Olympic Update: Silver? Bronze?

So I had a grand plan to not post until I was modeling my finished shrug – preferably I would post this on Sunday… Yeah. That clearly didn’t happen. The one two punch of being sick and being uber busy pretty much ended my Olympic dreams. Here’s where I’m at:

Soooo close! I honestly probably could have finished on time but after knitting the sleeves the first time I realized that I had a lot more hanspun yarn left… so I ripped back and made them much longer.

Oh well. In the end it’s more important that I have a shrug that I love than one that was finished on time.

I’m happy with my choice of the Medieval Red, though. I think it offsets the red bits in the hanspun really, really nicely. Thanks for all of your opinions on that!

Basically I only have about 10 more rounds to go. And I probably could have done it, too, but I just do not have the dedication of an Olympian. I got distracted by things such as a party and my fantasy football draft.

So here are my final stats:

Dying – 1 lb of fiber dyed.
Spinning – 8 oz of fiber spun and plyed into approximately 300 plus yards of yarn.
Knitting – about 80% of a shrug knit.

Not too shabby for 17 days. Perhaps I should get a silver or a bronze?

In other knitting news I finally finished the Odessa I’ve been working on:

It’s a Chemo Cap for a family member of Matt’s who needs it.

I love the Odessa pattern – it’s my fav. chemo cap by far. The bling is just so perfect... But man is it a pain in the ass to knit. Something about the lace and the beads makes it take for-ev-er. That and the cotton fleece was really hurting my hands so I could only knit a round or two at a time.

So it grew in baby steps and took way longer to finish than I had planned. I think the finished hat is completely worth it, though!

Tomorrow? Something way funner than the Olympics. No, really.

The Tulle Vortex

So Matt and I had opposite weekends. He was did this:



While I was wedding dress shopping with my good friend, Sarah. Now ok. I definitely belive that you should wear whatever you want on your wedding day. My dress, for example, was covered in beads because well... of course it was.

Close up of the bottom of my dress – just a crappy snap shot not like a professional pic or anything but you get the idea. I love beads.

So if you are all about the tulle princess dress than more power to you. However. Sarah? Not a tulle kindof a girl. So seeing her in this was nothing short of hilarious:

Especially when it twirled:


So we had her try on some that were less poufy:

Seriously. She’s a tiny little thing that would look good in anything – except for a dress with a knee bow apparently. The entire conversation while she was in that dress revolved around how impressive it was that her ass could look so big. That’s perhaps not the image most brides would be going for… we got a little closer with this one:


But eventually decided that we’re not really a David’s Bridal kindof a group. At one point this conversation happened:

Sarah in a totally disgusted and hushed tone: “It’s 100% polyester”
Friend #1: “But that’s what makes it so shiny!”
Friend #2: “And flammable!”
Friend #3: “Nothing says class like polyester!”
Friend #1: “And unfinished seams.”

Shudder. And everything she tried on was ridiculously overpriced for the quality. $700 for off-the-rack polyester? FAIL. You can get a much higher quality dress for that price. Possibly even at David’s but we weren’t willing to look very hard.

We had a lot more fun/luck at a vintage dress shop.

Well the bride didn’t have too much luck but it was fun to try on a huge variety of styles from many different decades. Sadly I couldn’t convince her to go for the Princess Di Sleeves. My friend, Michele, however almost bought this:

It’s an original Sarmi. That would be a designer that designed gowns for Jacki O. Yeah. It’s hand beaded silk. The quality of materials is just out of this world – they really don’t make them like they used to. And seriously to own a Jacki O dress? That’s some kind of rockstar. She still might go back and buy it…



Oh and my friends bought me a present:

Yup. Another creepy mystery melon courtesy of the yuppie grocery store. Luckily LB has a stand just perfect for photographing random produce. We played the “guess the color inside” game again… I guessed purple… what do you think?

More cowbell?

Ok so I need your opinions on something…

Remember this?

(Sorry for the sucky picture... it's very gray out right now. here's a slightly better close-up:)

That would be my Sahara that I was pretty convinced was headed for disaster. Well then I Ravelry’d it and decided that if the armholes are a little large it will just come out with more of a dropped shoulder look. I can live with that. Especially since I plan on wearing a cami under this anyways. So I kept up with the knitting and now I’m at a point where I have to make a decision.
To bling or not to bling.

I knit this swatch of the ribbing for the bottom, neckline, and armholes to check out the bling/no bling situation. I knit two repeats of the pattern w/o bling, then I slipped a bead onto the knitting at the center of each pattern for two repeats:


At first I thought: Needs more cowbell. I mean you can barely even see the bling! But I was pretty married to the plan of centering the beads on the diamonds… I’m picturing neat little rows of sparkle accentuating the v of the neckline. So I think rather than adding more beads I should just use different beads.

Because really when given the choice you always gotta go with the bling.

So ok then. I know how many/where I want them… but which beads should I use?

The Original Red bling:

I think this one may be too subtle.

Shiny Gray Bling:

Getting closer…

White Bling:

I think this might be too… white…

Black Bling:

Don’t know if this is shiny enough but it could work.

Or Silvery Gray Bling:

Also getting closer…

What do you guys think?