And yet, way too far away. My dreams of Knitting Olympics gold were pretty much gone by the end of last weekend, but I kept on keepin’ on, and managed to get a lot more done than I thought I could. Really, had I not gone to bed last night I could have done it. But sleep was more important to me at this point, so I put the knitting down and went to bed.

The exercise was not in vain, mind you. I learned several things over the past 16 days, some good, some not so good:

1. I have a very low tolerance for ribbing. Lower even, apparently, than my tolerance for alcohol. Although the reactions to the two things are… different.

2. Knitting my ribbing with some of the stitches done in combination knitting instead of plain western knitting makes the ribbing look much less like it was knit by a first grader after a serious Krispy Kreme and cocoa bender. This is a fine, fine thing.

3. Jo Sharp Silk Road Tweed, while yummy and soft in the ball and once knit up and blocked, is harder on the hands even than most cotton tends to be for me. This suprised me to no end.

4. I don’t do well with having only one project going at a time. I’ve suspected this during prior single-project jaunts, but this time really knocked it home for me. I really ought to have at least three knitting projects and one or two spinning projects going at a time to really be a happy camper. And yes, I will be casting on for a lace stole and picking the socks back up tonight. And lo, it will be good.

5. I love cables.

6. I really no longer have any fear whatsoever of dropping back a small section of knitting to fix a mis-crossed cable 20 rows back.

7. I suck at basic counting. Especially when there’s beer involved.

8. 5 plus 7 equals 6.

9. Which, really, isn’t an issue. So yay! Beer!

I’ll be taking pictures of stuff at some point today, so I’ll take some pictures of Durrow in its current state. Honestly, I’ll probably have it finished in the next two or three days (since I’ll be cheating on it with Socks That Rock, Lisa Souza Wensleydale, and Alpaca Cloud). It’s all good.

In other news:

Today I have a play date with Heidi at The Artful Ewe in Kingston. I heart Heidi. If you haven’t been out to TAE yet, do make the time to do so. And if you’re just jonesing to meet Heidi, she spins and knits at the Kingston Quilt store on the 3rd Sunday of every month, and starting next month will be doing spinning demos in Port Gamble on the first Saturday of every month, in the big yellow building. I’ll be there for some of those too.

And! OMFG! Yesterday I paid off my xmas layaway at Woodland Woolworks. So my (new to me) Majacraft Gem will be here before I head up to Bowen Island! Wooooooo! I SO can’t wait.

In: General | | #