Thursday, September 24, 2009

Concerto

I'm working on a KAL for a stole. The name of the stole is Concerto. The designer is working on another, larger, item that will be called Symphony. The joy of the KAL is that everyone participating is getting the pattern one section at a time. The first section had a lot of little daisies all over it:

Before even starting, I knit up this test swatch for practice. I also tried my hand at blocking, which is why it is pinned.
For acrylic yarn (which this is), blocking is very tricky. A process called "killing" is used. I was not a big fan of how the yarn looked after I killed it, so I'm not sure whether I'm going to attempt blocking of the finished project. I did like how the yarn felt, just not the look of it. I may choose to kill only the edges, to keep them from rolling.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Fixing the Car

I took my car out to my uncle's house to get it fixed today. He says he'll be done either Friday or Saturday. I'm very much looking forward to having my car back!!

On the trip out there, several things made me very nervous. One was that I could not wear my seat belt! It was stuck and would not come out more than a few inches. I held it across my body so I wouldn't get pulled over and ticketed for it, and after about 20 minutes it suddenly released, much to my relief!! I was able to fasten it and relax. Another worry was the lack of a driver's side-view mirror.I'm not sure about whether a side-view mirror is legally required on a vehicle, so I was very nervous the one time I passed a police car (especially since I had not yet been able to fasten my seat belt)! Luckily, my lack of a mirror was not very interesting to that particular officer.

The only other excitement in the trip was upon starting the car. The battery did not like sitting for 6.5 weeks and did not want to start the car (it was disconnected while sitting, but drained anyway). Jon hooked up the jumper cables to his car to get mine going, and at first nothing was happening. After a few minutes and still nothing, he double-checked all of the connections. One of the clips on his car was not connected well, and once he moved it, my car started right up!