*sighs* I hate life

You remember when Marian Cotillard won her Oscar and she said something about loving life and love?

Sadly, I can't say I'm enamoured of life at this moment:

My herringbone stitch for my tomato is giving me a warm time. This will be the fifth time I've ripped back - boo. The thing with my tomato is, I fall between sizes - in addition, the pattern calls for negative ease. So instead of 136 sts or 156 sts, I'm working with 140. Herring bone stitch is a multiple of 4, but the way how this design is, it seems to be a multiple of 4+2 at round 1 and round 4. Arrrgh.

In other life news, my partner and I have decided to withdraw from the adoption process - even though its more a matter of jumping instead of being pushed.

According to stats, it seems that we're neither wealthy enough nor do we have an adequate enough 'social circle' to adopt. Also, I don't have parental experience, which is important since this child won't be ours, as the social worker keeps saying. I now need to call my referees and tell them to stand down.

So, I'm a bit bummed right now. Off to rip my tomato back two rows.... again.

Ohhh la la! New Knitty!

Have you seen it? Yosemite and ribbon scarf are mine! I have first dibs. Honeycomb is cool too.

Need to finish up my knitting. Yes.

See you Friday. :)'

Purple - or is it blue? Tomato

My partner and I have been puzzling over this colour of yarn. I think it's an ultramarine blue (the first picture is really accurate), while my partner thinks its purple. I actually hope that it's blue, because I have too much purple yarn. It's going to be embarrassing when I knit up all this purple yarn - oy.

So, I decided to look up colour psychology and came up with my favourite colours and what they meant.

Purple: Associated with: creativity, fertility, joy, but also magic, evil, death and sex

Orange: Associated with: stability, reassurance, warmth, and is thought to aid digestion

Green:Associated with: nature and energy, calming and restful, balance (halfway between red and blue) security, stability

Blue: Associated with: calming and soothing; promotes intellectual thought; believed to keep hunger at bay; loyalty, serenity, authority, protection, contemplative, prevents nightmares.

Whoa.

Anyhoos, this is my first top down pattern, it's knit and tonic's Tomato . I must admit, it's the only pattern from No Sheep for You that I genuinely liked, so imagine my chagrin when knitting daily offered it for free! After I bought the book! Grrr. I'm not using the recommended yarn for this project (Blue Sky Alpaca's organic cotton) because I don't like it much. It pills dead easily (winding hanks into balls!), would be very uncomfortable on the size 7 needles and just feels really heavy.

I'm using Debbie Bliss' Stella, a cotton/silk/rayon blend. It has a nice slubbed texture (to hide the inevitable pilling), and the silk will have nice temperature regulating abilities. I'm doing it on the sevens, using the directions for the smallest size (but added additional stitches on the armscye so I can wear a t-shirt underneath without it bunching).

So far, the pattern is easy. I must admit, I scratched my head when it came to backward loop cast on (too loosey goosey, I understand why its used for lace cast on), and how to join the neckline into the round.

That was because I'm accustomed to knitting from the bottom up, so the needles dipping down threw me for a six.

The pattern is going well so far *knocks on wood*, and if I actually put my mind to it, I'd probably finish this by Friday - but alas, I have to tidy my house, fill out a stack of papers (an inch high!) and get some work done. It also doesn't help that I've started reading comics again - in earnest - as well as all those Navy SEALs romance novels *sigh*. They are so utterly trashy, like junk food for the intellect. So decadent, and so good. I'm shameless, I know.

Yum.

Oh, btw, flickr sucks. Because I live in the EU, my picture amounts have been shaved to nothing. What it means is that I have to go back to flickr and delete some of my pictures - or pony up $24.95 for a year.

So, what's your favourite colour? What's the psychology behind it? Surprise yourself!

Rip it good

"There's dust on my guitar/ and it's all your fault/ and you've paralyzed my mind and for that, you suck/Ooohh"

I don't even remember who sang that song, but they used to show it on Saturday morning cartoons when I was a wee sprong.

Anyways, how have you been? As for me, I've spent the time reading good books by Suzanne Brockmann - who writes really good stories with characters that make me cackle until three am in the morning. Right now, I'm totally mooning over the plight of Jules and Robin - my gay one true pairing (OTP).

I've also spent the past two weeks knitting the short sleeved cardigan - only to face the facts: the slubbed, lived in texture of this yarn doesn't suit the crisp sunny nature of this cardigan. Probably a smooth cotton/bamboo or a bamboo tape would have worked. Alas, cotone cardi, we hardly knew ye.

So, I'm gonna rip it back and do a Tomato from no sheep for you. The Stella yarn is a slightly better yarn than the blue sky alpaca cotton (the recommended yarn) in the sense that the Stella yarn hides the pilling well, and with its silk/cotton/rayon mix, it should be comfortable to wear. I've never really committed to a top down garment to its completion, so I'm going to be putting the foot down on this baby. I want three tops for Spring, and this is top no. 1.

My weekend will be the following:

1. Rip yarn
2. Wind yarn in hanks, dampen and let dry
3. Wind into balls
4. Do swatch
5. Start knitting - Sunday night.

The grand thing - I'm wearing the heck out of my Phildar pullover. It's charming, warm and I might knit another one in another colour - and put on sequins and keep it 'for best'.

We will see.

I hope to update on Sunday (tomorrow evening), or mid week the latest. See you then!

Have you ripped back anything lately?