i know that there's been a lack of knitting on the blog lately and a lot of hooping. well, i'm glad that there's been hooping because i had been doing a lot of secret knitting. i spent most of my time working on my first real design for popknits and now it's available and i can finally talk about it! i present, the lido west wrap!
i had this fabulous yarn, blue heron rayon metallic, that i bought at the point several years ago and really wanted to use. for a while, that yarn was in the slinky garter stitch wrap but i frogged that because it was always getting snagged on stuff. so it sat around and i looked at patterns on ravelry but nothing really clicked so i decided to design something to accommodate it.
i fished around in my 1960s vogue knitting magazines for some inspiration and came across a really sweet, little cardigan that used a columnar lace pattern that really appealed to me. after futzing with the numbers for the stitch pattern, i found a complimenting lace pattern in one of my stitch dictionaries to use on the ends. i sandwiched it all between garter stitch and started knitting!
this yarn is so nice! i love slinkyness of the rayon and the subtle sparkle from the metallic thread. it's really affordable too if you buy just the one skein. it makes a light and cool wrap perfect for the summer.
so that's what i've been up to! i also cast-on and finished an ishbel too which i'll update you on early this coming week.
it's been how long now since i started hooping? let's check flickr... ok, i got my hoop on march 5 so that means i've been hooping for less than 3 months now. this weekend was the first time that i got more than 2 days in a row to go outside and hoop on grass and not worry about breaking anything.
here's a video of my 3 days work condensed into a 5 min music video (i love imovie!) music is "my girls" by animal collective which i listened to a lot on my trusty shuffle.
maybe you're sick of hooping, but i'm not :) i actually have very little knitting content to show you right now because i just finished a secret popknits project (not so secret anymore) and just started knitting on ishbel. in the meantime, let me expound on my trip to central park to hoop with some girl friends.
i joined the hoopnotica meetup.com group a while back and i heard that there would be a meeting in central park on the first really HOT day of the "summer". i packed up a bag, my travel hoop and an extra hoop for tina and set off.
i arrived at the sheep's meadow in central park to find 1 billion people sunning themselves and a group of people hooping away. my new friend, lindsay, was already in the middle of a lesson so i joined her as quickly as i could. i seemed to be one of the more advanced people in the group so i just hooped along as best i could.
![[ Day 89 | Year 2 ] hoop fest in central park (by Ms. M)](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3406/3477057169_3fa9ab7981.jpg "[ Day 89 | Year 2 ] hoop fest in central park (by Ms. M)")
