I had to eat my breakfast first, as I mentioned, because the camera battery was dead and I had to go and find the charger anyway.  Once I got away from the internet, I realized just how hungry I was… especially when I started to do the hunger dance when I couldn’t put my hand on the battery charger immediately.  Finally, I got into the kitchen, found my oatmeal snotty because I had left in on the burner, even though the burner was off.  Damnit. I hate snotty oatmeal.  Then, to top it all off, the roasted pecans had attached to one of them… this.

That’s right, not one, but TWO little pieces of shell.  Snotty oatmeal with pecan shells.  My favourite. (For the proper perfect oatmeal recipe, I direct you to our sadly neglected family blog….)

Getting back to our sheep, I finished my arm warmers yesterday night. (Did you know that in French this is an actual way of saying ‘getting back on topic’? Retournons a nos moutons. Ya. Such a cool language.)

The darning in took two episodes of Ghost Whisperer.  Speaking of which, I realized that an important detail that I often forget to reveal is what I am watching or listening to when I knit a particular garment. I almost always remember the circumstances in which I knit when I fondle finished objects so, I try and pick literature that inspires the garment. Not to mention that the ultimate cozy is listening to an audiobook drinking tea and knitting at the same time – its a total orgasm of my senses.  For example, the shawl I knit for Sarah’s Wedding… I mostly knit while listening to Jane Eyre, and a Jane Austin novel.  The abandoned Milkweed, I was listening to The Secret Life of Bees for the second time.  I finished the book, but not the shawl.

To inspire the Noro Striped Arm Warmers, aside from the aforementioned show, I listened to the first few stories in Runaway by Alice Munro (you can only listen to so many short stories before you begin to think like a short story, which can be tragic.) There is something about striped arm warmers that screamed rebellion and independence to me – two beautiful themes in Runaway.

I also found myself so engrossed in the story line for the 4th season that I didn’t want to go to bed and thus continued right onto my sweater sleeve.

Proof that with the right circumstances we can overcome any form of knitters block!

I’m not an overly speedy knitter.  I think maybe I just spent way more time knitting  yesterday than I spent doing anything else. (Can you tell it’s raining and dark here?  The light in that photo is completely unnatural.  Yuck.)

You see… I have the house to myself this weekend.  That means that I don’t really  make food that doesn’t start with stir and end with fry.  I only clean up when I need to use a dish (I make sure I keep using the same dishes over and over again).  I watch old episodes of Ghost Whisperer and other than that I’m pretty much just knitting, sewing, weaving.  Honestly, if I could find my darning needle, I probably wouldn’t even be posting right now, but I can’t, so I am.  I am also avoiding other things, like any sort of physical exertion or discipline. And trying not to notice that when I talk… nobody is here to listen.  Le sigh.

Yup.  Just me and my arm warmers. Now… where is that darn darning needle?

I don’t know if I dislike the twisted up ball of a sweater hanging off my needles while knitting a sleeve, or seeming more.  I have been knitting away, but it seems to go so slowly… knitting, knitting, knitting, untwist.

So, I started a pair of wrist warmers.

I’ve never knit a pair of wrist warmers.

But the socks… as I was knitting them, and sticking them on my hands as I do… begged to be wrist warmers.  Luckily there is yarn left over.

Voila, le debut… wrist warmers kind of fly off the needles.  No untwisting… just knitting.

Maybe I won’t need sleeves on my sweater if I have these fabulous wrist warmers… or maybe that is crossing the ‘number of hand knit garments to be worn at the same time’ limit.  The other day I wore three and no one commented… and if the colours compliment each other…

Then, halfway through the warping process (I generally alternate the yarn with the apropriate amount of heddles as I warp, which keeps threading easier) I realized that I didn’t have near enough heddles.  Not 20 short, but over 100 short.  And really I was only going to be using a little over half of the width of the loom!  So, I ordered new heddles, which quickly arrived from Shuttleworks in Alberta (I needed them to come ASAP – BC is lacking in heddle stock apparently)  Ordered them Thursday before last and they came last Monday.  So, slowly, slowly, I have been threading the heddles.  It takes forever that way (336 warp threads -why do I love lace yarn so much?) but I am saving my body from the pain I normally have after doing a threading marathon.

I have 6 groups of 60 threads to thread, which means that I am a little over half way through.  Here I thought I would whip this shawl off and wear it for the Gathering the Women International Women’s Day Celebration in Victoria tomorrow.  Hah.  Or, I will maybe be done 3/4 of the threading.  Sigh.

I’ll post again when I get to the double weaving.  Never tried it, should be an adventure.

Forever warped

Maven

The socks knit up really fast.  So fast, in fact, that I think that I could have taken on something a little more difficult.  However,  I finished them.  I darned in all of the ends…

… it is quite remarkable actually, just how many ends there are to striped socks. I finished the first sock completely before I left for my spa day with the girls and the second one while I relaxed after my full body scrub (soft as a baby’s bum, I am!).  Here are some photos taken in the spa (lighting is bad).

One thing I noticed as I knit away on these socks and watched the olympics out my living room window (well, not really, but you get the point), was that these olympicss really brought Canada together as a country.  I even felt the need to catch the final men’s hockey game…  it was beyond me to hold myself back!  In fact, before we went into the spa, we sat and watched them win GOLD!  Oh thank God… remember what happened when the Canucks didn’t win the Cup?  ooooohhhh… pain.  I digress.

Here’s a photo taken during the closing ceremony to prove that I was indeed wearing them and not knitting them after the cauldron was extinguished.  See those cute boots there?  I had just gotten the heel re-affixed a couple of weeks before and then on this trip the heel broke on the other shoe!  ARG!

Figured it was time to splurge and get myself some John Fluevogs.  Oh baby.

I found that they looked pretty darn hot with the socks. As did my husband who at this moment

said that he was trying to work and could I please stop putting my boot up on the table.  Hot socks, check.  Hot boots to match, check.  Shiny gold Knitting Olympics medal, check.

PS: it was both inspiring and exciting to see all of your (Yarn Harlot, Melistress, Bookworm, Wise Hilda, Dances with Wool)  blogs and olympic knitting feats, they updates kept me focused and created a true sense of a global knitting matrix…  thanks for that!