Swallow your morning coffee before listening.

Never not knitting

And 2010 continues...
In the past 7 seven days, I have been knitting two sweaters for a very cute little girl.

I will spend this afternoon ripping them out.

One step closer to scrap booking.

2010 has been a Baaaddd knitting year. I knit. I rip. I knit more and I rip more.

I spent a day knitting the Snow Queen, a beautiful circular Estonian shawl. I spent 5 hours perfecting a circular cast-on and nupps.
The next day, I decided that if I continued, it would be smaller than I wanted. It's gone.

I started the Fern shawl. A lovely triangular shawl with more nupps. Another five hours gone.

And it's not just lace shawls that are driving me to start scrapbooking.

I started a pair of socks from the cuff edge and totally ignored that they had been designed toe-up. That was my first mistake. I ripped them out and started them again from the toe up. The toe was done and I had finished one pattern repeat. My knitting friends convinced me that if I continued to knit on the needles I was using, that they would never fit. I ripped again.

I pulled the needles out of another pair of socks that were just plain ugly. The time I had spent knitting them was less than the time I would need to spend to finish them. I refused to listen to the taunting any longer. The yarn has been designated to be a different project.

I thought that I would start a simple wrap. It would be my travel project. I would be able to knit and still carry on a conversation. What I didn't realize was that I had forgotten how to read. If the pattern says to cast on 189 stitches, I didn't need to cast on 289. Another one gone.

Evenstar is temporarily out of the bad knitting basket. After the fourth time I cast on, I was finally happy with the needle size. Clue 1 was completed without problems. Clue 2 has been ripped back a couple of times but it is done and I am working on Clue 3. The second half of Clue 3 has some strange symbols on the chart.

Tomorrow will be a better day to face the challenge.

Today I will be casting on a new project. I will attempt to defeat the Baaaddd Knitting karma by casting on a very simple baby sweater...top down...on big needles. My friend Alana assures me that it can be knit in a day.

I hope she's right.

Closing Ceremonies





All things must come to an end. Some events have grand closing ceremonies with music and fireworks. There is cheering in the stands as thousands watch in fasination. The cameras flash and there are smiling faces everywhere.



Other endings happen on cold mornings in February in a quiet kitchens. There are no marching bands. There are no flags waving. There is only the realization that what was once looked forward to with great anticipation has ended.

Farewell to "Whistler"

Olympic Knitting

The Challenge - To cast on a new project during the opening ceremonies and finish knitting before the end of the Olympics and the closing ceremonies.
My project was a pair of gloves. I cast on at the appropriate time. I had limited knitting time during the first weekend but I was well on my way to Olympic Knitting Gold.

Tuesday. Disaster. Tragedy. I found a mistake. I thought that I could live with it but like the super-G racer who missed a gate or the figure skater who broke a shoelace, I knew that I was out of the competition.



It was time to change events. I cast on a new project.

This stole was going so smoothly, that I knew I would be finished in time. I blinked. I lost my focus.

I cast on another project.

I can get them done. I will succeed.

I should not have spent three hours last night casting on yet another new project.

Today I am back on track.

Can someone please tell my family that we will have groceries in the house again....after next Sunday.

I am not Olympic Athlete....just in case you thought I might become one.

Olympic Athletes, in addition to having skills and talents to achieve great heights, also have the motivation to succeed at all costs. They will ignore pain and injury to focus on the final goal. They have the knowledge that whatever they give up in training, will ultimately result in a prize that makes all their hardships worthwhile.

I, on the other hand, focus on the short term goal. I am easily distracted and the next challenge will grab all of my attention as I casually toss aside the current project. A minor setback will cause me to fail or at least change direction and focus all of my efforts in a totally new direction.

"Whistler" is my evidence. Initially, I thought this would be easily knit before the start of the Vancouver games. I would cast on on January1 and have six weeks to knit the sweater. No problem. I had, after all, knit the Turin sweater in two weeks.

My pattern arrived on January 6.

I started. I ripped. I started again on January8. I still had lots of time.


I started other projects. I was sure that I could knit a cowl and still have time to finish.

I knit another cowl....and the fingerless gloves.

I ran off to Mexico for a week. A colourwork sweater is not a good airplane knitting project.

The socks were a Christmas present. It was important to finish those!

I finally had to admit it. The love for Whistler was gone. I didn't like the way the stitches were lying. I thought that part of the problem was caused by the superwash yarn that I was knitting with. To prove my theory, I had to start another project.

This hat matches the sweater that Dale of Norway designed for the Vancouver Olympics. It was necessary to finish this before the start of the games.

Whistler waits.

I'm back from vacation. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video should be worth a million.

I'll be back with those pictures soon.

I've heard this all before

At Tuesday's Knit night, the conversation once again came around to knitting on Airplanes. Since I am planning a trip soon, I was interested and had already thought of ways to sneak my bamboo dpns on board with me. I knew they wouldn't set off any alarms as I went through the metal scanner but I had not thought of the random pat-downs. Five hours on a plane with no knitting seemed to be in my future.

January 20, the regulations were adjusted.* I can take my knitting!!! My latest sock project falls under the category of "knitting needles (when wool is present)"

Does this mean that if I attempt to bring Phentex on the plane with me that I will be hauled off never to be seen again?

Does this mean that knitting needles by themselves are dangerous and it is the wool that calms them? Sound like a good reason to add the stash on a particularly stressful day. I can justify purchases by saying that Transport Canada made me buy this yarn.

I was surprised to read that knitting is not considered part of your carry-on luggage and is to be carried separately rather than packed in a larger bag. Knitting needles might look like weapons in x-ray scans. Perhaps too many knitters were getting cranky when the security people carelessly pulled their knitting off the needles in attempt to see what those 14" metal single points actually were.

I will be taking knitting on my next flight. I won't be knitting "Whistler".


*for a full list, check Calgaryairport I am now allowed to take my Tuba too...as long as it's in its case, but my knitting bag is too big to be considered a purse.

I get some of my best ideas while enjoying a glass of wine. The next day, I realise that someone should have stopped me.

Flashback to 2005.
I was in London and chatting with my friend and travelling companion about other travel possibilities. Wine was involved. We discussed the possibility of walking across England. The Holiday company would ferry our main luggage to various B&B's. We would only have to carry our day packs which would of course have our prepared lunches in them and very little else.
When I arrived home and told Mr.B of the wonderful plan, he told me I that I had lost all semblance of sanity and for once, I agreed with him.

Fast forward to 2010.
Somehow, late last year, the idea of walking across England was brought up for discussion again. Wine may have been involved. We did not hear the "Your crazy!" response.

We paid our deposit and in September will be walking. Eight days of walking. West coast to East coast. Our day packs will have to hold more than our lunches.

Obviously, training is necessary. Sitting on the couch and knitting, unfortunately does not count as training.. Last weekend, Mr. B and I walked the ravine from MacEwan to the Edgemont superstore. We have walked this route many times. In the summer, it takes about 45 minutes to walk up the hill to the store. and slightly less to get home...down hill the whole way. The paths were snow covered and icy. We needed to find a better route.

Yesterday, we thought we would tackle Nose Hill. After all. the Chinook had been around for an additional week. There would be less snow up on top of the hill since the wind would have blown much of it away. and the warm sunshine would have melted the rest of it off of the paths.

It was a great day for a walk.
The sunshine was warm. There was no wind which is unusual for the top of the hill.

Our theories about the paths being clear were wrong.

Two and half hours later, we had walked from 14th st at 64th Ave to the Edgemont parking lot and back again. We took the scenic route back as we headed north and were close to the Beddington parking lot before we turned south and walked on deer trails and coyote paths to get back to our car.

We checked the map when we got home. Close to 6 miles was covered. Many feet of elevation were involved. I missed the descriptive part of "Nose Hill"

Today we are looking for a shorter path...on level ground. Are the bike paths by the river still covered in ice?

We're leaving Nose Hill until March.

Training is cutting into my knitting time.

In January 2009, I thought it would be fun to join some sock clubs. I checked sites out on Ravelry. I asked other knitters. I looked at colors in Etsy shops.

I signed up for a few sock clubs. I signed up for a few lace clubs too but that is a different post. I heard alot about the number of sock clubs that I had joined from my knitting friends.
I also got emergency phone calls.
"XYZ is having sign ups for their knitting club in 20 minutes. You have to sign up. Their yarn is great!"
I signed up. I got purple yarn. Nice yarn but purple. Tangledarts is now the happy owner of that purple yarn and strangely enough, she is also the person who phoned to tell me about the sign up. hmmmnnn???

Some of the yarn came with extra goodies. I now have a fabulous collection of stitch markers, project bags, notebooks, magnets and various other knitting gadgets. I also have many more patterns for socks and other small projects.

But my main reason for joining sock clubs was for the yarn. I got some fabulous yarns from dyers that I didn't know about before.

These are people who dye yarn who have a great sense of how colors work together. They also realise that you can't just throw dye on yarn and make good yarn.

The colors are vibrant and clear and made me want to cast on a new pair of socks immediately.

Other dyers are not so good. These skeins remind me my the first skeins that I dyed in class last July. My thought then was that I needed to re-dye my yarn and I feel the same way about these skeins.

I recognise that we all have our own likes and dislikes and that someone may actually like these colors but I don't.

And there is not a speck of purple in those three skeins.

Colors I like and want to knit can be vibrant or pale. If you check the top photo, not only is there purple in one skein, the other one is completely, totally unapologetic purple. It has a future as the cuff and toes for the matching sock yarn.

I have recently signed up for 2010 sock clubs. The number is smaller.

On January 14th, I finished a Christmas Gift.

I started knitting back in December, got side tracked by Christmas, changed my mind about who should get these socks, started a sweater, finished a wrap and changed my mind again about who should receive these socks.
Can you tell that they are not my favorites?

Now this....

is my favorite.*

I knit this wrap once before. I was reminded that while I was knitting the first one, I complained bitterly. I hated knitting all those little squares. Constantly picking up stitches and knitting short rows and turning my work drove me batty.

This time I enjoyed knitting it. It was a good project to pick up and knit after a busy day.

I will admit that I was not happy to rip it out and restart it after I was on the third ball of yarn because I skipped a row of the instructions. I wasn't happy all the other times when I thought I knew what direction that I was knitting in and had to rip out more rows. I wasn't happy when I knit one ball of yarn four times.

But I am happy now. I love the colour. I love the yarn. I love the slight halo and the softness that I got by throwing it in the dryer (wet knitting, towel, dryer balls and no heat for 20 minutes)

I'm keeping this one.

* The color in the photo is off. There is no purple in this wrap. I think I need a new camera, or perhaps a filter. Do they make filters to block purple?

2009 Replay

It was a busy year. There was a new baby. There was a wedding. There were trips down south to visit Grandchildren, and a trip to Portland to take part in the first ever Sock Summit.

As the year began, I thought I was was going to be joining the unemployed. I kept showing up at work, no one sent me home and I still got paid. I guess you could say that I'm still working.

In many ways, the more that things changed this past year, the more they stay the same. I knit through it all.
Totals for the year:
18 pairs of socks
5 shawls
3 adult sweaters
5 little people sweaters
2 baby blankets
1 Hat and 1 pair of fingerless mitts.
1 shawl lost*


And just in case you were keeping track of really stupid resolutions that I may or may not have made back in January 1009, I broke them all. I am still procrastinating.

*I'm missing my Red Flirty Ruffles Shawl. I have a suspicion that I lent it to someone. Any Ideas????

Whistler has been ripped out. Back to the beginning. Back to square one.

No, I didn't twist my stitches as I joined them to knit in the round. That would have been an understandable mistake.

I miscounted when I first cast on. I didn't find my error until I was at the first row of colourwork. I was so busy checking to make sure that my stitches weren't twisted that I didn't notice that I had too many stitches.

Now I realise that you are all thinking that I am too much of a perfectionist and that I could have just knit two together to get rid of a couple of stitches and moved on.

I thought of that. But, I could not get rid of 50....yes I said Fifty extra stitches. I had placed markers as I cast on in groups of 50 and somehow forgot how to count to five. I had cast on one extra group.

I thought about making a larger size sweater but in the end, I knew I had to start again.

I am happy that I realised my mistake when I got to the first row of colourwork. I wonder how far I would have knit if the numbers on that first row had worked out.

And with fewer stitches on the needle, my tension has relaxed and the whole sweater should be much quicker to knit.

The scariest part about ripping this back was that one of my first thoughts was "Now I have something to blog about."
I'll be back when I have pictures that are more than rows and rows of Black stockinette.

The Olympics are coming and I'm Panicking

I've started my sweater. Originally, it sounded like a good idea. I would start on January 1 and have lots of time to finish my sweater before the opening Ceremonies in Vancouver.

I got my pattern on January 4. I got my yarn that day as well.

The knitting has been slow.

But my Christmas tree is put away and I am ninety percent done my latest Targello.

I may spend the next three weeks thinking up more excuses as to why my Whistler isn't finished.

It's 8:00 on Christmas morning and every else is till sleeping.

I'm enjoying the calm of the morning and knitting...on Christmas gifts. I'm not finished. Not even close.


My plans were to knit four pairs of socks. I have one pair done, as well as half of the second pair, and almost half of the third pair. The yarn for the fourth pair did not even get wound into a cake.

BUT...the gifts are wrapped, and the holubtsi is cooked. The shortbread is baked and the house is decorated. I'm guessing that people will wait for their socks.

Merry Christmas to all. I hope you have a day filled with love and Laughter.

Knitters are wonderful

Within a day of posting my SOS, I had a message back from Anna that she had the book I was looking for.

I had also sent out a couple of messages on Ravelry to people who had knit projects out of the book. I got positive replies from ladies in Arizona and Edmonton. I have not met either one of these ladies but they were both willing to trust that I would knit the sweater and then return their books.

I also got a message from Donna. She had found the link where I could order the whole kit.

I have no excuses now for not casting on on January 1.

ISO

I am on a mission. I decided that with the Olympics being in Canada this year, I should knit a sweater to wear while watching the games. No, I'm not going to Vancouver. I will watch my TV and enjoy the games while knitting.

Of course, the pattern that I have decided to knit is out of print. I could knit another Dale of Norway sweater but I have decided that the only sweater I want to do is the Whistler Sweater*.

So I am on a search for the pattern. I checked sources on Ravelry...no luck.
I sent messages to other knitters who knit projects out of the book....still waiting for replies.
My only other hope is that someone who reads this will have a copy of the book. Or know someone who has the book.

* I couldn't get the link to work. Dale of Norway Commemorative Collection #85001

Imagine, if you will, a 24 piece band and Dean Martin holding a mug of
eggnog-



"Oh the weather outside is frightful

But the fire is so delightful

And since we've no place to go,

Let it Snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!"

I hate winter.

I don't like the cold weather or feeling like a pumpkin when I put on enough layers to keep warm.

I hate being stuck in traffic for three and a half hours when the trip home should only have taken 25 minutes.

I hate the crowded malls and the bozos who don't realise that if traffic rules make sense on the roads, then those same rules are logical when navigating through the mall.

Slower walkers should keep to the right to keep the passing lanes free. Don't come to a dead stop unless you want me to run into your ankles with my shopping cart. Don't stop in the middle of the road to chit chat. Look before you change lanes and SIGNAL!

Rant over.

This miserable cold weather is good for knitting. For several years now, my rule has been that if the thermometer hits -15, it's too cold to go out. There have been many days this past week when I have deemed it too cold and miserable to go out. I have had some good knitting days. I finished Mystic Star.
It's too bad that shawls are easier to wear during warmer weather.

I finished Muffin's sweater for Christmas. I will have to leave the house to go find the perfect button for it. But at least I will have a hat to wear.

I

I did go outside this morning to take pictures. I probably should have been wearing something other than my pyjamas if I didn't want the neighbors to think I had lost my mind completely.

Mystic Star - designed by Anna Dalvi

Wollmeise Lace - Pfefferminz Prinz

Little sweet peas -Sirdar #332

Naturally Merino et Soie

Selbu Modern

Claudia Handpaints - Lipstick

and black something

Dear Hubby:

You haven't dropped any hints for Christmas. Wandering through the malls looking for the perfect gift without any guidelines is seriously cutting into my knitting time. I have socks to knit before December 25 and I am starting to panic.

So to preserve the last bit of sanity, I have come to the conclusion that you would like a new knitting bag wrapped up under the tree. And that you would not complain at all, if that bag was filled with yarn...silk and cashmere.

I have also come to realise that the only thing that you hate more than shopping is returning gifts so your Christmas gift might just land in my sewing room. So, because I am a thoughtful loving wife, I will make sure that I pick colours that I like.

Love, M

A slight case of over packing

I am home from my retreat* and once again, I find that there are projects that I took to work on that never made it out of my bin.

I did start this hat...formerly known as the End Paper Mitts. I'm thinking that if this had been the only project I had taken, I would have been finished it.

This is my 10 stitch blanket...3rd time lucky. If it had been the only project that I packed, I wouldn't be finished but I would be further along than on the second colour.

This was a good choice to pull out of the bin. The pattern is simple enough that I could still visit with my friends and see progress on the shawl.

I also knit on another Lady Eleanor shawl for a short time. The other projects were only pulled out to show other knitters what a yarn looked like. I didn't knit a stitch on them. I also didn't look through the books I brought.

Perhaps the real problem is overestimating how many hours there are in a weekend.

*The retreat was sponsored by The Calgary Guild of Needle and Fibre Arts.