Tag: icarus

a sneak preview…

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Well, I know I said I wouldn’t be back until Tuesday. Well, I lied. Couldn’t resist offering a sneak preview of my Icarus, hot off the needles!

Sadly, it’s raining, so the field trip I had planned with Icarus today to Casa Loma won’t work. Sigh. Will have to scheme about other photo op ideas…

And here are the very early days of Sherwood, my test knitting project:

Off to enjoy the rest of my long weekend do some tidying up now.

As you can see, we’ve been partying hard in the Brouhaha household this weekend…

Man, those duckies just can’t hold their drink!

Happy Monday!

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Big Friday, redux

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I’m feeling lazy today…I’m taking a day off for religious observance. That’s right, folks – it’s Big Friday for all us Greekish types (see my post this past Good Friday if you want to know why this is so).

So, being the high holy day in the Orthodox calendar, I’m spending the whole day in church, right?

Yep. The Church of Icarus.

(Oh, what’s that? You don’t think that knitting is a real religion? Check out this recent blog post by fellow raveller Genuine: The Sacraments of Knitting: A Simple Tract. I was a skeptic too, but she persuaded me and I’m a lawyer and all – I don’t believe anything, really.)

Anyway, if that excuse doesn’t work, my back up excuse is that I need to finish Icarus ASAP so that I can start on a test-knitting project that I’m doing for Susan of Sunflower Designs! The project in question is called Sherwood:

So, of course I had to go out and buy some new yarn for it today at Amerigo:

Llama!

I know, I know – it’s not really my usual type of colour choices. Unlike, for example, the llama I already bought from Amerigo a month ago…

… or the Handmaiden Sea Silk from the stash that I had already designated for this project.

But I figured, what with the forest-like name and all, that I should go with a bit more natural hue. Makes sense, eh?

Sherwood also calls for 1300 beads to be strung on. Here they are:

I figured I’d have to get a bit of zip in with the beads, at any rate. That’s fair, right?

And hope I’m not jinxing Icarus.  I’ve just finished the 3rd chart and now have only 20 (very long) rows plus the edging left.  Decided to pin part of it out to shore myself up last evening:

JJ just said to me “Aren’t ye glad ye didnae throw it off the balcony, hen”.  So I am. And I will be praying this Big Friday – if only to the Goddess of Knitting to ward off the dreaded Frogman.

So, that’s how my Big Friday will pass. Oh, and am I going to observe the traditional Big Friday fast (i.e. no meat, no dairy, no oil, no food that tastes remotely edible)?

Am I hell! (as JJ is wont to say). In fact, I’ll be hooking up with some friends on the Danforth for a big fat Greek meal which will involve as much pork souvlaki, saganaki (fried cheese) and galactoboureko (custard phyllo dreamy treat) as I can manage to ingest.

Hey, we can’t all be saints, eh?

A happy Friday to you all!

same old ball of wax

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I’ve decided that Icarus should be today’s Sunshine Girl (wonder if they still have that feature in the Sun? I know it’s not on page 3 any longer. Political correctness at its finest!)

Why? Because… I finished Chart 2!

And it only seemed to take about 2 1/5 years. Sigh.

I’m almost scared to start Chart 3 in case I end up in deepest Frogland again. Besides, this arrived in the mail quite by surprise yesterday

It is a replacement skein of yarn for part of a yarn kit I got some time back. Claudia’s laceweight silk – 1,100 metres of it! The shop which is conducting the Year of Lace 2008 knitalong unfortunately had some problems with the first batch of yarn.

I hadn’t thought I was going to get a replacement – the only problem with mine was that the colour was rubbing off the yarn quite badly. My hands looked like I had done battle with a jumbo bag of Doritos and then with two econo-packs of Hawkins cheesies. It is not an unusual look for me, as you might gather.

Anyway, isn’t the colour fabulous!? Can you see why I want to start a new project now?

But, onwards and upwards with the Icarus.


Maybe I should dip my hands in wax before starting to knit? Then again, this didn’t go all that well for the real Icarus:

(Hmm – the background colour here resembles the Claudia’s yarn, don’t you think? Is this a sign?)

Enough. Off to work to earn my yarn allowance the rent money.

the curse of Icarus!

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Now, I know that Icarus had rather a hard time of it…

… but why did a cheering section have to show up and party as he fell?!? I ask you!

And yes, there has been frogging in the Brouhaha household this weekend. More frogging than knitting, actually, I’m sad to report.

Last night, I had finally managed to finish Chart No. 2. Only after great patting on the back and admiring myself in the mirror did I notice this major booboo:

See that big gaping hole to the right? No chance of passing it off as a design feature. Icarus falls again!

(I should note that this is by way no fault of the pattern. Instead, I’ve decided that it is a big curse on any Greek who attempts to create an alternate image of one of her Gods.)

So, I had to take it all off the needles, and while it was off I thought I might as well snap this photo for posterity:

See – it looks so lovely that I can’t bear to stick it back in the frog pond.

Actually, I’ve been wondering if the high percentage of green in the project has attracted the project-dooming presence of the Frogman. (Anything but take responsibility and blame myself, eh? On that topic, the ever wise JJ has apparently observed over the years that I always screw up on knitting when it is “that time of the month”. And that is probably more information than you needed to know.)

This is the lovely pattern repeat that has foiled me yet again:

So, I had to call in some reinforcements…

…remind myself that only last week, I had come up with this brilliant solution to all thing frogging-related, and just get on with it.

Things seem to be back on track now, although it means I’m still not done Chart 2. Sigh.

But Icarus is soaring again (and let’s hope it’s not as brief and endeavour at the first time!):

… and I can only hope that Kermit is finally laid to rest, at least as regards this project.

Given that it is Orthodox Palm Sunday, I thought this representation of Kermit was quite appropriate.

So, am I off to church, then? In a way… I’m attending the High Holy Temple of Antiques and Junk, otherwise known as the St. Lawrence Flea Market, after several coffees with a friend. Please wish me luck in scoring some vintage knitting patterns!

And, in my brain at least, I’ve renamed this knitting pattern “Daedalus”. He’s the one to the left

I know he lost his son and so that’s not the luckiest name either, but it has kind of a nice ring to it, no?

Happy Sunday!

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