Men's Night

We'll be starting a men's knitting and crochet night in March, second Wednesdays of the month I believe. Think it will work? I think I fixed it so that anyone can post a comment, so please, comment away.

Who's counting?

Since the last posting I had taken apart, rethought, and restarted my shirt four times (but who's counting?). By Thursday I had changed to size 5 needles and ditched the working in the round for the conventional back/front/sew seems construction of the shirt. Everything was going fine, I had completed about a good three or four inches of my shirt ... then came Saturday. On Friday we had had some girl scouts come over to the yarn store at seven o'clock for beginning knitting lessons. There were 8 or so girls, around ten years old?, and two mothers. Surpisingly all of them were able to get it, but that left the four of us extremely tired by the end of the evening. Ok, to be honest I was too tired to really pay attention to the emotional and physical state of everyone else. On Saturday I had a short interview for a script reader job, wasn't going to pay much, but it's more than the O that I'm getting from the store right now. Of course none of my pants fit, they all make me look like a clown as Jessamy so kindly pointed out, so on Saturday morning I had to go over to Target and Robinson's May and look for pants, by the time I got home I had 10 minutes to get myself ready for the interview, drove to hollywood, did the interview, got back home, ate something, went to the store, did this and that, said hi to Evelyn, taught a beginning knitting class, talked to customers, and by 6 was catatonic. Seeing as I only have one knitting project going at a time, and I'm associating the shirt with a deadline I can not make, I was too stressed to knit. too stressed to knit?! Yup, pretty sad. So I figured, when I got back home I would wind down by making some socks with the sample Louet linen/wool mix. As you probably guessed, I wasn't able to make the socks, largely due to the fact that I have no such linen/wool mix at home. Details, details. It's now Monday afternoon and I've just started on a sample sock with the Sockotta, the first knitting I've done for a couple of days. The shirt was looking nice, I'll post a picture of it, but I think I'll at least have to wait until the deadline has passed until I can tackle it again.

Why am I writing this? Not sure, but notice that even though I have grave doubts on whether any one, including me, actually gives a damn tomorrow is another day I have not deleted this post. I think I'll just rename this blog "Thea's Woe Is Me Blog." Not really catchy, but it serves its purpose.

Knot the knitting olympics!

So, after hours of unknitting, which in moderation can be soothing, I'm ready to scream. I'm most of the way through the knot, and have been forced to knit whatever I've entangled in an effort to remain calm.

A neighbor of ours came in today and said she never really liked doing crochet. Whenever she would try crocheting something it would turn out to be too stressful and she'd immediately turn to knitting to calm herself down.

Back to the knot ... Despite my guage swatching and careful mathematics (which is out of the ordinary for me) my shirt was turning out way too big, and yes, I did consider the fact that it would shrink slightly in the waching machine. So I ripped it out then tried again, ripped that out then decided to go with a size six needles, did some more math, tried again, ripped it apart, and got a lovely knot to show for it.

What you see right now is my current attempt, still a little too big, but I can deal. I've gotten six rows into and I'm going to decrease a couple of stitches on each side and have a slightly tapered look (or sloppy look, depending on how I pull it off).

Ok, back to knitting...

Torch is lit

Hiya. So I did finish my gauge yesterday:
















I decided it was a bit too busy to do half knit half crochet, but I will incorporate the little shells into a border.

Now that the torch is lit, it's time to get busy. Here's my project so far:















Ok, so I'm the only person who thinks an empty knitting needle is funny. But you have to admit, it has a lot of potential.

I live in ProcrastiNation

I was intending on opening this blog with a glowing description of how lovely it is to work with linen - it looks so pretty knit up, it must be great to knit with.
But no, the linen feels like dental floss wax. But this olympics thing is about sacrifice (it's also about liking the end project, and the linen does look pretty when it's washed).

The official knitting olympics torch is going to be lit tomorrow, and I haven't finished my guage swatch yet. I've finished my knitted half, but have yet to do the crochet half. I also have to wash it, supposedly that changes things (or something) ...

And this is why I'm not an olympic athlete (other than the fact that I would prefer to move as little as possible).

Knitting olympics

So, I've signed up for the knitting olympics (well, I sent an email asking to be signed up). It's taken me several days to find the right yarn and stitches, but I think I've figured it out.

The mission of the knitting olympics is to find a project which is challenging, and push yourself to finish it in two weeks.

What is my project? A lacy vest. All the shirts I've attempted to make have been failures, but I've decided to have another go at it. And why do my shirts mess up because? Little things, like I don't count my rows, and because I make up my own pattern.

So what will make this project different than all the others? I'll be making it out of linen.

Actually, I've decided to make it in the round, in theory that will fix part of the counting rows problem (never one to actually solve the problem in the most logical way), until of course I get to the armpit. It'll be interesting to see if I ever learn my lesson. Speaking of not learning lessons, I'll be making up the pattern for the vest.

Here's the game plan. As of today, I'll be making the top half in a simple lace pattern (I couldn't find any challenging ones which I'd like to wear). To make up for the easy (yes, I'm saying easy now but in two weeks...) lace pattern I'll be crocheting the bottom. I'm not a very good crochet, so this will give me some good practise.

The olympic flame is going to be ignited on February 10, so I'll be making the guage swatch in the next day or two, and posting the results, and if I'm ambitious I might even have written the pattern by then, in which case I'll post that too.

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/olympics2006.html

TO OUR ONE BLOG READER:

Hi Regan!

Lily's Haikus

i am a monkey.
are you one too?
we share monkeyness.
so lets have a party now.
-lily

i like fishy heads.
they are polite
one day i met one
and it was indeed polite
-lily

one day i ate cheese
it had green spots
it made me say BLEH
but then i found it was good
-lily