sometimes when things are very - emotional - it's hard to write about them. And then I tend to just pass them by on the blog, which isn't right.

This past week was a milestone - a big one - and one that, given our past 2 years, we were not entirely certain we'd see.

Gerry turned 50 on Feb 5th, we had a very small coffee & cake thing on Saturday, and overall it was a very quiet celebration. Just being here is celebration enough!

But one thing we DID do was go to Nye's Polonaise Room for his actual birthday lunch! I love Nye's - it's like some terrific throwback to a Minnesota version of the Copa with hot dish. If it were in NJ, I'd expect to see a couple of goodfella's strolling in through the kitchen.

My friend, London, took me there last year and we've been a few times since then for lunch. I've never been in the evenings, when apparently it's a hopping place with a piano bar, I love the quiet "morning after hair-of-the-dog" atmosphere that permeates the lunchtime crowd.

I knew Gerry would love it, too! We had a great lunch, Chicken A La King (the special) for Gerry and a big walleye sandwich for me. Then we had amazing desserts and felt so happy and satisfied we gave up on seeing the movie we'd originally started out for, we just headed home to digest.

We also had a bed breakdown, literally. Our bed was kind of old, kind of ratty, and had been moved several times. Bits of it had been falling apart for a while, and it finally gave up the ghost this week with a loud CRASH one morning. There's always excitement going on in our bed.

After taking the bed apart we moved Max's bed into our room, and the poor lad is camping out on the only carpeted floor in the house (happens to be his bedroom) in his sleeping bag. We thought it would be a hard adjustment, moving from king sized bed to smaller-than-queen, but it's been not so bad (and a little fun.)

But we're still shopping for a new, actual Queen sized bed (king is too big for our room.) The honeymoon can't last forever.

HoTN
It suddenly hit me that I'd love to have a bag in my book. So now I have to start looking for paintings with bags in them...

I've been swatching and sketching for History on Two Needles. I've decided to do my swatches in one long strip, dividing them later as I need to and binding them off individually. It goes much faster this way, but it makes for some - ahem - unique pairings!

People keep trying to say nice things about my [cough] scarf, they're so relieved when I explain it's just a bunch of swatches!

I've made very few decisions so far about specific yarns for projects, but I will be trying all the new yarns I got from TNNA (they're still coming in!) to see what else may work well for the book projects.

It's hard to see in the image, so here's a second closeup. The Cocoon (at the top) is a VERY unique yarn with fuzzy, oval slubs running along a twisted cord. It can be knit up in a variety of ways, but here I've knit it up so that resembles cartridge pleating (image below.) The other yarns in this section of the swatch are Mango Moon's Ribbon (yellow/blue) and Trendsetter's Bombay (green)

When Cocoon is knitted up it looks very much like cartridge pleating (example of cartridge pleating at right from www.costumepastimes.com) I'm trying to find some cool way to use it for a few pieces in the book.

My main problem with it is that after I've worked a cartridge pleating section, I need a very similar yarn (velour? chenille?) in the same color to complete the garment.

Novelty Redux?
I tend not to fall in the category of big novelty yarn lover, but I don't hate them, either. I think they serve a purpose, and can be used to wonderful effect when used sparingly and intelligently. There's going to be a fur collar in my book and I'll definitely be using an eyelash yarn (a la my Raccoon Jacket) to create that effect.

But then, that's the hard nut of dealing with novelty yarns. It's difficult to use them to good effect, but not over do it, or try to make them do something that they're not really suited to do.

I may have to mix this groovy Cocoon yarn from Universal with a yarn from another company - maybe Touch Me from Muench? That's usually a No-No in the magazine world where ad space must be sold to individual yarn companies and they hate to be blended with other yarn companies. I must say I really love how it looks with Bombay from Trendsetter.

However, I have the luxury to be able to put this book together in the same way most knitters put their projects together - using yarns that are most suitable, even if they're not from the same companies.

I'll definitely try to keep projects single-company if at all possible, that makes it easier in many ways, but I'm not going to be a slave to it.

My most exciting discovery to date is the mixing of Valentina and Sunshine to create a beautiful colorwork fabric. Since Valentina is a ribbon and Sunshine a beautiful, glossy, shiny yarn, they are a cool contrast.

I've also discovered I can strand them together, use Valentina for a few stitches alone, toss in Sunshine with Valentina for a few stitches, and it doesn't seem to make a great difference to the gauge.

It looks like complex stranded knitting, but it's not really so hard!

Oh, and it's Harikuyo! I have fewer broken needles since I've been using the Signature needles, but baby do I ever respect my tools!