mostly painless

I usually hate picking up sts for neck/button bands because I never get the pick up ratio right. I seriously thought about knitting a garter stitch edging on the raglan cardi. But I knew that it wouldn't look good so I sucked it up and decided to follow the pattern. In my experience, it usually takes me 3 tries to pick up the right number of sts but this time I got 99 sts (picking up 3 out of every 4 rows) on my first pass which is only 7 from the 106 that I needed. So when I worked the first row on the band, I just picked up the missing 7 sts.


I was hoping the cardi would be finished today but I didn't get any knitting done yesterday afternoon/evening. We went over to my co-blogger's place because our respective hubbies were going on a fundraising bike ride. Cops for Cancer hosted a recovery ride and for $10, you got a police escort - no stopping for traffic lights. While the big boys were having fun, I got to play with Gladys' little boys and eat strawberries.

My friend, Ronnie received her package of goodies so I can blog about my secret quilting project. I sent her a small thank you package in exchange for the lovely shawl and fingerless gloves. Her poor koi pond is undergoing some serious repairs so she really needed a little pick-me-up. The parcel contained some Knit Picks goodies along with a quilted wallhanging.

Pattern: Dresden Plate by Patchworks Studio

Size: approx. 25" x 25"

I had lots of fun making this wallhanging. It was relatively quick and simple. You use a double sided fusible to stick the black "leading" to the background fabric (koi). I used a small zig-zag stitch to sew the edges down. I just love that koi fabric. I should get some more for my stash before it's all gone.

Just so I'm not the only one suffering, I have this song stuck in my head.