2008 - A Knitting Review

Hmmm. I like blue, don't I?

In 2008...

• I finished my first sweater - the Central Park Hoody.
• I knitted 24 hats, and gave 23 of them away.
• I caught the bug for viral knitting, and completed a Clapotis, a pair of Saartje's booties and the Drops Swing Jacket.
• I thrummed for the first time and made mittens.
• I cabled a pair of wrist warmers.
• I knitted a pair of earrings with wire and beads, on the day the pattern was published (3rd project on Ravelry, and one was the designer's!)
• I finished two scarves - one skinny, which took months; one chunky, which was started and finished on Christmas day.
• I knitted a corset top out of soy silk - favourite FO ever.
• I knitted a shawl, from one skein of LE Lion & Lamb.
• I STARTED a bag, my first attempt at lace with a mohair cardi, a digestive system for the science department and a scarf for Mr Z - which all lie languishing in the UFO pile.

I am quite disappointed I didn't even manage to knit one bag, in spite of joining the Knittabaggamonth group, but I'm pleased I managed three full sized garments. I've put a moratorium on knitting garments for the moment, since I am doing quite well with the old weight loss thing and I don't want to end up wasting yarn on something I won't be able to wear for longer than a few months.

That said, I cast on for a fishtail lace boob tube yesterday (no pattern link - it appears I was just in time because the link is dead!) I am knitting it from allhemp6, with a halter instead of a straight edge, and I hope to have it finished by my holiday in a month...we'll see. The hemp's quite hard on the hands and it's looking a bit crazy right now, but hopefully after 3 repeats of the lace pattern it will start to take shape; and a good blocking should get it looking shipshape. I am knitting to a different gauge and at 2 inches negative ease, so I am really crossing my fingers!

"What else do you do during the week?"

...panted the very sweaty man sat next to me on the mat this evening, as we caught our breath in time for the crunches in the circuits class.

He happened to be the fittest man in the room (and I use that term in its original context - definitely, only in its original context). He is the sort of athletic type who wears a sweat-wicking top and two pairs of shorts to every class. He shaves his legs. He was sweating even more than me, and I was half dead.

It was literally on the tip of my tongue to reply, "Weeeelllll, yknow, I mostly sit in my chair in front of the telly with some chocolate and a bit of knitting," but I decided I didn't know him well enough to be cracking jokes and so I made up a fitness routine on the spot. Apparently I go to the gym a couple of times a week and I desperately want to start going to circuits on Wednesday. I failed to mention that I count playing Tetris on the WiiFit board as exercise.

Of course, it's January and time for gym-going again. I was feeling a bit sorry for January yesterday. January never gets appreciated for being January. January is all about detox, dieting, devilishly difficult exercise routines, and deprivation - or it's about scoffing at all the people doing those things and declaring that you're much too cool for all that bollocks and will just continue on as before. Most of all, January is for getting through as quickly as possible so that spring will arrive. Sometimes February brings those magic sunny blue-skied days when spring feels just an unfurling leaf away, and the mornings are lighter by then and the evenings too.

January is all about the dark and the desperate and the dirt. Everywhere looks dirty. Grass starts to look yellow. Cars are so filthy from all the grit on the roads that people (like me) who refuse to use automatic car washes are driven to wiping their numberplates with a damp cloth, just to stay road legal; and the sides of the roads take on a foul, black hue from all the spray. And everyone's desperate, because December payday was early and now it seems like forever until payday again and all those copper jars are being raided for money for bread and milk and gin. Maybe not gin actually, because it's detox month.

Nobody loves January. Nobody appreciates nights like yesterday when the fence almost blew away and I was SO HAPPY to be curled up in bed with a knitting mag. Nobody marvels at the days of freezing fog, like last Friday, when the frost gets even thicker as the day progresses so that everything is coated in thick white icing sugar and looking beautiful, but it's not foolhardy to walk around because the ground frost isn't, by some miracle, slippery.

I'm going to make an effort to love January for January's sake and not wish it away into February - even though I am going to the Red Sea in February and I am quite beside myself with excitement already (I'll finally get to use that disposable underwater camera I bought in 1999).

Big up January! Woop woop!

Things I love about January so far -

1. I have managed to stay on top of all my planning to such an extent that I had the WHOLE WEEKEND OFF and yesterday I didn't even get dressed (although the internet was down for most of it, but I'm not blaming January for that).
2. I have lost almost all of the Christmas weight already.
3. I have been dry skiing and three of the boys I took, who came last year, were amazingly good, and I discovered they've been touring England's snow domes, so great is their love for skiing thanks to the school ski trip, and I DID THAT! Me. That trip wouldn't run if it wasn't for me.
4. I have been very fastidious about laying out clothes, jewellery and make up every evening and have consequently been very nicely turned out at work.
5. Sixth form mocks. Study leave, baby! Five lessons down this week!
6. I've had a clear out. I stashed up all my knitting yarn (all 15 miles of it...) in pretty hat boxes and recylced a ginormous bag of clothes.
7. I'm knitting an aran sweater with a faintly rude name for Jen's baby and it's going superquick.
8. We have a brand spanking new telly which is 40 inches and an LCD so I can see it properly now, even whilst knitting and only looking at it intermittently.
9. I bought a new black dress and it should arrive soon, and I got 15% off.
10. Celebrity Big Brother. Hirarious! Especially tonight where they made Coolio wear a kilt, and Vern a Beefeater outfit, and Latoya had to dress up as a Welsh maiden. Loves it.
11. I have finished writing the last set of audiobooks which had been commissioned, and a new mattress is in the near future. I was very pleased to finally get it over with, though I fear I amy sign up for another one soon, even though it will be a struggle for me to do it. Just say no, Sal, just say no.

I may be a bit overexcitable this evening. I'm blaming circuits.

I wanted to do a big post as a round up to 2008 but I thought, if I waited to have time to do it, I'd never post again. So I leave you instead with a group shot of my year 11 lovelies in their hats, on the last day of term. They were thrilled with them and wore them to assembly, which got me loads of kudos with the other staff, not to mention other pupils.


Mmmm....check out my end of term lushness. I was looking hawt that day. Mmhmm.