I’m here. I feel like I barely escaped the weekend with my life, but I’m here. Team Harlot and it’s associated members attended a grand total of 5 (five) parties this weekend, survived a scary blow to the head that Sam took at party 3 (she’s just fine, but has a dramatic black eye), and successfully launched Joe on a wilderness camping/canoeing/portaging/ picture taking trip to Algonquin Provincial Park. It confuses me still that the man can look at me wrapping presents in the kitchen and somehow think that I have a package of waterproof matches, his dry bags or the camp stove on my person. Joe claims, of course, that he didn’t really think that I “had” the camping stuff on me, but he’s lying. Why else would someone follow you around the house asking for it?
The sweater didn’t get finished in time for party #2, but it was knit on at parties 3 and 4 and before attending party 5 on Sunday, it was delivered to the birthday boy.
I think Max likes his new sweater…
but he may be sort of neutral about the hood.
Last night I celebrated not being at a party by digging up the ribbon tank. (I did find more of the ribbon, same dye lot too. I stood in the store just stunned. That never happens to me. I’d be the lady with all the striped sweaters).
A couple of weeks ago when I realized that I was going to run out of yarn I put the stitches on to a piece of yarn so I could try it on and figure out if it was worth beginning a yarn search. I have concerns about making and wearing stuff at this gauge (16 stitches to 10cm) I have this feeling that chunky knits tend to make the wearer look, well…chunky. I was thinking that if I was knitting the world’s ugliest tank that I wouldn’t be able to bear the irony of spending hours searching Toronto and the world for more yarn just to knit something that made me look like a discus thrower. (Someday I’ll show you the sweater that taught me this lesson. I call it the “michelin man” sweater. It’s an abomination on the earth)
The tank seems ok, but when I went to put the knitting back on needles last night I couldn’t for the life of me remember what needles I was using. A clever knitter would have written what needles she was using on her pattern. A thoughtful knitter would have put the needle into the bag with the tank. A less tidy knitter (and I really thought I was one of those) would have still had the needle on the coffee table even though it has been 2 weeks. In a very un-harlotty move, the needle had been tidied into my drawer of circular needles with it’s tangled brothers and sisters. What’s a knitter to do? I may not be clever or thoughtful, but I am blogging…I went back to my previous entry about the tank, looked closely at the needles (reason #16 why coloured needles are just neat) and bob’s yer uncle. I’m discovering the advantages of blogging all the time.
Yarn Harlot
Nice job but you won’t tempt me to tangle with Sirdar Snowflake Chunky again. It hurts my hands. You seem OK with it so would you like (free) 4-5 untouched balls and two girls patterns? Let me know.
After your post about the Snowflake, I made an effort to track it down in my LYS last week. To my hands, this stuff feels really yucky! Like an extruded garbage bag? Thanks for the warnings about working with it – but I don’t think I’d be tempted anyway 🙂
Glad you found the right circular for your tank. I often use the blog to track down dates and was surprised to see that it could be a useful reference tool 🙂
This happens to me all the time. Not being a note-taker, I refer to my archives. Actually, we ARE note-takers….isn’t that called blogging?
A small group I belong to has a lady who is knitting her first sweater ever out of snowflake and nearly going crazy. I had never used it or knew anyone who had. I sent her your comments, and she feels so much better. She thought it was her skill level.
I’ve been away, so had no chance to comment before. Your kids are amazing, and you’re right. They are going to grow up to be great adults. Anyone who puts in the effort they do to accomplish goals, especially at their age, will never give up. Congrats!
Barb B.
when i needed to order a 2nd skein of koigu to finish my socks (which remain unfinished still) i had *gasp* thrown out the ball band. the original koigu was a gift, so i had no hope of matching the dye lot, but i did hold out hope of at least getting the same colorway. i went back to my raw pictures of the yarn and lo and behold, i could read the number from the long ago tossed band. go me. and i’m the coffee table knitter…or the floor…or my hugely cluttered desk…
I am SO that girl that takes a half-knitted, worked-on-in-frenzy-right-up-until-the-last-minute, and gives it to the recipient as it, with an attached IOU. sooo bad. I did it this weekend even…I spent ALL Saturday morning trying to make my boyfriend’s iPod cozy, only to end up with a Wonky half-finished green blob of a result, but what did I do? Wrapped it and said “Here honey… I’m making you this!!!”
The BEST time I did that was when I gave my sister ONE red mitten for Christmas and promised to make her the other, and never followed through. At one point in the following year, she said, “Since you only made ONE anyway…think I could have BLUE ones instead!?!?!” THE NERVE! Never-the-less, the NEXT Christmas, she got TWO BLUE mittens 🙂
-Lara
ps – when the boy opened the gift, he was all like “OOOOH THANK YOU!!!” and I was all like, “Don’t you even want to know what it IS?!?” and he looked at it curiously (this little, tube-like 4-in pice of knit fabric with a flap) and chrigged and said, “I don’t know…I thought maybe it was a sweater or part of a sleeve or uh… a pouch of something” hee. That’s sort of the goofy great thing about him. He loved it (honestly) no matter what it was supposed to be!
damn, my post if FULL of wierd typos! I’ll proof-read next time 😉
btw, that’s SHRUGGED, not chrigged. I won’t bother correcting the others, you get the drift 😉
MAX! I can relate to that look in pic #2 – I think it was me when trying on my “Kate” sweater that I finished last week. Can you say ULTIMATE ‘michelin man’? I daresay I could go head to head with you on photos of sweaters gone wrong…. Apparently when they show a woman with NO HIPS wearing a sweater, the maker is ALSO supposed to have no hips – oh! Big lightbulb moment! Size 2 does NOT equal size 18! Yup- just cause the pattern is written large enough doesnt mean it will look good. Talk about a sweater I wouldn’t have batted an eye at in the store – yet felt the need to spend a week (or so) of my free time making. Where the scotch?
CMON- share the ‘M Man’ sweater- I need to feel better!
Bravo on the snowflake sweater – and for attending all those parties! Hope there are no blackflies up Algonquin way yet, but I kind of think there are. Oh, and did you ever find Sam’s glasses? Or is that why she had the mishap with whatever she bonked into?
Just caught up on the Snowflake Saga. Being from the upper midwest, I know that there is such a thing as snow blindness, which is what made you decide to knit that project in less time than some of us give ourselves to straighten out our desk. (My desk in the kitchen is like an abandoned car in the ghetto — the whole family just drops whatever they want to there, willy-nilly, but I digress.)
So, you did the only thing you could do and kept walking until you got out of the blizzard. Brava! But next time, maybe try something with the words “tropical” or “island” in the name? Something with no deadline? Yeah mon.
IM-pressive! Wow! Way to go on the deadline. I usually don’t finish the IOU present for several months. Once I miss the deadline the first time, I have trouble recreating the frenzy. The sweater looks really cute on him!
Great job on the hoodie, it looks so soft and comfy.
You crack me up! I love the “neutral” comment. That’s a great interpretation. The sweater looks cool though. How could he not love it?!