I really like this sweater
I found it on Knitpicks. Here’s the thing.
I love this sweater. I would love knitting this sweater. But I would never ever in a million years wear this sweater.
Knitting something for the sheer joy of knitting it is not a bad thing. But, I know myself well enough to know this would take me for ever. And I just really don’t have that kind of time to dedicate to pure process knitting.
It’s too bad I wouldn’t wear it, because it really is pretty.
The college football season has begun. And Notre Dame crushed Navy. Ha ha. (Sorry Dad). I love college football. It is excellent for knitting. I get much of my Christmas knitting done while watching football games.
But I can’t knit right now. I think I have a repetitive stress injury from too much knitting. Too much knitting with no finished projects to show for it. Sigh. This is very frustrating. I also smacked my elbow on a ladder today (don’t ask) and it hurts. So I am taking the night off. Instead of actual knitting I am just looking at knitting patterns online.
I know, it’s pathetic.
My knitting has been pissing me off lately. Which is really not what it is supposed to be doing. But, be that as it may, it has been pissing me off.
None of it is doing what I want it to do. Things don’t fit. They unravel, they develop mysterious extra stitches, or lose stitches. They are a mess. I have been trying to knit the same pair of socks all summer. This is some kind of record, and not a good one. And I don’t even want to talk about the Olympic Knitting.
So, I decided I needed to knit something quick and easy. Something that did not have to fit (much) and did not require teeny tiny needles and surgical grade lighting to see what I was doing.
Voila! Some fingerless mittens to wear with my denim jacket this fall. I knit them while I was watching the Hatfields and McCoys with the children this week. They turned out pretty well. They are both the same size and shape and they even fit, which is always a challenge for me.
I am pretty happy with them. Why? Because I actually finished them. It has been a while since I managed that.
Maybe this will break my unlucky streak.
I made polenta for dinner tonight. Polenta is one of those things you cannot eat in front of the television. So I was actually sitting at my dining room table, eating polenta and flipping through the latest issue of Interweave Knits.
My mind was wandering while I was flipping pages. I was wondering why the NBC Olympic coverage is so bad. I thought about how much I like to knit cables, but that they make me look about 20 feet wide. I cursed my inability to knit things like sweaters. Things that actually have to fit. And I wondered if Felipe Massa be back at Ferrari next year, and if not, who will replace him. What can I say, I have a lot on my mind, most of it spectacularly unimportant.
And then I flipped the page and saw this:
I almost dropped my fork.
These are brand spanking new knitting needles. They are so new you can’t even get them yet. They are called Karbonz and they are made by Knitter’s Pride. These are knitting needles made out of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber!
Do you know what else they make out of carbon fiber? Do you? Formula One racing cars, that’s what else!
I love Formula One racing cars! This is so freaking cool. Clearly, I will need to have some. I wonder if they will make me knit faster….
Have I mentioned to you lately how much I like to knit? Well, I do. And yarn bombing interests me more and more.
What is yarn bombing? That’s a good question. And here’s the answer. Yarn bombing or yarnstorming or urban knitting are all the same thing; essentially knitted graffiti. I have seen some in Montreal. It is usually things like hats on statues, or little knitted cozies on bike racks or light posts. It is, of course, technically vandalism, which, as you know, is illegal. However, since it can be removed with a simple pair of scissors there isn’t anything very menacing about it. The wikipedia has some good information about it. And some cool pictures.
But I digress.
They had a yarn bombing exhibit in the butterfly house at Reiman Gardens yesterday. This begs the question, is it really yarn bombing if you had permission to do it? But either way it looked pretty cool. See:
Looks pretty cool doesn’t it? Here’s some more:
And finally:
Pretty
Oh, and here’s a butterfly.
He didn’t seem terribly impressed with the knititng, but he didn’t seem to mind it either.
Look! It’s a giant size Gnome-y. I need one. Or ten. Or fifty. I’ll have to get the pattern. And the yarn. And the time…
It’s from MochiMochi Land. One of my favorite websites.
Do you see this:
It is a mitten. A complicated two-color stranded work mitten. And it is a disaster. You can’t see it in the picture but the color work is a mess. All bumpy and puckery and generally not very nice. And I hear many of these problems can be solved with blocking but there is one other massive problem. It doesn’t fit.
The thumb hole hits me in a weird place and I can tell it would be misery to wear them. So now I have to frog it and think of something else to do. But I am having a hard time.
I keep trying the mitten on. I guess I am thinking that somehow the thumb hole will have magically repositioned itself since the last time I tried it on. And I don’t know why this is bothering me so much. The whole project was kind of an experiment anyway, because I wanted to knit something with two colors. So, mission accomplished. Now I just have to frog the stupid thing.
In case you are wondering what frogging is, it is pulling the needles out and unravelling the whole thing right down to nothing. It is called frogging because you are ripping the stitches back. (Rip-it, rip-it. Get it?) Because it is two colors of yarn frogging will be an especially large pain in the ass (sorry mom). But it has to be done. Maybe I will do it after work tonight. After I have had a glass of wine or two. Unless somebody wants to come over and do it for me.
Ugh.
I knit this today while I was watching the Illinois-Indiana game. He’s pretty cute. I may have to make about 1,000 more.
He’s standing in front of my jar of sand from Grand Mere Beach in Michigan. I love it there.
Oh, and by the way, Illinois is 6-0. This is highly unusual.
I made this over the weekend.
I think he’s pretty cute. And a lot of you may or may not be getting one for Christmas, so pretend you didn’t see anything.
I mentioned earlier that I was knitting a random thing for the C-Man. Here it is. And before you ask, it’s a smokestack:
Actually, this is a Cuter Polluter from Anna Hrachovec’s Knitting MochiMochi. There are some very fun things in this book.
And because if you knit something for one child you have to knit something for both children, here is Princess O’s random object:
It’s a television. An old school television. And this pattern was in the same book.
They turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself.
