Jan 29
I was listening to an audiobook today that involves the theater, and was surprised to hear a character declare that “knitting on stage is bad luck”.
Having at least 50% of the qualification, and never having heard of this one — of course, I had to look into it. And yes, I found several websites that insist that knitting on-stage — or near the stage, or to the side of the stage — is definitely bad luck — even at rehearsals!
On about.com's knitting section, I found a poll for "What are Your Knitting Resolutions for 2009?"
OK, so it's a year out of date, but I figure things can't have changed all that much in a year.
Dec 17
Hey, I thought maybe it's about time I gave an update on the 2009 FO Finishing Project — where I somehow sort of decided I would finish all my UFO's before the end of the year. Progress has indeed been made, and I've got a couple more FO's to show for it!
Yesterday at the LYS, I took part in a discussion about SABLE.
What, you never heard of SABLE? You might even be a member of SABLE!
SABLE stands for "Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy". A person becomes a member of this group when she owns more yarn than she can reasonably expect to knit in her years remaining on this mortal coil.*
Dec 1
OK, OK, I admit that in the last post on this subject, I didn't spell out every little detail about exactly how I was going to finish this bad boy off… but then there would be no suspense left for the big surprise ending.
A few posts back, 
I mentioned that I seem to have developed not so much a New Year's Resolution, as an End-Of-Year Resolution: to finish up the last few remaining UFO's in my knitting pile. And so, I've been battling with this one.
Editor's Note: This is not my own FO — however, it is a pretty stunning knitting accomplishment, IMHO, and I don't think it should go unheralded.
Marlene is a very accomplished knitter. I can't exactly say she is one of my students, because I haven't taught her very much — although I guess I did get her to try socks for the first time. When a person has been knitting for 30 or more years, sometimes there just isn't all that much you can teach 'em. And boy, does Marlene knit. She gets more stuff done than I can even THINK of doing. And I don't think she has any UFO's.
Read more on The “18 years of Knitting Penance to Knitting Heaven” Project…
May 11
Oh, happy day! DH has another pair of handknit socks, and I have one less UFO. (Believe it or not, I’m down to just SIX UFO’s. My advice is to keep an eye out for plagues of locusts.)
Mar 5
This week, I finished off four — count ‘em, four — UFO’s in the stack. Not only that, I have a good shot at finishing off a fifth.
I’m as shocked as you are. Probably more so.
Jan 27
One of the cold hard truths I learned when I quit the engineering job and started setting my own schedule was this:
You can’t get anything done on the days when DH is home.
Wow! Here we are at the end of the UFOlympics, and the decathlon results are in…
… and I made it!
Well, it's nearly halfway through the timeframe I set for my personal UFOlympics. (In fact, it's only about 40% of the way through, if you don't count that "vacation" time I spent with strep.)
Jul 21
OK, so I know I said I wasn't going to work on the UFOs during my "vacation".
Well, that was before I got strep throat on the very first day of my "vacation". I mean, it's not like I had this penciled in on my calendar:
Jul 15
Wow, this UFOlympics thing is getting to be quite an eye-opener for me.
For one thing, I have started to realize just how little time I devote to knitting in the course of a standard week. I mean to the actual act of pulling one loop of yarn through another. Sure, I spend plenty of time writing about knitting, and teaching others about knitting, and working on my someday-I’ll-have-a-new-cool-website-about-knitting — but as for ACTUAL KNITTING, it seems to be an endangered species at my house.
Ummm… I have good news, and bad news.
First, the good news: UFO #0, Brioche st hat: FINISHED 07/07/08.
Final time (offical Swiss, of course): 2 days.
The crowd goes wild!
Yarn: Manos del Uruguay silk & wool.
Pattern: my own Polar Bear Pattern.
Shameless plug: this is a sample for a class I’ll teach at the Knitting Bee in Sept.
Well: I’ve been seriously winnowing out the UFO pile in preparation for the Games of Summer. I’ve had to revise my rule a bit, and I think I’ve got a goal now.
Jun 26
OK, I got game. (Whatever that means.)
I also still got plenty of UFO’s.
So, here goes: I’m officially entering the 2008 Summer UFOlympic Games.
Welllll, kind of officially. There’s some wiggle room there, I think.
The other day I realized I am into my 5th year of what I still think of as my "new career": teaching knitting, writing patterns, and perhaps most importantly, not being a corporate slave.
Mar 4
Hey, you can’t say I don’t have persistence.
This little gem has literally taken me something like 5 years to finish.
To be fair, there was more than the usual amount of knitting involved. I did knit the entire thing once, and then reknit the top half; but then I got to cheating and for the third attempt I knit the main parts on a machine.
Feb 19
Admittedly, I haven’t written much in the past week (heck, I haven’t written anything). But, I have an excellent excuse reason. Actually, several reasons…
#1 reason is, I have a bad Continental knitting habit of using my right index finger to help out on each and every stitch. I don’t actually need to use it — I can knit and purl without moving it at all, if I think about it. As I say, it’s a bad habit, which means I do it more-or-less unconsciously. I even demonstrate it to new Continental knitters in my classes as a great example of what not to do.
Dec 21
Both my sister and a college friend recently sent me copies of this Wall Street Journal article about knitting.
More specifically, it’s about "Sock Wars", where the idea is that everyone playing the game is an "assassin" and has an assigned "target". You are supposed to "assassinate" that person by knitting them a pair of socks, and then you send them to your target before your assassin sends a pair of finished socks to you.
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