OK, people, you have until tomorrow lunchtime (UK time) to enter the luxuriously colourful Noro giveaway. Just thought I’d mention that, in case you haven’t cast your (knitted) hat into the ring, yet. The competition is open worldwide.
Anyway, settle y’self in a chair (yes, even the chair if you so wish) with your crochet/knitting, and let’s talk yarn. May I see what you’re making, please? And of course you can join us in the pub for out knitting group if you so wish. Our membership spans quite a range of ages:-
It’s been hot* around here for the past few weeks. The heat is relevant to this blog post in two ways.
First, the knitting. Being prone to feeling the cold (yes, in July), I’ve never understood folks’ insistence that certain types of project are not suitable for summer knitting/hooking. So right now, I’m knitting BIG WOOLLY CARDIGANS, because I’m fed up with shivering. Here’s my progress on ‘Trip To Town‘ in Drops’ Nepal (65% wool, plus 35% alpaca – just to taunt the Stoic Spouse who was once chased by a VERY aggrieved alpaca).
So far, so good. You may say, ‘It’s too hot to knit wool!’ to which I say, ‘Pass me my scarf, will you? I detect a chill in the air.’ (My ability to detect a chill is on a par with a sniffer dog’s ability to find cocaine.)
The other night, I took this cardigan-in-progress to the village pub. Now, I’m generally a staunch defender of drunken knitting. If you can still knit in a straight line (which of course you can, because… needles), then you’ll be fine. But the cardigan was at the sewing-up stage, which is maybe not quite so wine-friendly. By some miracle of luck that I’ll no doubt pay for later by witnessing pianos falling from the sky onto the heads of my ten favourite people, I managed to drunkenly sew the first sleeve in… the right way round, and into the correct hole. Wa-hey! And ditto the second sleeve. Win!
But I also needed to sew up the shoulder seams, ideally using a nice, tidy, near-invisible mattress stitch. Sober Me is medium-competent in mattress stitch, although I wouldn’t quite rate it amongst my 500 favourite ways of spending time. Sober Me can stitch neatly and discreetly, having no wish to draw attention to the fact that I didn’t magically create this garment in one piece out of unicorn hair by the gleaming light of the full moon. Drunken Me has other ideas. Drunken Me just wants to ensure that come the apocalypse, NOTHING IS GOING TO DESTROY THIS SEAM! NOTHING, I TELL YE! So… long, long, after the rest of the cardigan has succumbed to age/moths/nuclear-holocaust, these shoulder seams will remain standing.
Let’s just call it a design feature and move on, shall we?
The other thing that’s been happening in this weather-that-some-folk-would-describe-as-hot is that I’ve been running. A lot. It would seem that after half a lifetime of dedicated sport-avoidance, followed by several years of grumpily plodding along in running shoes, plus a half-marathon last year, I’ve finally achieved a running addiction.
I love the feeling of ‘See that hill over there? I think I’ll run to that, next.’ Last night, I lolloped across the Oxfordshire countryside, a pouch of water attached to my left wrist and a stash of jelly babies at my waist. I ran up to the top of the long and ancient Ridgeway, and stared out across the landscape. Well… that was my excuse for stopping, anyway.
I ran 9.3 hilly miles (that’s 15 equally hilly kilometres). Absolutely disastrously for this blog, nothing went wrong. I was gutted! How on earth am I supposed to make a decent anecdote out of ‘I had a good run’? (I didn’t even get lost, or fall out of a tree into a puddle.)
Fret-ye-not, for there’ll be opportunities a’plenty to laugh at my expense over the next few months, because I’m tantalisingly close to the top of the waiting list for a place in our local marathon. Eek! I have never run 26 miles before in my life. Just driving that distance leaves me a little tired. So it’s reasonably safe to assume that my path from here to the finish line in a few months’ time will not be entirely smooth.
But hey, I don’t need my legs for knitting, so it’s worth the risk. 🙂
∗Unless you’re reading from Arizona or Australia or Algeria, in which case you’d regard our peak temperatures as ‘pleasantly warm’.
You’re get addicted. I’ve to warn you. If you do a marathon once, even a half one your addicted to it. Then it gets in the way of the knitting. No, joking, I loved to do them. No special time, just running and emptying my head. And I still knit and crochet so you survive. Of to training!
Can I put my hat in the ring for some Noro yarn please. Thank you. X
I live in New Orleans. We tend to laugh in a slightly maniacal way when people from other places throw around words like hot and humid. We pretty much live in a greenhouse for much of the year but Mardi Gras more than makes up for summer and I hate being cold. I do have to bring a sweater everywhere I go because I will start to shiver if the a/c in a shop or restaurant is below 80 or so.
I’m reading your blog with a hot cup of tea gazing out the window but it is soooo cold and foggy I can’t see the edge of the verandah. ??. Enjoy the warm weather and sprinting over the hills. Kindest regards Lenore
I can’t imagine running a marathon. Mind you, a couple of months ago I couldn’t imagine running 5k and yet I’ve now completed six parkruns. Still, I think 5k is enough for me.
I do love looking at maps and spotting amusing place names. West Ginge and East Ginge tickled me, and then I spotted Ginge Ho, which sounds like something from Thundercats!
Yes, please, I would love to win some yarn!
I have a sweater on my needles… and your cowl on another set, but I haven’t worked on either one in over a month. I live in Charleston, SC, not quite as hot and humid as Debbie in New Orleans, La… but very close to it.
I am doing the year of techniques Antirrhinum Socks right now and am glad that is this month’s technique because at no point do you have a lap full of wool doing these. I cannot fathom doing a sweater right now even with the a/c!
Hat in the yarn for the noro…done. Showing my knitting(it’s all over my blog, and I’m making progress on the Terpander socks this week, check in Thursday night/Friday morning to see;-)…and I just said something to the effect of “I should train for a marathon…okay a half marathon.” Twenty-six miles has me worn out just thinking of it…
The Ridgeway is not a hill! Time to try fell running! I have many a design feature in my knitting too, they make each piece so unique!
I also have your knack for detecting a chill in the air. Combine that with the Scottish ‘summer’, in which I could see my breath this morning, and you can see why I never stop crochet/knitting. There’s no such thing as too warm!
I’m in love with your friend’s baby, just seeing her wee hands on the knitting. That is precious. Congrats on all your accomplishments, both with running and knitting and also nearing the top of your local marathon list. I hope you’ll make it onto the list. I’ve had several friends over the years train for and run a marathon. Some have continued to run them as they too, find running addictive, and others are just happy to have accomplished such a milestone. That you’re enjoying yourself is what really counts. I hope we get to see you model your sweater one day.
I have hooked 4 hot water bottle covers in the last few weeks. One for a birthday gift for a fellow classmate, two for my new hot water bottles and one for my son who’s hot water bottle was just about to die a tragic death and needed to be replaced (so I put a new bottle in the cover to save him the trip to town…) I have put up my hook for the time being while I learn to wrangle my spinning wheel. I SHALL go to the homespun yarn ball I tells ye! Much like your (crazy) running fetish, I have a (nice, sane) fetish for spinning my own yarn. I had another go yesterday and managed to spin quite a bit of reasonably attractive yarn before something overcame me and I went mad and spun up a mass of lumps and tight twists. I sanely decided to call it quits for the day and will be spending today knuckling down and spinning as tomorrow I am off to spinning class so obv. I need to know how to do it prior to turning up. Good luck with all of that (MAD) running around the countryside Ms T. I will be stoically supporting you from the wings (with a nice mug of tea in my comfy chair completely sans running gear).
If all this running around keeps you healthy and gives you lots of extra years to knit and crochet and generally just love life, then I’m all for it! I don’t do it, but I’m all for it. If I did do I’d need a lot less yarn to make myself a sweater. But I don’t do it. Still, I’m all for it, for you.
I’m in Arizona, where the monsoon has cooled things down to highs around 108F. Oh the decadence! Please ready your spare room, I will be right over for your version of hot weather!
I wish I could join you in your knitting group even though I only really crochet… however oxfordshire is a little far for a northerner like me to pop to for a cuppa 🙁 I have to admit that I have been much too hot to participate in wooly activities of late and my current WIP scarf has sat in my project basket for weeks untouched….