More to come: Will I ever start those gloves? Washcloth on chopsticks! My knitting taboos. Adventures in NYC (where I serendipitously or un-serendipitously missed Comic-Con by a mere week...). Etc. Back in a bit. You know, eventually.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Scarf picture
More to come: Will I ever start those gloves? Washcloth on chopsticks! My knitting taboos. Adventures in NYC (where I serendipitously or un-serendipitously missed Comic-Con by a mere week...). Etc. Back in a bit. You know, eventually.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Killing time, part deux
Actually, I'm not sure there was a part 1, but as I'm always killing time when I blog, not always for legitimate reasons, I figure part 2 is a perfectly reasonable place to start. So what am I killing time instead of doing right now? Well, where do I start? I am "mostly" packed for a flight to New York to visit my sister and one of my friends from med school. I've finished a couple loads of laundry which mostly means clothing, but there's a pile of bedding that just ain't gonna get done before I have to leave. I have patient logs that I'm at least a week behind on. I still need to find people to cover my clinic days when I'm floor senior next month. And I still need to locate a dentist while I have vacation time to actually get my teeth cleaned. All told, perfect time to procrastinate and blog about knitting/sewing projects. Knitting ahoy!
The Amy scarf is about halfway finished and looks friggin' gorgeous. No more dropped stitches (must locate wood to knock on without getting up from couch), and the pattern does get more manageable as you repeat it to infinity. Even the knit-elevens, especially if you remember where your yarn-overs were on the previous rows. Though I have to admit I've always rather hated purling. Something to look forward to when I'm doing this in the round for the gloves: all wrong-side purl rows become knit! Glorious! Knew there was a reason I have a preponderance of hats in my finished knitting projects drawer.
My next knitting challenge, should I choose to accept it (and should I ever finish the above-mentioned scarf and gloves), will be a horse of a different color. It's a pretty boring story, but probably necessary. So I was in Milwaukee last week hanging out with my pal the Desultory Knitter, and, naturally, we got on the subject of knitting and couldn't get off it, no doubt much to the dismay of her long-suffering husband. We were ogling patterns in one of the Stitch-n-Bitch series books, and there was a comment by one of the contributors about how she got her start with some loose yarns and two dowel rods run through a pencil sharpener. Being both a slightly kooky knitter and, well, Asian, my first thought was "What if you decided on a whim you wanted to learn how to knit, and all you had was some plain worsted-weight yarn and a pair of chopsticks?" Keeping in mind that most households don't have a set of size-8 all-purpose double-points tucked away in a drawer somewhere and that at least slightly more of them will have the aforementioned chopsticks. Some adventure in takeout or delivery from the local "Chinese" place, usually, although if you have a nicer pair that splinters less your fingers might thank you. So, can one Macgyver together a project out of boring yarn and a kitchen utensil? Eh, why not?
Thus was born the next challenge of my knitterly life: the Dalek washcloth, Asian-style. Don't knock it, the concept of the washcloth as a beginner project is much-maligned but perhaps unfairly, since it's one of the most adaptable palettes to both pattern-work and color-work available to the novice knitter. I bet that I could accomplish, on standard-issue eating chopsticks, using...hmm...a skein of blue Lionbrand Jiffy, a washcloth complete with Dalek picture and "Exfoliate" logo, for your nerdly pleasure. Think I can't? Well, you might be right, but if I forfeit due to time issues that doesn't count.
In other news, anybody got a good idea for a costume theme for the residents on one floor of a children's hospital? There's a costume contest every year, and they tend to go for humor (last year's winners dressed up as the animals pictured on each floor of the parking garage). All my tired old brain cells could come up with was Famous Fictional Doctors (not MDs), but I'm having trouble coming up with female ones that are family-appropriate (somehow don't think Doctor Girlfriend, aka Mrs. Doctor the Monarch, even in the pink suit and hat, would quite cut it). Sad, 'cause the male ones are pretty obvious: Doc Brown, Dr. Evil, Dr. Horrible, Doctor Who, heck I'd even accept House because he doesn't wear a white coat and/or scrubs and that's really my only goal. Ideas? We have until the end of the month, and my pride and my seniorly duties dictate that I come up with something at least slightly awesome. Whatever that means.
The Amy scarf is about halfway finished and looks friggin' gorgeous. No more dropped stitches (must locate wood to knock on without getting up from couch), and the pattern does get more manageable as you repeat it to infinity. Even the knit-elevens, especially if you remember where your yarn-overs were on the previous rows. Though I have to admit I've always rather hated purling. Something to look forward to when I'm doing this in the round for the gloves: all wrong-side purl rows become knit! Glorious! Knew there was a reason I have a preponderance of hats in my finished knitting projects drawer.
My next knitting challenge, should I choose to accept it (and should I ever finish the above-mentioned scarf and gloves), will be a horse of a different color. It's a pretty boring story, but probably necessary. So I was in Milwaukee last week hanging out with my pal the Desultory Knitter, and, naturally, we got on the subject of knitting and couldn't get off it, no doubt much to the dismay of her long-suffering husband. We were ogling patterns in one of the Stitch-n-Bitch series books, and there was a comment by one of the contributors about how she got her start with some loose yarns and two dowel rods run through a pencil sharpener. Being both a slightly kooky knitter and, well, Asian, my first thought was "What if you decided on a whim you wanted to learn how to knit, and all you had was some plain worsted-weight yarn and a pair of chopsticks?" Keeping in mind that most households don't have a set of size-8 all-purpose double-points tucked away in a drawer somewhere and that at least slightly more of them will have the aforementioned chopsticks. Some adventure in takeout or delivery from the local "Chinese" place, usually, although if you have a nicer pair that splinters less your fingers might thank you. So, can one Macgyver together a project out of boring yarn and a kitchen utensil? Eh, why not?
Thus was born the next challenge of my knitterly life: the Dalek washcloth, Asian-style. Don't knock it, the concept of the washcloth as a beginner project is much-maligned but perhaps unfairly, since it's one of the most adaptable palettes to both pattern-work and color-work available to the novice knitter. I bet that I could accomplish, on standard-issue eating chopsticks, using...hmm...a skein of blue Lionbrand Jiffy, a washcloth complete with Dalek picture and "Exfoliate" logo, for your nerdly pleasure. Think I can't? Well, you might be right, but if I forfeit due to time issues that doesn't count.
In other news, anybody got a good idea for a costume theme for the residents on one floor of a children's hospital? There's a costume contest every year, and they tend to go for humor (last year's winners dressed up as the animals pictured on each floor of the parking garage). All my tired old brain cells could come up with was Famous Fictional Doctors (not MDs), but I'm having trouble coming up with female ones that are family-appropriate (somehow don't think Doctor Girlfriend, aka Mrs. Doctor the Monarch, even in the pink suit and hat, would quite cut it). Sad, 'cause the male ones are pretty obvious: Doc Brown, Dr. Evil, Dr. Horrible, Doctor Who, heck I'd even accept House because he doesn't wear a white coat and/or scrubs and that's really my only goal. Ideas? We have until the end of the month, and my pride and my seniorly duties dictate that I come up with something at least slightly awesome. Whatever that means.
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