as promised, more pictures
Jul. 15th, 2007 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mouse_rantsso this is what the shawl looks like now:
(see - i use my exercise ball!)
ick - every time i look at the holes in the center, they look uglier. i keep telling myself a) they will even out when i block it and b) you fold the shawl in half to wear it, and those can go on the underside. lots of people on the knitting site keep talking about how many rows they've frogged, and how many times they've restarted it - guess i'm not a "real" knitter, because i'm damned if i'm going to rip all this out - i made two starts, and that's enough. besides, i tell myself this way, if anyone takes my shawl, i will be able to identify it, because of the ugly center.
i blame poor fred (as many of you reading this may now think of him) for the bad start, as he was determined to give me his attentions while i did it. in my defense, i now present (for those of you with the interest and the bandwidth)
angelina is not terribly interested in knitting - which is good, because she is of the let's-see-how-fast-i-can-destroy-this school. ("this"==needles, yarn, project, whatever.)
and after all that, i didn't get too much knitting done today - ended up reorganizing the patio instead (necessitating much pruning and thinning). maybe i'll get home early enough some days this week to knit out there....
(see - i use my exercise ball!)
ick - every time i look at the holes in the center, they look uglier. i keep telling myself a) they will even out when i block it and b) you fold the shawl in half to wear it, and those can go on the underside. lots of people on the knitting site keep talking about how many rows they've frogged, and how many times they've restarted it - guess i'm not a "real" knitter, because i'm damned if i'm going to rip all this out - i made two starts, and that's enough. besides, i tell myself this way, if anyone takes my shawl, i will be able to identify it, because of the ugly center.
i blame poor fred (as many of you reading this may now think of him) for the bad start, as he was determined to give me his attentions while i did it. in my defense, i now present (for those of you with the interest and the bandwidth)
i imagine when i complain about fred's attentions to my knitting, people think it's something like this:
the classic cat "ooooo - string! gititgititgitit!". but this is actually unusual for fred. he's usually oblivious to the yarn. like so:
you begin, perhaps, to see the difficulty. really, he appears to be completely unaware of the yarn - whether he is standing on it, lying on it, or has it wrapped around his tail. oh yeah - The Tail:
i spend a depressing amount of time knitting to this view. (actually, not exactly this view - i was holding the camera up over my head. my usual view is much closer.) you miss the full effect - you are not getting The Tail lashing across your face with metronomic regularity. now you know why tail and yarn get entangled.
this also gives you an idea of the other problem with fred - he doesn't actually _sit_ in my lap. standing, pacing, balancing precariously on my kneecap - these, he's into. sitting (or better yet, lying) quietly - not so much.
so in all honestly, i'm not always dealing with The Tail. i regularly deal with The Head-butt:
often accompanied by a love-nip (that's my hand at the bottom there). of course, the head-butt has an ulterior purpose - getting me to stop and pet him. should i resist the butt, and the rub, and the paw-in-the-face, he moves up to the heavy guns - the forehead-pressed-against-my-hand-in-supplication. it's really difficult to knit with a cat's head pressed against your hand - even if you don't have qualms about putting his eye out with the needle, it really impedes your action. this, combined with the head-butt (effective at dislodging precariously-held stitches) is what i was dealing with when i started the shawl. twice.
eventually, of course, i get annoyed enough to oust him from my lap. and then he brings the deadliest maneuver to bear: The Look:
the ones that fills me with enough guilt that i immediately insist that he get back on my lap, because i really _do_ love him. (and i really do).
and sometimes it's not that bad.
(sorry he's so fuzzy, the camera kept wanting to overexpose him).
the classic cat "ooooo - string! gititgititgitit!". but this is actually unusual for fred. he's usually oblivious to the yarn. like so:
you begin, perhaps, to see the difficulty. really, he appears to be completely unaware of the yarn - whether he is standing on it, lying on it, or has it wrapped around his tail. oh yeah - The Tail:
i spend a depressing amount of time knitting to this view. (actually, not exactly this view - i was holding the camera up over my head. my usual view is much closer.) you miss the full effect - you are not getting The Tail lashing across your face with metronomic regularity. now you know why tail and yarn get entangled.
this also gives you an idea of the other problem with fred - he doesn't actually _sit_ in my lap. standing, pacing, balancing precariously on my kneecap - these, he's into. sitting (or better yet, lying) quietly - not so much.
so in all honestly, i'm not always dealing with The Tail. i regularly deal with The Head-butt:
often accompanied by a love-nip (that's my hand at the bottom there). of course, the head-butt has an ulterior purpose - getting me to stop and pet him. should i resist the butt, and the rub, and the paw-in-the-face, he moves up to the heavy guns - the forehead-pressed-against-my-hand-in-supplication. it's really difficult to knit with a cat's head pressed against your hand - even if you don't have qualms about putting his eye out with the needle, it really impedes your action. this, combined with the head-butt (effective at dislodging precariously-held stitches) is what i was dealing with when i started the shawl. twice.
eventually, of course, i get annoyed enough to oust him from my lap. and then he brings the deadliest maneuver to bear: The Look:
the ones that fills me with enough guilt that i immediately insist that he get back on my lap, because i really _do_ love him. (and i really do).
and sometimes it's not that bad.
(sorry he's so fuzzy, the camera kept wanting to overexpose him).
angelina is not terribly interested in knitting - which is good, because she is of the let's-see-how-fast-i-can-destroy-this school. ("this"==needles, yarn, project, whatever.)
and after all that, i didn't get too much knitting done today - ended up reorganizing the patio instead (necessitating much pruning and thinning). maybe i'll get home early enough some days this week to knit out there....
