I keep remembering stuff

I know that I wrote about the wonderful weekend I spent visiting my brothers and sisters. But there were so many activities, so many people to see, that I didn't tell everything about the weekend. And I keep remembering things that I wanted to say.

For instance, on Friday evening my husband and I joined my youngest brother and wife and attended a concert at the State Theater in Kalamazoo, MI. My brother told me that the theatre was worth the price of admission. He was right. (Fortunately, we enjoyed the show as well!) The theatre was built back in vaudeville times, and has been lovingly restored to its period splendor. The ornate plaster, the lights, the roomy seats. And just to top it all off--when the lights go down, the "stars" in the ceiling light up. Truly, if you have the opportunity to visit this venue, I would strongly recommend it.

Accompanying the wonderful blues music was a veritable feast of "cajun cooking." There is a gentleman who comes to provide food for concertgoers. His prices may be cut-rate but the taste is out of this world. Doug had beans and rice, which was tasty although not my favorite. Then he tried the seafood linguine, which was yummy. I polished off a piece of BBQ chicken that was to die for. I even licked my fingers, in public, all the way to the second knuckle.

On Saturday night, we were invited to a Battle Creek Knights basketball game. Turns out that my brother is the head IT guy for the team, which position comes with season tickets. My elder brother and his wife scored 4 tickets, and shared them with Doug and I. Just to round out the evening, my third brother also came. The first half of the game was OK in that the home team was out-scoring the visiting team. At half-time, however, the visitors got a royal arse-chewing from the coach. They came out just smoking. That 16-point lead the Knights had disappeared in a heartbeat. The fourth quarter was a nail-biter. The Knights finally won in the last 5 seconds or so. It was an exciting game--even if I don't watch much basketball and didn't know anyone on the team!

Sunday was spent relaxing and visiting, which was greatly enjoyed by all. Well, I know Doug and I enjoyed it. I hope the brothers and sisters did!

In knitting news, I finished a store display.
I started this sweater just after Christmas, knitting with Paton's Chunky Shetland from the Creative Knitting shown. The pattern itself is rather simple if you can count to 15. I kept forgetting which number came after 12, so had a difficult time with the knitting. Then when assembling the sweater, I discovered that the sleeves were MILES longer than the body. This in and of itself is not unusual because one's arms are generally longer than the waistband of the sweater. And the sweater really is a bit on the short side. (At least that's how it appears in the magazine.) However, 10 inches was excessive in my humble opinion. In a fit of pique, I threw the sweater in the project bin, closed the magazine and started something new.

Months later, I decided that the time was right to finish off this bad boy. The problem with having a hissy fit and closing the magazine is that you now don't know which magazine the pattern was in. And I look at a lot of magazines and patterns every week. Do you know it took me a good two weeks just to find the pattern again?!

Anyway, I did persevere and finish the sweater. If you ever make this sweater, I cannot caution you enough about being careful with the measurements. The zig-zag effect makes measurement interesting. The sleeves are still about 2 inches too long, and this was AFTER adding approximately 7 inches to the length of the body. Maybe this type of pattern shrinks when no one is looking?

In home knitting, I am so very pleased to show this wonderful little knit:
This beauty comes from Paton's Around the Seasons (#548). I used 15 balls of royal blue Zara and 1.5 balls of light blue Zara. (I did have to make allowances for the fact that Zara is a DK and the pattern was written for worsted, but that was just a matter of changing needle sizes.) The fair isle was a breeze considering there were only two colours and I had been taught the best way to perform the maneuver. (Thank you very much Irene and Cathy!) The stitch definition that Zara provides is just phenomenal.

The best part of finishing the sweater? I had a mere 48 inches left of the blue yarn. Yes, you did read that correctly. 48 inches. There may have been enough to knit one more row of the neck-band ribbing, but I didn't want to take any chances. It was enough to cast off and say "I'm done!"

My daughter (who is 16) is known to claim that she "wants to marry" whatever it is that she has seen and she really, really likes.

I'd marry Zara quite happily.