Rantastic - Knitting

Knittin' Mittens

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 23:08:00 -0500

Over Christmas holidays I actually had some time to knit, as Matt was home to burp/rock/bounce/change the baby.

(That photo fulfills Heather's dare to appear in my pyjamas knitting.)

Unfortunately Matt only had off enough time for me to knit one mitten. I'm not sure when I'm going to do the other.

Knitting Revelation

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:32:00 -0400

Inspired by Heather making socks for the Dulaan Project, I decided to try my hand at some mittens today (having finally finished the third baby toque yesterday, hopefully now in the right size), with the intention of hopefully donating a pair or two of mittens for the kids in Mongolia (we'll see how things go once the baby arrives... though right now, knitting is my favorite activity as it's soothing and I can put my swollen feet up and do my kick counts). Now, I have never been good at reading patterns. All those people who say, "Once you know how to knit and purl, you're set!" are WRONG. I knew how to knit, I knew how to purl, but all the K2tog and SSK and M1R were confusing the hell out of me.

I started googling for some pictures or videos of stitches, and just got more and more frustrated when everything was contradictory and confusing and just not making any sense. I put out a plea for help on my chat board and someone directed me to KnittingHelp.com, where they have really good stitch demo videos on just about ANYTHING you will see in a pattern. The SSK video, like Heather's, still looked like what I was doing when I was doing K2tog, and the K2tog video looked nothing like what I was doing, so I decided to go back to basics and just watch the basic knit stitch video.

It is not at all what I was doing when I thought I was knitting.

Apparently my grandma uses a technique called "Combined Knitting", which means everything has to be done differently. Now I'm waffling between re-teaching myself how to knit (correctly, this time), and just figuring out how to adjust the other stitches. Dangit!

Catch-up

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 17:03:52 -0500

Well, well, well. It's been a while since I stuck anything new on this page (other than my rage over David Emerson).

Things have been very busy... all last week, Matt and I ran around every night trying to get me outfitted to go skiing. Monday night, we hit MEC and Coast Mountain Sports (looking for ski pants, mittens, long johns, etc.), and Ski Cellar (looking for rental boots that didn't cut off circulation to my feet). Wednesday we went to Sport Mart, still looking for ski pants, and ended up trying on and buying some boots (which were the most comfy ones I'd tried so far). Then we waffled over buying skis and binding to match the boots, since I'm paranoid about (a) my boots not fitting rental skis and (b) binding styles changing between this year and next and rendering my boots obsolete. We went to the Chapters to get a coffee, figure out if we could afford skis and what we needed out of them, and I had a coffee that didn't suck. From Starbucks. Seriously. (Cinnamon Dulce Latte, if anyone's interested.) From an avowed Starbucks hater, you should know that this coffee? Does not suck in any way.

Anyways, after waffling for a few hours, looking through ski buyer's guides in Chapters, driving home to look at the internet, and waffling some more, we ran back to Sport Mart and bought some skis, poles, and bindings.

Thursday, I phoned no less than FIVE stores before I found someone who could install my bindings before we had wanted to go skiing. Matt and I trucked up to Country Hills to get my skis assembled, ran home, waited, drove back, fetched them (and bought goggles for Matt and mittens - children's mittens - for me), and then went to Lisa's to fix her computer.

Friday, dinner with friends; Saturday, tea with my family then my birthday dinner; and Sunday, a trip to beautiful Sunshine Village.

Ah, how I love Sunshine.

I insisted on dragging Matt out of bed at an ungodly hour so we could be there rightwhenitopened! and get the full day out of our lift tickets. It was gorgeous. The first few runs of the day, I was skiing in barely touched powder. The hill was not at all busy; we were just about skiing right on to the lifts the whole day.

And now all this week, I've had an Actual Job. Not a glamourous job, mind you, but it paid for my new skis. I've been helping out Matt's uncle Bob - they're a bit short-staffed and haven't had time to chase down their deliquent accounts or archive their files for awhile.

So. Been busy.

I am about to get a bit more busy, as I decided to join in the Knitting Olympics. I didn't think I was going to be able to, but the scarf I started for my grandma isn't very far along, and the gauge is wrong anyways, so I'm going to restart it on smaller needles. It's that eyelash wool stuff, so it doesn't stretch at all while you're knitting and it stays a bit too loose once off the needles to be decent as a winter scarf. Plus I have all of those awesome needles I got for Christmas to try, so it's time to put away my number eights for awhile. Though I love the click-click-click sound they making when I'm knitting. :)

So, that's what's going on in Tamara-land.

Just for Heather

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 09:34:36 -0500

This is the scarf I have been working on. It's slow going, I only get about one colour section done a day. It's 42 stitches: knit two, purl two, knit two, purl two, ..., knit two (I've been bring math notation into the knitting talk with my sister and other people and no one seems to find it funny except Matt). Going the other way I reverse the pattern (purl two, knit two, etc.) and it seems to be making a nice ribbed pattern. Twenty rows and then switch colours.

It matches my Jayne hat. :)