For Claudia, because she asked so nicely.

And doesn’t everybody knit on the beach?

I’m off to bed. Tomorrow we’re headed to see the sights at Pearl Harbor, so I need a good night’s sleep!

We’re on the road again (wait, wasn’t that a song?), this time to Hawaii. We got here on Friday, and we’re using a week of our timeshare on Oahu. It’s a beautiful place, certainly, and made even lovelier by the fact that January so far has been one of the all-time greyest and rainiest in the Pacific Northwest. I really needed to get out of Dodge before I started shooting holes in the refrigerator. A little sunshine midwinter goes a long ways towards getting me through the season without spending time in a sanitarium.

Here are a couple photos of where we are:

On the knitting front, there have been a few knitting accidents lately. The purple Langsjal Jóhönnu stole is proceeding without incident, thanks to judiciously placed dental floss lifelines. I haven’t needed to rip back to one yet, but I’m certain that if I stop using them, I’ll make a colossal error and have to rip the whole thing out. The lifelines stay. They may brand me as a knitting wuss, but there you have it.

The grey Peace Fleece sweater is nearly done. It would be done by now, but I had some issues with the sleeves. I finished the first sleeve and was well on my way on the second one, when I decided that the whole thing looked rather suspicious. I put the front and back together, and then pinned the first sleeve in and had John try it on. I was a bit concerned that the whole mess was going to fit Andre the Giant, but the body seems to meet with his approval. The sleeve? It reached past his fingertips. So I re-jiggered the sleeve increases on the second sleeve, and it looks like it will be about the right length. Now I have to rip out the first one back to where I changed the increases, I’d estimate about a third of the first sleeve needs to be reknit. I brought it with me, but I’m not so excited to knit on heavy worsted weight yarn when it’s 80 degrees outside.

Then there are the socks. The yarn is Madeline Tosh sock yarn in the color Amaranth. I’ve gotten about this far on them:

That would be one sock, a little over half done. I’ve been concerned all along that this was going to be too small for my big feet, but marched on, knitting along anyway. Just call me the Queen of Denial. I tried it on yesterday, and I was right. I can barely get them over my instep. I thought about just finishing them and giving them away, but I need a new pair of socks, as I haven’t really finished a pair in a long time. And I really love this color. So I ripped the whole thing out and started over yesterday. I have about an inch of ribbing done at the moment.

And that’s all there is in the knitting news. We’re off to church, then to Chinatown for dim sum this morning. I wonder, are there any yarn stores in Hawaii?

There is a little trend going around the blogs of knitting directly from the unwound hank of yarn, instead of winding it up into center pull balls. I’m pretty sure that the knitting-directly-from-the-hank knitters, who shall remain unnamed here, were just pulling our legs on this one. I rolled my eyes at the first blog report on this, but then when two or three more reported that this was the best thing since sliced bread, I decided to try it.

I’m here to report that, with certainty, this clearly does NOT prevent yarn barf.

And no, I didn’t take pictures, but it just took me the better part of an hour to untangle the mess that ensues when you try to get all smarty-pants and follow the latest knitting fads. I wasn’t about to leave the mess spread over the entire kitchen floor with the pet menagerie drooling around the edges like a pack of wild hyenas, while I went to fetch the camera. Let’s just say that from now on, I’ll be dutifully winding my yarn hanks into neat little cakes.

I promise knitting progress photos in the next post. I’m off to wind yarn.

Oh, and Dorothy reminded me that I needed to add Lewey to the sidebar. If you look over there to the left, there he is!

I hope you all had a lovely New Year’s Eve! John and I had a nice quiet evening at home, with champagne and veal chops for supper. “Lights-out” was at about 10 PM, as I just came off a 7 day work week that was a little like an Olympic luge run. I really did try to stay awake until midnight, but I found myself sitting at the dining room table after supper, with my knitting in hand, having fallen asleep right in the middle of a row.

In honor of the new year, I am going to make a few resolutions. I don’t usually do this, as they don’t last very long, but here goes.

I’m going to try to knit only from stash in 2008*. That means buying no new yarn, unless it’s for gifts for someone else. And no, it won’t work if I buy it as a gift for someone else, they already have it and give it back. I think that’s probably cheating. We’ll see how long this one lasts. I might have to take a sledge hammer to the computer to have any luck with this. I probably need to expand this one into not buying stuff in general that I don’t need, but let’s not get carried away here.

I’m seriously going to try to stop fretting about crap that I can’t do anything about. I think this one will last until about 2PM today, but I can try.

I am indeed going to finish that purple Icelandic stole. I am working on it, really.

And the Peace Fleece sweater for John, that’s going to get done, too.

And I’m going to blog more. There, that’s it.

Happy New Year to all of you! I’m going to eat my black eyed peas now.

*Yes, I really said that publicly. I may have to eat my words.