now there are 3!!

 When my son was visiting we played this awesome card game called Dominion in the evenings. At first you had to strategically choose cards for the game play and then nearing the end of the game you had to accumulate point cards. It was pretty fun. He has since left for Seattle to get ready for school and get settled in. I miss him and playing games in the evening. Such fun. He was lucky to leave the day before we were to get some rain from hurricane Irene. We were pretty lucky here also and only got little bursts of rain here and there before it moved on. There was actually more rain after it had passed us by.

 In my last post my son and I had painted some trees. He applied paint with a knife and I applied paint with brushes. There was one canvas left and I decided to make another painting to add to the group. I was trying to keep them all in the same color range. For the last painting I used the same colors but not as much of the silver metallic paint as in the first two paintings so the colors look a little brighter and I applied the paint for the background with a knife and then painted the tree with a brush. These will soon be hanging in my family room once it is painted with a fresh coat of paint. Painting these pictures was such fun.. I think I need to buy some more canvases and see what else I can come up with.

As you can see from the picture I am making progress on the Diamond rib lace shrug. As it is now, it will fit but very fitted and I wanted it to have a little more drape so probably two or three more repeats will do it. To bad I have to keep ripping. At least I can get back on track pretty easily. I need to hurry up and get started on some Holiday projects asap..!!

Here and there.. this and that

 This is what happens when you take pictures from a moving car. My son is visiting this week and we visited the Orlando museum of art. The exhibits were really enjoyable. They had American artist and some ancient artifacts, and beautiful crystal on display. After all the viewing we got hungry and stopped at Wholefoods for some yummy food, wine and deserts.

 One day we decided to have a painting day. We had an inspiration picture and decided to do our thing using the same color paints. He used the paint thicker and applied it with a knife, and I used my paint thinner and applied it with brushes. This was really fun and we had great day ending with a yummy dinner made by my son-in-law and daughter. We topped that off with a night of game playing. We have been playing Dominion which is a card game just about every evening. You should try it !!

My life seems to be full of shoes lately. I picked these up at the outlets.. very inexpensive and very different. I haven't seen them before and they are comfy as a bonus.

 Last but not least... my progress on my Diamond Rib Lace Shrug. It's growing a little. We have been busying this week and I have been mostly knitting in the car on our outings. Knitting with black yarn is a little challenging especially in the evenings but it isn't as bad as I thought it would be. I really wanted to knit a black shawl awhile ago but decided against it because I have always had a hard time knitting with black yarn. I have only had to rip back the usual amount of times.. heheh.

Andrea's Shawl.. Finished!!

 Well it's about time!!....Yes it's finally finished. For some reason it took me almost a week to bind this off. I don't think that was a reasonable amount of time and it normally shouldn't take that long. I was just lagging. Anyway it's finished now. I'm undecided about the outcome of this shawl. It is one of my favorite shawl patterns but there was a color in the yarn that never showed up in the shawl and that was the reason I purchased the yarn in the first place. I weighed the yarn and I actually have enough yarn left over to make another shawl but that will be sometime in the future. The other issue I had was that the Noro Taiyo yarn was beautiful to work with and soft and the contrasting yarn felt soft and spongy in the ball but after being knitted up, washed, blocked and dried it now has a bit of a prickle. So I am definitely going to knit another shawl with a better contrasting yarn. That leaves me to decide what to do with this shawl.. someone is going to be getting a pretty shawl for Christmas!

 Of course, finishing one project means starting another. I decided on the Diamond Rib Lace Shrug pattern (pdf) because I need a very light cover up to wear over tank tops at work. Recently I purchase a lot of pretty sleeveless shirts but we can't wear sleeveless at work and being Florida (hot and humid) I need a really light weight shrug . This shrug seems pretty lacy and light enough to wear down here. The yarn I'm using is a vintage cone yarn with loads of yardage that is a blend of alpaca/wool/acrylic. So far I'm really liking this.

Music to knit by.....

Biggest!!

 Big, bigger, biggest. It's growing a little each day. Right now this is the only project I'm working on. I had planned to start on some socks but then I would be splitting my knitting time between 2 projects and I would rather just finish Andrea's shawl first. When this is finished I will probably cast on some socks and a baby sweater and work on both.. or maybe just one more shawl. I'll think about it. The last picture is a little anime style picture I drew of the man.. hehe

beautiful days...

 Beautiful days in Florida lately.. yes it's hot too!! We are down one car so there is a lot of driving to and from work. I drop him off, drive home, drive myself to work, drive home and then pick him up and back home. The ac is fixed in the car and everyday seems to be so pretty that all the driving isn't that bad. I also get a little knitting time on Andrea's shawl. I completed the lace edging and border and started on the stripes. It's a little more stripy than I thought it would be.. I knit on....

So excited!!

 Finished the edging lace last night and was excited about starting the lace border. I decided to go for the larger version after reading others say that their shawl turned out too small and I have enough yarn for the large so might as well use it. I had originally planned to knit the medium size. It took me a while to decide on whether or not to use a solid natural yarn for the lace border or the noro that I plan to use for the striped portion and as much as I like how the creamy color looks in the lace pattern I'm going to use the noro. I haven't been excited about knitting anything for a while, but this pattern has renewed my excitement for knitting again. I think I found my knitting mojo again! Thanks to ravelry I also found the perfect sock pattern for my schoppel-wool crazy zauberball yarn. It is the Burning Stripes sock pattern by Susan Luni. I just love the heal and hope to cast these on in the next couple of days and a carry-a-long project.

Last week on our way to the store we had to turn around because a little playground in the neighborhood was on fire...I felt bad seeing this because it seemed to be deliberately set and there are not very many playgrounds for the kids in this area. Now there is one less.

So fun to knit!!

 Finally finished my Coquille shawl. It took me longer than I anticipated probably do to less knitting time the past 2 weeks. We are down to one car working around two different work schedules which means a lot of driving. This is also the reason for no posts in a while.. I really had nothing new to show you as far as knitting goes. There was a lot of home and car repairs during that time not sure you want to hear about that.. hehe. Good thing is now I get to start a new project and I have pretty new yarn to work with. There is a pattern I have wanted to knit since I first saw it and that is Kristen Kapur's Andrea's Shawl. This shawl has a very unique construction that makes it pretty interesting to knit.. So here I go, I casted on and started working on the first step which is the bottom edging using some charcoal bamboo sock yarn. For the body I'm going to use my noro 
taiyo sock yarn. More pictures to come as I progress.

For now I leave you with some nice knitting music.. (^_^)