Sitting on my hands

I'm avoiding emailing, calling or otherwise contacting my family right now. I think someone has been spectacularly selfish, and I'm afraid I'll just explode if I talk to anyone about it.

And the stress is playing havoc with my knitting tension...

A pause to prepare

This week has been strange. I'm waiting for the Ravelympics to start, and my knitting fingers are going nuts... I've found so many lovely patterns that I want to cast on.

But I can't. Because I know anything I cast on now will either be abandoned for the duration of the Ravelympics and possibly completely forgotten (my short term memory is bad like that), or will take over so completely that the projects I've been studiously avoiding casting on for, saving them for the Ravelympics, will never get started.

So I've been swatching, endlessly swatching. The past two evenings it has been Wendy Happy. On DPNs (that's a whole other blog post). Tomorrow will probably be the decider for what pattern I do - I'm thinking Jaywalkers right now.

Then it will be the Manos for the Lava Flow Cowl. And possibly a little bit of pre-swatching for the Fiddlehead mittens (if my paypal ever gets sorted out).

I'm not sure I've ever done so much swatching. I can barely see the couch for all the yarn and needles that have been dug out this week for various swatching attempts.

Roll on Friday when I can finally get my teeth into a real project!

I need a swift...

... or a lot more patience.

Little Whirlwind was being put to bed, so I had a child-free and husband-free half hour. And decided it was time to get ready to knit the lovely Lava Flow (it's meant to be a Ravelympics project, but I'm not sure I'll hold out that long). I'd decided on a lovely skein of Manos silk blend which has been languishing in my stash for about two years now.

All of which meant I had the time and need to finally use my ball winder.

It was working so well for a while. And then, suddenly, it all just started to go wrong.

And I was left with this:

and this:

2 hours later, having cut the yarn twice (thank goodness for spit splicing), I finally got to this:

I would have been quicker winding it into a ball by hand. Oh well.

I don't do New Year's Resolutions

The 1st of January always seems to early to begin New Year's Resolutions. I'm usually still in the grip of Christmas, not yet back at work after the festivities, and feeling like lounging about on the couch for a while. Certainly not prime resolution time.

February, now, February is a totally different matter. The depression of January is over, the lull that inevitably follows Christmas. And all the tediously earnest resolutions that enter my head in January have begun to quietly pick up their coats and go. So I'm left with the good ones - the ones I really want to do, the ones that I have more chance of sticking with.

And so, more for my own accountability, here they are, my February Resolutions:

- Blogging. I want to do more. I have ideas, I have things to write. I just need to get over the feeling that I'm talking to a vacuum... or embrace it. Will I say one post a fortnight, just to get started?

- Knitting:

• Ravelymics. Fiddlehead mittens. I shall say little more, except that I will be very very pleased with myself if I complete them in the allotted time.
• A garment, for me. Possibly finish Rogue, or move on to something else.

- Other stuff

• Exercise. One class a week and possibly one visit to the pool. And walking Little Whirlwind to creche.
• Writing. Start again. The ideas have started poking at my brain and my fingers are getting itchy to start again. So I shall. I think.
• French. The less said about my current ability the better. When your two and a half year old corrects your pronunciation, you know something is up...

So that's it. Not New Year's Resolutions, but some nice February goals...