Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Knitting Status and the Manicure of the Week

It seems that I've spent the bulk of the past two months waiting on people to get back with me about various things, mostly job related, which has lead to a lot of anxiety knitting. Mostly, this has been on the livingroom afghan, which has had several rows added this week as Missouri and I work our way through season two of The Murdoch Mysteries. Of course, being that it is a massive project done almost entirely in stockinette, you can't really tell.

I've also been attempting to finish the Christmas socks, but have hit that point of knitting purgatory where they don't seem to be getting any longer, no matter how much I knit on them. I've decided that they have until April 1 to reach the desired length, and then regardless I'm doing the cuff, casting off, and then going back for the afterthought heel. Really, four months for a single pair of socks is far, far too long.

Since I've been concentrating on the socks, I haven't been working as much on the cardigan as I would like. I did start over, and have finished the three-ish inches of ribbing around the hem (I actually don't remember how much ribbing the pattern calls for, but it was in that neighborhood) as well as the first cable repeat. I'm staring at it right now, fighting the desire to work on it some more before I have to leave for my day job.

The Mario nails seem to have gotten me hooked. I've been giving myself decorative manicures every couple of days. Currently, it's a deck of cards inspired by watching Missouri play Alice: The Madness Returns. I did these a couple of days ago, so they're not as fresh and clean as they could be (my sock needles rubbed off part of the thumb). I also discovered that my clear coat seems to cause the other colors to bleed. It's not as noticeable on a darker base color, but you can really tell on the white. I do have a typewriter themed manicure planned in the future, but I'm sure I can do lettering with my left hand. I might try a stencil of some kind. Maybe contact paper would work.

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Anyone know anything about Photoshop? I keep getting an error message every time I try to save, and it's the only software I have that will let me resize images.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like a busy lead into spring. Your nails would be a huge hit at a casino. They look great.

    Perhaps you should go into business doing artistic nails. I can't wait for the typewriter theme.

    No help with Photoshop. I do not buy expensive software. Download GIMP.

    http://www.gimp.org/

    It will do everything Photoshop can (at least I have not found anything) and it is FREE. Like any new software package it may take some time to learn. I found the latest release quite easy.

    The other alternative is to use Google's Picasa. I think it took my better half all of abut 15 or 20 minutes to learn and start editing with it when I loaded it on her notebook PC.

    Gimp will work with Linux or Window$ I am not sure about OSX. Picasa works on all since it is on line.

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