There’s a freeway in my way

(mostly) Wordless Wednesday.

I cross Interstate 35 on my way to and from work. It’s hard to simultaneously cross both under and over a freeway when you have vertigo.

Is she looking at me accusingly?

I suspect it’s becaue she knows I started a new project when I’ve already got half a dozen in the works. I think my next post might have to be a “confession” post about everything I’ve got going, and the stage it’s in.  Might be good just to get myself a little accounting. I think I forget about things after a while. (Actually, Callie’s hoping I will feed her here, and confused about the yarn I’ve put in front of her face that she knows she’s not supposed to touch.)

So this sweater is loosely – and I do mean loosely – based on a sweater in the May/June 2009 issue of Crochet Today called the Summer Breeze Cardi by Elena Malo. It’s a fairly simple 3/4 sleeve cardigan, but the part I’m truly using is the yoke. I can’t find a decent link/picture, so here’s a picture of the cardigan from the magazine.

The changes I’m making to the pattern (dangerous!) are:

1. I am not making a cardigan, I’m doing a single front piece with a back piece, and I plan to do some shaping to it so it won’t be just a straight sweater.
2. I’m cutting out the bubble stitch detail. It’s just not me.
3. No button (obviously).
4. I made up my own stitch pattern for the body and sleeves. The way the picture is shot doesn’t show you there’s extra detail at the waist and on down to the hem, and I guess that just turned me off of using this mostly plain pattern.
5. I will be attaching a simple charmeuse shell to the inside. It’s not a closed pattern at all.

My stitch pattern is simple:  Row 1 treble crochet, Rows 2 and 3 single crochet. Repeat.  This is what it looks like. The yarn I’m using is pedestrian. It was handy: left over from my flower blanket, the humble and yet pretty Caron Simply Soft in Autumn Red. I really love the color of this yarn, actually, and I have three extra skeins (I got carried away). So yarn snobs will just have to sniff at my acrylic, and I will itch tremendously at their wool. It’s a fair trade.

The things I’m keeping about the pattern are:

1. The open-stitch yoke. I like how far down on the shoulders it comes. I may even only do two rows. I do hate things that come up too far on my neck.
2. The split in the yoke. Although I’m not making a cardigan, I’m going to split the yoke in front. I like the detail.
3. The 3/4 length sleeves are staying. I will need to remember to make mine fitted like that.
4. The construction of the arm and body pieces. I think the pattern is fitted together pleasingly.

I am not very far along on this, so we will see.  If all goes well, I predict I will have a sweater to wear in October (what, you don’t think I’ll keep at this continuously, do you?). The timing is really fine, because no one in their right mind wears a sweater during the summer months here when it’s 95 – 110 F all the time. It would just be awful to sweat that much.

Lastly, I leave you with me and my coworkers from last Thursday. It is an odd pic for me to post, as it is of people which I have never done before, but I’m feeling a bit nostalgic (already) because the one on the far left is leaving us. I’ve spent a lot of time with these three folks over the past three years. These have been my friends and cohorts in fundraising and putting on that enormous 550-person lunch I talked about: Abby, Margaret-the-wonder-boss and Will. Yeah, and that’s me in black, with a small flower in my hair. Abby’s going to be so surprised to see this here! She sometimes ready this here blog. Hi Abby!

I’m going to go figure out what all of the projects I’m working on now really are.

My Weekday, Comic-Style

I have a drawing tablet, and I’m not afraid to use it. Wait! That should read “I have a drawing tablet, and I have no *$%&* idea how to use it. But I’m fixing that. In my ongoing quest to conquer my nemesis, Illustrator, I knew the next step was to draw something from scratch. So I got out my Wacom drawing tablet and selected the pencil tool. I soon remembered that my drawing tablet is an older variety and takes a bit of blunt force determination to get it to do kind of what you want it to do. But I prevailed! As proof, I present to you a bit of levity in my first comic, entirely drawn on computer! I can tell that drawing with the tablet is going to take practice, it’s a little like learning to write all over again.

Guess I should say something about what I drew? The first 2 are morning – I go find exercise of some type nearly every day, and I am working on running in a fun run in November, if you can imagine (I can’t). Coffee is a daily requirement, a beverage which my colleague Will usually makes. I will euphemistically refer to his concoction as “coffee” but it’s more like “coffee-flavored mud.” I advised him of the one-scoop-per-cup method of measuring this morning, and he laughed at my insistence on measuring.

The middle is my whole workday. I sit at my computer with periodic trips to the printer. Woo! Excitement! Action! Adventure! Seriously, I think that 95% of my work is computer related. That is why there is morning and sometimes afternoon exercise. Otherwise I would turn into a boneless puddle or would have to resort to one of those foot-pedalers under my desk, and I’m not ready to admit defeat yet.

In the evenings I play with my computer and cats and dog, and occasionally cook, and usually I do some more sitting and watch some sort of sci-fi and do some handiwork. I love sci-fi and can often be found watching old episodes of Star Trek and Firefly (gorram cancellation) or perhaps a new episode if the TV stations can be convinced to make new ones of the three I like. I prefer to do my more active crafting work on weekends, but I’ve been known to paint on a weeknight.

What to draw next??