Jul 18, 2011

Road Trip (with Make Up Your Mind Tank)

It was a whirlwind weekend with a road trip down to Washington, DC, and back in 36 hours.  We dropped M off at her junior leadership conference where she'll be for the week and hubby & I enjoyed a night on the town, eating at a wonderful Belgian cafe and staying right in the Capitol Hill area.


Knowing that I had a solid five hours in the car each way, I cast on one of my year of projects patterns -- the Make Up Your Mind tank.  I'm using a different cotton than Julie used but since she suggested Knit Picks Comfy Fingering, I'm confident it'll look great when it's done.

Make Up Your Mind by Julie Crawford (aka Knitted Bliss)
This is a really interesting pattern -- call me slow but I didn't understand why Julie called her tank Make Up Your Mind until I actually started to knit it.  Every 2.5 inches the pattern requires a different stitch which keeps the knitting fresh and challenging.  As you can see from the photo, I just finished the fourth band, this being my favorite of the stitches so far.  It's called a Hindu Pillar Stitch and I've never done it before.  It's a little tiring on my fingers but I love the way it looks.


The color in the photo is quite different than it looks in real life.  Called planetarium, the blue is  dark and dusky.  It's a beautiful color but maybe a touch too dark to really see the beauty of the stitches of each band.  We'll see once I finish and block it.

So when I was out of the car and not knitting, hubby & I strolled a very hot DC.  One of my all-time favorite things to do is walk and look at art.  So, that's what we did ...


Exterior of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian
Exterior of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden













In the Sculpture Garden


Installation by Olafur Eliasson

The art walk ended with a visit to Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial which is an incredibly moving site.  Once this tank is done, it'll have a nice memory of our trip to DC attached to it.  


12 comments:

  1. Your pictures from you weekend away look fab !
    Love the colour of your tank and I love the fact its got a different stitch every so often. I like learning new and interesting stitches in patterns, keeps the interest alive.

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  2. The finished project pictures look lovely on Ravelry, and it looks like it ends up with the fabric quite opened up, so I'm sure you'll be happy with your colour choice! It's very pretty!

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  3. That installation look fantastic! And so is your WIP:) The pattern with the stitch change does sound interesting.

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  4. Beautiful summery tank!

    Thank you so much for the DC photos. My husband and I spent two fantastic holidays there and I would go back in a heartbeat. Your photos have reminded me of some great times.

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  5. Great photo's, glad you had such a good trip. I'm enjoying the tank and as soon as I saw your picture I chuckled, how cleaver the naming is. lol

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  6. What a fab weekend. Love the colour of the yarn for the tank. Great pictures.x

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  7. I hope it wasn't too warm and sticky during your DC walking adventure! You managed to see some of the more artistic sights - good on you.

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  8. Love your Make up your Mind. I'm not sure I could do the changing of pattern, but love them and can see full projects being done in them!

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  9. Thank you for the tour of Washington DC ... looks like a nice place. I've only ever been out of Australia twice and on both occasions it was just to New Zealand. Good opportunity for you to get that knitting done. Phew .. what a long trip.

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  10. You have made loads of progress, the blue looks great in the pictures, and sounds lovely from your description too

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  11. So many pretty pictures. I love it! the Pic of the museum is exceptionally cool.

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