Knitting Races

My mother and I are having knitting races right now. I'm kicking her butt. This picture doesn't really show her knitting style. I just thought it was cute.

My mother is the one who taught me to knit. When we were kids, almost all our clothes were hand knit or sewn, and store bought cookies were a treat. She was the original Martha Stewart, except not obnoxious or belittling or greedy to the point of going to jail over it. She knit me a fuzzy mint green sweater with 1 giant needle and 1 regular one so that the stitches were huge. Hey, it was the early 80s, I think it was cool at the time. She knit me a bright yellow cardigan that I had to take to the movie theatre when a neighbour took my older sister & I along with her daughters to see The Cat From Outer Space. Air conditioning in the theatre gets cold, you know. I remember waiting in line outside the theater and swatting at a bee with it and getting stung on the neck. She knit us blankets for our doll cradles. She knit impossibly tiny bikinis for our Barbie dolls.

I always thought she was the fastest knitter in the world. She doesn't knit much anymore, and she's always talking about how fast I knit. I didn't really see it until tonight.
Yesterday, I started the back of the cabled double-buttoned jacket. By the time I went to bed, I was at the armhole shaping. Tonight, I finished the back, and I'm halfway done the left front panel.
On April 17, the day of my surgery, my mum cast on the right front of a cardigan she's making for one of my uncles for Christmas. She's finished the ribbing.
Now, I know that I've had a lot more time for knitting in the past 2 weeks than my mum has. She's got all the running around and stuff to do. She's retired and busier now than ever before.
But what really hit me tonight is how fast I do appear to knit. I think I did 3 stitches for every 1 of hers.
So now, when she says I knit fast, I'm going to believe her.
I found the usb cable for my camera! I knew I had brought it with me. So here are some pics of Cromarty (not pieced, don't forget, because I want to block the front & back) and the back of the cabled jacket.


If you know the Cromarty pattern at all, you can see that I left off the cabling around the neck. I think it looks better on me having a bit of a more open neck. I'll see how it looks after the blocking - it may stretch out the neck and I'll want to add it on.


Here is where the shoulder saddle is sewn into the front to make the square neckline. I've never done shoulder saddles before. I love the way the cabling goes up over the shoulder.


What am I loving the most about that cabled jacket? Using my new addi turbos! Awesome needles. Oh - and I'm knitting a size small because that's what I guestimate I'll fit into come fall!!!!!


And - more good news - I had real food for dinner tonight! Yay! I had 1/2 a cabbage roll, all chopped up in the blender, and a tiny spoonful of mashed potatoes. And I was ridiculously stuffed. I felt like I'd just finished eating the lunch buffet at The Mandarin. But boy, did it feel good to be eating real food again! The last week has been reasonably real, but one can only take so much soup & yogurt before feeling the need to kill someone. Let's be honest.
I'm already planning tomorrow's meals! It's so exciting!!

No, really, it's true

I just have no pictures to prove it. I was sure I brought my usb cable for the camera down to my parents' with me, but I can't find it.
Anyhoo, Cromarty is DONE!! Well, the knit bit is, anyway. It doesn't call for blocking, but I will, because the body needs to be lengthened. I don't suit the crop look.
And I started the back of the cabled double-buttoned jacket this afternoon and I'm all the way up to the armhole shaping.
Seriously. It's all true. Stop calling me a liar.

Baby steps but not baby knitting

Feeling much better today - even went out to the grocery store with my mum to get some slightly more real food (real soup & pudding for dinner!). And got a lot of knitting done this evening. I may finish Cromarty and cast on the next before I'm home, after all! And 2 pieces of good news today - the weight has already started to come off (13lb in 1 week!!) and I won a massive salon hair care pack from my gossip bitch, Lainey! Cross your fingers for me to win the grand prize - a weekend spa/shopping spree getaway in TO with Lainey herself!

hospitals are bad for knitting

I brought my knitting to the hospital where I was for a few days. I think I managed to knit a dozen stitches. Between the drugs, the IV and the oxygen thingie on my finger, it just didn't happen. Poo.

Finished!

The wrapover is finished! I just need to buy some more ribbon for it. And, of course, it's a bit small because I am on the large size, but I will be rapidly decreasing soon, so as soon as it fits properly, I will model it for pictures.

Oh, Lady Mohair, you are the stuff of nightmares

So being on dialup at home means that not all of the amazingly fantastical hysterical pics on Lady Mohair's site didn't load. Now I'm at my mum & dad's - with high speed. And here is what is going to be in my nightmares tonight. On the plus side, that means no more nightmares about that huge pile of neverending dishes that Mr. Burns is making me do while Homer Simpson keeps eating from the Sea Captain's all you can eat seafood bar and adding to the pile. Just don't ask. Or analyse.
Just enjoy the mohair.

What the FUG????

While knitting after six million dishes were washed I was surfing my favourite blogs (remember, I'm on dialup, so I can knit while pages load!). I like to check out what blogs my favourite bloggers are reading. I was on The Panopticon (the brilliant Franklin, creator of Delores, the knitting sheep in his cartoons) and off him I linked to QueerJoe. From QueerJoe I got to this hideous creation:


How did the knitting gods allow this to happen??? I can't decide what was funnier on that site: the post-op tranny model who shouldn't have stopped taking her hormones, or the designs themselves. I especially love the fact that both the horror above and the hot pink sweater dress are proudly labelled 'unisex'. And the balaklavas with no opening. For sex games, one would assume. But can you imagine trying to breathe through doubled mohair when things are getting hot & heavy? This is why leather or latex are much better choices. Or so I hear.
Need a good laugh? Check out 'Lady Mohair'.
Oh - did I mention that this stuff is for sale??? What exactly do you suppose would have to be the mental state of someone who would buy it?

Why no knitting got done today

I've been cooking quite a bit lately. Healthier, cheaper, yada yada. The real reason is that it's rather embarrassing to walk into a fast food restaurant, get greeted by name and have the staff start preparing your usual order without asking.
I love to cook; I really do. And I'm not a bad cook, either. My problem? Dishes. I would rather be in charge of preparing chum on a fishing boat than do dishes. Be the only person in charge of changing diapers in that psycho octomom's house. Muck out the stall of a horse with 2 asses and they both have diarrhea. Be Paris Hilton's personal bikini waxer. Get the picture? So, basically, what I do is wait until I have absolutely no dishes left to eat off of or use to cook. Then I break down and do them. Of course, in the summer, it has to happen a lot faster because of the smell. So here is what the counter looked like while I was washing up. This isn't the worst part. The worst part? I had already done one load of plates, bowls and cutlery, and there is more on the stove that you can't see!!


Not only do I wait far too long to do the dishes, I'm also an extremely messy cook. So cleaning up is not only doing 4 loads of dishes, but it consists of scrubbing the stove, oven, counters, cupboard doors, ceiling, you name it. This is not an exaggeration. Here is some small proof in the form of the stovetop, although it's hard to see the spaghetti sauce cooked on the elements, the burnt crumbs under the elements, the grease, the pancake batter, etc., etc.:


So I cleaned and scrubbed and now the kitchen is all sparkly. Except for the floors. I just don't look at them. It's better that way. So here is how the kitchen is supposed to look, but, quite honestly, rarely does:


And shiny stovetop - even with new tin foil in the element pans. And the crud cleaned out from underneath them.


Then, I spent half an hour on the phone with my vet because the Hound from Hell ate one of my crazy pills. He looks through all his books, we figure out what to do, I find the sedatives leftover from when she got her ovaried yanked (in case she starts getting hyper and all agitated) and then, after I give her extra food like he said to, I go into the living room, thinking I might be able to knit a bit, I shake out the cozy knit wrap on the couch and what do I find? A wrinkled little crazy pill. She didn't eat it after all. She sucked on it, but she didn't actually ingest it. Little bugger.
Oh well. I can knit now.

Death and Taxes

Well, the plant might not have actually died today, but I did notice it today. That's one of those tree-falling-in-the-forest conundrums. That's the death.
And the taxes did get done today. As usual, I had to do them 3 times. The first time, I owed $10,000.00. Something told me I made a big mistake. So I did them again, and this time I was getting a refund of a whole $12.83. So I thought I'd check one more time - three's the charm. Now I owe again - but only $34.18. I can deal with that.
And for some reason, the final sleeve for the wrapover sweater that I've been working on doesn't seem to be getting any longer. How exactly does that work? I knit and knit and knit, and the damn thing stays the same length.
That must defy the laws of physics somehow. Knitting physics - there's a PhD in there somewhere.
And just for fun - Rosebud posing like they say that Bassets do naturally.