Friday, May 18, 2012

Friday Mishmash

After four years of blogging, I finally reached my photo upload limit.  I blame my week-long Beach Palooza recap (side note - I just reread those posts - dang, that was fun!). Nah, it's all good - basically I've used Blogger for free for all this time; now it's going to cost me $2.49 a month for the photos.  Well worth it to support my crazy habit!

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Speaking of four years of blogging, thank you so much for the sweet comments on Monday's post.  I love that not only did I hear from my regulars, but also from some people who I had no idea were reading my blog!  Which is nice, because sometimes I wonder if it's just me and the same 10 readers...now I know - there are more, they just rarely comment.  Which is perfectly fine by me - I get "comment overload" when I read blogs and don't always comment, either.  I'm just glad y'all are here, whether you say anything or not.

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I finally got Jeff his medal hanger!  It took me forever to figure out what to have it say - I had the word "tenacity" floating around in my head, as that described how he was toward training for his first half marathon, but it wasn't long enough for the hanger.  I got some great suggestions from many of you and those eventually led to "TENACITY + SWEAT = MEDALS" - I worked with Joel at Allied Medal Displays to get the sizing and symbols right - as usual, he was wonderful to work with and I can't recommend this company enough if you want a really special medal hanger.
 
Sorry for the flash - it's the only way I could get the shot without the shadow of the letters on the wall.
 A runner's wall.

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Sometimes I struggle with how much to put "out there" on this blog, because it's fairly easy to figure out where I live, and what stores I might be talking about...and I really try to not speak bad, publicly, about small businesses - I know that it's not easy being a business owner, and they are only human, after all.  I said all that to say that things did not go well with the last class on my windmill bag - suffice it to say that when we started to sew up the sides, it became apparent that something major wasn't right.  And you know, after paying a decent amount of money for the class and the yarn, I was pretty peeved because honestly, I could have made those kinds of mistakes on my own and spent the class fee on something fun.  Sighhhhh.  We ended up leaving our bags with the instructor at the store so she could figure out how to fix them.  I had additional frustration because I'd already started a second bag, so I knew that one was messed up as well.  I was able to pick up the first bag a day later, and brought the other one in so she could take the two panels apart and get them reattached in the correct direction.  So now I'm supposed to do on my own - sew up the side panels - what we would have done in class...and we'll have yet another class this coming Tuesday to deal with the handles.  One of these days, this bag will be finished, but for now, this is what it looks like:
Not any different from last week!

Here's the second bag I started - I used some different yarn (that I already had) - it doesn't have the texture like the yarn in the first bag, so I did the seed stitch on the pink, for variety.  Guess what I discovered?  Seed stitch is kind of a pain - it's boring, but you have to pay attention or you'll mess up (note the hole near one edge - oops, but I'm not too worried about that, as it should be hidden once I sew the panels together).  Anyway, it's a good thing I discovered that I'm not a huge fan of that particular stitch, because I was considering doing a baby blanket with that as the border - which would have driven me crazy.
Pink for my favorite girl, who I'll be visiting in about 6 weeks!

I finally decided to do a diagonal baby blanket for my next project - I played with the pattern over the weekend making a washcloth, and liked that I could pretty much zone out while doing it, and still end up with a nice design.  Here's the start:
With every row, you increase by a stitch until you get to a certain number, and then you start decreasing all the way down to the point...for such a simple pattern, it sure looks nice!
This is James C. Brett's Marble Chunky yarn - it comes in huge skeins so I only needed two.  This color is Rosebush and it will sort of stripe/pattern itself as I knit.  I like mystery yarns like this, and can't wait to see what the finished blanket ends up looking like!

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I saw this on Facebook yesterday and had to share - it describes, with absolute perfection, how my brain looks at math:

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Have a great weekend! 

14 comments:

  1. haha! I saw that on FB as well from one of my friends and it's very fitting. That's how I feel about math as well!

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  2. Why don't those of you taking that knitting class demands that you get an additional FREE class to be shown how to sew the bag up. The instructor should have offered that automatically!

    The runner wall that you've done for Jeff is so sweet Shelley. I adore how you guys support each other in your running ventures!

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  3. I feel the same way about Math! I was never fond of story problems as a kid. LOL

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  4. That medal hanger is pretty cool! You guys are going to need to build an addition to house all the medals and photos.

    John loves math (it was one of his undergrad degrees as a double major) and he feels bad when people hate math LOL.

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  5. All I can say is thank for spending the $2.50 to keep me entertained. I love all your photos!

    Sorry about the purse. I would be pissed as well, especially if I paid for the "expertise." I can't believe how well you knit for just being at it for a short period of time.

    Have a great weekend!

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  6. LOL at the math word problem! You are doing pretty darn good at math, if you ask me, with all this knitting you are doing. That baby blanket in that yarn is GORGEOUS! Now I want to do that. I love knitting on the diagonal. You can do a neat looking scarf using that same method!

    Jeff's medal rack looks fantastic. Very manly.

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  7. I love that "math" ecard - my 15 year old son is struggling through honors geometry this year and that is EXACTLY how I feel when I foolishly attempt to help him study for his tests.

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  8. I saw and posted that same thing (re math word problems). It's STILL cracking me up because it's so true of me!

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  9. Ha! Glad that there's someone out there that sees math word problems the same way:P

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  10. What an awesome medal hanger and "shrine" to your husband's running. Very neat. I really like Allied Medal Hangers too, what a great company.

    Have a great weekend!

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  11. I love the hanger you made for Jeff! And I love that you made a runners wall - you guys should both be proud of yourselves!

    I am mathematically challenged too - I guess I had a bad teacher in grade school and I never was able to keep up!

    Happy Friday Shelley!

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  12. The medal wall is PERFECT, a very sweet thing to do for Jeff! Math looks like that for me too! Good luck on the knitting thing, I am hopeless when it comes to stuff like that!

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  13. The runners wall is so cool with the hanger and the photos above it. Did he like it?

    I had to look up the seed stitch :) it's called "boordsteek" here and it's mostly used at the bottom of a sweater for about 10 needles. I think making an entire piece in this stitch would drive me crazy too. I love the purple baby blanket. You're improving so much with your knitting. Love it.

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  14. I laughed at that on facebook as well. I am not horrible at math, but a lot of problems tend to confuse me with their too many parts!

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