As someone on the journals list just said (I’m catching up,) December is hectic and insane. Now I know December is way less any of those things now that I’m not working, but it’s still pretty hard to keep up, what with the cats knocking over the tree, and the kids being home now for winter break.
And here I am, woefully behind on my holidailies entries. msh keeps hounding me to write something. My uncreative brain is resisting. Not only is it resisting, it doesn’t have anything to say. And so today I will break the rule of the crossover post. And maybe sometime next week I will have pictures to show you.
This week I started knitting the mariah. GO LOOK! It’s really a beautiful sweater. Not only is it beautiful, but it is full of cabley goodness. Cables and things that I’ve never tried before - like a sweater! I’ve never tried an entire sweater. Well, no I did start a cami from vogueknitting earlier this year, but didn’t get very far. I always thought my first sweater would be of the sleeveless variety, mostly because sleeves look hard.
But then the winter knitty came out and I see this beautiful pattern… And just in time I had purchased a couple of sweaters from the thrift shop, one that knits up perfectly to gauge. So after I ripped my second hand sweater, and rolled the yarn into balls (incidentally I have decided that relaxing the yarn in skeins the way this person recommends is NOT the way to go. I guess it works for lots of people, but I end up with a round of ramen that is tangly and does not want to be wound into balls. I’m much more comfortable winding the yarn into balls right out of the sweater. I’ve read that some people knit right out of the sweater, but I am hoping that my winding the yarn into balls is helping it to relax a bit.
I swatch and see that I need size seven needles. Circulars. I have a set of straights but they are short and the pattern wants me to have both straights and circs. So needlehunting I go. So I google AGAIN for my local yarn stores and find that there’s one that I missed in my first ten google rounds. One that is apparently right up the street from me. (yay!) At the yarn shop which sells coffee and doesn’t smell stinky (Knit One, Chat Too in Calgary, in case you were wondering,) I meet two of the loveliest ladies ever who are so helpful and even go as far as to look up the pattern on the internet for me when I gave them a blank look in response to one of their questions. Very helpful and nice and never made me feel stupid. Because you see, I am generally afraid to discuss my knitting in public. Since I taught myself, I don’t like being in the position where people can actually TELL that I’ve taught myself. Chicken, yes.
The story gets even better! I got my first set of Addis on this expedition. And they rock.
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I wrote that two weeks ago and have not returned to finish the darn thing. Nor have I kept up with holidailies. Again.
To sum things up:
I had the best Christmas ever. It’s hard being away from home during the holidays, but this was the first time I got to spend Christmas with my very own family. It was so much better than I imagined.
2005 is here.
I got even MORE knitting needles and love them so much.
I am a year older.
I will write more this year.
