Domestically Challenged

Guest Entry: Sue Learns To Knit

While Allison is gallavanting in Greece and Turkey with her father, Richard, I thought I would share with you one of my recent crafting adventures. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't knit-blog anything, mostly because blogging makes me nervous, and also because I don't do knit-bloggable things since I am usually a sewer and not a knitter. However, just before Allison left, prompted by some unnamed urging, I decided to get my oldest sister (the family's undisputed queen of knitting; she just finished an elaborately cabled afghan, I think it's 6 feet long; it took her years to make) to teach me how to knit. Specifically, to knit dishcloths. I decided I wanted more knitted dishcloths in my life. (As you can tell, I am not a very ambitious knitter, though I would like to make mittens at some point, maybe.)

Over Thanksgiving weekend, my sister gave me some needles and some baby-blue-and-white variegated cotton yarn, and taught me the following dishcloth pattern (knitting terminology c/o Lisa the Knitter):

1. Cast on four stitches
2. Knit one, YO, knit to end of row
3. Repeat step 2 until there are 45 stitches on the needles
4. K2TOG, YO, K2TOG, knit to end of row
5. Repeat step 4 until there are 4 stitches on the needles
6. Cast off

When I started knitting, I was nervous enough that I would only knit in the presence of experienced knitters (my sister, Allison, or Lisa) in case I made a horrible mistake that I couldn't fix, thus ensuring the utter failure of my beautiful dishcloth creation. Once I got to the decreasing section, however, I was so curious about how K2TOG would work that I knitted without supervision -- a rash move. I totally screwed things up; K2TOG was not what I initially thought it was; what I did seemed reasonable at the time, but when I tried to knit over those same stitches it all came apart.

However, knitting without supervision probably Built Character, and besides, you can see that it all worked out in the end: shown below, in its natural habitat, is my first knitting project ever, if you exclude the blue rectangle I made when I was about 10. 

 

Knitting is, as you likely are aware, addictive, so I decided to keep going (but still with dishcloths; I'm not much of a knitting risktaker). I did, however, decide to branch out by putting a wide stripe in the middle. I didn't know how to make a stripe, but I really really wanted to, so, since Allison was not available for comment, I just made it up. At first I didn't know what to do with the ends, so for a while they hung there limply, threatening to unravel at any moment. Thankfully in the end I faked my way through the striping with a series of Knots. Here's dishcloth 2, shown at the lunch table.

I'm now making a third one.

It's going to be half that blue and half the lime green that's sitting on the table, and I'm going to give it to my mom for Christmas, so she can think of me when she wipes her counters. Stay tuned for later variations on the dishcloth theme.

Dishcloth photo shoot done by Lisa the Knitter and her fabulous Lisacam.

Knitting in Istanbul

So I'm about to enter the Blue Mosque when I see this old guy knitting by the entrance way.  He knits hats and sells them, and is apparently famous for it.  He showed me all of the newspaper and magazine clippings of himself knitting outside the famous mosque.  Naturally, I had to show him my sock. 

I've just turned the heel and am about a quarter of the way down the foot.  These are my first pair of lace socks.  I'm using the Feather & Fan pattern from Socks, Socks, Socks and using Regia sock yarn in the closest colour I could get to HOT pink.  So far the Regia is nice.  It's no KPPPM, but I think it will wash well and last a long time.  Only time will tell.

I will be out of the country until November, but I'll remind you that I'll be posting semi-regularly at www.domestically_challenged.typepad.com/cycling.   

I'm in Greece!

Hi Everyone,

The blog has been silent for the last little while as I am cycling in Greece and Turkey with my Dad.  Don't worry, I am knitting.  I have dragged sue's christmas socks with me.  If I manage to get any pics of them, I will post them.  In the meantime, I will be blogging about my trip at:

http://domestically_challenged.typepad.com/cycling/

Don't be shy to visit my dad and I there.

xo

Al

Deja-blog?

Monday night, I was very excited to show sue my finished school scarf.  But when I took it out of my bag, I was terribly shocked when she said that she had already seen it on my blog.  On my blog?  This blog?  I knew that I had posted pictures of the yarn, but I never thought that I had put up pics of the scarf's progress.  I rushed home to scroll through the blog...no pics.  But sue was so adamant she had seen it.  At first I thought she must be having deja-blog, but then I remembered she had seen it at my house the week before.  I only remember because she said that the scarf was very Gilmore Girl-esq, which is one of the highest compliments sue could have paid me.  Hopefully the weather will start to feel a bit more like Fall before I leave to Greece so that I can wear it.

I had a hard time photographing this one.  Either the scarf looked bad, or I looked like a dork.  The picture on the right shows the colours most accurately, but also shows my arm pit flab.  My vanity forced me to include the picture on the right (sans flab).

Yarn: Cascade Pastaza (1 ball ) & Koigu Kertsi (1 ball)

Needles: Size 11

Pattern: St st, 2 rows/colour

Montreal!

With my corrections finished and my thesis safely at the bindery, I thought it was safe to escape to Montreal.  My good friend Amy is having a very important birthday on the 14th, but since I'll be in Greece then, I had to make sure I saw her.  After sprinting to the post office to courier my med school application to Winnipeg, I arrived to the train station just in the nick of time.  Jessica joined me in the adventure, which meant that I also had a knitting partner.  We both knit socks on the train.  She's making some toe-up socks using Wendy's pattern, and I'm still working on sue's birthday socks.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten to bring the pattern and how to turn the heel.  Luckily I only got to that part of the knitting when we were almost back in Toronto.

Here is everyone having dinner on Saturday night.

Here we are snuggling with Jack (the dog) who insisted on sleeping with Jessica and I every night.

The weekend was very fun.  There was a lot of catching up, dancing and cycling around Montreal.  That city has some amazing bike paths.  It was good training for Greece, as I haven't cycled with traffic in a while.  Of course, Jessica and I wanted to do a little yarn shopping while we were there.  We were mainly interested in going to La Bobineuse de Laine which is listed at the back of the stitch n' bitch book and sells yarn by the pound.  This was something I could get behind.  But they weren't open on Sunday (boo).  Luckily, La Tricoteuse, which was literally one block away from where we were staying, was. 

Here's Jess standing in front of a yarn wall stroking something soft.  She ended up getting a couple of balls of variegated Alfosse Lopi to make a felted bag.  I suppressed all urges to buy all of the phildar magazines and only got two balls of sock yarn, for sue's Christmas present.

The visit ended with a trip to the Tam-Tams.  It was a gorgeous summer day.  People were dancing and singing, and sprawled lazily across the grass with their families.  I wished I could have stayed longer.