Ingrid Michaelson tonight!

Last call for joining me tonight at the 9:30 club.
It's an early show and she's opening for Matt Nathanson who I don't know.
So I'm only planning on going at 5:30, watching Ingrid's set, then heading to stitch 'n bitch. I can't think of a better way to fill up my evening!

p.s. Both hubby and I are in love with her; she's totally on our respective "lists". I'm crossing my fingers that I get lucky tonight! ;)

Code Blue

Please bear with me as I fight with blogger over the customization of the blog. I spent way too many hours last night futzing with the html, only to end up overhauling the whole thing at the very end by upgrading to their new (and improved?) interface. This was probably a bad idea however since I think the new system uses xml and I only know how to work with html. So the fact that I have this nice saved word document with all the lovely html code I worked on doesn't help me too much - the new system won't accept all that as proper code.

The good news is that the new system does let you customize many things very easily. So at the end of the night I was able to sort of duplicate the look I was going for using blogger's new features. Now my only big task is to figure out how to get the header to fill the whole box at the top. The way its cut off right now on the right and left really bothers me. I've tried adjusting a bunch of the code in the new template page - haven't found the trigger yet.

Having said all that, I think I'm actually in the mood for a more dramatic change that would involve *gasp* NOT having a light blue background.

A scarf update

Thanks for all the input!!! I was so attached to clapotis that I couldn't judge the matter objectively.

After the overwhelming support for feather & fan, I ended up ripping out both swatches, cast on 2 needles sizes bigger so the lace would show up better with this yarn, and started in on a new & improved feather & fan scarf. I had only done about 3 rows when I saw the brilliant suggestion by Jenna to purl the odd rows.

As much I love reversibility, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that most lace does. not. want. to. be. reversible. End of story. By knitting every row, I had compromised the lace too much and it wasn't worth it just so it'd be a reversible scarf.
See? I'm not hopeless. Thanks Jenna! (and Seal, who I think was on the same wavelength)


Doesn't this version show off the yarn's colors and texture so much better!?

*Edit* So now I'm wondering if I want to knit the 4th row such that it looks like this.
It would help w/ the curling, but I don't know if its necessarily an improvement.
Oh, and because I have so much of this yarn, I'm thinking of making a beret/tam to go with the scarf so Gram could have a set. It wouldn't be a regular hat of course, cuz that would mess up her 'do.

the Clap vs. Feather & Fan

I've been swatching for a scarf for my Gram* and I can't decide between the traditional Feather & Fan pattern and a mini Clapotis.

The yarn is Duet by Brooks Farm (drool) which is a wool/mohair blend. These 2 pictures make the voting a bit unfair because the clapotis swatch doesn't have dropped stitches yet (which is honestly the whole point behind wanting to knit that pattern).

Here's how I see the competition:

FEATHER & FAN

pros: nice and traditional; something I'm sure my Gram will think is pretty; very easy & quick to knit
cons: I personally don't love how it looks; maybe I need to swatch w/ larger needles, but the yarn's complexity seems to obscure the lace.

CLAPOTIS

pros: fun for me to knit; I've done it before and liked the results; seems to mesh well with the semi-solidness of the yarn.
cons: Not sure it's Gram's thing - too modern?; I've done it before (should branch out?); and I've heard at least one person say it looks a little boring compared to feather & fan.


How do you see it?

ROUND 1
FIGHT!

* and so begins the Christmas knitting

New Love

I have been in love with Ingrid Michaelson for a few weeks now. BEFORE the Old Navy commercial debuted. But not much before.
I have the podcast Cast-On to thank for exposing me to her music.



And she's coming to DC in a couple weeks! Sadly, I have no one to go with so I might miss this chance to see her.

Update on last episode in the Things That Annoy Me series

I believe my last installment in this series was about coffee orders at the Miami Beach Dunkin Donuts. Well, I'm back on the Beach this week and while yesterday's hazelnut iced coffee was excellent, they got neither yesterday's nor today's order 100% correct. But they did seem to be doing better. Today's wasn't actually incorrect; I just had to repeat everything - once to place the order and then again as she was making the drink and kept confirming the wrong things.
"So that's cream and sugar right?"
"No, milk and sweet & low on the side"
"Right. OK."

I also learned today that they don't actually brew hazelnut coffee (at least not for their iced versions) the way their counterparts in the North do. This means that the drink is already super sweet even without the added sugar (thank god I asked for that sweet & low on the side), since the hazelnut flavor shot they use is essentially a sweetener. So this was a small bummer because usually the only reason I get excited to see a DD anywhere is because they brew hazelnut coffee which is NOT a common practice in DC.

Anyway, now you can move on with your day since I've provided this critical update. Carry on.

Ravelry scratches the itch

I'd like to say it was worth the wait, but that would be cheating since I didn't actually have to suffer through an actual wait: a generous friend of mine let me see Ravelry through her eyes before my invite came.

Those of you who think the site sounds lame or that you don't need another thing to join in your life...stop it. Just sign up and wait til the invite comes before you judge the awesomeness site. You really can't judge it by the screenshots they put on the homepage.

I'll give a more full review later. Calling it a myspace for knitters isn't entirely wrong, but misses the boat in terms of its full value. I often think of it as myspace and wikipedia smushed together where 'myspace' = any of the social networking sites out there.