Downgrade

Adding new knitters continues apace, your continued patience is appreciated. (Which is really a polite was of saying HOLY CRAP there are a lot of you!) My inbox is full to bursting, and each event in my life is now punctuated by entering another hundred Knitters to the list. Make coffee, add knitters. Drink coffee, add knitters. Make lunches, add knitters. Do real job, add knitters.

I’d be finished if I didn’t have a real life, or if I didn’t insist on sharing the entering time with knitting.

To that end, I have downgraded the level of difficulty of my current knitting to free up brain cells for adding knitters. The Tinks sweaters are sitting a day or two out, since I think rule # 2 of steeking should be that you give hacking up your knitting your full attention.

(Rule #1 is : measure several times before you cut) So I’ve whipped out two pairs of socks. I keep socks on the go all the time, and I don’t even consider them current projects (unless there is a deadline or they are very fancy) since I don’t work on them in any kind of dedicated way. I keep one by my computer:

Regsocomp1

a plain pair (this one is Regia Brasil Colour #5478) that I work a row on while I’m waiting for a page to load, a disk to write…or even while I’m thinking or on the phone. Whole socks get done this way, a few stitches or rows at a time.

I keep another pair on the go at the same time,

Ksharsok1

a pair a little fancier than the plain ones. These are “Shari’s lace” (a free pattern from Sockbug, who has several really, really nice ones, as well as some really helpful stuff about sock knitting in general.)

The yarn in the above is Koigu (colour long forgotton- tags lost) which, while I am as big a fan of as anybody….is actually completely wasted for this pretty pattern. The colours compete with the pattern so that the lace is as completely obscured as white sheep in a snowstorm.

You can see it a little bit better here:

Ksharlsock2

but when (not if) I do this pattern again, I’ll use a plain yarn. I’ve got no interest in knitting lace that you can only see when I am in complex yoga poses displaying them at their best angle. I keep these socks in my bag and work on them when I have time to knit…but not enough time to drag out a big project or a chart. On the subway, waiting in line…coffee with a friend. A simple pattern with enough pizzazz to hold my (really fragile) attention span is perfect.

Olympic updates:

1. All hail Jen and La, who have a collection of super funky buttons for US knitters to use. I’ve included one for your perusal, but they have a whole bunch…lace team, cable team. I’m cracking up over here.

Usfiteam

2. All hail Kelly..distributor of the Team Canada button.

Team-Canada

3. All continue to hail S. kate, who continues to make the list of athletes possible without me weeping all day long. She’s figured out some kind of mojo with an excel spreadsheet and bandies about terms like “export word file” and does things like search for duplicates, make corrections simple and alphabetize the athletes, which is a totally cool way to make it easier on me and more fun for you. I am completely in love with her right now.

It surprises me actually. S.Kate is sitting over there using the same sort of computer I am, making movements with her hands and managing information, just like I am…and yet her computer seems to do so much more than mine. Have you even noticed that with some people? Joe and Ken are like that. Their computers are performing very complex and helpful things, and aside from a handy conversion program I have (we call it “talking to Americans” and it lets me know what the temperature is in Boston or how much 11 inches is…) My computer seems to largely be a glorified and expensive word processor which torments me with it’s reluctance to DO things…while other computers seem to be genuinely useful tools. Exporting spreadsheets? Who knew?