Sunday, February 22, 2009

Venting

Sorry, no pictures today. I’m just venting. I have nothing to show because I have had almost no time to knit since work is sucking our life away at the moment. I know it’s only temporary but every time we go through it, it seem like an eternity. My husband is working the “insane” hours while I’m doing the only “very heavy” hours since I’m taking care of the kids most times. That’s okay; I’d rather have it that way. That’s the only reason I managed to get any knitting done yesterday and it felt so good. That and that I bought some International Delight Southern Butter Pecan to go in my coffee – mmmm, flavoured coffee and knitting.

At the end of this coming week, hubby has to go away on a course for two days. He’s extending it to a third day since he’s never visited this place before. As a result, I’m also going to miss my yoga class which is my only other stress outlet aside from knitting. My other crafts and hobbies don’t provide me with the same de-stressing ability, not that I’ve had time to touch them anyway. I always say I’m grumpier when I haven’t had time to knit, can you imagine me by the end of Saturday?

I’m drinking a glass of red wine and watching the third Lord of the Rings movie while I do this; it helps. Any time I’ve not blogged for a while, the sole cause is work. I’ve always been afraid of venting on my blog because I was afraid some of the people I work with might discover my complaints. Oh well, I guess I'm past caring (to a certain extent). I just had to vent.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Fearless Tobogganers

Sadly, my very busy work schedule has infringed upon my precious free knitting time. I’ve only managed to knit one day this past week and not much the week before and boy does my overall mood show it. I get pretty cranky when I don’t get my knitting stress relief. So today, I’m going to share a couple of shots of the recent past.

All hats in these pictures were hand knitted by me. Unfortunately, you can’t see the details in my hubby’s hat but it’s from Elsebeth Lavold’s Viking Patterns for Knitting. The pattern is called Harald.

The hats my daughter and I are wearing were inspired by Anna Zilboorg’s 45 Fine & Fanciful Hats to Knit. Mine is the Egyptian style but I put in my own motifs. On my daughter’s, I used the motif that was in the book for cone hats, but I added earflaps with I-cord ties, which none of the hats in the book have.
My son’s hat is my own original design which I covered in previous blog posts under the labels “dragon” and “dragon scarf”.
Over the past couple of weeks, virtually all our snow has melted, although I hear we will have a snowstorm on Wednesday. Winter is far from over.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

And the Mitre Goes On

So far so good. The pattern I chose for the border is called the Inverness Diamond from my 365 Knitting Stitches a Year Perpetual Calendar. The pattern can be found on the December 13 page.

I’m doing directional increases to make the mitre while avoiding creating any holes or gaps. Translation: the increased stitch on the right corner will slant to the right, the increased stitch on the left corner will slant to the left.

To make the right slanting increase, I brought the tip of the left hand needle under the strand between the stitches on the left hand and right hand needles, from back to front. Then I knit this loop (that I created by picking up the strand) through the front.

To make the left slanting increase, I brought the tip of the left hand needle under the strand between the stitches on the left hand and right hand needles, from front to back. Then I knit this loop (that I created by picking up the strand) through the back.