I have been taking it a little easy with my knitting the last few days. My wrists have been bothering me - sometimes quite a lot and I don’t want to aggravate them to the point where I can’t knit. Actually, I suspect game playing to be the culprit here - and lousy posture while I’m doing it so I’m trying to remedy that.
I had started a little sock the other night but hadn’t gotten past the 5th round before my wrists started howling, so I abandoned that in favor of something else. For all my tendency to knit relatively loosely, I tend to tighten up when I’m working on socks and right now, that’s not a good idea :)
So I started a simple scarf with worsted weight yarn on size 8 US (5.0 mm) needles.
Does this look like the banner at the Thanksgiving game or what? Heh… This is the Paton’s wool that I dyed a few weeks ago when I was dithering about the border for the entrelac shawl.
There’s no real pattern here, just 12 rows of garter stitch interspersed with seed stitch, colors changed more or less randomly with each section. I stop every few sections and weave in the ends because I couldn’t face having to do them all together when the scarf is completed.
On the lace front, I’ve been looking for a simple pattern to experiment practice on. This one, the Wildflower Shawl looks like a real possibility, though I think I’d mirror the flower lace on one side of the shawl rather than have all the flowers facing in the same direction. I’d have to do some more dyeing, but I have the yarn for this and it would be nice, loose knitting that wouldn’t aggravate my wrists.
I also confess to being rather taken with the Stor Rund Dug piece, though I’m not sure it isn’t a little ambitious just at the moment :) It sure is beautiful and even if I decide to hold off on tackling it, it would go on the list for serious future consideration.
I’ve been reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s book The Namesake and enjoying it quite a lot.
Lahiri’s writing style is so clear, it rings like a bell. I am only a little over halfway through with this, but I’m enjoying it very much and recommend it. I also recommend her collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies - some of the best short fiction I have ever read.
I, like many others, am practically frothing at the mouth to get my grubby little hands on the last Harry Potter book :) I will also see the new film, though after the last one, I have few expectations of it. I went out this week to have a look at Charmed Knits which I thought was kind of a cute idea. I changed my mind after I’d had the chance to look through it. Without being snotty - it’s just not for me and I’m glad I didn’t order it sight unseen as I had been thinking about doing.
While in the book store, I also finally (after seeing it so glowingly recommended in so many places) got to look through Charlene Schurch’s Sensational Knitted Socks. I’m surprised Borders didn’t make me purchase the copy I was looking at because of the drool on the pages. This is definitely something I’m going to want and I didn’t dare look at the second book (More Sensational Knitted Socks) for fear of complete overload :)
Stay cool, friends (or warm for my friends down under) and have a lovely weekend!
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oh, i am ever so smitten by the wild flowers shawl- sooo pretty-
isn’t it nice to be able to pick and choose what you want to make? i say this because i am right in the middle of ‘must have right NOW’ items for baby showers, so those have lost all appeal and i am dragging, drooping, and whining- usually i love to see little baby items coming together, but tell me i have to finish something on a deadline (umm, does this sound familiar?) and i immediately lose interest and feel bored- humans are perverse critters!
hot and sticky here- remind me why we use wool at all- must go fight the good fight against mold and mildew-
stay happy-
Be careful with your wrists,,, they started bothering me when I started knitting socks. (I use a 12” circular needle). Now also my right shoulder is bad, and that means almost no knitting at all… I hope you get better soon. Try Handeaze craft gloves. They helped me a lot.
I took a look at Charmed Knits and decided it wasn’t for me either. I just don’t think I’ll ever need a wand cozy. ;-)
Barb - Since I don’t have a lot of other people to knit for, generally I’m just doing something for my own amusement or education :) Just as well, deadlines make me shudder anyway :)
Laura - Since you’re the second person to recommend those glove-type thingies to me, I think I should probably go check them out. I do too many things with my hands to endanger them!
Thanks for mentioning them :)
Opal - To be brutally honest with you, I thought a “wand cozy” was less than desireable too :) And many of the rest of the items consisted of ordinary things done in certain color schemes - which I don’t need a book to explain to me.
To be fair, the book is cute and is an interesting sociological marker of the current popularity of both Harry Potter and knitting but otherwise? Meh…
Well, crap. I DID order it sight unseen. Sigh. Although my wand IS a little chilly here with our new air-conditioning… ;)
Bron - Call it unreasonable expectations, something I am often guilty of.
Besides, we can’t be having cold wands, can we? Heh…
I love both the lace patterns! I’ve bookmarked them for myself.
I, too, second the gloves. They’re a big help, but the best thing is to take a break on the knitting that aggravates. As well, if you can, try a different method of knitting. For instance, I knit in the English style, throwing my yarn with my right hand. When my wrist starts to ache, I try to switch to continental style because it uses a different set of muscles. It’s slower, but it can help.
Another thing that can help is to get a good muscle rub cream and massage your wrists (or have someone massage your wrists and arms for you). It feels good and it does help.
Oh… I like the scarf, too. It looks…. “happy”!
Ev - Thanks for the massage advice - I hadn’t thought of that at all. I think I need to discuss this with Myria!
The scarf looks happy? I guess it does, with all the bright colors. I’d have said more hysterical :)
Ilike the ide of interspersing seed stitch in the garter stitch scarf. Adds some interest to an otherwise “ordinary” scarf even without the color changes.
Charlotte - I like that too and have done that on other scarves. adore the look of seed and moss stitch but I sometimes find it tedious to work. Still, when I’m looking for something that looks nice and lies flat it’s what I almost always go for :)
