Spring Knitting

Yes, a whole season has gone by, with not much knitting to show for it.  However, I haven't yet posted pictures of the things I made way back for the gift exchange with the Langley girls!  My secret gift person that I was knitting for was Anna, who is a fellow linguist and a beautiful, sincere and joyful person.  It was so fun to make these projects for her!  First up, I knitted her the "Musica" fingerless gloves pattern.

Fair-isle really is exhausting.  Next glove/mitten pattern I do (which will probably be the Norwegian Totoro Mittens) I shall do doubleknit to save myself the agony of fair-isle knitting.  Anyhow, the other sizeable project I knitted was a simple Leaf Lace Scarf with beads.  The crochet method of adding beads to knitting has revolutionized the way I do lace.  It's so easy!  I love this colourway of yarn because it really does look like a dappled forest.  Here are a few pictures from knitting to blocking to finished project.  Incidentally, I learned that the foam inserts from inside my DDR mats make excellent blocking mats for knitting.  The pins stick into them really well.  Who knew they would come in so handy?  See them in action below!

Lastly, I finally looked up some online tutorials and discovered what the heck a crimp bead actually is, and made a few little stitch markers for her.  Yes, one of them is a dinosaur.  It's more awesome that way.

Now, in terms of current knitting, I became addicted to the lace-beads combination and have started the Haruni shawl with silver beads placed throughout.  The yarn is a gorgeous Malabrigo Lace that I fell in love with at a local yarn shop (while I was just browsing and trying very hard not to buy anything) and might be a good choice if I ever decide to knit the Here Be Dragone Shawl.  The first half chart of Haruni is actually quite memorizable so this has become my carry-around knitting for the moment because of its compact size.

I am also so very nearly done DS' scarf, the current project for the knitting request list.  This scarf has been sitting at nearly done for about a month now because it has gotten to the size that it's very hard to carry around.  But, soon it shall begin its journey to the Netherlands and find a new home there. (Picture only given of scarf in jellyroll form, because it's a surprise!)

I shall soon be finishing a couple potholders that I'm (much belatedly) giving out as prizes for the Retro Sig Week Contest at GotWoot.  Grats again to the winners, Archangel and Ryllharu!  Feel free to poke me if you don't have any news on this within a couple weeks, because sometimes I forget about these things.

And speaking of GotWoot, we now have our own fansub group.  The team is led by the amazing and talented Sapphire, and currently is releasing House of Five Leaves, which is a fun samurai anime with quirky characters and a unique art style that might take a bit of getting used to.  We've got an irc channel up and running as well so you can always visit #gotwoot on irc.rizon.net.

Lastly, here is my latest baking adventure.  This week I was given the privilege of bringing a birthday cake for an amazing friend of mine at small group.  Now, I love these kind of opportunities because I get to try out new recipes and use everyone as my guinea pigs, hehe.  Anyhow, I wanted to do something special for her, because she has really impacted my life and blessed me more than I can say, and I feel like this birthday for her is fairly significant, so I wanted to mark the occasion with something elegant and extravagant.  What better time to try out making fondant?  The base cake was just a basic chocolate cake recipe I found on allrecipes.  Rating: satisfactory.  I used this online photo tutorial for making marshmallow fondant, and this stuff is fun!  By the time I'd finished kneading the different food colourings into my little fondant chunks, my hands looked like I'd been tie-dying all day.  The shapes I used to decorate the cake are reflective purely of the cookie cutters I own.  Verdict:  very fun experience, and tasty fondant!

Oh, and before I bid you all goodnight, I have just discovered that LeVar Burton (who you should be familiar with if you ever watched Reading Rainbow or Star Trek) has just launched a debut comic book entitled "Con-CERNed".  As the name suggests, it follows a physicist who is working at the Large Hadron Collider who gains superpowers and is purported to be a tale about "physics, family, and consequences."  The geekiness rating of this is off-the-scale, but it makes me oh so very happy.  Read the comic here!  (As a side note, you should check out the LHC on Twitter too, because whoever is tweeting there is hilarious, as I discovered via my friend and fellow blogger Beth).  Have a lovely evening and a fantastic week my friends!  Catch you next time.