Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Remember when I wrote...

... the flamingo was too cute for words? Well, what say you?



When he was completely finished, I showed him to Rich and said, I don't think I can give him up. He said, "then don't, she (the giftee) will not appreciate him anyway." While that probably isn't exactly true, it gave me a lovely excuse to hang on to him.

He is from a Fiber Trends pattern. And while their patterns are usually terrific in terms of yardage and direction etc. This one was WAY, WAY off. It called for 2 skeins of Brown Sheep worsted pink and one black. I used three pink skeins! It took a full skein just to knit those two knobby legs, because you hold the yarn doubled. The "feathers" are a Moda Dea novelty yarn from Joanne's that I picked up on a whim. I should have paid better attention though as one needs between 30 and 40 yards of novelty, and this skein only had 11 yards!! I needed three and could have used a fourth. In short Franco Flamingo has lots more $$ invested than I intended. (I named him Franco because his soulful black button eyes reminded me of Franco Harris...don't ask.)I'm thinking of knitting a second one for the giftee anyway, but with a better choice for the novelty yarn.

Anyway, I knit him because I needed a little fun in my life. I was stressing about my new job and changing offices and just tons of other things, and this was just a very fun silly thing to do. I took the photo with my camera phone, so it isn't the best quality.

I may need to find some more anti-stress knitting. On Sunday, even though the temperatures were in the low 90s, we decided to go hiking late in the afternoon. We drove out to Penn State's Recreation Center, Stone Valley. We thought it would be cooler, and since everyone else was in town (or should have been) for the Central PA Festival of the Arts we thought it would be quiet. It wasn't quiet on the lake. There was some kind of boating/fishing event, but as soon as we got into the woods. It was very peaceful. Unfortunately, when I extracted a map from a posted sign, I was literally attacked by a nasty flying insect. I'm reasonably sure it was a yellow jacket, though I didn't bother to ask for identification. It hurt like hell! No stinger, got the bump, it went away, I used hydrocortisone, all seemed well except for a little, to be expected, soreness. To make a long story short, by Tuesday morning, I had a VERY swollen, hot, red, forearm, which hurt and was itching like heck. Fortunately the doc had an opening, and I found out that that bugger not only gave me a nasty bite, he also gave me cellulitis. So I'm now on antibiotics, and after 36 hours my arm looks and feels lots better. Still itching like mad though.

The fun just never ends.

5 comments:

aija said...

I love it! So cute :)

ladyfunk25 said...

The flamingo is awesome! My mother loooves flamingos so I'm really excited to hear about a pattern for a knitted one!

tekopp said...

oh my... that is one of the coolest knitted objects I've seen in some time! :)

tekopp said...

oh my... that is one of the coolest knitted objects I've seen in some time! :)

barbp said...

It's been awhile since I've passed by your blog. Your flamingo is totally cute - I just did their hedgehog and that was a fun fast knit.

My MIL has had cellulitis twice in fact just finished her IV's this week. The first time (last year)around she had IV's in each arm for about two weeks for her antibiotics - I hope your treatment was shorter and was not as painful.