Soo much to say

Right now I am writing this entry from my hotel in Portland. I love my hotel sooo much. I kinda don't want to leave. Portland has been great. The weather is really nice and the buses and light rail have arrived at an amazing frequency.  Today I went to a coffee shop, the Yarn Garden (which is not an actual garden), went to the Japanese Garden (an actual garden) and saw Avenue Q. It was a great day really. Portland is relatively easy to get around in. Today while looking for Washington Park I learned that the light rail train going to NW 24th does a loop and doesn't actually go to the park. Oh well, it did stop right in front of the hotel. 

Visiting the redwoods on the CA/OR border was great. I took a lot of pictures but I think that they might all look the same...green. The roads to the camp grounds are crazy. But luckily Emmy (my travel buddy) can manage the driving a KIA Sedona (aka the KIA Sedona-mess-with-us) like a pro. Tomorrow we head back down south to Crater lake. So sad. I will miss Portland. 

Flipping Droped Stitch!!!!!

Sorry to say this, but I am not making an effort to clean up my language. In fact after discovering a huge knitting boo boo it may get worse for a couple of days. So all this weekend I was on a knitting marathon. I really wanted to get the yoke of my sweater done before I left for my trip. HA! not happening. Before I began to divide the yoke (i.e. separate the armholes from the body) I counted the number of stitches in each section. To my surprise I realized that I was about four stitches off in all but one section. That means that I somehow dropped about 16 stitches!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!! That is not good. I don't even think that I can fudge it by just making 16 in the last row. Damnit, so I guess that means that I will not start working on the body of my sweater this week... and I will do some major forgging tonight.

2008 Attempt at Orange sweater

Alright. There are a lot of people who remember the joy that I had at my first attempt to knit a sweater last year. And I am sure that there are plenty of people who remember how sad I was when I realized that it was not going to work out. I am pretty sure that I was angry, depressed and hated the yarn that I used for a solid six months. But it took me over a year to get up the c0urage to look at the darn thing. I knew that there was no way that I was going to re-due the sweater and fix it. The fact that the original orange sweater used four different stitches was enough to turn me off from that idea. I mean come on now, even re-duing a sleeve would be enough to make me waant to slit my wrists with a couple of US 1 dpns. So instead I am taring the whole thing apart to make a new (and way more simple) sweater.

So I started on the Gathered Cardi (pattern from Knit.1 magazine) on Tuesday and so far I think that I have made a great amount of progress. I finished the collar and I am working on the increase rows (I am already changing the pattern by adding two buttons rather than one. That way I will have one of them a litter higher than the original pattern suggest). Although I am getting a little bored with the project already I am curious to see how it will come out. The pattern suggests using cotton yarn. I am using merino wool (but I have felt to guilty about have $100+ of yearn sitting in a bag for a year) so I really have no idea it my completed project is even going to really shape the same way. Well. I am starting it now and I plan on taking my porject of my vacation. Yes! I will show pictures of yarn in many inappropriate places such as tents, moving vehicles, possibly brewpubs and definitely in a hotel room. Hopefully I will be able to make it out to a yarn shop while in Portland. I really want to take advantage of the fact that they don't have sales tax.