Fiber Dreams

As promised, here’s a picture of my completed Sizzle. It’s a horrible picture, taken in the bedroom against the mirror that we do our best to hide with a huge and unwieldy headboard (the thing is ghastly, but I haven’t yet been able to do a thing about it—ugh!). Much better pictures of the nearly done sweater are here and here. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone ever gets a good picture of themselves modeling a sweater in a mirror. It’s hard enough just to line up the viewfinder, much less get accurate color. Or focus.

That said, I had a great time wearing the sweater to TNNA on the Friday. It’s comfortable. And it looks better than you would think here. You know. Moving body. Arms down. Not reflected in an old, discolored mirror.

• Pattern: Sizzle by Wendy Bernard
• Yarn: French Ribbon from Newton’s Yarn Country, French blue, about 2-1/2 hanks
• Needles: Size 5 Addi Turbo
• Elapsed time: November 5 (ish), 2007 through very early, 2008
• Finished size: Size small
• Notes: I rarely bother blocking my swatches. I know. I know. But this is one time I did. And boy howdy, am I glad I took the time to do it. The swatch didn’t shrink in height at all, but it sure grew in width when it got wet. The 25- (or was it 30?) stitch swatch grew by an entire inch in width. I would have knit a totally unwearable garment, if I hadn’t known that. Whew. Since I knew, I could plan. There was plenty of planning going on. I had to re-figure every number-of-stitches instruction in the entire sweater, as my gauge was completely different than the pattern’s. It worked though. Good old algebra to the rescue. It was great! Oh yeah. One other change I made. I followed Wendy’s instructions for raising the neckline a bit. I raised it by one inch, and glad I am, too. It has quite enough sizzle for this girl as it is.

I went and tried to add photos of the completed Garden Party and Sizzle to my gallery only to find that things were all mucked up, and it just.didn’t.work. Arg. Yup. First time I tried it since the server, um, upset back in December. So I installed different gallery software, and got an error there, too. I’m thinking that for some reason I can’t make that kind of database change, when I used to be able to. Gotta talk to Dave about that when he’s awake.

I finished David and Leah Eddings’ book The Elder Gods on Sunday morning. I have to say that I was disappointed with the book. It’s frustrating. I’d been so looking forward to reading it for such a long time, and it really left me… wanting. Not that I expect all their books to be as wonderful as the Belgariad (Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician’s Gambit, and Castle of Wizardry, Enchanters’ End Game) and the Malloreon (Guardians of the West, King of the Murgos, Demon Lord of Karanda, and Sorceress of Darshiva, The Seeress of Kell). But. I read the Elenium (The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, The Sapphire Rose) and the Tamuli (Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones, The Hidden City), and enjoyed those. The Redemption of Althalus was good, but I didn’t like it as much as the other books, either. Two things were lacking, to my way of thinking, in The Elder Gods: 1. There was no single protagonist, 2. Only the gods did magic, and then only sparingly. I mean. Really. What’s a really good fantasy story without magic? People need to be able to do magic. That’s one of the things I like best about the genre. And the protagonist thing. There wasn’t really one. It was all a matter of them-against-us or good-versus-evil or whatever you want to call it, and that was it. There are some good characters, certainly, but no real focal point. I have the other three books in the series, and right now I have no idea when I’m going to read them. I’ve gone back to Mercedes Lackey and another Valdemar trilogy (Owlflight, the first book in Darian’s Tale). I guess I like Eddings’ books better when his wife’s input was in the background. Drat and blast.

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