A family in New Jersey made a snow sculpture of Venus de Milo but someone found it offensive and called the police. Now Venus wears clothes. I’m speechless.
Link to the story at bbc.com
Knitting? What knitting? Despite my declaration in the last blog that I was on my way to cast on several projects I have nothing on the needles. Nothing. How is that even possible?
What did the knitting Olympics do to me? I’m usually a monogamous knitter (if one doesn’t count all the sleeping laceprojects in my drawer) and I like it that way. But now I want to cast on at least two shawls, a vest, a scarf, a hat and a pair of socks all at once. I have even picked out yarn for all these projects.
I do get bored easily and that might be the reason for my monogamous knitting, I pick a project I know I can finish quickly and then start a new one. Maybe I’m now shifting towards projects that take longer time and thus bringing in the getting bored possibility, so I will have to have more than one project to switch between?
Well, before I do any of those knitting projects I will have to get back on track with the rest of my life. Some aspects of it might have been slightly neglected the last week or so.
So do I wait and see if these polygamist tendencies are just a post Olympic high or have I really changed? She says with two sets of needles and two hanks of yarn waiting by her side. Who am I kidding? See you later, I have some casting on to do.
My first finished lace project. My first real lace blocking. My first provisional cast on. My love. (Do you hear the violins too?)
The Olympic Þórdís/Thordis:
She went out for a walk (as usual you can click on the pictures to see larger ones)
But it was so windy she almost blew into the ocean and so snowy that she got wet and cold. So she had to stay indoors and just look out the window instead.
And I can’t stop, I think she’s pretty.
Pattern: Þórdísarhyrna from the book Þríhyrnur og Langsjöl (Thordisarhyrna, Three-cornered and long shawls)
Needles: 3.5mm circular
Size before blocking: 114 cm x 54 cm (~ 45 x 21 inches)
After blocking: 155 cm x 75 cm (~ 61 x 30 inches)
Approximately 38.600 stitches knitted in 160 rows (or maybe closer to a million or so if I count all the times I had to rip out and reknit to fix all my mistakes).
Some of the things I’ve learnt:
- I can.
- I love lace knitting.
- Never ever ever do this much knitting in this short time again unless I have a week of health spa lined up right afterwards.
- That no matter how well I read the pattern and the charts I will make endless mistakes, some of which will drive me crazy. That‘s ok, I can fix them, after I’ve cursed and threatened to throw all my yarn and needles in the ocean and to never knit another stitch.
- That there is a whole word of lace knitting out there just waiting for me to come and explore.
And so much more. Thank you Þórdís (insert violins again).
I truly enjoyed participating in the Knitting Olympics. It made me stretch further than I have before and was an intellectual and physical challenge to my abilities. To me it was all about the process, but that said I am really happy that I made it to the finish line! Physically exhausted and mentally ecstatic. Thank you.
she’s off the needles. Yes, she. Her name is Þórdís (Thordis), she is a friend of mine and she has taught me so much. Someday I will write about all the things I have learnt from her.
I am happy to say that the knitting of the lace edging went well. I made hardly any mistakes, unless you count a couple of 600 stitches rows that I knit, and then had to rip out because I was supposed to purl them, a mistake. Or knitting a full 500 stitches row of S1K2togPsso and then to realise that was wrong and redo it (that was a $%&/ to untangle). Or binding off around 700 stitches and then rip that out and bind off again because it was too tight the first time. And a few other small thingies like that. Nope, hardly any mistakes made.
I still got a lot of ends to weave in (10 colours used = many ends) and there is The Blocking. My first real lace blocking. I’m scared.
And then I’ll do some decorative crocheting on the top edge. Or actually I’m not sure if I’m supposed to do that before or after I block. I worry that if I do it before the blocking it won’t stretch enough and if I do it after blocking the shawl will get all wrinkled. I think I might be overthinking this?
Since I started my project 6 pm my time on Friday the 12th I have to finish before 6 pm Sunday 28th. I want to say I’m fairly sure I’ll make it but I don’t dare, so I’ll just say I hope I’ll make it (how many I:s do I have?).
Finland got two bronze medals today (technically yesterday). Hooray! These Olympics haven’t gone well for the Finns so I’m happy that today things went well.
Only 31 rows to go.
31 rows that might be somewhat gruelling. It’s the lace edging off the shawl and I start with 339 stitches and will end with 691 stitches. Then is the cast off, weaving in ends, washing and blocking.
Will I make it in time? I don’t know. I do know that I’m going to give it my best and enjoy the ride.
Can’t wait to see what blocking does to Þórdísarhyrna. I think the size is going to be on the smallish side.
Still a long way to go but at least I’m going forward now. Loving it.
(click on the picture to enlarge)
Being a Finn the winter Olympics has always been a big event for me. I remember so many things about the Olympics. I remember watching them on TV (black and white for many years) since I was a child. I remember when the Olympics were only for amateur athletes and I also remember when the rules changed and the professional athletes were allowed to participate. To me it seemed so enormously unfair for the first few years as not everybody could be professional athletes and therefore at a disadvantage.
I love all the small stories that emerge at the Olympics, many of which bring tears to my eyes (or have me blubbering uncontrollably).
There are two older stories that are etched to my memory:
One is of the Finish giant Juha Mieto, a great cross-country skier. Before the Olympics in Lake Placid 1980 he had all the colours of the medals except for gold in an individual race. At that time he was 31 years of age and getting “old”, thus it was uncertain that he would ever compete in the Olympics again. He wanted that gold so badly and since he is a lovable big teddy bear and a Finish hero we all wanted him to be able to fulfil his dream. He had a great race and we waited, holding our breath, for him to cross the finishing line. It was obvious that the race was very close but the disappointment could be physically felt when the result was clear. He lost by 1/100th of a second. Contemplate that for a moment, 1/100th of a second.
When he realised how close he came he disappeared into the woods for a while, probably to scream expletives and cry. That’s what I would have done. I remember feeling so incredibly sorry for him and cried like a baby. When he came back, congratulated the winner and happily received his silver I cried some more.
This close margin led the International Ski Federation (FIS) to round all of their times to the nearest 1/10th second in future competitions.
Another story is of the first Kenyan ever to participate in the winter Olympics, Philip Boit. That was 1998 in Nagano and he competed in the 10 km cross-country race. The first time he ever laid eyes on snow was two years earlier so he hadn’t much time to practice. He of course finished far behind everybody else and during the race it was a question whether he was actually skiing or running on the skis. But that didn´t matter, he finished. The medal event for the race had to be postponed since the winner, Norwegian Bjorn Dæhlie, wanted to wait and greet Boit at the finishing line. Boit was so touched by this that he named one of his sons Dæhlie.
Boit was going to compete in Vancouver this year but just shortly before the games (I think he was in Vancouver already) it became clear that he just missed the recently tightened cut by 2 points. Do you like a good (sob) story? Read this and this (scroll down to Kenya).
There are so many stories. Come-back stories about people overcoming injuries, serious illness or “just” after taking a few years off to have children, everybody just wanting to participate in the Olympics and so happy to be able to do that. Tonight I was watching the biathlon and the narrators were talking about it now being hard for many athletes, especially from the smaller countries, to get the money to train and compete. One of the competitors in the biathlon is trained by his father, who himself is a two time Olympics gold medallist. The father auctioned his gold medals so his son could participate in these games.
I’m going to watch the figure skating now, even if it is the middle of the night here in Iceland. I love the Olympic Games.
I keep going one step forward and two steps back. I have never done so many mistakes in one knitting project, or spent two hours searching for a mistake before realising there wasn’t one after all!
If I didn’t like and trust my mind as much as I do I would say it was playing tricks on me.
So no pictures of knitting projects today, would you like some silly looking cats instead? Sitting on the desk, almost on my arm, wondering why I would stare at the computer screen instead of talking to them.
I am so glad I screwed up the beginning. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have googled for another method to do the provisional cast on, and I might have missed out on learning this one:
Cat Bordhi demonstrates Judy Becker’s Magic Cast-On (and magic it is!)
If I hadn’t found that video I probably wouldn’t have this neat beginning of a shawl that looks and feel so much better than the first attempt. Screw ups can be good.
Here being inspected and approved by another enthusiastic yarnie:
Yesterday I cast on. My first provisional cast on and it was a mess. Well, I wrestled my way through that and got 4 garter stitch rows made. The cast on and the knitting took over 4 hours and a lot of patience and not so beautiful thoughts. When the opening ceremonies started at 2 a.m. I was already cross-eyed, and even though I really really wanted to stay up to see the Olympic fire lit I just couldn’t make it to 5 a.m. So I folded in at the same time as the pink bear appeared. I was too tired to grasp what the bear stood for but it sure was pretty.
I was impressed with the opening ceremonies, way to go Canada! This morning I managed to catch the last minutes of the rerun and saw the fire being lit, wonderful and so perfect in its imperfectness. I loved seeing Wayne Gretzky at the stadium, one of the old archenemies of the Finish hockey team but oh yet so loved and admired because he is he.
Today was a busy day and I only knit 3 rows, with a stitch combination I haven’t seen before (purl 1, knit 2, pass the first one over the other two). It’s a little time consuming but fun to see the outcome. But all these rounds I knew something was wrong, I seemed to be missing a stitch or have one stitch too many all the time. Me being me I just fudged it adding or subtracting that one stitch as I went on. But after three rows I realized this wouldn’t work. I thought that there was no way I could have counted the stitches wrong because I counted them countless (pun intended) times, even putting markers every 50 stitches (never ever ever done that before). I checked, double checked and checked some more and always ended up with the same result 339 stitches, just as asked for.
Tonight I counted again, several times. There is no way escaping the fact that I have 50 extra stitches. It was a good strategy to put markers every 50 stitches, an even better one would have been to add up all the 50 stitch sections correctly. I did some math to see if I could keep this size, but there are so many different multiples of stitches in different parts of the pattern that I just couldn’t get a result I was happy with, math wise (what did I expect? I couldn’t even get 50+50 right yesterday). So this is where I am at now, with empty needles and a pile of mistake.
Living is for learning. But for the rest of the evening I do not want to see any needles or yarn, no thanks.
P.S The name of this post, Fall er fararheill, is an Icelandic saying. Roughly translated it means that falling down in the beginning predicts a good journey. It is often used when something goes wrong in the beginning, and I choose to believe that that is the case now. Since I fell quite hardly in the beginning the shawl knitting should go like a breeze from now on. Right? RIGHT?
