Always Learning

I watched Lucy Neatby's Gems 2 DVD about colorwork and I was amazed at how she broke down the process. I have been making a huge carrying and stranding mistake. I tried her way as soon as I finished the DVD and the difference was astounding. I have not been stranding and carrying my yarn consistently. I finished the Warm Sipalu bag - all but the strap. I am telling you iCord is not my friend. I have only knit half of the strap on the first bag, knitting iCord makes my nose bleed - I hate it. Anyway, I digress, the simple step of always keeping your background colors to the right or top and you dominant colors to the left or bottom makes the finished product a thousand times better than stranding willy nilly. So I could not wait to start another bag, handling the yarn correctly. I cast on a Sipalu bag in the Main color selection/charts in the Cool palette. I am so anxious to see the bag knit "correctly" I cannot wait to finish the side panel and first welt. As advised, I wrote on the pattern and charts which would be the dominant colors and which would be the background colors.

I made myself put the bag down for a couple hours while I work the Glenesk swatch. I made center pull balls out of each color in the kit. There are a couple of colors that are so close that a strand taped to my color chart is not enough to see the difference with the naked eye. I am going to knit small 6 row x 10 stitch squares of each color in the kit for the chart. Then I will knit the Chart B Swatch using the "correct" carrying and stranding method. For this record, I want the dark colors - the blues and greens to be dominant so I will make those my left hand yarns. I want the reds, oranges and golds to be the background colors so I will carry those in my right hand. I will wrap every third stitch when stranding four or more stitches in a single color.

In other news - I finished the cuff of my sock and 20 rows of the leg, and I knit another section of the Aguona Laptop bag. I finished The Face by Dean Koontz, not very good, not a title I would recommend. I finished listening to Phantom Prey audiobook, again, not one I would recommend. Richard Ferrone absolutely cannot do female voices and more than half the characters were women. I was ready to tear my hair out by the time the last track played. OMG, never again will I buy an audiobook read by him. I finished Dexter Season 1, Serial Killers of America, and watched Deadliest Catch Season 1 AGAIN. I am currently reading one of the best books I have read in a while The Blue Nowhere by Jeffery Deaver. I have always LOVED computers but I was unfortunately born about 10 years too late. Personal computers were not released to the public until a year after I graduated from college. This book is quite old, I wish I had discovered it sooner - I have read many of Deaver's books, I don't know how I missed this one. To age it - the computers still used floppy disks. But I am loving the hacker talk and the acronyms and the Silicon Valley locals. It is hard for me to pay attention to the serial killer they are tracking, I am so into the geek speak. Awwww, to speak DOS and UNIX again!!