Hi again. Bet you wondered what hole I fell into. Well, let me tell you, it's been pretty busy here at the Tinklenberg ranch. What with Emily having her birthday this past week, the anticipated visit of the grandparents (now over, thank you Lord!) which entailed a bit of cleaning up, and the arrival of a large stamp shipment, some of which were for me, I was kind of tied up. I mounted all my new stamps and then was hoping for some time to play with them, but it hasn't happened yet.
Instead, my husband has been downstairs playing his guitar every single night. The volumn gets pretty loud down there, so I usually don't venture to try to stamp while he's playing. And by the time he's finished, I'm too tired to do anything but stare stupidly at the stamps, trying to come up with a great idea for using them.
I live for Monday mornings.
However, I did have this commitment, like many of you, to start my Knitting Olympics project. The opening ceremonies came on, I cast on and here I am.Doing these little units is addictive. I did 6 of them last night and I've already done 5 more today and will likely do at least 2 or 3, if not more, by the end of the evening.
The instructions for this blanket are a little sketchy in places. For instance, once you've made the first square, it tells you to cast on 11 stitches, then pick up 10 on the top of the first square. Well...which side is the top? One of the non-cast on sides, but it's not really clear. I kind of had to figure out that YES, you were supposed to cut the yarn, then cast on 11 new stitches, then pick them up on the side that would be logical.
This sort of bummed me out, because you have to cut the yarn every single time you start a unit, which I didn't remember doing for my last mitered knitting project. But that was a long time ago and I probably just forgot. It's a bummer because I am going to have a lot of ends to weave in on the back, which on a blanket is kind of a stinky thing to have to do. I have started out by weaving in the ends when I have 4 corners all meeting, but I should probably do the ones hanging out where the squares meet on the outside edge to reduce the work at the end.
Otherwise, it's kind of fun...like eating a famous brand of potato chips, it's hard to stop at just one. I was "just one more"-ing myself until 1:30 AM this morning, egged on by watching "The Invisible Man" with Claude Raines on AMC. The acting was just so kitschy and over the top that I greatly enjoyed listening to Claude laughing his maniacal laugh as he pedaled what looked like an empty bicycle down the street while I worked on the blanket.
I also enjoyed the appearance of one of my favorite Warner Brothers character actresses from the 30's: Una O'Connor. Una always played maids, cooks, and similar supporting roles. She had a face that really looked like the face you used to see on a Kitchen Witch (a popular kitchen accessory in the late 70's and early 80's) where the nose and the pointed chin almost seemed to meet, what they call "a face like a nutcracker." But I've always thought that Una was one of the better actresses in any movie she was ever in and I have fun spotting her in movies I haven't seen before.
In "The Invisible Man" she was just as over the top as Claude Raines...they made the whole movie fun to watch. So I managed to finish watching that and doing "just one more." Finally the movie was over and I just had to finish that last unit before I went to bed. Fortunately, the movie that followed (a 70's pulp horror flick with Robert Culp) was not bad enough to be good to watch and not good enough to be good to watch either.
But Janine, you say...why aren't you watching the Olympics while you knit? Well, I did watch a bit of the opening ceremonies. And we watched a bit of speed skating and some of the mogul skiing today. But I really only enjoy watching the figure skating and since that's the part that Dan doesn't like watching, I don't get to see it unless he's playing his guitar and I get the remote.
He's down there right now, actually, but the kids are watching Lord of the Rings and I have a stack of receipts and bills that really must be dealt with today or I'll start getting phone calls....sigh. Why can't I just knit or stamp and let everyone else do the cleaning, cooking, paying bills, laundry, etc.?
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