A Little Yarn On The Side

Ahem.  The year is half over and my list of "twelve 12s" is not exactly at the half-finished point, but I have finally completed one: There are now fourteen completed pen sleeves.  I made them from some leftover micro suede, which works really well for these as it doesn't ravel.  Felt works well too, but it doesn't look quite as nice.  I still think I can get all 12 done--plus the bonus one--by December 31, but then again, I am known to be quite the delusional nutcase optimist.  Hey, it's the first one that's the hardest, right?

Or maybe just sort-of real as I didn't actually finish anything.  But I did get to craft without having to do ANYTHING else, so that still kind of counts.  The baby sweater now has a back and two fronts: and I am still being monogamous!!!!!  In all honesty, since I've been doing political consulting, I'm just thankful to have time to do ANY knitting.  But I have finished with what I was doing for the campaign, so I'm getting my first truly free weekend in months and am looking forward to life getting back to normal around here.  Or normal for ME, at any rate.  I'm still trying to figure out how to arrange the sewing room, so I still haven't done much sewing, but today I was determined to find a project.  I sorted through project bags, looked through patterns, and finally selected one.  And this: is as far as I got.  I know this sounds odd coming from the woman who has foolishly plunged into every insane crafting challenge she can dr...

Random update time: *  Because of the bullies at the U.S. Olympic Committee, the Ravelympics have been changed to the Ravellenics.  I think I like the new name.  The behavior of USOC has tainted the Olympics forever for me, so I'm pleased that the games will now have nothing to do with them at all.  There are discussions about changing the dates in the future or having the yearly, so maybe it's a good move after all.  I will not be bothering to update any of the verbiage on the blog.  Even if USOC is so petty as to start stalking blogs, the games WERE called the Ravelympics until USOC decided they owned even partial BITS of the word "Olympics," so I'll just add the following disclaimer: Any mention of the word "Ravelympics" occurred before the jerks at the USOC decided to persecute anyone even using a fraction of the word "Olympics," so even in your wildest pettiness, I used the term before you decided to insult 2 million knitters. That s...

Bob:  We're here at the formerly-known-as-Ravelympics training camp, where the knitting world was stunned yesterday by an official Cease and Desist letter from the United States Olympic Committee, which asserted the term "Ravelympics" and knitting events such as scarf hockey "denigrates" the game's athletes.  Knitters worldwide surprisingly responded with something strongly resembling outrage. Ron:  They did indeed, Bob.  Rumor has it that the email inbox of the U.S. Olympic Committee was filled by evening.  I believe officials were slightly shocked by the fury of 2-million crafters wielding sharp, pointy objects whose passion had just been insulted.  I'm sure they believed that the grandmotherly-types who were clearly exploiting the Olympic fervor for their own nefarious means (fun) would assume "denigrate" was meant in its very nicest sense.  Bob:  In further developments today, the U.S. Olympic Committee has issued a statement :  ...

So, remember all the fun we knitters have with Ravelympics ?  Ravelry--a free social networking site for knitters--has been contacted by the Office of General Counsel for the United States Olympic committee.  Details on Ravelry here .  Among other pretty obnoxious things, the letter says: "We believe using the name 'Ravelympics' for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games.  In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work." Well I, for one, think that such a sentence is CLEARLY disrespectful to anyone who has a hobby that he or she has tried to master.  Obviously, we do denigrate the true nature of the games as this person sees them--ours have been about fun and teamwork, and NOT about raking in the greatest number of sponsorships. Count this as one VERY angry knitter wh...

Bob:  We're here at Ravelympics Training camp with some very surprising developments. Ron:  Right you are, Bob.  In a sudden burst of activity, Ms. Sutton blocked FIVE scarves yesterday, without incident.....   Bob:  It looks like there might have been a little kitty subterfuge involved, but Ms. Sutton has completed her stretching exercises, and possibly even more surprisingly,  is on day 3 of what could become her endurance test. Ron:  Now this is earlier than you expected for the endurance test, isn't it Bob? Bob:  It is indeed, Ron.  We had expected to see a little more activity with the mohair sweater but some ongoing yarn thinning problems have landed it in the Project Protection Program, and we believe the sweater is currently in hiding somewhere in Montana and answering to the name "Beauford." Ron:  Certainly an unexpected turn of events, but with the new baby sweater already being on the third day, it's off to...

Bob and Ron have the weekend off, so I thought I'd do a quick update without them. I have had a weekend all by myself.  This was not actually the intention, as we had agreed to go on a 3-day camping trip with friends, but my back could neither handle the car ride there nor (most likely) any part of actually being there, so Andy went with our friends and I have had a resting/crafting weekend.  The fact that MY weekend involved indoor plumbing was an added bonus. I have 2 more mitten ornaments: a pair of fleece pants finished (which are in the washing machine which makes them difficult to photograph, but you can take my word for this one),the start of a Mr. Flurry snowman: a potential project for my "high jump" item:   which is a brioche stitch ha t.....that currently makes me want to drink heavily, but I'm hoping will improve once I get past the beginning whole-bunch-of-needles-and-few-stitches nightmare.  This is why I generally prefer hats that start wit...