I know they say “Good things come to those who wait.” So I’m still waiting for that letter in the mailbox. Hopefully, it will be here by Friday. I’m getting to the point of giving up because I know as soon as I give up it will show up. But I can’t quite make myself give up yet. I’ve been working a lot which helps keep my mind off of things. Last night, I knitted and watched In Her Shoes.

I’ve been knitting quite a bit but the photos are so uninteresting. It’s hard to be interesting when you’re focusing most of your time on the same two projects. I have eight inches left on the body of the Hobo sweater. In the last month, I’ve knitted almost ten inches of the body, so I think I can finish the body within another month. And then the sleeves don’t take must time at all. After I finish this piece I get to do it all over again for the second piece. At least when the second piece is finished, the sweater is done. One of the advantages to knitting it sideways.

I’ve worked on quite a bit in the last few nights on the Snowflake vest. The back looked so great and I was so excited to finish the front. That is until I tried it on. The snowflake motif is huge on me and it just doesn’t look right. It’s not the stitches, it’s the design. I think I just need to rip back and start with a smaller motif. I was sad that it didn’t work out but at the same time I want a sweater that I’ll be proud to wear. Tonight at knitting, I plan on frogging the vest to the point where I will restart the pattern.
I’ve started reworking the motif in Excel so that it fits me a bit better. Here are the two that I’ve come up with. Which one do you like better? One or Two.

I’m sure that some of you heard about the storms that went through Kansas this past weekend. Unfortunately, the KU campus was hit really hard with over $6 million in damage, including the chapel where we were married. Fortunately, only one person was injured minorly. This is what it looked like on our wedding day and after Sunday’s storm. I feel so bad for those couples that are getting married within the next few weeks.

Yesterday was my Olympic day, it was supposed to be a day of olympic reading but I couldn’t focus late in the afternoon. I finished watching part of the Ladies’ Long Program on tape and didn’t see the last 1/2 hour because I hadn’t set the VCR correctly. So to find out who won the gold and bronze I had to look it up online. I saw the gold medal winner’s performance but my tape cut off right after that. Oh well. I still have the Medal Winners Gala to watch too, so my Olympics aren’t quite over yet.

Last night Bryan and I watched the Closing Ceremonies. Strange at times but entertaining nonetheless, we muted the tv during Ricky Martin’s performance. I don’t know what he has to do with either country that just hosted or are hosting the Olympics next time. Maybe they just wanted someone entertaining. I would have rather had a few more songs by Andrea Bocelli than Ricky Martin but that’s just my personal opinion. I’m sure there are lots of other Ricky Martin fans out there, I’m just not one of them. During the Closing Ceremonies, I worked on my “Olympic” sweater for the Special Knitting Olympics. There was a part of me that hoped I could finish it before the end of the Olympics but after ripping it out last week, I’m glad to be where I am. It’s my first fair-isle sweater ever. I’ve done the mittens and a hat but never a sweater. In bulky yarn, I think it looks pretty darn good considering that bulky yarn doesn’t hide your mistakes very well. I have a few puckering problems in a few areas but I think those can be worked out with a bit of reworking the strands in the back. This is the back of the vest, I figured make the mistakes in the back and then do the front. It was a bit of a challenge to work the pattern on the purl side (wrong side) but I had to trust myself and just do it. Who knows I may be up for making a more complicated pattern in the future, in the round of course. I just have to finish the other sweaters that I’m working on.

Thank you all so much for your comments with the last post. I was having one of those days and now I feel so silly about it. I know there are a lot of lurkers and I’m happy there are people actually reading my blog.

I’ve been avoiding all news of the Olympics today, especially figure skating news. Why? Because I had to work last night and didn’t get to watch figure skating. I want to watch it all unfold before me on my tape instead of having the news ruined for me and then watching it. It will also make me give me an excuse to work on my Snowflake vest. (Bamboo needles just feel so slow after using Addi Turbos. But I couldn’t find size 11 Addis in town.)

Yesterday, I worked on the sweater that I’m lengthening. I finally finished binding off the sleeve using Elizabeth Zimmerman’s casting-off casting-on which truly does look like the long-tail cast-on. I had to make the sleeves match, so this was perfect. Now I’m working on lengthening the body. Since I don’t have enough pink yarn but have a ton of blue, I’m going to use the blue as an accent at the bottom of the ribbing. Basically, I’m just doubling the length of the ribbing. (The yarn is Rowan DK Tweed, which was discontinued several years ago.)

After the Snowflake vest is completed, I told Bryan I would start on the Cider House Rules vest for him. Earlier this week, the wonderful yarn (Rowan Wool Cotton) order for the vest arrived from The Yarn Barn. I used two gift certificates that I’ve received. One was a wedding gift from a former roommate of mine and she mentioned in her card that we could use the gift certificate to possibly buy yarn for a sweater for Bryan, so that’s what we did.

And once again my own insecurities about the blog are surfacing. Do you even care what I have to say? Am I boring the pants off of all of you? I’ve often wondered how some people get 20 comments per post or even 50 or 60. What is so remarkable about what they are saying and makes people post a comment? Then there are those blogs where no one comments. What separates them, I haven’t quite figured that out yet. Yes, the Yarn Harlot is extremely witty and does have a few books published, but she seems to be the exception in the comments department. Does anyone else think about this regarding their blog? I just bring this up because since I’ve moved the blog the comments seem to be back to the one, two, even three comments per post. Not that I don’t appreciate each and every comment that I receive. I’m just thinking “outloud.” And boy do I sound like a real brat about it. Please excuse me I seem to be suffering a brat attack. If you have a problem leaving a comment, such as it doesn’t post, let me know.

Have a great weekend.

Yes, I’m still here. I haven’t been in the mood to blog in the last week. It’s nothing against any of you, I just don’t feel like sitting at the computer longer than I have to. Maybe it’s still the residual effects of being required to sit at a computer eight hours a day when I was working in the corporate world.

Things have been quiet around here lately, the usual stuff. I baked banana bread for my knitting group on Wednesday and on Thursday, I baked vegetable bread for my book group. This week, I just haven’t been in the mood to bake or do much of anything except knit. We took a couples’ massage class on Sunday and I think I’m still a bit relaxed from that. It was a wonderful class and I highly recommend it to anyone. We were both so relaxed after class that day that I didn’t knit a stitch and went to be about 9pm, which is quite early for us.

I checked out Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitting Glossary from the library and watched the first half of it last Wednesday. I couldn’t just sit there and watch it, I had to knit too. It prompted me to dig out a sweater that I had ripped out the bottom of about a year ago to lengthen. When I went to cut the bottom off, I accidentally cut one of the sleeve seams and part of the cuff. I’ve been avoiding it for a year, so I’m glad I worked on it. While watching the video, I worked on fixing the sleeve cuff and actually learned a new cast-off that I really like. EZ calls is the cast-off cast-on which really looks nice. Maybe watching the second half will prompt me to work on the bottom of the sweater too.

Also Wednesday afternoon, I finished the first of the Lilly socks. It’s a true knee sock and definitely the longest cuff I’ve ever knit on a sock.
Unfortunately, my excitement for the second sock just isn’t there at the moment. I’m enjoying Hobo a bit more than usual at the moment and I’m using that energy to my advantage. I took Hobo to my knitting group because it’s a good project to work on while talking. I made such progress that I figured I’d work on it a bit after I got home that night. Then Thursday it was the first thing I wanted to pick up and knit.

Saturday, Miss S and I decided we both needed to get each other out of the house, so we went to a cafe and knit. I figured we’d be there two to three hours, nope, we were there for about four hours and I made significant progress on Hobo. In fact, since last Wednesday I’ve been knitting a lot on Hobo and have doubled the length of the body. I’m up to about 8 inches, which is a little over 1/3 of the body! It’s starting to actually look like a sweater again.

Before going out on Saturday with Miss S, I tried on my Snowflake vest and realized with much dismay that it was way too big. One thing I had forgotten in designing the vest was that the stitch counts in The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns by Ann Budd take into consideration seam stitches. I’m doing my sweater in the round which at three stitches per inch gives me an extra 1 1/3 inches. So Saturday night, I got out the ball winder and ripped out the vest. Monday morning, I restarted it and am back to where I was before I ripped it out. I have about three more inches before I start the snowflake pattern. I’ve been trying to knit on it only when I’m watching the Olympics, which I’m really enjoying right now. I always go through a bit of figure skating withdrawal after the Winter Olympics.

Before I forget, I finished the charity scarf on Thursday night. It really looks cute and I’m sure a child will love it. Doubling the yarn made it go really fast. My only concern is that the yarn is hand-wash only. When we did the yarn swap, we failed to mention that the yarn should be machine washable.

It was a pretty quiet weekend around here. We both worked on Saturday and before heading off to work Saturday afternoon, I decided it was the perfect time to make the baguettes. They look a bit funky but taste great. A lesson was definitely learned with this bread - don’t put too much flour on the cutting board or they won’t roll very well. I ended up doing more pulling to shape the loaves than rolling. (Yes, one of them has a bite taken out of it. It appears that a husband couldn’t resist.)

Saturday evening, I watched the Olympics and knit while Bryan worked on school stuff. I knit on the Snowflake vest during the Olympics. It’s the perfect Olympics project because I don’t have to pay real close attention to it. My yarn is a bit kinky from being part of a previous vest for nearly 10 years but it’s nothing a good wet blocking won’t take care of. This first week, I’m only going to knit on the vest while watching the Olympics just to see how much I can get done. If this was how much I got done in four hours of the Olympics, I wonder where I’ll be by the end of the week? I have to work tonight, so I won’t get to knit the full four hours of coverage, but I will have the tape to watch tomorrow.

Sunday was our Valentine’s Day, we figured it would be easier to celebrate yesterday than on Tuesday. We watched two movies and went out for dinner, no reservations needed. :) One of the movies we watched was Grizzly Man, which is a fascinating documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a man who spent 13 summers trying to project grizzlies in Alaska. Even though he’s a sympathetic and likable person in the film, you have to wonder who he was protecting himself or the bears. Some of the footage he took while out in the wilderness with these bears shows a bit of his madness in the sense that he was consumed with these bears but had a lot of internal demons that he was dealing with. He seemed to be more afraid of the human world than he was of the grizzlies. In the end, he and his girlfriend, who was always afraid of the bears, were both killed by a grizzly bear. Bryan and I have been talking about this film since we finished watching it last night. There is something haunting but very powerful about this film. It’s definitely worth checking out. We both think it’s one of the best documentaries we’ve seen in a while and we tend to watch more documentaries than the average person.

During the two movies, I got a lot of knitting done on the first Lilly sock. I kept trying it on to see if it was where I wanted it to be. I came to the conclusion that they will look great as full knee socks, so I have about 25 rows left before I finish the first sock. Why waste the rest of the ball of yarn when I can get a full knee sock out of it, is what I’ve figured and I love this yarn.

The interview went well yesterday and now it’s just a waiting game. I should hear by the middle of next week. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.

My “knitting” officially started for the Special Knitting Olympics last night. I put knitting in quotes because the knitting consisted of casting on 134 stitches twice. Why twice? The first cast-on didn’t go very well, I got to 118 stitches with a four inch tail using the long-tail cast-on and that certainly wouldn’t give me the additional 16 stitches I needed. I managed to cast-on just fine the second time around but ended up with a four foot tail, this after only adding about 18 inches to my cast-on tail. Then I realized before I started knitting I should plot out my fair-isle chart so that I know I have the right amount of stitches for what I want to do. I spent a fair amount of the opening ceremonies and a while afterwards charting out my pattern (thank goodness for Excel), it helped with some of the oddness of the opening ceremonies. I’m going to use the pink background with white snowflakes. I had to chart both of them just to see. Now I’m all ready for figure skating tonight after work. If the yarn looks a little recycled it is. It’s from the first vest that I ever made back in the winter of 1995-1996. The vest never really fit, it was too short and the neck band puckered something awful. I figured this was the perfect Olympics project because it’s on larger needles than the size 3s that I’m using for my other sweaters and it’s also being knit in the round. Originally, I had planned to start the Flower Basket Shawl but after knitting my swatch, I realized that it wasn’t a good project for Olympic watching. I needed something a bit more mindless.

I’ve also joined Lolly’s Project Spectrum to encourage me to knit on the projects that seem to be so neglected.

Yesterday, I thought I would make bread again but I had sort of a lonely day all to myself. It should have been a productive day enjoying a day off, instead I missed Bryan a lot. He had an eleven hour day with work and school, and I wasn’t feeling the best. It was just one of those days. Since I completely believe in karma, I didn’t think that baking bread on a not so good day would be good for the bread. Who wants to eat unwanted bread anyway? Instead of baking I made some progress on the Lilly sock, spun for about an hour on the Garden yarn and started a garter stitch scarf for my knitting group’s charity project. My knitting group had a yarn swap in December and we’re making scarves out of the yarn we received. I’m doubling the yarn I received and making a horizontal garter stitch scarf. I cast on 136 stitches and I’ll knit for about four inches.

Today was a much better day. I’m so excited to start my new project for the Special Knitting Olympics. I swatched for it on Tuesday night but made a big mistake and decided to rip out the swatch. After I’ve started the project, I’ll take a photo of it for all of you. I had today off too and spent part of it knitting on the Lilly sock. Then after eating the second of our homemade pizza crusts for dinner tonight I decided that I was in the mood to make more bread. I put together the baguette dough which is rising in the refrigerator overnight. Then tomorrow I’ll form the dough into loaves and bake it, I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Now I’m having a dilemma about the Lilly socks. Do I work on the cuff for about seven more inches for a knee sock or do I stop in about three inches and have a nice mid-calf sock? Here’s where I’m at right now. You can’t really see the cables in the cuff in the photo but you can in person, take my word for it they’re there. I’m thinking I’ll only knit about three more inches and if later I want to make the cuff longer, I’ll just rip out the bind off and continue it. Oh the advantages of toe-up socks.

I’m so excited about the Olympics starting tomorrow. Figure skating is my absolute favorite but I find myself watching sports that I could normally care nothing about, such as luge, speed skating and curling, which still fascinates me. I’m hoping that a lot of knitting and spinning will be done in those 16 days. I’m participating in the Special Knitting Olympics because I have no idea when I’ll finish the project I start. I also can’t forget that I have to finish In Cold Blood by next Thursday for my book group. It would look really bad if the hostess didn’t finish the book.

The Rosepole mittens and hat have been sent off to my grandmother. Bryan’s Dad should be receiving his socks shortly. I can’t wait to hear how they like their belated Christmas gifts.

I’m a bit nervous about my interview tomorrow afternoon, it’s for a mentoring position at the local library. I have done mentoring before with the Girl Scouts but this will be a bit different.