Another Music Journal Page

The text, I guess because it is white, looks much more prominent in the photo than it does in real life, and there is some gold paint in the stems of the lotus pods. The pears are not quite as "loud" either, but photos just sometimes are what they are, and you can't change them to suit yourself.. hmmm I suppose that was profound somehow, but then again....

New York Prayer Flags

I was reading the other day about Prayer Flags. In Tibetan they are called lung ta meaning Wind Horse. They are left until they have disintegrated from the elements and are one of 5 colors (red, blue, green, yellow and white). It started me thinking about the things that catch in New York trees and how, in their way, they resemble Prayer Flags as they disintegrate and blow away. I had one outside my window for a while, but it shredded pretty quickly, and was gone in a month or so.  So now when I spot one, you are going to get to see them here.

According to Wikipedia, the Lung Ta are placed in high places so that the prayers for good that they carry will be dispersed over a wide area and be good for all beings.  They are not prayers TO someone but rather prayers FOR wellbeing..  I love the thought.

Dinner at Omai

Really good, Vietnamese with a Japanese influence. Yummy...

blocking

Well, I decided to block one thing. This is a little shawlette, It is from the Pacific Shawl pattern from Ravelry. It is designed for bigger yarn than I used, so what I have is a very small light shawlette that fits easily inside your coat.

Because I really did want to use beads, I had to find some really tiny ones. They barely show, but I actually like that. They were, however, a bear to get in with the world's tiniest crochet hook. Splitting the yarn was a big problem. This yarn is Dream from the Buffalo Woo; Company, though not nearly as much as the picture on Ravelry shows.

They call it a cobweb yarn, that tells the story about it for sure. But it really is soft and lovely. The important thing about the pattern is something I did NOT do. READ THE PATTERN ALL THE WAY THROUGH BEFORE STARTING! It is a bit wonky in parts because I failed to do that and never used Chart B at all, but it is pretty, warm, and soft and the pattern police are not going to arrest me because I got a bit creative to make it work out vaguely even...

yum

And then there are the two red scarves

I was really getting ready for last winter when it was COLD. No snow to speak of and only an occasional cold day this winter, but I guess I am ready for the next one.... and then there is the red for Valentine's Day.... hmmmm I didn't think of that til I already had these up.

I used that 365 day calendar and just found patterns I liked and added a garter stitch border and edging.  The one thing I do that helps with the boring - ness of the garter stitch border is slip the first stitch of each row knitwise with the yarn in front and then move it to the back for the next knit stitch.  It makes a prettier edge and I am sure everyone knows about that but I include it just in case.

When I block them I will do a closeup of the edge so you can see...

this one is not blocked at ALL

and running through it is a fine silvery thread.  Hard to see but I NEED to block it dammit.

I've been knitting

but not blocking, so therefore not showing on the blog. However, I decided that blocked or not, I needed to put them up.

This is the Stripe Study Shawl (ravelry link) by Veera Välimäki. I just used some yarn I had, Madelyn Tosh sock, and love the shawl. At first I had the beige in the big spaces, but it looked too boring so I ripped and restarted with the pink/peach. Love it