Believe it or not, I have managed to get through 28 1/2 years without painting a single wall. I don’t know how I’ve done it. Especially since my parents were big fans of slave labor in the form of their children. God Bless them. Robby painted most of our condo as his wedding present to me (awww). We were (are) broke and this was something that he could do with minimal caashee. It was the best present ever. Especially considering some of the colors I choose…Red, red, red in the kitchen. Painting white walls red sucks. There are no two ways about it.

He got pretty far in the process. The only rooms remaining pre-wedding were our bedroom, office, and half of the bathroom. My job was to finish the bathroom. I almost accomplished that this weekend. One coat to go and we will have a FINISHED ROOM IN OUR HOUSE. Unheard of. A few things I learned about painting.

1. Don’t wear your favorite velour puma sweat pants. They will get paint of them.
2. Tie your hair back in a ponytail. If you don’t it will fall into the paint bucket.
3. Painting around and behind a toilet is not the most fun thing in the world.
4. Someone watching you paint behind a toilet will inevitably lead to hysterical laughter.
5. Wear a bandana around your hair. It will get paint on it.
6. Use your own paintbrush. You will get paint all over it.
7. I am one messy ass painter and should not quit my day job.

On to knitting news…..

So, Ms. Shapely tank is finito! Yippy! Thanks to the wonders of blocking it fits, like a glove. I actually like it! This is the first thing that I’ve knit for myself. As I was blocking I realized I made the wrong size. I failed to let my brain fully process the words…finished size XX”. Don’t know what kind of brain fart that was, but it was messy. Check out the difference. The left is blocked, the right is pre-block.

Pretty cool huh?

This is her all finished up. I call this pose my “Something sneaking is going on” pose. This is the face I had on in my pre-name change license. At least I got a few laughs out of it.

Shapely eh? This tank has shortrows at the bottom and up top. I still am not convinced that the ones up top are completely necessary. However, to really judge I’d have to make one without them. The short rows at the bottom give you this:

I finally figured out how to pick up the shortrow stitches invisibly. See…

Project Specs:

The pattern is free and available here. It was fun to knit once I acquired all the necessary skills. Picking up stitches was a two try effort. As was knitting through the short row stitches invisibly. I love this yarn. I used South West Trading Company’s Beyond. This is the second yarn I’ve used from the Company. The first was Bamboo. I will definitely find more projects for each of these. I knit this pattern exactly as specified. No changes. If I did it again, I would eliminate the shaping on the bottom. I prefer a straight edge along my waist.

I downloaded pictures from the reading last week. They’re blurry! I’ll spare you. Sorry about that.