Thursday, November 08, 2007

So much for the fancy lace ball idea

I finished the fancy lace ball, dilegently mixed equal parts water and white glue, stuck a balloon in it and blew it up then hung the supposed fancy ball from the cupboard door handle to dry. Filled with anticipation I got up the next morning and hurried downstairs to check out my sparkling sphere of fanciness. Apparently it did not occur to me that getting a nine inch balloon and only blowing it up to fit the six inch circumfrence of my lace wonder would not result in a perfect round ball. Oh no. It resulted in a somewhat askew ball. A ball that looks like the air was let out of it and quite frankly, the top of the ball appears to have an odd looking "nipple" where the holder string pulled it up.

To make matters more disappointing, the fact that I'm cheap and bought 22 balloons at the dollar store means that somehow some of the colour from the balloon bled into the once pristine sparkly white of my lace. To fix that problem I grabbed a can of glitter spray and sprayed the heck out of it. Imagining there in the early morning dawn, that I could find redemption for the ball and it would glitter and glint in the light, thereby distracting the viewer from it's odd shape and nipple appendage. It became abundantly clear to me after this endeavor that the only thing glinting and glittering in the light was my kitchen sink and counter. I don't believe any of the glitter spray actually landed on the yarn at all, but instead zoomed right through the lacey holes to land willy nilly about my kitchen.

Not one to be easily discouraged I thought that maybe I could cut the string at the top, glue some seasonal silk leaves and berries to it, add a festive ribbon and make it a "kissing ball" to be hung from the ceiling. I also have been toying with the idea of making another one in the spirit of "When at first you don't succeed... try try again." but we'll see. There's many other items on the list that need to be taken care of, so I'm not sure I want to go down that path yet.

In very the happy and positive results type knitting news, I finished the cabled Newsboy cap and am very pleased with it. It looks a little ridiculous on me, but then most hats do. It should look really cute on G though so I'm quite happy with myself!

I also have been motoring along on Interweave Knit's Little Arrowhead Shawl that I'm knitting for my Christmas swap partner. I hope she likes it. I had a bit of a slow start because I'm just not used to lace charts yet, but since I now understand how to read the chart it's going along really quickly! (I'm actually considerably farther along than the picture would lead you to believe!)

Unfortunately (BF)G's sweater has taken a backseat to the shawl. It had too. He can wait (although I'm not sure he'd agree), the shawl can't. I'm almost the front (only a few more rows to go) though, so it's not like it's still at the baby stages of creation.

Not too much else new in this Prairie Girl's world. J and G had their birthdays this week so Happy 17th birthday to J and Happy 15th birthday to G, and in case I neglected N at the end of September, Happy belated 13th birthday to N!

4 comments:

  1. When doing round lacy ornaments, I usually sit them in little rounds of toilet paper tubes, rather than hanging them. That might help with the nippling at the top.

    You can also mix glitter into the water/glue mixture to make sure that it adheres to the lace.

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  2. Well that makes sense! I'll try that with the next one I do for sure! Thanks! :)

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  3. My mum used to make things like that but she used sugar and water instead and it worked really well. You could probably use starch too.
    I don't know what she did about the nippling though (she wrapped the crochet string around the balloon instead of knitting crocheting something out of it and usually cut the circle to make things so I'm sure that part got discarded...)

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  4. You could try and find some of those things that are on the top of glass Christmas ornaments... You know the little metal things that cover the top of them?? If you put one of those on top of the ornament it would cover the point.

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