Honey, I’m home!
In the past month I’ve travelled overseas (without my man or kids! Who knew international flights could be so stress free!), had the most blissfully perfect shopping experience EVER (fat girls with big feet stay tuned, I’ll blog about this very soon) and adopted two cats who grew like beanstalks almost overnight into enormous furry killing machines. I also changed roles at work, had a major business overhaul and enrolled one of my babies into primary school (she doesn’t start till September but I’m reeling at the shock of it all. Where the hell did the last five years go?)
What I didn’t do was any knitting. In fact, I unknitted rather a lot. Remember this?
This is the Enormous Yarn Eating Cardi which took 8 balls of chunky yarn to make a sleeveless torso for my very skinny sister. Well, it is now the Enormous Pile Of Yarn waiting in my knitting basket.
My latest attempts at sock knitting ended in tears and the Kitty Pi I’m working on for the cats has been sucked into the Garter Stitch Black Hole of endless round-and-round with no discernable progress on the length so I have stuffed it down the back of the sofa. (Oh come on! Like you’ve never done this?!)
Having finally gotten a grip on myself and ceased wallowing in the I’m-such-a-crap-knitter quicksand, I’ve decided to work on something definite and quick. (I nearly typed ‘easy’ there but stopped myself just in time). I’ve decided to make my own pattern and knit it and BLOG the process. This will serve several purposes:
1. It will make me work on it when I get stuck and not wimp out as there will be people watching me (if anyone is still out there, that is! Hello? Anyone?)
2. I might get some help if I get stuck which would be nice. Just the thought is kind of encouraging, actually.
3. Anyone out there considering doing the same sort of thing might learn something (like how not to do it)
4. If I do it right and it actually works then I will have a record of what I did! This is optimistic, I know, but I did once knit a lovely baby sweater and give it away. I’ve never been able to recreate it and have long since lost the envelope that the instructions were scribbled on. By blogging, all my mistakes and the bits I do right will be forever floating around the Internet.
I’ve started by sketching the shape and basic design of the sweater and have measured my daughter with a tape measure, having found one lurking down the back of the sofa (See? Knitting karma says stuffing boring Kitty Pi into furniture is a good thing!) and I jotted down the measurements onto a scrap of paper.
I promptly lost the bit of paper so I’m doing it all again on the computer. Clearly my back-of-last-week’s-shopping-list filing method (patent pending) is not as efficient as it could be. This might be due to the onset of winter weather and the evening fire-lighting process where every bit of loose paper in the house is stuffed into the grate in the hope that the logs will eventually catch light if we offer up enough offerings of kindling to the Fire Gods.
I’ll post the measurements and outline tomorrow and I’m working on my gauge swatch, which is what I will need next.
I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy and clever getting this far! Stay tuned for more knitting misadventures, some maths and a strong possibility of some swear words.
In the meantime, I shall leave you with this: Bonnie and Clyde.
Could you have left them at the cat shelter? Nope, me neither.
