last days of summer

I go back to school today, after a holiday of about 2.5 weeks (I have to do summer school in order to graduate quickly).  It feels like school should not be for a long while yet, and I am feeling quite rebellious about my forced return, as are many of my classmates.

I was lucky, however, that I got to have a little weekend away in Charleston with my mom.  Here are some photos from the trip, all taken on my iPhone 4S.

Old buildings on Kings Street in downtown Charleston really add interest and history to the experience.

Many buildings are well kept and used as apartments/lofts above the shopfronts.

On Kings Street we stopped at Jim N’ Nick’s Bar-B-Q for some delicious beef brisket sandwiches.

On our first morning, we went to the beach on Sullivan’s Island. It was very hot, but the water felt nice.

Some intense looking rainclouds came in, though, and drove us away in the early afternoon.

We went back to the market area downtown, where we visited Kaminsky’s Cafe and had some incredibly delicious multi-berry cobbler.

On the way back home the next day, we stopped at Middleton Place, an old plantation home, and took the garden tour.

There were many ponds, this one full of lilies, and all around on the live oaks and bald cypresses hung multitudes of Spanish moss.

Here’s another example of the Spanish moss. Very eerie looking, don’t you think?

We had a great time on our trip, even though there was some rain, and I feel much more relaxed now and maybe a tiny bit more willing to go back to school.  Maybe.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any yarny things to share with you today!  No new Ravelry faves, no progress on my current projects, no nuthin’.  I just wanted to share my Charleston experience because it is a very unique and special place, and so different from many other vacations.

Thanks for stopping by!  I’ll have something yarny next time, I promise!

yarn journal

Firstly, I want to say a big thank you to Hannah Ackroyd, who introduced me to this.  Thanks Hannah!

The Kathryn Ivy blog/site  provides free PDF pages for your printable organization needs.  You can make a binder (with dividers, perhaps) to organize your knitting/crocheting projects, your yarn stash, your needle/hook stash, your yarn wish list, your queue, notes, sketch pages, and graph paper of different sizes!  How cool would it be to be so organized, to be able to show off your finished projects with ease, and to be able to express your own yarny creativity all in one place?  Check out this screenshot of the crochet project sheet:

It’s a little small but you can see there’s space for a photo, all your yarn specs, notes, and at the bottom you can tape/paste your yarn label and a little snippet of yarn!  I can just picture a lovely neat binder full of these completed sheets!  So are you interested in making your own project journal?  Then please go to the site with all those lovely pages:

click here.

I do apologize if this is something everybody already knows about — it was new to me and I just had to share!  Thanks again to Hannah for enlightening me.  Now I just need to go out and buy a hole puncher and a nice pretty binder and I’ll be ready to start getting organized!  I’m so excited — it’s like Ravelry in physical form!

As always, thanks for stopping by!  I’ll be on a short vacay in Charleston with my mom starting tomorrow so I might not update for a few days, but I’ve left such a condensed wad of posts that it makes me feel like it somehow all equals out. 🙂

reviewing yarn

I’ve begun working on an alphabetical list of yarns I’ve tried or that have been recommended to me by trusted sources (some of which are you lovely commenters).  Here’s the page that has it all so far.  I’ll be adding to this page as I find and try new yarns.  I hope it’s helpful, and as always, thanks for stopping by!

ta-da!

I finished my mom’s shawl for our England trip this Christmas!  The free pattern is found here, and you might recognize it from my first one that was made for myself.  Here it is:

 

I’m excited about the result!  I think I’m going to suggest to my mom that she wash it and block it to stretch the ends a little more, like I’m planning to do with mine.  This shawl does not have the tassels on the ends that are included in the pattern — Mom preferred hers without them, and I think it looks just as good.  I also love the creamy colors!

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now, but I’m going to try and post a little more than I have been lately — I know I’ve been really slack about it.  Anyway, thanks for stopping by!

 

getting along

To practice my fair isle technique, I made a hat!  I’m really happy with it.  It only took 2 days to finish, which is even better.

 

 

 

I made it with some spare Berroco Vintage yarn that I just had lying around.  The pattern is my own conglomeration (I used other patterns to make it but nobody else has made this exact hat).  The fair isle pattern can be downloaded here, and the hat pattern itself can be downloaded here.  If you follow the hat pattern and CO 96 sts, the fair isle pattern matches up perfectly.  I’m really happy with it.  Unfortunately my phone camera wouldn’t quite pick up the purple color correctly — it looks almost brown in the first picture — but it is purple, and the background is light blue.

That’s all I’ve got for today, thanks for stopping by!