Saturday, January 28, 2012

Kingdom Sweater

The past few weeks I discovered the British series, Kingdom. It stars Stephen Fry as a solicitor (lawyer) in a small town in England. This town has many quirky characters that make the show very enjoyable to watch. I found it on Netflix Instant watch if you're interested.

Anyway, Peter Kingdom has an older aunt he visits often. On one of the visits she was wearing a sweater that I am in love with. She also had a way cool knitting bag on the table next to her and a ball of yarn in her chair. This lady rocks! So I had to watch that scene multiple times and try to get a few pictures of the sweater.





The front of the sweater is very long and flowing with a wide lace band around it. The cuffs on the sleeve bell out a little bit with the same lace. The back is simple and ends at the waist. There is just something about this sweater that makes me think it would be very comfortable to wear and it looks quite elegant in the process.

While on the topic of the series Kingdom, there is one things about the series that has me upset. Like most British shows it has short seasons instead of longer season like we do. So it was 3 season but only 18 episodes. I can deal with that but the last 5 minutes of the last episode Peter Kingdom finds something out that is life changing. Yup - a cliffhanger. I shall never know how he deals with finding out that he.......... don't worry I won't give the secret out in case you decide to watch the show.

Now I'll leave you with a cliffhanger of my own. Do you think I'll actually take the 10 pictures I took of the sweater and design something similar to it or will I procrastinate and just let the pictures sit on my computer forever and look at them every few years and say - "gee, I should do something about these pictures."

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Surprises

A couple things came this week. The first was very unwelcome. Winter decided to pay us a visit. The wind chill dropped below zero and the wind was so strong it was hard to walk without tears coming to your eyes. But, still no snow to speak of. We had maybe an inch if you had a short ruler. This afternoon the snow has started up again so perhaps even that will finally come to the north Minneapolis area.

The second thing that came was a total surprise. I received a book from a publisher. I hear about that happening to other people who blog, you know the "famous" bloggers, but never to me. The letter inclosed with the book started "Dear Esteemed Member of the Kniterati". The book came wrapped in a huge ribbon/bow of yarn. How cool is that! So what's this book? To me it was a disappointment because I don't have a child of my own. The disappointment wasn't the book itself, it was the fact that I didn't have a child at hand to read it to. For some reason Chief and Bert weren't good child substitutes at this moment. But, I'll carry on and tell you about the book anyway. It will find its way to a child and I know it will be enjoyed more at that time.

The book is called "Extra Yarn" by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen. It's the story of Anabelle, a little girl who lives in a town with no color. One day Annabelle finds a box and when she opens it, she finds colorful yarn. She makes herself a sweater and still has more yarn. After making her dog a sweater and finding still more yarn she continues throughout her town to make sweaters for everyone and ..... well you'll have to read the book to find out what happens. The story is a simple story of generousity and illustrated with simple but very effective stories. I think its a wonderful story for sharing knitting with your small ones.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

New Year - New things

Happy New Year!
The year started out by giving us something we haven't seen yet this season in the Twin Cities - snow. I headed out to my friend's house last night at 8pm to a light rain and when we looked out at midnight the world had totally changed. There was heavy snow coating everything and making the world look all fresh and new.

This morning I've been getting a few things ready for the new year. First I cleared out some pictures from my camera. Back on Dec 23rd the sunrise was so amazing I had to attempt to get a few pictures as I drove to work. Unfortunately, I took pictures at the stop light and the best part of the sunrise had already passed.


Luckily, by the time I got to work things had changed up again and the sky was absolutely amazing. Now if I could just figure out how to dye yarn to look like this!




Now to more current things, today I've been packing part of the stash into plastic containers to protect it from the evil moths. I haven't seen moths for about a month but I decided better safe than sorry.

The boys have been very helpful in moving things out of the boxes and into plastic. I can always count on them.

Other new things for this year are my eyes. I have not had to wear glasses most of my life. About 5-6 years ago I joined the ranks of people needing reading glasses. I hate them. Having to put glasses on and off every 2 seconds is very irritating. I tried bifocals and they didn't work for me. I tried progressive lens - nope. So I've spent these years running around with readers on my head like a headband when I didn't need them - whipping them off when someone comes in to talk to me so I can see them. On and off all day every day. Not able to see the directions on the frozen dinner, not being able to read labels in the store when shopping. GRRRR! I know many of you know this feeling.

So, I bit the bullet and asked for options from my eye doctor. We came up with contact lens - dominate eye for regular vision, other eye for reading distance. I've been wearing them for a couple days and am still having to get my eyes used to the new way of looking at things but I think they're going to work out fine once my brain figures things out. Time will tell..... Now if I could just remember I don't have to re-adjust the glasses cause they're not there anymore! (my hand keeps going up to adjust and nothing is there)