Knitting Olympics, Sulking, and Other Winter Sports

I have so much to blog about and so little time because, hello, I'm in the Olympics! Well, the KNITTING Olympics, that is.  My road to the competition has been a rocky one--a tale of false starts and frustration.  I WILL medal, though, and in the Knitting Olympics, the only medal is gold. "Do or do not do; there is no 'try.'"

There is, however, doing very BADLY and thank you, that would be me. I've cast on five different times so far.  I chose an easy project because it's my first attempt at knitting lace. For knitting lace, you use yarn that is the same thickness as dental floss and you make these lovely, intricate patterns of ethereal snowflake-like fabric.

Unless you are doing what I'm doing-- which is to make a lot of mistakes and then say a lot of curse words that swirl about my head like a huge toxic cloud and give me a serious headache. I can't even rip this yarn out because it's so fine, so I have been cutting it off and throwing it in the fire. (The rest of the yarn LIVES IN FEAR.) Worst of all, I can't "read" my knitting the way I can with socks, because the lace is so...LACY.  I make mistakes on every row and sometimes I get plain lost because I get interrupted and then have no idea where I am in the pattern.

Still, you know what?  I'm going to finish.  And it will either have gotten a lot better and I will have a new knitting skill and passion OR I will hate it until the end and I will know not to do lace knitting ever again.

 

(Plus, well, this is supposed to be a STOLE.  I'm going to be seriously crabby if by the time I finish this thing, it will make a stole for an American Girl doll. Freaking lace knitting...)

On the subject of things that make me sulk (and curse,) yesterday was Valentine's day.  My sweetie did a good job with the flowers, it's not THAT.

I made him socks.  Here is is, modeling them for the blog. Notice anything?

Why yes, that is a freaking ORANGE toe on one of them, thanks for asking.  Once again, I ran out of yarn right before the toe and when I ordered the same color, it came and was completely different.  BECAUSE I NEVER LEARN. The yarn (all of it) is Claudia Handpainted Yarn in "Copper Pennies."  I thought for sure that I had enough but I didn't and that's always a set up to fail when knitting with hand-painted yarn.  I wouldn't have ordered it if it had looked that orange on the photo, though.  I hate orange--except on cats.

(My spouse responded to the socks with his patented Grateful Spouse Genius.  "I think you should make all of your socks this way.  I think it should be the new style."  And then he slept in them, which I think means he liked them.)

(Speaking of orange cats, here's Thomas against the snow.  I don't know why this makes me laugh, but it does.)

And speaking of snow, did I mention that we had a huge snowfall last week?  You know, while my spouse was out of town?  Here is a video from the first day which shows Puppy Austin trying to play with Scout.

Speaking of the puppy, Sir Austin turned one year old on Valentine's Day.  He took it in stride.

 

 And now, gratuitous shots of my daughters in the snow.  If you aren't a grandparent, you might just want to go about your business now...

Here is Coop helping the girls build a snowman. He is somewhat hampered by the fact that Jane keeps diving onto the snow mound in order to assist in packing it down.