Month: November 2004

Short Blog Break

I realized yesterday that I have updated my blog only 7 times in the last month, and only twice since the beginning of this month.  There are a lot of things going on in my life right now, and committing to writing a 50,000 word novel (NanNoWriMo) by the end of November has been sort of the last straw.  Rather than feel guilty about it, I won’t be blogging until the first of December, unless I have some sort of Knitting News that just overwhelms me with its importance.

I will definitely be back, and I expect to start blogging around the first weekend in December, so please check in around then.  I know how annoying it can be when you keep checking a blog for days on end and there is just nothing.  Those of you who use Bloglines will automatically get notified when I post again.

Here are a couple of pictures for you in the meantime.  The first is so I don’t get kicked out of the puppy/kitty rings.  Riley the wonder dog and Willie the lunatic cat who thinks he’s a dog clearly love each other.

Here is what it looks like in the Pacific Northwest today:

It’s been a bit gloomy here the last few weeks, so the glorious sunshine today is just a gift.  No offense to those of you who live elsewhere, but this is just  the most lovely place on earth.  I’m sure the place that you live is quite nice, but I just wouldn’t move anywhere else unless somebody held a gun to my head.  Maybe not even then.

See you all in a couple of weeks!

Ramen Noodles

No, this has not become a fast-food blog.  Though ramen noodles do have their advantages.  I did a fair amount of knitting on the lavender sleeve this week.  Unfortunately “work” does not always translate to “progress”.  I mentioned in my previous post that the armhole on the finished and blocked body is a little bigger than the pattern measurements.  I will have to change the sleeve dimensions a little to make the sleeve cap fit into the armhole.  Then I decided I want the sleeves just a little bit longer than the original pattern (I have gorilla-length arms).  Sweater Wizard makes it possible to change every single dimension in the pattern on the schematic picture of the sweater; when you hit “enter” it changes the pattern instructions accordingly.  I love this software!  The original pattern instructions for the sleeve instructions were something like “increase every 4 rows 18 times, then every 6 rows 6 times”.  The new instructions were to “increase every 4 rows 25 times”, then go to the every 6 rows part.  I had just finished all the increases using the previous set of instructions, and briefly considered just doing more “every 6 row” increases, but figured I would end up with a sleeve that dragged to my knees.  So I ripped it out back to the every 4 rows part and am ready to go again.  You still with me??  Here is the ramen noodles part:

I rolled some of it back up before I took the picture, but 30-some rows of ripped out cotton yarn looks like purple ramen noodles to me.  The good news is that I didn’t wait to decide to change this until I had finished both sleeves.  Now I just have to remember what I did when I get to the second one.

Here is the non-knitting picture of the day:

My Christmas cacti appear to be confused about the season.
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You might have noticed a new link over in the Webrings and Buttons section on the left.  I decided in a moment of temporary insanity to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short).  This group of truly berserk people commit every November to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.  This started in 1999, and this year so far there are over 39,000 people who have signed up. I didn’t decide to do this until the last couple of days in October, so I’m a bit behind on my word count.  50,000 words in 30 days means about 1667 words a day.  As I’ve never written a novel before, this should be highly entertaining.  I did convince my husband that I needed a laptop computer in order to complete this task.  I will never hear the end of it if I don’t get to 50,000 words.  If you join and start writing tonight, you only have to do 2083 words a day to get there…any takers??

I’m Depressed

The votes are in.  Kerry/Edwards won by a huge margin in the election held right here at Knitting Doctor.  The turnout wasn’t huge, but the mandate was clear:  15 for K/E, 6 for B/C.  That means Kerry got somewhere around 70% of the popular vote.

Too bad the real world doesn’t mirror knitting blogs.  Clearly, knit bloggers, and knit blog readers, are smarter than the average American.

I’m looking forward to 2008.  Once W. screws things up even more that he already has, voters will most certainly put an intelligent woman or man in the White House.  Until then, we all can take comfort in the fact that America has endured worse.

Now back to our regularly scheduled knitting blog.

I finally got the body of the purple sweater blocked.  Here is a picture of the pinning ceremony.  You can see my handy-dandy steamer in the background, waiting for its turn.  Take note of my lovely home-made blocking board.

And here everything is ready to get steamed:

The lace detail:

Here’s where I am on the first sleeve.  After I blocked and measured the back pieces, the armhole is a bit larger than the measurements given in the pattern, so I will need to adjust the sleeve width a bit to match.  Last time I knit a sweater, I didn’t take this into consideration;  this error led to an awful lot of swearing in the Knitting Doctor household.

In case you thought I am hiding the green striped socks from you, here are a couple of pictures.  I finished the short row heel and am on my way up the cuff.  This turned out better than I expected.  It looks a little big on my foot because it is intended for my Bigfooted husband.  He refused to model because he was too busy sobbing over election results.

I’m off to watch the concession speech.