but I have been doing stuff

Since this photo, I’ve begun shaping the crown.

I don’t want you to think that I’ve stopped knitting. I haven’t. True, I have been busy crocheting my table runner while watching TV. But I have also been knitting, sometimes while watching TV and sometimes while battling insomnia. Neither is particularly wise when you have trouble counting.

I have also been dedicating time to the 3-Legged Challenge, a world-first fundraiser whose aim is to support unpaid carers. As I work for one of the charities involved, my signing up was a no-brainer. I cajoled YoungB into participating, which has, I think, well and truly exhausted my annual quota of filial goodwill from him! Never mind.

Yesterday, he and I did a truncated version of our original idea. Between travel to and fro, a special soccer match and his work commitments, we were never going to get as much 3-legged silliness as we’d originally planned. This photo of him being not too rude to me is the best I could have expected.

“I will kill you later, Mum.”

Today, Dr B and I joined a group of staff in a 2-Km walk along part of the Hallett Cove boardwalk. We were promised no steps in the out-and-back loop. Yes, well, not quite true! But only half a dozen or so either way, and we managed those reasonably well. Let me put it this way: nobody fell over, or down, or caused anybody else to do either of those things. Win-win. Right? Lots of laughs and, no doubt, some excellent photos from our fundraising and marketing manager in due course.

The nice thing about travelling from our north-eastern suburb to the suburban far south was the amount of knitting time it afforded me. My beanie has now reached the stage where the rows are noticeably shorter and the end in sight.

I am not enamoured of the brown. But it works with the rest of the colours and it’s not yellow, so it’s staying 😉

I’m on schedule to finish the beanie by the knitting store’s CAL/KAL deadline. Let’s hope I haven’t just hexed myself!

What have you been up to?

 

…little bit…

New yarn and old needles for a new project

I have to admit, when I knitted along that first row of my tension square last Wednesday evening, I just couldn’t help myself. “Oh, I love knitting,” I exclaimed to anyone who might be listening (mostly dust and spiders, to be fair, because there was nobody else around at the time). And I have been happily knitting ever since.

I did a little bit on the bus, a little bit while watching TV, a little bit at lunchtime, a little bit after dinner, a little bit on the suburban train, a little bit in the car on the way to our Thursday dumplings and coffee date (and during that, of course; the Bs barely notice nowadays), and a little bit at the bus interchange as I sat and waited for a connecting bus and chatted with an elderly Italian woman who prefers crochet but complimented me for my dedication to the cause: “It’s good to see.”

I did a little bit in the car while Dr B drove us to an early-morning appointment and a little bit more while we waited there. I did a little bit at the coffee shop, a little bit while Dr B bought motorbike things from the local dealership where he and YoungB are habitues, and then I had to have a little bit of a pause because I didn’t have the pattern with me and I needed to check it.

At this time of year, the mornings are cool and dewy and the evenings chilly enough for a shawl. I’m sorry to see the end of summer, but at least when the weather is like this, nobody looks at you strangely when you whip out the needles and knit for the 10 minutes it takes your homeward train to reach the city, or if you do it while you reminisce over coffee and cake before heading back to the busyness of the day.

I haven’t suddenly stopped crocheting. In fact, I have a plain crochet project at which I intend to keep plugging away while watching TV. It uses a thick, light-coloured yarn and a large hook, so is easier on my eyes. However, there’s that series of KALs/CALs I mentioned and this month it’s beanies and, well, there’s a workmate who’s about to turn 50 and who likes to walk in the mornings – those increasingly chilly mornings – so I thought a handmade beanie would be just the shot. And there’s nothing like a deadline to maintain the momentum with ticking off rows, as it were.

Anyone who knows me would agree that my doing a tension square is a little unusual. It’s true that, if I am knitting a familiar pattern using yarn I know well, then I might give it a miss. In this instance, although I am using a familiar pattern, I’m working with a new-to-me yarn; hence the tension square. Also, I was interested to see how the colours looked once knitted.

Satisfied on both counts, I unpicked the tension square and cast on the first row of the  lady’s size for Pattern 23 – Knitted Family Cap – from my old Patons Winter Warmers, Book 483. And I am more than a little bit pleased to have now reached the body of the beanie.

Very pleased indeed with this progress 😀