Great Wolf Lodge

So we took the Girl Scouts up north to Traverse City MI and stayed the night at Great Wolf Lodge (they have locations around the US). We had a blast! GWL is a massive indoor water park and they have pools, play areas, lazy river and 5 water slides. so much to do there. Just had to share. This photo was taken of the fort in the middle of GWL the bucket at the top dumps 1000 gallons of water every 5 minutes and this is the big dump. It really comes at a huge force and knocked some PPL down who weren't expecting it.

Book: Tasty crochet

So I was browsing the book store yesterday while I was out getting a memory card for DD's PS2 as she got Guitar Hero for her b-day and just couldn't resist this gem!

A cute little crochet book that has 33 patterns for food in it. It's broken down into

Breakfast - 7 patterns
Lunch - 12 patterns
Dinner - 7 patterns
and of course...
Dessert - 8 patterns

Stitches are pretty basic and these are small easy to work patterns. I have not made anything yet but they appear to be well written. Just an over all cute little book.

My boys love to play with their kitchen and their play food but the plastic stuff just get's broken and poses pinch hazards so I thought this would be fun.

you can get this book on Amazon - Tasty Crochet !

back cover *you can click to enlarge these cover images.

Illusion knitting

I will be updating this post with photos of the progress on this piece.

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I have decided not to continue on with this because I have had some bad experiences with Hobby Lobby's I Love This Yarn not holding up well at all. I intend ot make this with a much sturdier yarn because this will be for me and i intend to use it well.

So I started this w/the intention of making a scarf but got lazy at finding smaller yarn so it will be an afghan (my 1st knit afghan). Illusion knitting is a visual play on the garter stitch and knits and purls. It's quite simple to do but you have to keep good count of your stitch. Form a top down view it looks like stripes (maybe a tad wonky) but as you look at the same piece at an angle the picture starts to emerge. I am making a Harry Potter afghan out of this. I think one square will be like this and the other will be reversed (a negative if you will). I am using the EXCELLENT pattern found at Wolly Thoughts. He Does an excellent job of explaining the process of illusion knitting and how it works.

When looking straight down at the project (you can super size the image if you like to see the stitches). You can see the slight disturbances in the stripes but it's still mostly just stripes. I have placed my stitch markers spaced every 10 stitches (added one stitch to each side ) this matches up with the grid on the pattern and it's easier to follow my spot. I also have tied contrasting yarn to mark every 10th ridge which also is the way the pattern is marked to keep better tract of my place.

But when you tilt it at an angle you see the design.

Being a left handed person and knitting as such when I follow this chart as written it makes the image appear mirrored. This really isn't a big issue but if you are intending to do an illusion knit and want it to face the same way as the designer I recommend printing out the charts in mirror image that way your finished project will face the way it was intended to. Some day I want to knit the Mona Lisa but she will face the wrong way If I don't flip the charts and who want's the Mona Lisa to be facing the wrong way?

I'm editing this so that I will be putting the most current photo on top.

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Here is a short video that shows how this illusion works.