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??
You can do NaNo! I signed up for my first attempt in October, and it’s been a lot more fun than I was expecting. You can get there!
My Christmas Cactus always (4th year) starts blooming in September and last until March or April. It is such a lovely plant, yours has load s of blooms. Good luck knitting your Ramen Noodles. I use Sweater Wizard, too.
My mom’s Thanksgiving Cactus always blooms in time for halloween, and the Christmas Cactus always blooms in time for Thanksgiving. There are confused Cacti everywhere!
I didn’t even know there was a such thing as Christmas cactus. 🙂 Good luck on the novel, I would love to do that, once I’m finished writing the thesis I’m currently up against to get me out of grad school.
Well, my dear old friend, is there no challenge you can say no to?? Obviously not. And knowing you the way I do, you’ll succeed. You always have. I’ll pass on this challenge as I just completed my master’s thesis. I wish to revel in my delight for just a bit yet.
Okay, you’ve got to be kidding me, Lorette – work, knit, write a novel? At least you got a laptop out of the deal – you’ll never live it down though if you don’t hit 50,000!
I really need to learn how to knit….