Mothlady

Hello, world

I've decided to resurrect my blog for the Winter Olympics. In all probability I will be knitting Wisteria by Kate Gilbert (Twig made it and I'm such a copycat) although I'm not sure if my yarn choice is the best one. Or even possible. A linen/silk blend and some gauge problems should make things interesting. In the meantime our four cats say hi.

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

Old nemesis

Hmm, over a week has gone by since my last post. What has been going on?

• I've been working during the days and watching the World Cup in the evenings.
• We've got the first heat wave, but I haven't been able to enjoy it much (see above)
• I reinstalled XP on my computer and at the same time got rid of Anonymizer. I wouldn't recommend this software to my worst enemy, their support is virtually non-existent. When the program suddenly stopped working (and with it my Internet connection!), I emailed them to ask what was going on. After several days I got a reply that my subscription had ended. Why didn't they tell me that beforehand? GRRR...
• Bettina had a small lump on her back. It was removed and turned out to be a benign cyst. Whew!
• We've done a bit of house-hunting. We're still not buying a house (the prices are too high), but we're considering renting one. We're going to see one on Monday night.
• My World Cup project was supposed to be Kaffe Fassett's Geometric Star jacket, but I didn't like the candy colours, so it went to the frog pond.

• So I took out my old nemesis.

[Spoken in the voice of Jeremy Brett] "Ah, we meet again, Moriarty!"

• Contrary to what I said before, I decided that my summer project should be as easy as possible (and my crocheting skills are, um, limited).

The S word

Yesterday I realized what day it was suddenly felt the urge to finish Lillehammer (nothing works better for me than a deadline). I can't knit (or finish) a sweater I associate with skiing and snow when I'm watching 22 men on a field. So off I went and finished the sweater. But before I show it to you, let's get back to that unfortunate steeking business.

First I took a couple of drinks to calm my nerves and then I took out the sewing machine. Now, if I say that at the best of times my sewing machine and I are not on good terms, that is an understatement. I hate sewing and the machine always seems to have it in for me. So I wasn't surprised when it refused to work, I guess it would have needed service or a drop of oil or something. I know I needed a drink after I had wrestled with it for some 20 minutes.

Then I remembered that you could sew the steeks by hand. I googled and found this site. I even toyed with the idea of doing crocheted steeks, but I'm not on speaking terms with the crochet hook.

I got some sewing thread and started working. While I was sewing, the yarn seemed awfully slippery, so I decided to do the backstitch part twice for good measure.

And then I cut the steeks.

Voilà!

As soon as I took this picture, I saw that the yarn ends were busy unravelling. Only then I remembered that Eunny Jang had wrote something about this not being the ideal method for superwash wools. Of course I didn't pay any attention to it because I thought this yarn would have enough hold (silly me!). And there I was, holding a garment made out of superwash Falk. Suddenly I felt dizzy, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't because of the drinks I'd had. At once three images came to my mind.

1. Next winter I'm hiking in the woods wearing Lillehammer. I walk by a tree, a yarn end gets snagged on a twig and by the time I come home,  half of the sweater is unravelled. Or better still:

2. One sleeve suddenly falls on the frozen ground. Or possibly two.

3. And what will happen when I wash the sweater? I open the washing machine and take out the sweater. Oh wait, it's only a sleeve. And then the other sleeve. And then the body (or a tangled mess of yarn).

Frantically I studied the steeks to see if they would unravel. It seemed like they would hold, but I can't be sure, can I? At the end I decided to finish the sweater as it is, I can always sew the seams again later (but with a machine this time).

Sewing the shoulder and armhole seams neatly proved to be a little difficult, and I'm still not entirely satisfied with how they turned out. (The close-ups would be even better if I had blocked the sweater, but I didn't.)

All in all this sweater was a joy to knit, I loved every detail.

And here is the wrong side.

Facings mercifully hide any unravelling incidents, but who knows what's going on under there?

It took a lot of work, but it was worth it.

I will post a separate entry on the yarn and needle info, but now I'm all set for my next project. Summer projects should be all about relaxing and not having to think about what you're knitting. You know, something fun and simple that you can knit while watching football.

Uh-oh.

Tv + knitting = 2 sleeves

Lately I've been watching the World Championship in ice hockey. I usually knit when I'm watching tv, so this has been a good excuse to get some knitting done. Well, guess what? The Lillehammer sleeves are finally finished.

You know what this means. STEEKS.

Not with a bang but a whimper

Here's a much delayed recap of the last days of the Olympics.

On Saturday we went to my sister's and I had my knitting with me (mind you, this was supposed to be The Steek Day if I had stuck to my original time schedule), but after a few glasses of wine I decided to concentrate on chatting and watching men's slalom. (Have you ever tried knitting fair isle while tipsy? Do it, it's great fun! Oh, and remember to take pictures of your knitting before you eventually rip it out.)

On Sunday I knitted and watched the last events of the Olympics. As I was in no hurry, I stopped every now and then to marvel at the beautiful pattern. I especially love the horses and the peacocks. This is how far I had gotten when the torch went out.

Doesn't it look suspiciously like the photo in my last post? Well, that's probably true (and the reason for today's title). You see, in my eagerness to admire the pattern I somehow got confused with the neck opening decreases. I had to rip out everything I had done during the weekend, and a little more. Aaagh. I still have to tink back a row or two, but I haven't had the heart to do it yet because it is the part that is knit back and forth. And no, I don't have any special method for it, I just keep the unused yarn in front of the knitting while purling with the other yarn (I knit continental style and use the Norwegian purl). So if you know of an easier method, do tell me.

I get highly emotional with sports. It's hard to knit because you're choking up about an exceptionally good takeout in curling, or while you're sobbing because your team lost - unfair! And it's not just national pride, play any national anthem and I get goose bumps ;) BTW, they played the national anthem of Italy twice in the closing ceremony. Now that is just plain torture for me.

I always feel sad when big sports events come to an end, but the Olympic movement is wise enough to promote the next event in the closing ceremony.

And then there's the FIFA World Cup in June.

I feel better already. And I can't wait to see what you all have been up to during my Olympic absence.

Mistakes

Well, I guess it's time to say this: I don't think I will finish Lillehammer during the Olympics. The asymmetrical upper part of the pattern takes too much time, so there won't be enough time for the sleeves (unless I knit at lightning speed!).

And I noticed I've done some mistakes.

The things on the left side of the picture (arrows?) are wonky in both pictures. I don't understand how they became boomerangs. But yes, I'll leave them as they are, call it artistic freedom :)

I blame it all on this guy.

Canadian figure skater Emanuel Sandhu didn't do too well in the finals, but he is hot! Want to see his sixpack? Go ahead. Hey, hey! No drooling on the keyboard!

Cuts and bruises

First of all, thank you for all your compliments and cheers, they mean a lot to me. It's just that I'm so busybusybusy with the Olympics and Lillehammer that I'm having a hard time answering emails and reading other people's blogs (my Bloglines Notifier has exploded).

If you watched the Pairs figure skating finals yesterday, you know what happened here.

How Zhang Dan could continue after that fall is beyond me. And they won the silver medal!

I cut my finger while cutting a slice of bread and had to use a bandaid. I didn't know my left thumb is so crucial when it comes to knitting, so it took some getting used to. But I still made some progress on Lillehammer.

I went to visit my father yesterday, so I started a sleeve as a commuter project. I also noticed that there might be a slight error in the instructions for the front neck opening, but we'll see for sure when I get there. I'm a little behind in my schedule, but not much. And I've been able to get 8 hours of sleep nearly every night, so I might squeeze in some extra knitting hours during the second week, if need be.

More drama

First of all, I can't understand how I forgot to mention this as one of the funniest posts of 2005:

I guess all of us have had that horrific dream where you realize you're naked in a public place. Yarn Harlot did it for real. Technically speaking she did have underwear, but still... And then she wrote about it. Kudos to her, I would have emigrated to Greenland or, at the very least, demanded a brain transplant.

This is the stuff legends are made of. Yesterday Norway's Frode Estil stumbled at the start of the 30 km pursuit.

He waited for 45 seconds to get a new ski...

...and then set off in pursuit of the others.

He took silver and lost the gold medal by 0.6 seconds. An unbelievable feat.

I'm still knitting the main pattern, so nothing spectacular yet. But tomorrow I will probably begin Pattern II with the beautiful horses.

First day

The first day of the Games was so exciting that it almost interfered with my knitting. For example Norwegians Magnus Moan and Petter Tande fought until the end for the bronze medal in Nordic Combined (Moan won).

I've completed the first multicolour pattern and started the black and white main pattern. Here's 302 stitches of fair isle bliss.

I used a 2.5mm needle for the ribbing and 3.5mm for the body, so in answer to Twig's comment: I'm not totally insane, just a bit :) But the ribbing took FOREVER.

Opening ceremony

Italians have a high sense of drama, so the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics was quite spectacular. There were dancers, roller-skaters, acrobats, balloons, and fireworks; music and dance, opera, history, fashion, and sports. Everything from Luciano Pavarotti to a Formula One race car. Even supermodels (more pictures in Yahoo! News).

Notice the ballet dancers' legs in the following picture.

This was my favourite: acrobats hanging on wires formed a dove on the wall.

One thing I wasn't looking forward to was the music, I thought there would be Italian pop all the way (sorry, my potential Italian readers!), but surprisingly enough they played 70's and 80's disco when the athletes came to the stadium. It was like a quick rerun of my misspent youth to listen to artists like Aretha Franklin and Eurythmics :)

Extra points to Australia for their cute mascots (sorry, couldn't find a better picture of the little kangaroos).

Eight women carried the Olympic flag to the stadium, among them Italian actress Sophia Loren, 71.

And finally, the Italians know how to light the Olympic fire in a fantastic way.

Mmm, what? Lillehammer? I've just about completed the ribbing.

Notice the state-of-the-art stitch marker, though.