Casting on…

I’m not well today, I have some kind of flu type thing. My head feels big and my ears are hurty and I can’t hear very well, which I hate because I can’t always hear very well anyway!

The weather is still not doing as what it should, I’m beginning to worry that we wont have a real winter this year. I don’t expect it to snow on Christmas day but it must snow at some point during winter or i don’t think it counts.

I’ve cast on another pair of mittens, it’s a pair for the latest Knitty, they are pretty fun top knit! I’m making a pair for me and then I’m going to design a hat to match… and maybe a scarf if I have enough yarn left over. I’d put up a picture but despite it being really warm, it’s actually pretty grey today, and my house is not the best for natural light.

I’ve been knitting on a jumper for a few weeks and all was going well until I got half way through the back and noticed that I’d miss 2 rows of ribbing before switching to stocking stitch. So far all the people I’ve spoken to about this have said that you wont notice 2 missing rows… To them I say, “Well how the hell did notice in the first place?!”. I’m not really sure what to do, if I have to rip back then I can tell you now that this jumper will never be finished. It’s pretty boring to knit and I was really just making it to A) See if I should avoid drop shoulders, B) Have a quick, warm item of clothing for the bitterly cold (yeah right…) days that are coming and C) Use up this yarn that I bought purely because it was cheap (at the time that was good enough for me). It’s not the nicest looking yarn in the world, but it will be warm.

So I’m thinking that I just pretend I never noticed and because it’s on the back piece, if anyone says “You missed two rows of ribbing at the bottom there…” I can come back with the hightly mature “Why were you looking!?!”. The other option was cutting the bottom off and knitting down, but that would involve cutting the bottom off my knitting (I think the person who suggested this idea completely over looked that “cutting the bottom off” meant cutting off the bottom…).

Whilst at work on Saturday, one of the girls started talking to me about her knitting. She’s making a scarf, but was only ever taught how to knit. She wasn’t really aware that there was anything else to do and so was asking me how you ever make anything else if you can only knit back and forth. I get quite excited when people ask me to help them with things, I like to see myself as an enabler (See: Crazy lady, with pointy sticks and some string getting overly excited and being way over prepared for teaching someone to purl). She invited me to her house so I could help her. For the rest of the day I was thinking about what I would need to take with me. I thought I’d need to take some spare wool and needles so I can cast on a practice square for her, I have a really good beginners book with some fun patterns in that basically only require you to knit and purl, I’d need some of my own knitting so we can knit together when she’s got the hang of it. This is where the list of really useful things ends, after this point my list started to get a little… ummm… out of hand… I though other people might be there, and they might want to knit so I’d need even more wool and needles (ones I didn’t mind leaving behind), I thought that they might like to see some of the things I’ve knit, so I thought about my socks, mittens, a shawl, hats, a cowl oh and I think I still have a picture of the jumper I knit way back at the beginning (the one that didn’t fit me, but I wouldn’t need to mention that…). The stuff really started to pile up and I was beginning to worry about how I was going to get it all there.

In the end I stuck the the basic list and I’m pretty glad I did. When I arrived and handed over all the stuff my friend seems a little, overwhelmed, by it all. I did take a pretty large bag of yarn that she could have and when she opened it she paused for a moment, took a deep breath, looked at me and just said “Umm.. Wow…”, in a way that made me think I’d shown her just a little too much of my stash, she’s still a beginner after all! Then she went to get her knitting and the next thing that made me glad I’d toned down the crazy was when she pulled out a very nice, very long green scarf that she was knitting on paintbrushes… of different sizes!! I felt a little dizzy at this point… Then later on when a few of use were knitting away happily my friend said, “ Oh man, I don’t supposes anyone has anything, kinda long a pointy do they?”. This really cracked me up, though I think it just mad them think that I was crazy(er) because I kept laughing well after everyone else stopped…

I’ll leave you with a rare site…

This is my house mate Nathan, he’s making Welsh Cakes. Nathan is the kinda person who can (just about) cook frozen pizza without burning it! I’m looking forward to them…

Casting off…