Off I go this morning, the first of two flights, making my way from cold and snowy Toronto to what I hear is a decidedly more spring-like Seattle. It’s the time of the year that I get to go to Madrona, and I’m excited and happy to be on my way, despite the 5am wake-up call. It’s early morning in the Air Canada Lounge at YYZ, and I’m here with my fellow travellers, watching Olympic curling on TV and knitting. Well, we’re all watching curling (it is Canada, after all, and the sport is a bit of a national obsession here) but I think I’m the only one knitting. I’m certainly the only one posing yarn with curling. (Hold on… yes. It’s just me.)
As I was getting my projects together for this trip, I realized that for the first time maybe ever, everything I’m knitting is something I’ve made before. I’ve got the second go at Elliot’s sweater in my bag (because you guys are right and it makes more sense to knit it all over again than it does to rip it back – I’d only be able to keep a bit of it, and I’m pretty sure I have enough yarn) and those two balls of yarn are destined to be another Bonfire – this time in Freia Handpaints Vitamin C and Driftwood, a combination that’s a little more 1970’s kitchen than the one before. I loved knitting that last cowl, and I’ve been dreaming of a do-over since the minute I finished it… The way I remember it, every single moment of it was a pleasure. Then just now I started the two-colour Italian cast-on this sucker begins with, and all of a sudden I don’t know what I was thinking. Last time it all seemed so fast, so easy, so entertaining, and that must be true, if I forgot about this part. Second verse, same as the first.
Making the stitches for the cast-on isn’t so bad, it’s the !@#$%ing “join without twisting” that had me literally throw this project across a hotel room and then send myself downstairs to the bar for a time out.
Glad to know I’m not the only adult who occasionally puts herself in time out.
When it’s REALLY bad, I send myself to bed early. (Though not usually without dinner.)
When I know the cast on will twist like a Slinky as it is created I leave a bit of a longer tail and put a slip knot in it. After the first few stitches I put the slip knot on a little used finger and continue casting on. At the end of the cast on I pull the tail to unkink the stitches. I still check carefully but there is not that huge build up of rotations to contend with.
Brilliant! Must try that next time.
I usually cast on, join,and then masking tape everything to the dining room table to make sure I haven’t twisted the cast on.
I do nearly the same…except I pin it to the ironing board.
What I do is knit a couple of rows back and forth and then it’s easier to close the round without twisting, and afterwards just seam together those rows invisibly.
That’s fabulous!
Oh my yes, that is the one thing that I have yet to be able to do. Join without twisting — yeah right. Impossible!
Congratulations on the mixed doubles gold. I think you have convinced me to try the cowl. I was tempted to keep knitting more hats. They became an addiction after I started knitting them for Christmas. Nothing like a wam hat in Wisconsin. Have a great trip. Hope you need the sunscreen.
And on the topic of Olympic knitting, check this out! https://www.npr.org/sections/thetorch/2018/02/13/585556301/finland-takes-olympic-chill-to-the-next-level-team-knitting
Susan, Yes! I saw this Finnish coach knitting the day of the race, but what I was most concerned about was how on earth he was doing it without getting frostbite on his poor fingers! The temps there in South Korea are like 14F, and how can he manage to hold those needles with his bare hands and feel what he is doing???
THAT.
I wasn’t so much interested in the fact he was DOING it or WHERE he was doing it or even that HE was doing it, but how he could stand to be doing it in that cold?? Not even fingerless mitts – just bare hands!
Knitting without sensation? Intravenous antifreeze? Or maybe the Finns are a super-race genetically engineered to be capable of knitting below freezing?
Finns = super-race with anti-freeze for blood, capable of knitting in sub-zero weather while coaching! Guest at future retreat??!
This is wonderful!!
The Guardian had a great article about the Finns – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/12/safe-happy-and-free-does-finland-have-all-the-answers .
I’m thinking their habit of sauna might toughen their blood circulation…
I have done the sauna to cold water in the UP! Those Finns are crazy!
Then there was my dad. Until I was 8, we lived a short walk to the Baltic Sea in Denmark. Every day he swam, sometimes having to,chop a hole in the ice!
We all have our different “crazy”!
I’m still trying to wrap my head around that cast-on. I want to make a 2 color brioche item myself but the cast on befuddles me and I don’t do You Tube well. Need detailed photos, which I finally found. (I think).
Macro a sounds like the perfect place for you to be! Have a safe trip and a lovely time!
My kids took up curling this year. It has been fantastic, while they spend 3 hours on the ice, I knit…..
https://www.instagram.com/p/BcxYhkgBGDL/?taken-by=amy_munson
And I imagine that there is a lot of knitting time in that 3 hours? It is not exactly a fast-paced sport!
Travel safely and enjoy spring for a few days!
I love that you were knitting while watching curling. We do that in America, too. Just not where we can be seen, lol.
Seriously, a woman in my knitting group knits her curling husband THE MOST gorgeous outrageous socks. Because socks matter when curling. Curling and knitting seem to go together.
I ADORE curling! Not on the Canadian scale (800 curling clubs), but I try.
So glad you decided to keep the first sweater and start again. There was so much sadness in that post about the sweater that it broke my heart. But you’ve made the ‘right’ decision. Let the first one be exactly what it is (lovely but small), and enjoy the process of doing it again.
BTW, I happened upon your blog when another knitter told me that they were adding my blog to their list of morning coffee blog reads, their only other being the Yarn Harlot, and that I’d better be aware of just what a compliment that was to be placed in your company.
I’m now religiously reading your blog too, and she was right. Very good company indeed!
Must be the cosmos. I’m doing a second Bliss Blanket, this time in four colors, and I whizzed through the set-up triangles, got to the end, started the first tier of entrelac … and just stared at it. Read the pattern. Stared some more. Reread. And went to bed. Next morning it made perfect sense (well, I might have written it as “knit up” instead of “pick up,” but 12 hours later it made sense, so.) Enjoy the warm(er) — let us know if there’s anything green.
It probably won’t be sunny in Seattle and not even that warm, but it undoubtedly will be green. Here in the PNW, I have noticed that I’ll need to mow the lawn soon.
I love your blog.
I have just started doing brioche knitting and that cast-on, well, … the whole thing actually, was kicking my butt! It does eventually get better so hang in!
Have fun at Madrona! And, if the Italian two-color cast-on gets too annoying, try it with some pinot grigio or maybe a nice chianti…;-)!
Have a great trip, wish I were there!
Now I’m singing Henry the 8th in my head. “Second verse, same as the first. I’m Henry the 8th, I am….” Thanks and You’re welcome. #sorrynotsorry
ROF LOL
And I have to touch the “music note” to post this!
Safe travels, Stephanie, and enjoy your visit to warmer climes. And hey, it’s not the mountainous Olympic sites with their frigid temperatures either (and the aerial shots of the ski runs would set me back a year or so if I had had any interest in downhill skiing!).
Oh man, one of my senators spent several days in the past week ragging on curling, and how he doesn’t understand it, and thinks it looks stupid, and therefore it shouldn’t be in the Olympics, because his opinion outweighs everyone else’s or something?
Ugh, what a crusty, mean old shriveled-up piece of pickled okra that guy is. Just awful.,
I love your description of the senator! I’m saving the mental picture for the next time my father-in-law goes off track. Thanks for the smile.
Houston, huh?
Utterly unsurprising.
Hey guys ! Did anyone notice the team Canada jackets that were “Knitted” it was either the ladies moguls team or the ladies Snowboarders …….I have been binge watching and it was on the first day ….Cool
It was snowboarders. More info here:
https://www.grantedclothing.com/blogs/news/corrine-hunt-x-burton-x-team-canada
So… they have real knitted jumpers for village (AKA indoor wear?) then identical but not knitted jackets for out and about in competition? Interesting…original concept!
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetorch/2018/02/13/585556301/finland-takes-olympic-chill-to-the-next-level-team-knitting?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
Did you see this?
Saw a male snowboarding coach knitting away at the start house for the half pipe snowboarding. How else would one handle the tension of waiting for your snowboarder to make his run?
Speaking of national obsessions, did you see the picture of the Norwegian(?) ski coach knitting up by the start of the race?
The Canadian Olympic Team always has the best mittens for sale. I could knit them but these are fleeced lined with white felted maple leaves on both sides, a nice cuff, and part of the money goes to the Canadian Olympic Team.
Mixed doubles curling was an obsession for me!
Knitting and watching curling sounds so relaxing! I’ll admit I still don’t understand the game, but I like that it’s played by “normal”-looking people.
Safe travels! Sorry I won’t get to see you at Madrona, and also sorry that the weather here has taken a bit more of a “winter” turn than last week (LAST week was DEFINITELY spring-like). Perhaps I’m most sorry that we don’t have the same obsession with Curling here, so you likely won’t get to see much of it, then again, I suppose you’ll be busy while you’re here…
PS- some talk of snow this weekend….I’m sure it’s a nasty rumor.
Oh, Madrona! What a wonderful set of classes! Someday…. Can one carry a wheel onto a plane? Enjoy yourself!
It is comforting to make something you have done before as you know just what to expect. I make the same biscuit recipe over and over again. I make socks, the same pattern over and over again. No guesswork, no surprises. Sometimes, you just need to feel secure and certain.
How about posting the biscuit recipe? Mine are terrible,
Julie in San Diego
“all of a sudden I don’t know what I was thinking. Last time it all seemed so fast, so easy, so entertaining, and that must be true, if I forgot about this part”
Much like childbirth once you’re holding that baby.
🙂
it’s not just Canada obsessed with the curling at the winter Olympics. So is quite a lot of Scotland. if Canada and GB both get medals, i’ll be perfectly content!
and i discovered that one member of the GB team (Kyle Waddell) is actually related to me ! OK, it’s fairly distant – his grandfather and my late mother were cousins – it may not be ‘on the button’ but it is ‘in the house’
I thought of you recently when traveling – we had an unexpected 26 hour flight delay when coming home from the Azores, which sounds potentially lovely except they kept us coralled in the post passport control little boarding area for all but a few hours (some of which were the 3 hours waiting on the plane and a few at a hotel for too little sleep) and I thought of your many writings about packing excessive yarn in case of emergencies (which I always do). I was so thankful to have ample knitting to keep me sane, which several other passengers remarked on enviously; none were knitters, I would have shared.
I was going to try brioche, but I am old and don’t know if my heart could handle the frustration. Perhaps I’ll just contine to enjoy looking at your creations.
Here’s the wonderful Finnish Olympic team, with their kniiting coaches (coaches who knit that is!) and their team knitting project. An antidote to so much going on in the world. Note they are chatting with Toronto librarians too 🙂
https://twitter.com/hashtag/knittingteamfi?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
It’s good to know that you can “chicken knit” at any experience level. I have a sweater that only needs button bands to replace the wavy ones I first did. Of course, I wove in all the ends! While I’m seriously irritated, in the end, it’s just sticks and string.
You have my sympathy. I was a wreck dealing with my mother’s estate. I hope you find ways to be kind to yourself. At any rate, I hope that sheep sweater transforms into a beautiful object that radiates the love you and your mother shared. I wish you peace and comfort that grows every day.
So great to see you at Madrona. Are you the one that brought the snow this morning?! Safe travels home!
Lizzy Yarnold, a British Olympian medal winner in something called skeleton racing (not curling) is also a knitter ! She says, “I often knit when I need time to think about something.” That’s what sometimes gets me tangled up, if I’m thinking something out, I tend to forget the knitting pattern. And sadly, every knitter knows, it’s a ^&$@^&* harder to unknit.
I’ve become obsessed with curling, too. My friend curls in a league for middle age women and she talks about it a lot and has fun with it, so I get some of the terms and scoring. And we’ve been mostly watching the Olympics on CBC because they actually show the Olympics and not just the top 3 plus the Americans… So now I’m thinking I might give it a go in March when the local curling club has their open house.
And knitting socks while watching. 🙂
Hi Steph,
I can’t believe it but I didn’t know you had a blog. Now that I want to subscribe to it I can’t for the life of me figure out how to do that…hence this comment.
Please help an old woman find the subscribe button.
Thanks.
It looks like Ms Harlot is away for a bit. I miss her but most of all I miss the Blog…I love you guys and am hoping someone can help me. I just found out I’m going to Scotland in June, for two weeks and my only request is a yarn shop…a good one with lots of sock yarn lol. Damn, I finally broke down last winter and knit my first pair and now I can’t seem to stop! I’ll never wear them all but I’m addicted I’m afraid lol.
I’ve hunted ad nauseum online and now am a blathering fool…a blathering sock knitting one at that. Know a good one?
A brilliant one is Ginger Twist Studio. London Road Edinburgh. Jessica has the most amazing yarns and is super friendly. I always stop in when I’m in Edinburgh
Thank you so much! I’ve written it on my list…and informed my travel buddies of my plans! I really appreciate your help
Oh to live in Canada (or even Scotland) where curling is loved and on tv/your local rink! Here in England, I look forward to the Winter Olympics because I know I can watch curling pretty much every day for two weeks. And then there’s another four year wait…
I was also knitting while I watched, but only up until, say, about the 7th end. Then it got too nail-biting to look down all the time.