Knitting and Fable

No, there isn't a fable in today's post. One about the follies of a young girl and a fish. No. If I were exceptionally clever and whatnot, perhaps I would have prepared such a thing, but it really only just occured to me. I'd rather just get a new post up, if that's okay with you, dear reader.

Maybe I'll try to get the eldest child, pictured here with the fish hat eating her head, to write a story about The Girl and the Fish. If it works, I'll post the story.

As you can see, hat #1 is finished! I think it is just almost too small for her head, but she is happy with it. The pattern is apparently written for children, so if you want to make it for an adult (ahem), add extra stitches. This is knit up with various shades of Cascade 220 in random order, but with an intent to focus on the red. Her favorite color. She took it to school last week (finished Thursday night) to show her classmates. It was a hit with everyone except the teacher. She is strangely silent whenever my daughter has brought something to share with the class. I don't know if she is always neutral with all the kids or what, but I think it really bugs my daughter to get zero reaction from the teacher. I mean, DD knows the hat is silly, that is sort of the point of having and wearing the thing. It isn't like I forced it on her. OTOH, the girls thought it was cute (I think), and the boys told her it looked like a fish sucking her brains out. For some reason, that made her happy.



The next hat has been cast on, with pink as the focus, for DD2. I haven't really gotten that far, but it is on the needles, so will get attention in the early evenings, I imagine. I'd like to get it finished before it stops being cold. Not a huge issue up here in the Pacific Northwest, I guess, but it is February and Spring is just around the corner. Not that you'll be able to tell by the "change" in our weather. lol The hat is a super fast knit if you work on it regularly and don't ignore it for days on end. The color changes are a bit fiddly, for me, but it is good to try new things, no? The 2nd hat will be pinks, yellow and purple. I think. DD2 picked out the colors.



What else? Well, I've been working on a heel flap for the Princess Toadstool socks for the Bleeping Sock Games KAL. I haven't done well with this KAL. I've been far busier than I expected, and to be totally honest, the patterns haven't been as inspiring as they were for the Scarefest Sock KAL. Guess my heart belongs to horror... eeeewwwww! lol I hesitate to say the patterns haven't been good, they just aren't rocking my world. I think the concept was great, but perhaps we needed more time for some solid patterns to come forth. I will say that the pattern for the Viva Pinata socks is pretty spot on. (That's a Ravelry link there, I couldn't find one off-Rav.) Lots of color work, though, and I don't have any colors in my stash that would do them justice (think BRIGHT pinata).

I'm thinking about a vampire sock yarn club thing starting up in May, though. Sign-ups are next month and all I really need to decide is how many shipments I want to sign up for. sigh Patterns will be included, so, more socks in my future if I will do them. Or, shawls, I guess. The fingering weight yarn would certainly be nice in a shawl. This yarn club is hosted by Fresh from the Cauldron, who has some really lovely colorways. And a delightfully gruesome imagination at times. There's a forum with this name (Fresh... Cauldron) on Ravelry if your interested, signups start March 1.

I've also been working a good bit on the Pi shawl. You remember that one, right? Frogged at every turn, ripping back dozens of rows due to knitter error, etc. sigh Man, this has been a crazy knit. I might have been better off to have ditched it in the laceweight and switched to a heavier yarn, but I shall persevere! I have almost, almost caugth up to where I was when I last ripped back about 20 rows. It is going very smoothly, funny how that works when you are actually following the directions correctly, and it has been (dare I say it?) a soothing knit of late. Still, miles to go before it is done, but I am once again making progress of a few rows a day. Slow and steady, and all that.

The sweater is going well and is still a swim class knit (swim for the girls, I'm there over an hour watching them). I haven't picked it up in a week, but we didn't swim last week. The pool was closed Tuesday, which is good because I was sick all week.

The girls gave me some crud, a sinusy sort of thing, not the stomach bug that's been going around. Fine with me, that's the way I'd prefer it if I got to choose. I was chilled as if feverish, but I never found myself actually having a fever. Perhaps my thermometer is flawed. Anyway, I was not only ill, but got rather down in the dumps as well. So, I sat around and played Fable II (Xbox 360) all week once they were all out of the house.

Himself brought it home a couple of weeks ago, and commenced to play. I turned my eye the other way. He allowed the kids to start a game (monitored by us, and they do have a limit on how far they can go in the game. It is rated M, but the early bits aren't bad & the kids are happy with what they are allowed to do.) I continued to remail aloof. I got sick, all bets were off and I vented my misery all week by killing trools, balverines, Hobbes, and bandits, etc. I had to force myself to do other things too. If I put in laundry, I could play for a while. I did a lot of laundry. When I finished the main quest, I was a bit surprised to find that even in games I can't seem to keep color in my hair. heh. By the end of the main quest, I had bulked up, gone completely white-haired, had glowing lines all over (magic use) and had a halo, for goodness sakes!, because I'm so darned pure of heart.

If only real life were so easy. Now I can continue to play and go on other quests, own business (I already own 5 or 6), etc. Or not. We'll see how it goes. It was nice to have the game around to keep me busy. Knitting was not appealing most of the week, in part because of the game, and I just couldn't seem to settle. Still, last week was a good reminder of why I should avoid RPG type video games. I was pretty obsessed, played every chance I got and nearly dreamed the game.

Mini review of game: It rocks! There are definitely reasons younger folks shouldn't play, the violence isn't bad, though you do kill lots of people/things, no real blood, etc., but you can have sex, marry, have kids, etc. I haven't, but that does ramp up the adult theme a bit. My 8 yo doesn't need to find condoms as treasure (I only found 1 or 2) or deal with the prostitutes offering to "entertain" them. That comes a good bit later in the game, though, so that's why they can only play so far, then they have to stop. It would have been nice to have some sort of option for more conversational speech with other characters at times, but it was still a fascinating and rather rich universe.

I kicked some serious butt, though. grin

I'm feeling much more myself today, still a bit stuffy, but not bad at all. Now it is back to the regular routine. I hope. Now that the major baddies are gone, the lure of the game is somewhat lessened. I really do have stuff to do now.