Thursday 30 December 2010

A Jumper for MEeee!

OK. Knitting for other people officially abandoned for a little while. Time for knitting for Me.
I really don't do that very often.

Grannie gave me a few balls of gorgeous really really chunky wool for Christmas, so I decided to find a pattern right away for a jumper for me to make from them. This would be a first! I found this really hard to do when putting into ravelry that it had to be free. So I decided to go with another first and actually paid actual money for a pattern. Its called Nati and its insanely simple but really nice.

It took very little time to knit it up and finish it off. And that included another nother first - blocking. I'd given this one go before with a scarf, and, well, got bored and shoved it in the dryer after all. This time I actually managed to do it properly (I think) and so YAY! It could to be honest do with some more stretching out, but for the moment it is actually great so I don't really care!

Saturday 25 December 2010

Crazy Christmas knitting countdown, the Final Tally

To do list:
1:scarf done
2:scarf done
3:scarf
4:dalek done
5:ruddy jumper for dad that has been on the go since April. done
6:secret Santa warwick edition done
7:secret Santa Poole edition done
8:socks replaced with elephant done
9:brother presents
10:snu
11:penguin with hat replaced this with tiny turtle. done
12:grim squeaker.



Leftovers: scarf for Heather - she can have it for New Year's
                Brother present - no idea, but I've got until Monday
                Snu - Monday
                grim squeaker - nearly done, and for Monday.


That may even be possible.

The End of An Era, or Merry Christmas To All, and To All A Good Knit

ITS DONE!!!! ITS DONE!!!! EVERYONE SING HALLELUJAH, IT IS DONE!
My Dad's jumper : started April 2010 as a birthday present for him (June 1st) finished 25th December 2010, 2:17am.

We got back from Midnight Mass about 12:30am. I still had the decreasing rows of one sleeve to do, even after the fairly constant knitting over the past two weeks. This took over 90 minutes, and then the finishing of sewing up the sleeve seam, and attaching the sleeve to the body. But IT IS DONE!

This is totally awesome.
And and and and and what is more, he's been wearing it ever since I gave it to him earlier today! Yays!

BTW, I wish I had actually listened to Suzz just a little bit more this term as she continuously told me that I should in fact not start new exciting projects but should knit the silly jumper. She was (depressingly) continuously right all term. Bah Humbug!

Merry Christmas everyone!
Christ has come to save us, and we shall now rejoice!

Thursday 23 December 2010

Crazy Christmas knitting countdown update 3

To do list:
1:scarf done
2:scarf done
3:scarf
4:dalek almost done
5:ruddy jumper for dad that has been on the go since April.
6:secret Santa warwick edition done
7:secret Santa Poole edition done
8:socks replaced with elephant done, cause they are totally the same thing anyway. Right? I mean, one goes on your feet, one has a trunk, they're basically the same!
9:brother presents
10:snu
11:penguin with hat replaced this with tiny turtle. done

12:grim squeaker.


hmm.
this doesn't appear to be getting shorter, and there's today and tomorrow to go. 
Yeah. not going to happen. Oh wells. 

Sunday 19 December 2010

Crazy Christmas knitting countdown update 2

To do list:
1:scarf done
2:scarf done
3:scarf
4:dalek almost done
5:ruddy jumper for dad that has been on the go since April. Well. I've done a sleeve. It now has a back a front and a left sleeve. That's almost like a completed jumper right?
6:secret Santa warwick edition done
7:secret Santa Poole edition done
8:socks
9:brother presents
10:snu
11:penguin with hat replaced this with tiny turtle. done

5 full days remaining. Wish me luck.

Thursday 16 December 2010

Crazy Christmas knitting countdown update 1

To do list:
1:scarf done
2:scarf
3:scarf
4:dalek almost done
5:ruddy jumper for dad that has been on the go since April
6:secret Santa warwick edition done
7:secret Santa Poole edition done
8:socks
9:brother presents
10:snu
11:penguin with hat



So, to sum up two more days and only one more project completed. This is so not going to get done before Christmas. Although Dalek and scarf mark 2 are both really near completion, and Dad's jumper has improved considerably. 


I'm so screwed.

Tuesday 14 December 2010

Crazy Christmas knitting countdown

To do list:
1:scarf done
2:scarf
3:scarf
4:dalek almost done
5:ruddy jumper for dad that has been on the go since April
6:secret Santa warwick edition done
7:secret Santa Poole edition
8:socks
9:brother present
10:snu
11:penguin with hat

and 9 days remaining


Hmmmmm....
Stay tuned for progress or lack thereof. Alternatively don't and live a nearly normal life happily ignoring my random musings and more likely grumblings since I cannot physically make the deadlines I have set myself here. Well I mean I can't make the knits in the time. God set the deadline. Not me. Where'd I put my drink?

Friday 10 December 2010

Penguins of happyness

I joined in Rev's angels and mortals thing this term - think secret santa all term long. Twas awesome. I got given Ben and Jerrys, a hug, alcohol, a really confusing note, and a ball of awesome wool. Thanks Ellen!
Even more fun was giving Emma (Hastings) pressies, cause she was my mortal. She got truly random things. A pineapple. Glitter glue pens.
I wanted to knit her something from the start as well, but knew she would instantly cotton on to who her angel was if I did that, so I left knitting a present till the last week of term. I was going to knit her a turtle, and give her some chocolate coins, but when I went to wilkos I found awesome chocolate penguins. So clearly the knitted project HAD to be a penguin. right? So Ravelry to the rescue again. There was a fairly cool project for feathers McGraw, from Wallace and Gromit, and so clearly that was going to be the best random happy christmas knit I could find.
Was really easy too. A good thing, since I got home at 2 on Tuesday, and left at 5 for Rev. WEll, pre Rev, but the same difference, cause I went via the chaplaincy to drop off said penguins. About half 6 Emma got to the chaplaincy. I know because I got a text from her saying something along the lines of 'Do I by any chance owe you thanks? :)'
Knew she'd get it in one. :D

oh. btw, this was not the pattern I was intending to knit Emma as a mortal present. That will have to wait for another day cause I ran out of time.

Needle Roll of Happyness

Jen gave me a (somewhat belated but AWESOME) birthday present today. A really pretty and awesome needle roll! Its soo pretty! So I just spent the last half hour or so filling it up with needles. My gran gave me her lifetime's stash of needles and wool - all of the wool was beige. Beige. I mean, really? but still its awesome wool - so I have many many needles. I have 16 number 11s, and 11 number 10s. I never even use that thin wool. But its cool.
I have also just spent some time wandering around my house probably irritating my housemates by saying "it's really pretty!" In case people hadn't noticed I would just like to officially say - it's really pretty!

Now all I need to do is sort out all the wool all over my room so I can take what I want for the next month home tomorrow. That shouldn't take more than about 2 days. Hang on. Let me do the math on that.

Sunday 28 November 2010

So. Life got busy again.

My life got busy these last two weeks. I've had an essay to write on a subject that I still honest to goodness don't understand, and a weekend away to, well not so much organise (though there was an element of that) but to stress about. And, and this is the important bit: its all DONE!
In a totally normal way for me I have been happily making my life harder than I needed to by tackling knitting projects with a time limit. I really should work my life out at some point. Anyway.

Catherine at some point in the past mentioned that she liked my scarf, and it was her birthday on Friday. Well. She stole it every time she saw me for a week or so, and I kind of gathered that she liked it. The point was that I decided to knit her a rainbow colour scarf of awesometude. Only issue is that knitting scarfs takes ages. Really really ages. And changing colour often means it takes even more ages when finishing off. All this meant that while she did in fact get an awesome scarf of awesometude, and even on her birthday, she did get it after it had been press-ganged into service while we were waiting in the cold for the bus to the weekend away. Only slightly second hand. By like an hour or so. Totally close enough. (sorry Catherine)

I also happily found projects for Emma's birthday, Rob's birthday, my Uni secret Santa, and my home secret Santa circles. I have been trying hard to work on these over the past two weeks, but only 2 of the 4  are actually - hang on. Food is ready.

Om nom nom.
Food is nom.

Only 2 of the 4 are actually cast on right now, and in fact I'm not even sure about the home secret Santa pattern. There is absolutely no way that Rob will be getting his present on time, and Emma may well also be receiving an IOU. There's also my Rev mortal, who I found an AWESOME pattern for, but again. Absolutely no way that she'll be getting the finished works before the end of term.

Why oh why do I do this to myself?

Not a rhetorical question here. Please help.

Sunday 21 November 2010

Stress city

I finished Eeyore!

I can't think of anything else knitting related to say.

Basically I am a giant ball of stress with ( I hope ) a small centre of a sane Kate. I am not very convinced any more however. The further through life I get the less sane I seem to be. Oh well. 7 months left of Uni, and only 3 months left of Focus presidency. I can totally make it through.

Oh I know.

Eeyore.
Technically this is a pattern I created myself, and would therefore put on the my own patterns page I'm gently trying to accumulate stuff to, but there is an issue. Basically I don't know what the pattern was. It started by being a messed up garter stitch elephant, but then the head I made for it was a bit rubbish, and so I chopped it off. This made Steve really quite irritated. Apparently decapitating Eeyore was even worse than ignoring Eeyore while trying to do some maths. He may have a point. So then I knitted a new head, which was sufficiently good to be acceptable, and then ears and a tail and hair and a bow for the tail. And I have no clue as to how I would do any of this again.
But Eeyore is complete, and it works!

Yay.
Now back to the rest of life.

Wednesday 10 November 2010

No way could I make life easy for myself

It could be said that the worst part of getting a maths degree is having to do the maths involved. In fact it is said. By me. A lot. But.. I could do more to actually make my life possible. Say, only doing one or two things at a time, rather than trying to juggle about 17.

An example would be today. I went in for a 9o'clock, which was fine. I didn't understand the stupid thing, cause I've had to miss the last two lectures for various reasons, but on the other hand at least I didn't fall asleep. Then I had to skip my 10o'clock to go to some stupid piddly little meeting with the SU about the Focus weekend away (shock horror disaster nothing was wrong with the form (actually there was but I wasn't exactly gonna point that out was I) and we can go) which lasted all of 3 -count em- 3 minutes. I then went to the chapo, and discovered the kitchen was sufficiently disgusting that I spontaneously decided to clean it. ALL of it. All the washing up, all the surfaces, the lot. I am an idiot. That took over an hour. Then last lecture (which btw was a win, cause I didn't fall asleep in that either!) and home.
Then the ever present choices: clean kitchen, clean room, do useful work that's due in soon, do useful work that is never due in, or knit.
Hmmmm. Clean kitchen. Did I mention I'm an idiot?
Next.. Hmm. Work that's never due in. .... .... 5 minutes later. Yep: bored. NEXT!
Hmm... Knitting.
At this point we see the entry of more stupidity. Instead of continuing one of the many projects I have on the go, or starting one of the ones that I really want to do soon, I started a totally new project! Yay! Emma put the idea of knitting Eeyore into my head, and ravelry had failed me. This is kind of where the issue came in. If I had found a pattern then the whole thing would quite happily have been put on the back burner and added to the queue. But they didn't, or at least not for free. And I'm sort of against paying money for a pattern I can work out myself given time. Time. Yeah. One commodity students are supposed to be rich in, and I'm totally skint. Meh. ANYway, it led to me knitting Eeyore instead of doing the silly assignment that is in fact due in in about 13 hours time now.
Again. I am an idiot.
And.. I'm OK with that.

(I ended up snubbing Eeyore by hiding him under the table in order to persuade myself to do the maths. It's OK though. He doesn't know I'm snubbing him. Although, that is largely because I haven't knitted his head yet.)

Tuesday 2 November 2010

Ebay Crazy

I found wool shops on ebay the other day. I've just bought over a kilogram of wool online. I love ebay. Its awesome.

Monday 25 October 2010

Snu!

I had nothing to do yesterday and nothing I wanted to knit. Well I say nothing to do. I did technically have work for Math Bio, Number Theory, Math Stat and a lot of organising for Focus, but well. Totally putting that all to one side.
I have lots of projects on the go, but the only one I don't need the pattern for is the silly jumper that I'm bored of, and I needed to take the knitting into the chaplaincy to knit - Focus wasn't entirely ignorable. So, time for a new project I thought!

I managed to ruin my awesome rainbow scarf the other day. I was cycling home with it tied onto my back and it got caught in the gears. And covered in oil. Hum.

So I needed a new scarf. I dug through my stash - cause lo and behold my dearest Grandmother darling I do not want a beige scarf no matter your views on beige being the only colour anyone should ever wear ever - and found some happy chunky wool. The really awesome upshot of all this is that now after a full days lectures and only a small bit of knitting I have a new Snu! (btw a snu is what I call a circular scarf or a buff. I don't really know why.)

And - as a bonus upside I now have an idea for what to knit my brother for his Christmas present! Or my uncle!

Happyness.

Thursday 21 October 2010

Random Musings inappropriate to Lectures.

I really wish it was considered slightly less weird to knit. Today I had a string of 3 lectures which were totally pointless and REALLY wanted to just get out my knitting. Its not even like its very exciting knitting (such as Daleks and ducks and pterodactyls), just my Dad's jumper, which I got bored of months ago.

First of the 3: Math Bio. Sounds like it ought to be interesting really - you get to work out how come animals have specific coat patterns and eat each other and things. In reality the silly man at the front talks in a monotone and writes unrelated equations on the board. Knitting makes much more sense. Next up: History of Maths, or in other words Time For A Nap. And finally Number Theory. Where this silly man at the front is confused as to why we are all fundamentally comatose, and continually asks us if we are bored.  I've usually just about forgotten the fact I'm bored each time he brings it up. Ass.

To be fair it's not hard for fairly boring things to be the highlight of entertainment when you put them into the same frame of reference as maths lectures. Technically I ought to like maths since I'm now in my third year of studying the ruddy subject, but actually I just don't care. It is a means to an end. The end being the important part. Not in the sense that I will then have a degree and a career (I want to be a maths teacher and yes I realise that makes little to no sense given that I really truly hate the study of maths), but that it will be the END of my maths degree! Another minor technicality is that to pass the degree I should be paying at least a modicum of attention, not fantasising about cake (mmm... cake) or being really frustrated that I actually had knittable knitting with me and still couldn't knit it.

One of these days I will just ignore the weird looks I am sure to get from my peers and knit. If nothing else (and I'm pretty darn sure there are many better reasons than this) to see the reaction on my lecturers face.

Purple is a Happy Colour

I finally decided that it was irritating to keep guessing people's favourite colours, so I sent out a facebook message to all those who are really likely to be involved in a Secret Santa that I am also involved in this year.
The results were surprisingly consistently purple.


Kate Drage 19 October at 23:57
Hi everyone.
Whats your favourite colour/s? This would just make my life sooo much easier for a surprisingly large amount of the time. Please tell me!
Suzz Wood 20 October at 00:09 ReplyReport
green/purple perhaps
Emma Tinnion 20 October at 07:23 ReplyReport
Purple or Green :)
Victoria Jarvis 20 October at 09:38 ReplyReport
Blue! Or dark purple.
Anne Parkinson 20 October at 09:44 ReplyReport
turquoise, purple
Rob Horswell 20 October at 10:11 ReplyReport
Blue/Red/Purple, I think...
Sam Fiveash 20 October at 10:15 ReplyReport
Blue/purple
Steven Weston 20 October at 10:25 ReplyReport
Grey, black
Sophie Brightwell 20 October at 10:38 ReplyReport
Like everybody else I'm going to say purple. Or red, maybe.
Matt Brennan 20 October at 10:38 ReplyReport
Sorta bluish-teal. Like this http://tinyurl.com/2b9oh7j.
Stephen Adams 20 October at 11:36 ReplyReport
blue/green
Mel Moore 20 October at 11:45 ReplyReport
i;m going to stick with the trend and say purple haha
Emma Giddens 20 October at 13:33 ReplyReport
Blue, purple or yellow :)
red :)
All I can say is that Matt Brennan is the only person I have ever met who would respond to a simple enquiry as to a favourite colour with a weblink. I mean - yeah its nice to have the exact shade, but really I was looking for blue or teal.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

AAAAAAHHH!!!

Sumaiya's birthday is... actually I don't know. But she's doing stuff for it this weekend. Apparently I was invited to this about 2 months ago... but I only actually found out on Sunday, and only confirmed I was going this afternoon.

This is a major YAY: I get a weekend with friends in London!,most importantly Sumaiya who is bucking the trend with Focusites by actually leaving both Uni and Coventry at the end of her course (more-or-less, she spent one extra year here); I get to see Avenue Q!which I thought I was gonna miss due to it closing in like a week; and (importantly I feel) this means I cannot possibly do any maths at all this weekend!
Minor issue. Present.

However that is now sorted. I found an awesome pattern for ducks on Ravelry and have knitted Sumaiya a duck :D Whether this is really a sensible present for a 23rd birthday is a matter that I don't really care about to be honest. It's not that earthshattering as knitting goes, but it is cute, and importantly only took about 2hours! Success here is measured in time left over before the deadline : 2 days and several hours!

I looked at the duck today, and it looked cold. It IS cold - it should NOT be this cold when its only October - so I couldn't let the poor thing suffer. I knitted it a scarf. It is now a warm cosy duck with an awesome I-cord scarf. Yay!

Thursday 14 October 2010

So... no hat. Lets try gloves next.

So. I have no hat to help with the keeping-Kate-warm, but I do have a scarf - its awesome and rainbow striped! My current issue with cycling in is how freaking cold it is (yes it's mid October, but it's only Week 2! How bad will it get?) and how my hands are gently getting frozed.

Obvious solution. Gloves. So I am now in the process of knitting awesome rainbow striped gloves. Happyness. I searched Ravelry for the pattern again, and picked the one that looked easiest while still resembling actual gloves rather than mittens or the creature from the Black Lagoon. Little things like that make all the difference in knitting patterns I think.

One thing I will say though: Knitting gets silly when you're using 6 double pointers and a circular needle in one glove.

Monday 11 October 2010

Hat FAIL!

So. I've been happily knitting this hat for myself for the last two weeks. I cycle to uni, and its irritatingly cold even this early in the term, so I decided I would knit myself an awesome hat. Minor problem: I never check the gauge. A little bit of a mistake there.

Little being the operative word. The stupid hat is just about big enough for a small kid. When I was casting on the stitches for it I thought 'that looks too small, hmmm. Lets make it bigger' and so did so. And its still too small.
I did actually notice this problem about half way through knitting it, but by that point I just decided to continue.

Stupidly small hat. Whoops.

On the other hand, my house mates have been happily giving me suggestions of other things to turn it into. So far, suggestions have been: a bag, a Christmas tree hat, a snowman, a dalek, and a polar bear. We have the randoms in our house.

Friday 8 October 2010

Tory's Gecko Completed!

My first ever pattern-that-I've-made-up-myself done! AND its really awesome! I love it!
I basically made up the pattern as I went along, starting at the tail and working towards the head, and knitting the legs separately. When I was done I decided to cartoon-ise him, and modified part of the Dalek pattern to make massive eyes.

The pattern is approximately:
Starting at the tail end of main body piece,
CO4
*K4
P4
Repeat from * until piece is the length you want the tail to be (more or less)
**K1 inc1 K2 inc 1 K1
P row
K row
P row
Repeat from ** until there are 16 stitches.
increase 4 stitches in each of next 2 rows.
K row, P row until the piece has sufficient body length
decrease 2 stitches every other row 4 times.
decrease 2 stitches every row 3 times
K row
increase 4 stitches in each of next 2 rows
K row
P row
decrease 2 stitches every other row until 2 remain
P row
BO2

Legs, make 4 the same:
CO8
Work in I-cord for 16 rows, or until leg is in proportion with body piece
Place 6 stitches on holder, continue working in I-cord on remaining 2 stitches for 6 rows to create a toe.
BO2
Pick up 2 stiches from holder, work in I cord for 6 rows.
BO2
Repeat for final two rows.

Eyes, make 2 the same:
CO1
KPKPKP into that one stitch
KP into all 6 stitches, making 12 stitches in total
K row
K row
K2tog 6 times
K2tog 3 times
K3tog
Pick up the original cast on stitch, K2tog
BO

Sew up the main piece of the gecko from nose to tail, pausing at some point in the belly to stuff. Attach legs and ears.

And - you have a Gecko! Yay!

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Tory, her Gecko, and the yrrytatyon of Crochet patterns

I have a very lovely fryend named TorY. She ys Amerycan so must be forgyven the fact that she cannot spell her own name, and ys yn fact declaryng herself to be a Conservatyve the whole tyme she ys yn England. Y once had a really long argument wyth her and her boyfryend Rob about her to spell Tory, whych resulted yn the current weyrdness of usyng 'y's all over the place.
Anyways. The poynt ys that Y myssed Tory's byrthday yn September, to be fayr she was yn Amerycaland so yt could have been worse. Tory loves geckos. There ys happyly an obvyous solutyon to thys problem: knyttyng Tory a gecko.

Unfortunately Ravelry users do not thynk that knytters want gecko patterns, only crocheters crochet geckos. Thys even more yrrytatyngly went double for google knyt pattern search, so Y'm now left wyth ynventyng my own pattern for knyttyng a gecko. Thys could take a whyle, especyally gyven there ys no tyme to guylt-free knyt anymore...

The one good thyng about myssyng someones byrthday by a month already: Yt no longer has any relevance how late you gyve them a present.... provyded yt's before Chrystmas anyway.

Yt surely won't take that long, wyll yt?

Monday 4 October 2010

The End of Guilt-Free Knitting

So. Today was the last day of guilt-free knitting. Tomorrow is a new day bringing with the new challenges, trials and tribulations of a new term of university mathematics. I really wish I could remember why maths sounded like a good thing to study. So what with lectures starting tomorrow, classes starting, assignments starting, the need to read maths books and the consistent attempts to entice freshers towards my societies... I actually have real and useful things I need to do.

Knitting is going on the back burner.

On the other hand I really do need to finish my dad's jumper. It was originally going to be a birthday pressie, but, uh... his birthday was way back in June. So it's now gonna be a Christmas pressie. Always assuming it's finished in time.

My very own Elephant Herd

I went on safari this summer through Botswana. Before I went I thought how awesome it was going to be to see an actual-real-live-in-the-wild-elephant! Then the very first night out in the wilderness we actually saw some actual-real-live-in-the-wild-elephants, including a baby one! So I was obviously happy. Then we didn't see any elephants for about a week, and then we saw just about every elephant that lives in Botswana. They kept coming to say hi. It was awesome. We saw really little babies, and really old males, and big herds of females and their younguns crossing the Zambezi, and big herds of males - who by the way spent most of the time we were watching them playing in a handy river and ducking each other! Awesomeness!

Anyways. The point was actually going to be that before I went I promised my friend Anne that I would steal her a baby elephant, but shockingly our guides and the elephants mothers were both none too keen on this plan. So I got back home with no elephants in tow.






I then found on ravelry the easiest pattern for an elephant in the world. Its so awesomely easy that my first garter stitch elephant took around about 3 hours to make, and he looks really elephant-like and everything!

 I then knitted another that was multicoloured which took significantly longer thanks to the joys of changing yarn ALL the time and the jumbled mess of wool I ended up with. But he's even more awesome. He was going to be another of my exciting knitting birthday presents, obviously to make up for the lack of a real elephant, but he's too cute.








Now I keep making more elephants but I haven't yet got one that I'm willing to give away....










Hmmm.... what else could I get Anne for her birthday?

Friday 1 October 2010

Knitting for Birthdays

You know the old tradition of knitting socks for peoples birthdays? Well I thought it was boring. For my friend Emma's birthday this spring I found this stuffed Tigger in Asda. It was quite cool, but not quite up to awesomeness standards. So I fixed that by making him into Super Tigger!, with the simple addition of a cape. It was basically a copy of the cape I made by accident for my weasel, except that this one had the major plus of a big orange T in the middle of the cape. Poor Emma then received less a present than an assembly kit with unhelpful instructions. I enjoy vaguely irritating my friends for their birthdays, and happily they find it funny. It works for everyone this way.

Sophies birthday is this Saturday coming, but I got the jump on this one. In the summer we got majorly into Doctor Who, including some of the retro stuff... and well. She has a stuffed weasel too, and it was looking mighty cold this summer. It just HAD to have a Doctor Who scarf really didn't it? Couldn't let it suffer.

For Sam's birthday (next week) I kind of panicked. I'm really terrible at thinking of anything to buy for Sam, so it had to be something knitted. Problem was thinking of something interesting (read random) enough for her, since I'm thinking she wouldn't overly appreciate a pair of odd gloves. So I was happily searching Ravelry for inspiration when my housemate Suzie (who so far has avoided the onslaught of knitted gifts but won't for long) suggested more Doctor Who related knitting.



And I found a DALEK pattern!! Knitting has apparently got so popular again that it can even be Geeky! YAY!
Anyways - long story short, I knitted her a Dalek. Its awesome.

ps. its even a fictionally accurate colour. Pierre reliably informs me that the red dalek will reappear next season of Doctor Who, whereas the retro grey versions, and even the new blue one won't.
 .....
 I should really get a life sometime soon.

Monday 20 September 2010

the start of my Crazed Knitting

I started knitting a year ago, largely because I came back to uni two weeks early and had NOTHING to do. I don't like being useless. So I started knitting. Knitting because some of my friends here also knit, and its something you can do when watching TV or listening to music, both of which I enjoy, but get itchy fingers. So knitting.

My first knitting project was the traditional scarf, and as tradition dictates it got way wider at the end than it was in the beginning. Enter the first piece of randomness. I have a cuddly toy weasel (doesn't every uni student?) and, well it was in need of a cape. So I turned my first ever piece of knitting into a cape for a weasel. Obvious when you think about it really.

Unfortunately knitting then sauntered back into the mundane realms, with me knitting an actual scarf, another scarf that just barely qualifies as a scarf rather than a length of material (I was running out of wool) and a pair of gloves that match in precisely no way other than colour. Oh well. It was my first try. And they are still usable as gloves so it all works out in the end. Next I tried (and succeeded) a lacy scarf, and a rainbow scarf, both of which I actually use where people can see them. They're THAT not-awful. Oh yeah.

The only problem with this is that now whenever I have any time to spare I knit. Not a problem I know, but when you are 20 years old moaning on the train cause there's not enough space to knit, something has probably gone wrong in your life. Or everyone else's. And when I went on safari this summer I was also irritated about not being able to bring knitting. I didn't want the knitting for the actual safari - my life hasn't sunk that far quite yet - but I did want it for the 11 hour flights. However the powers that be believe that if I were allowed to take knitting needles on board a plane then I would instantly turn into a homicidal maniac and skewer the pilot. Not that the thought has never occurred, I'd just be more likely to skewer my family. And I can do that before airport security.