She’s Alive!!

It’s the same damned excuse. Work work work. I just fell out of a 9 day work stretch rabbit hole, and go back tomorrow for another 5 day siege. Then I get a little bit of a breather. So I’ll get a quick post in before I put my head back down.

There’s been hardly any knitting around here for the past couple of weeks. As a sample of how things went, I got home late one night after a long day at work. While my lovely husband made me dinner, I sat in the kitchen and said, “All I want from life right now is to be able to sit here and knit ONE danged row.”

I stupidly picked up that Langsjal Jóhönnu stole, and started across the row. About 7/8 of the way across the row, I ran into a mistake I’d made in the prior row. I messed around with it a bit, trying to fix the row below without going all the way back, then realized I was brain dead and would probably frak the whole thing up if I tried that. So I painfully unknit all the way back over the mostly done row, then the prior row, fixed it, then started forward again. I eventually finished that one row. Be careful what you wish for.

Speaking of wishing for things, last week was my birthday. How lame is that, failing to blog your own birthday? I even got to work late, as Friday, the big day, was my late shift day. 7AM to 9:30PM. Do I know how to have fun or what? I got a great present from my lovely husband though, the same one who fixes me dinner and makes sure I have plenty of wine and bourbon always available. I drive an oldish VW Beetle with the original radio/CD player. I also have an Ipod loaded with over 10,000 songs. My guy bought me a new car stereo, one that has a connector wired through the glove box for my Ipod. It is very cool. I find myself just wanting to drive around so I can listen to it.

OK, I promised you a finished knitting project a post or so ago. While we were in Idaho, we went to the yarn shop in Ketchum, and I <<cough, cough>> bought a few <<cough cough>> things. One of those things was a lovely little single skein of Synchronicity by Alchemy Yarns. This stuff is just heavenly. I’d like a whole tub full of it so I could roll around in it all day. Unfortunately, it’s also spendy enough that I decided to spring for only one skein. So I made little fingerless mitts out of it. I sort of made up the pattern, as I was in a cabin in Idaho, and couldn’t resist casting on immediately when I got back from the store. Some day if I can decipher my notes, I might post it. For now, here are the mitts.

It actually was easy to come up with the pattern, except when I got to the thumb. The first attempt looked horrible. Then I remembered, I just learned how to do an underarm gusset with the gansey class. I dragged out my trusty knitting notebook and a pencil, and in a few moments had it figured out. Yeah, yeah, I know, mittens are easy. This is just a basic mitten pattern, find one in a book and just work till you get to your knuckles and do more ribbing. But I’ve never done mittens or gloves, and I’m pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to do them all by myself.

Project Specifications:

Pattern: I made it up.
Yarn: Alchemy Synchronicity, in the color Resolution. It’s a silk/merino blend, and the photos just do not do this yarn justice. I used almost a whole skein for these, with just enough left over to let Lucy have fun with. (What? You don’t let your cats play with silk yarn?)
For: Me
Started: In September, when I was in Idaho.
Finished: Four days later. It wouldn’t have taken so long if I’d had any clue what I was doing.
Needles: Metal double points that I had with me for the gansey class. I think they were 3.75 mm.
What I learned: I learned to trust my knitting instincts and just “let the force be with me”. It’s only yarn. Pattern, schmattern, who needs a pattern?

I’m off to try to catch up with NetNewsWire. I’m 513 posts behind in my knit-blog reading. Have a great weekend everybody!

Author: Lorette

My name is Lorette. I learned to knit in 1999, and took up spinning in 2009. I'm a physician specializing in internal medicine, and live in the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy my blog!

25 thoughts on “She’s Alive!!”

  3. Happy [belated] birthday!
    Mr BDK worked long, ridiculous hours when he was at the hospital. Now he’s gone private, I hardly ever see him!!

  4. Happy Belated Birthday! That is a great present – my husband bought me one of those a few years ago and I love it. The mitts are great, too.

  6. Happy Belated Birthday – and you sure know how to celebrate!:) I hope things settle down and you get some time to just relax, soon.

  7. Happy late birthday! I love my MP3, no Ipod here. I am addicted to ebooks and the ones from the library have to be WMA format that only plays on MP3. That’s ok I love it 🙂
    Cute gloves and you can still palpate abdomens with them on

  9. Welcome back and belated Happy Birthday. The mitts are indeed lovely. I think we all need to trust our instincts more – you did a great job.

  10. Happy Happy belated Birthday Lorette!!!
    Cute mitts – I just posted a pattern for almost the same mitts on my blog! GMTA 🙂

  12. Happy Belated Birthday…is it the 5th? I have to remember that since mine is the 3rd.
    Love the mitts. The knitting force is truly with you.

  13. Well, happy birthday, indeed. Sorry to hear of the soul-sucking nature of work right now. The pundits are saying “longer, later, cheaper, older”. Maybe a sux dart?

  20. You’re a bigger music junkie than I am, Lorette, and as for “How hard can it be?” I’d have no trouble telling you how hard. You people just slay me. You fearlessly plunge into mittens with needles, yarn, and NO pattern, and come out with MITTENS, for the love of Lovett himself. If only I get to knit so long in life to be able to do that. If I tried such a thing at this point in time, I’d probably end up with a miniature shawl rather than a mitten, or at the very most, something resembling a straightjacket for fingers. Those mitts are awesome, by the way.

  21. hi Lorette, oh what beautiful yarn! You did an awesome job making them with no pattern. I fell on 8/18 and broke my ulna bone in a bunch of places and also fractured my hand. Had a long surgery the next day to repair it, spent 5 weeks in a transitional care unit, oh, also fractured my left knee, so was totally dependent on others to care for me 24/7. i miss not being able to knit. i look forward even more to reading your posts. i will be off work 3 months total and even when i go back will be limited as i work in an office. thurs morning my hand surgeon removed the 4 huge screws holding the bones together, and wow, it still throbs 5 days later and with the pain meds. Lord have mercy. Cynthia in Minnesota

  23. happy happy belated birthday!
    I’m glad that you at least got spoiled with a lovely homemade dinner from that sweet guy of yours 🙂
    Maybe I can tempt you with a belated b-day lunch down here the next time you have a break?
    your mitts look wonderful.
    and no worries about the lace knitting – sometimes it just be that way… one row knit, two frogged, one re-knit. it’s all good in the end.

  25. It is awful when work interferes with knitting.
    But happy birthday–and what a great present that is. I’m now driving what used to be our second car, and it has no radio at all. I keep thinking I’ll replace it, and then I go and spend money on other things (imagine that).
    The mitts do look great, and now that you’ve figured out how to do it on your own, you’ll never need a pattern.

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