I’ve been looking for an excuse to jump in to the MMPs! I took up knitting again about 5 years ago and just joined the local knitters guild. Yeeee ha. I’m official.
What I like best is the instant companionship with a wide variety of people, many of whom I wouldn’t otherwise have much in common with. Sophisticated blue haired daughters of the American revolution or barely out of their teens mall rats–doesn’t matter, we can chatter on about knitting and discover (of course) or common humanity rather than our social differences.
The only thing I’ve ever knitted were broken bones.
Spaz, iffn you need floss from this end of the state, talk to VWife. she has at least 3 skeins of every number DMC ever produced. And a humunguous file cabinet full of charts she’ll never finish in her lifetime or 3 others.
And she has the audacity to give me hell for wasting money on a model railroad magazine once a month…
Before this turns into a Pitting of my wife, I’ll change my subject and say ouch. Everything about me is sore this morning, when the bathroom project wasn’t even that strenuous. I hurt too much to blurf.
Any of you hawt MMP wimmin wanna give me a massage?
I can’t knit either, or sew, or doing anything remotely crafty. My creativity outlet is cooking.
C’mere, Bobbio, I’ll rub your shoulders. I am a master masseuse, so I’ve been told.
I was so busy this weekend, I feel like I never sat down at all. Except for Saturday afternoon when I hoisted a few with Mr Rebo and and old friend I hadn’t seen in months.
Last night I made Chicken Meatball and Tortellini Soup. A new recipe, that with a bit of tweaking might be a keeper. It had a bit too much thyme, and the chicken sausage was a bit pricy. It was good, though!
Dad had a bit of a panic attack last night. We tried a combo of Benadryl and 1/2 a Xanax. Seemed to do the trick. The Xanax alone isn’t helping much. I wish he could relax on his own. Poor guy.
It is VERY quiet here. There are only 20 or so of us on this floor now, and most of them don’t make it in until 8:00 am. This will be a weird week. And then I start the one hour commute again. <sigh> It’s been a nice three years of a 15-minute commute. At least I have permission to change my hours to 6:30 to 4:30. That will help with traffic.
Bleargh. Morning. Monday morning, the worst kind of morning. Slept a little late today, but I schedule my weekdays such that I’ve got lots of time in case stuff like this happens – either accidentally, or accidentally-on-purpose. (Alarm set for 6:30am; work starts at 8:30am; travel time is under 30 minutes.) Also, I hate rushing in the morning. Mornings are not rush-friendly.
The wife is not really liking the Windows 7 beta. (Oh, yeah, I’m running it full-time now. I needed to redo my system after an overhaul with new motherboard, CPU, RAM, video card, etc. and couldn’t justify reinstalling XP when I was almost certainly going to have to do it again when I went with 7 at its release. I don’t do overlay upgrade installs. Too messy and fraught with long-term issues.) It’s mostly the lack of hardware support for older bits of hardware – or new hardware that doesn’t yet have support. And most of that is because I installed the 64-bit version so I could get a full 4 gigs of RAM, and not the 3GB+1GB video I’d have gotten under a 32-bit system.
So I installed XP in a virtual machine, and it seems to run well. I can even print through my printer using the virtualized XP where I can’t in Windows 7 due to a lack of 64-bit drives. That’s pretty cool. (The printer is wireless, so I can connect through a virtual wireless network in the virtual XP to Windows 7 and then to the printer. It’s weird, but it works.)
I’m sure this is all terribly fascinating and not the least bit confusing or technical.
Anyway. Gotta run off to blog and do some actual work.
Add me to the list of “can’t knit, won’t knit”. I tried knitting a scarf a while ago, it came in a little pack with instructions (2 lines thereof), needles and three balls of fluffy wool. I got bored by the time I was halfway through the third ball of wool and therefore said scarf is somewhat shorter than it should have been, and the remaining wool became a cat toy.
My feline overlords are fond of this knitting lark.
To the OP, let me say I know exactly how you feel about knitting. Embrace the feeling, revel in it, and don’t ever let anyone rain on your parade. I love knitting annd have found it to be a salvation in the sometimes craziness that is my life.
Not sure if I should even suggest this, as it will take even more of your time, but it will add to your knitting life in so many ways. Ravelry. If you are not already there, sign up (it is SO worth the short wait!)and you will be amazed at all it can offer. Want to see how someone has worked up a certain pattern? Enter pattern name (or pattern type) into the “Pattern” box function and you will be given a list of (quite possibly) several thousand people who have worked up that pattern! Got a type of yarn you want to use? Just enter it into the “Yarn” box and voila! you will will get (quite possibly) hundreds of projects others have done with same yarn. It is a wonderful way to get inspired! Want to join a knit-a-long? There are plenty to be found! I joined one in January and have already finshed my first project of 2009. If you find yourself there, be sure to “friend” me- I go by the name of Dexi.
Even though there are other things in your life that need doing, they will get done. But the knitting thing, it is just so cool you got your knitting mojo back!!
I love knitting!! I really want to learn crochet as well. My problem has been that I’m more comfortable without a pattern than with one. But, I’m trying some now. (I wonder if I’ll go back to my pattern-less ways once I learn more about how sweaters, lace items and such are structured.) Ravelry has been supremely awesome and frickin’ addictive as I search out possible projects, and with an impending lay-off on Friday, I’m going to have lots of time to knit. I followed you, GT, and joined the frugal knitters community on Ravelry. I refuse to feel bad about not spending bucketloads of money on fancy expensive yarn. I’m not opposed to it for a special project, but I’m not doing it for every one.
I cross-stitch as well, but my patience tends to be designing and making 3 inch ornaments for Christmas trees. I got a few kits that I like and thought I’d try, but they’ve been sitting for quite a while. I’m trying to figure out how to attach a knitted item to one of the ornaments. So far, I’ve come up with making a little hat, and then trying to perch it on the top. It was mildly successful, but is still a work in progress.
I could go on and on about this stuff and bore you all for days, but lucky for you all, I have a really busy week at work.
Welcome new ones!! Bwahhh we have lured you into our den.
I can cook, sew, spin, and weave, though. And play with Lego.
We’re off to the library shortly, and will be running around in an attempt to stay awake.
The forced day off tomorrow (elections’ day) is not going to help!
Ah, well… I guess it’s a form of Job Security.
Oh, knitting – I actually knew how to knit as a kid. I’d probably be able to re-learn in about an hour if I really felt like it or needed to. Never really got into it, though, and haven’t handled a pair of knitting needled in, oh… well, more years than **Haze **has been alive, for instance… :eek:
I like knitting, but need to learn how to do more of it–as in purl. And reducing and other things, but I know this about myself: I am not ready to do any of that, yet. I will learn (maybe next winter), but for now, I need something soothing, easy and relatively mindless. I was almost in tears last night because my binding off of knit for this damned scarf I finally finished (I did it on those connected needles because I wanted long, vertical rows) is messed up at the end and about 2 inches or so of stitches unravelled.
I truly cannot handle more challenge at this point. I took the free end of the yarn and basically just wove it into a mess and put the scarf aside. I think my next project will be a hat or at least a striped scarf (so that I can learn how to switch yarns). But not right now.
I have my day planned out: flatiron hair, bank run, Borders to get a blank journal to help me with all this shit, Fashion Bug for 70% off short sleeve sweaters because the library is so hot. Come home, lunch, write in journal (cry), make doctor’s appt, dinner, register #1 son for SAT, award ceremony for #2 son.
What to make for dinner is the question… Grocery store run is Wednesday, so my choices are limited.
Daughter skyped in last night–she went to Student Health to see a counselor (she had made the appt over the phone or online or some such) and the receptionist was rude and told her she had no record of her appt. Daughter pressed her a bit and Bitch said she could talk to the Behavioral Health Receptionist who would be in in about 5 minutes. She waited 15 and no one showed. She’s 19, so she didn’t go back to Bitch and say, Yo! Where be the BH Receptionist, she just left. We told her to try again, get the name of the person who makes the appt etc. I’m thinking of calling there myself–wtf is up with treating someone like that?
Mousie, are you me? That’s almost exactly what I wanted to say. I don’t like patterns. I used to x-stitch and tended to make up my own patterns, mostly for very little items: I really got into little coasters for a while. Mom has a whole year’s set of coasters with a set for each season plus some really cute Christmas ones. Other than the fall pattern, which started the whole thing off, I made up all the others.
I started knitting almost two years ago because I was tired of x-stitch and I wanted something where I wouldn’t have to be changing colors all the time. So even now, other than a couple of those Noro striped scarves, which only have 2 colors, everything I knit is one color. I hate having to weave in the ends so the fewer I have to do, the better.
I haven’t yet progressed beyond rectangles so I’ve made a bunch of scarves, a couple baby blankets, and a couple throws/small blankets. They’re enough to keep me happy, though, since I do it mostly for the relaxation of a repetitive activity. I don’t want to have to think to hard about it so a 1x1 ribbed scarf is perfect. Right now I’m working on this shawl (which I did use that pattern for, but with modifications). I’ve gotten 2 balls of Bernat 30% alpaca into it so far and I’m working on the 3rd. It’s nice and soft without being anywhere near as expensive as the pure alpaca (which I used for a scarf for my hubby who loved it). I do have pure alpaca for a scarf for myself to start on as soon as the shawl is done. I didn’t intend to get that yarn, but we were out shopping one day and there was a new yarn store and I had to go in and then the yarn just called to me. What could I do?? I would start on that scarf now - I’m dying to play with that yarn - but it needs the same size needles as the shawl, and I can’t justify buying a new set just so I can start the project sooner. Oh well.
On a non-knitting topic, Friday I went to the outlet mall and found some great deals. I got a bunch of sweaters for me for $5 each and 2 part wool sweaters for KT for $3 each!! So much stuff was 70% off. It was fun. Today I’ve got sexy new jeans on, cuuuuuuute boots and a $5 sweater. Yay!
I can do a basic knitting stitch but I never really learned how, but I’ve been crocheting for over 30 years and I can make about any kind of clothing or lace that I want. I don’t use patterns unless I lay them out myself, but I often take the measurements from other clothing or examine it to see how it’s constructed. The only hard parts can be to set in sleeves or to use more than 3 colors in a row and still hide the other 2 under the stitch. Lace is pretty hard to do if you don’t use a pattern because guessing if something circular will lay flat means a lot of ripping out. Cables are tricky but once you have it down, it’s easy.
Unfortunately I’m a yarn snob and crocheting uses a lot more yarn than knitting does. I used to sell some of my sweaters but when over $200 worth of yarn has gone into it and I’ve spent hours and hours on it and then the consignment shop takes a cut, what I end up getting is barely worth it. Now I mostly give them away as gifts or keep them for myself.
I’m not normally an MMPer, but I had to pop in and say I had a lovely knitterly weekend.
After a holiday hiatus, I picked Autumn Roseback up (I’m doing mine in blues and greens). I’m almost done with the second sleeve, so I might get to wear it once or twice before spring hits.
When I wasn’t doing that I was spinning wool/mohair roving. The rest of the time I was cleaning out the basement (which earned me much guilt-free parked on the couch knitting time). A dozen bags of junk hit the curb this morning, and it felt good.
I don’t knit anymore. I knew how when I was a kid but haven’t needed a pair of mittens or a scarf in far to long. From time to time I get the urge to sew up something, though. I find a sewing project very soothing for some reason. I’ve even done some fancy embroidery design in my past. I never could learn to crochet…being a lefty.
Eons ago, when I was living in Indianapolis, my old company would bring in a masseuse for the employees. She was good, and after a particularly satisfying massage, I proposed marriage of which she thought I was serious. It took a minute of explanation to make the point that I was really complimenting her on a job well done in a manner intended to be funny.
