Posts Tagged ‘cast on’

Froggy

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

The Ravelympics kicked off on Friday night, and I kicked off mine by frogging the living crap out of two hats. Took much longer than expected, as I’d done a stellar job at weaving in the ends, so couldn’t actually find the things again.

Still, all worked out nicely, and now I’ve got these hanging around as evidence…

frogged-eco

The eco beret

frogged-urchinand the Urchin.

More to follow on those at a much, much later date.

So on with the main event.

I started Vivian on Sunday, having spent all of Saturday in town with some fabulous knitters for the LSG 2nd birthday party. There was beer, cake, rugby, tea and zen knitting. A very enjoyable day, all in all. There are photos, but I’ve still to locate my damn Nokia usb cable. Anyway, I cast on on Sunday afternoon, and by the time dinner rolled around I had finished frogging it for the second time. Nothing to do with the pattern or the yarn, but more my total inability to read the bit on the cable chart that says to repeat the first 3 lines until line…..30-something. Which means that I was technically starting the waist shaping somewhere distinctly south of my navel.

At that stage of the evening, I just couldn’t bear to cast on a third time, so instead I pulled out the chart for the left sleeve and got to grips with that. I’m pleased to report that it went swimmingly.

vivian-left-sleeve

Left sleeve is on multiple stitch holders and residing in my knitting basket. Right sleeve has been cast on and is progressing well.

Now I realise that this leaves me behind schedule right at the start of things. Added to this is the fact that I’ve promised to write a game for a convention that’s happening this coming weekend, not in 3 weeks’ time like I thought. On Thursday I’m also heading to breakfast at my sister in law’s house so that we (plus HusBeast and the niece and nephew) can go to see The Princess and the Frog matinee. Vivian is really not cinema knitting. I’m hoping to get the right sleeve done by Thursday so that I can get the body up and running and get a couple of hours done on it on Friday…because I’ll have no knitting time at all on Saturday.

Phew.

This whole event is proving rather interesting already. I am looking forward to seeing just how much I can get done by the closing ceremony - it’ll be an experiment in anti-procrastination. I mean, if I really can get something like this done (or near to done) in 15 days, then there’s no excuse for not finishing all my wips in a suitably speedy timeframe either.

Or something like that.

Next jumper I make though? Garter stitch, totally.

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Another one bites the dust

Monday, May 4th, 2009

In WIP terms, at least.

image013

Boo yah!!!

The footies are finished. I’ve a little yarn left over, but didn’t want to run the risk of turning these into ankle socks. I hate ankle socks bigtime. Too many memories of horribly uncomfortable feet in childhood summers caused by the things.

My current WIP pile was then brought to two - my NDS socks and my Tangled Yoke.

So naturally, I cast on another project. More on that later…

Back at the start of the year I may possibly have made some statement about a particular monthly goal and entrelac in the same sentence. I’ve been feeling guilty about my lack of progress on that, but during the week I had a startling revelation about the whole thing.

I really don’t care about entrelac.

Sure, I could learn it for the sake of learning it, but having weighed up the pros and cons of the situation, I’ve put it firmly back on the..er..back burner. Sure, I like the effect of it, but I really can’t see myself ever wearing something made out of entrelac. It’s not really my style. It looks awesome on some people, but I fear that my “personal style” can be described as eclectic on the best of days, so adding multicoloured knitted squares to the mix might be the final straw and have the men in white coats come for me.

Since deciding not to bother with the whole entrelac thing, my queue seems so much less intimidating as I don’t have an entrelac tutorial screaming at me from the bowels of the knitting basket.

I’ve also managed, somehow, in the last few weeks to hit a kind of a balance between my book-eating and my knitting. I’m still flying through books but now the knitting basket is no longer where good projects go to die. I’ve been slowly but steadily making a dent in my rather sizeable stash, and have been using up pretties that I didn’t have the heart to knit before (because then I wouldn’t get to knit them in the future, of course. It makes sense to me, at least.)

It’s an overcast day outside, as is traditional on bank holiday weekends.  I’m ensconsed on the sofa with my new project, wishing that I didn’t have to leave the house in a couple of hours to drive to Dublin (Sunday public transport timetables are in effect today and are, quite frankly, poo.) with the purpose of running a game for a bunch of people who are quite likely not to turn up as they’ll be firmly ensconsed on their own sofas for the weekend.

The whole “I don’t have to go to work tomorrow” thought has flashed in my mind a couple of times and is rather odd. More time for knitting and blogging, I guess. Oh, and that dyeing that I thought I’d get to do today, but haven’t had a chance to.

Anyone else get up to anything interesting this weekend?

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Politics and yarn

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Went out for a rather casual dinner last night after work with a friend. Good food, good wine, good company. The kind of thing that life is all about.

It being a schoolnight, though, I was in my pajamas (or Thundercats tshirt, in my case) at 11pm. I flicked off the light, and lay there in the dark. I turned and twisted and tried to get comfy and settle down, but after about 10 minutes of being a complete fidget, I gave up. 11.30pm last night found me propped up in bed…casting on.

Yup, there’s no cure for having busy fingers and a busy head like starting a new lace project! I broke out the baggies of Sirdar blur, and cast on. It’s a rather nice yarn to knit with. It’s a mohair/acrylic blend, so it’s soft and silky, but if you need to frog a few lines you don’t need a vodka and a vallium to get through it.

Knitting, to me, is incredibly theraputic. Ok, so I only got through the garter stitch lines that comprise the wrap set up, but by the end, I was feeling relaxed and calm enough to settle down for the night. Counting stitches is far superior to counting sheep, in my experience.

Today is voting day in Ireland. It’s a general election, as opposed to just local election. I didn’t get to vote in the last one, as I wasn’t on the register. I was deleted off it. Apparently students don’t bother or need to bother with pesky things like politics. I moved to Dublin nearly 3 years ago, and was again deleted at some point during this time. The difference being that I was well aware of their crap admin, and sent in my paperwork in November, so a polling card came for me last week.
(It’s not just me. 100,000 people were “accidently” deleted off the register last year. Sounds a bit too like dimpled chads for my liking.)

This evening, I shall be exercising my constitutional right, and doing some ticking of boxes. Me, I’ll be voting for who I consider to be the lesser of several dozen charlatans. I’m hoping for balance, in the end. I’d like to see people in charge who have the best interests of their constituents in mind, and not just their golf/rugby/chess buddies. Someone who can balance environmental and social causes, and not run the country into the ground financially at the same time. Someone who realises that total seperation of church and state is the way forward, and is not just “anti-Christian”.

A very tall order, I realise, but I live in hope.

Some days, hope is all we have.

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