The World's stupidest needles

Progress on the sleeves of my February Lady Sweater has been rather slow as I was knitting them on stupidly long double pointed needles. I mean, who even needs 30cm (12inch) DPNs? I only had them because I bought them from a charity shop. Surely if you need DPNs that long you just use a circular needle instead? I finally managed to find myself some short circulars to get on with the sleeves today and progress has suddenly increased tenfold so now I just have one and a half sleeves to knit and I'm done, yay! I can't wait! I love the needles too, their Lang needles but are made by Addi, making them a little cheaper than standard Addi needles but they are exactly the same. I've never really knit with Addi needles before until the past couple of days and I have really fallen in love with them, they are so smooth and comfortable to work with, definitely worth the extra money over any other brands, especially since I really can't get on with bamboo circulars, I always find that they snag where the needles join the cable.

Yesterday I cast on a leftover sock yarn blanket. I'm knitting it in a logcabin style, making it up as I go along. I'm thinking this will be a very long-term project with no visible end date. Unfortunately I made the initial piece rather small, so I'm hoping it won't look strange but it is meant to be all higgeldy-piggeldy and kind of like a scrap patchwork blanket. I will post pictures when I have made a little more progress.

Progress Update

My February Lady Sweater is coming along nicely. I have gotten used to the gull lace stitch pattern and have managed to get on without making any mistake, which is a relief as I had to do the first repeat twice due to mistakes and figured it was going to be a very long project if I had to do each repeat twice.

I'm really enjoying knitting this, now that I've got the hang of the lace pattern I'm finding it a breeze but the kind of breeze that I still have to think about, which I haven't had in a knitting project for a long time. I needed something a little more challenging, which this is but not so much it hurts. Hopefully this will prepare me for a bit more lace knitting that I have planned, although I'm not sure how much knitting time I'm going to have over the next few months for reasons I can't go into at the moment.

There are more socks I want to knit now, Opal have a new range of their Hundertwasser sock yarn and I love it. I will try to restrain myself for a bit but I'm sure it won't be long before I'm over at Tricolaine raiding Annelis' stock!

Ravelry group for Interknit Cafe

So, I just set up a group on Ravelry for the Interknit Cafe, so feel free to join if you're a member of Ravelry, the more the merrier! The group can be found here: http://www.ravelry.com/groups/interknit-cafe-farnham-2

Go Murray!

So, I've spent the evening watching the tennis and knitting. Very relaxing. The knitting did help to keep me relaxed through the tense Murray match, I was very glad to see him win. Maybe I should go out onto the streets of Geneva and make lots of noise like all the football fans. The Spanish fans were so noisy last night. Apparently the fanzone was packed so I'm glad we gave it a miss, I'm still not feeling 100%.

The doctor has got me on steroids for my Crohn's to try to help the inflammation. I'm getting better each day and have actually managed to get out and do some things, which is a relief to both me and Mr H, although, to be honest, it's kind of too hot to do too much other than strolling in the shade and drinking iced coffee. The good thing about having been ill though is that I've managed to give up smoking again (yes, I failed last time, which was probably obvious by my silence on the subject). Haven't had a cigarette in 9 days and tomorrow is the first day of the public smoking ban in Switzerland.

The February Lady Sweater is coming on slowly. I've not done any knitting since last weekend until tonight so there's not been much to report. I did receive a lovely gift from my mum (it took a week and a half to get here after a detour via Ecuador!). She sent me a copy of the book Tea Cozies and I want to knit all of them! It is such a lovely book and is beautifully photographed, I can't wait to start on a project. My mum wants me to knit her some from the shop and will be sending over some yarn for me when I tell her which ones I will do, very exciting!

Knitting Therapy

I'm sick. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I have Crohn's disease. It first started five and a half years ago and I've been sick on and off since then but have been pretty symptom free for a long time, except for some complications but now it's back and I'm not a happy bunny. I have stomach pains, no appetite and want to sleep all the time. Luckily the symptoms aren't as severe as they were when I first got sick and I got seen to pretty quickly but I have to wait for more tests before I can start any new medication regime or whatever my specialist has planned for me. My doctor sent me for a CT scan on Monday and that showed inflammation at the location where I had earlier bowel surgery 4 years ago. They did try to hospitalize me when I went down to ER on Tuesday on the advice of my GP but I refused and insisted I go see my specialist first. He didn't seem overly concerned (in comparison with my GP and the ER) and has booked me for more test next week so he clearly didn't think it was an emergency although my pain has increased since then.

So, I am taking it nice and easy and have been spending most of my time watching daytime tv or sleeping. You'd think I would have got loads of knitting done but I haven't as I keep getting tired when I try to concentrate. Of course, I haven't neglected it completely, it was when I first got sick all those years again that I picked up the knitting needles again and it really is a great comfort to me when I'm feeling otherwise useless.

I'm currently knitting FlintKnit's February Lady Sweater in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. I would be further on with it but I had to frog it as my increases on the raglan were all different, clearly a lack of concentration! It's starting to come along nicely now and I can't wait to get it finished, if I can only keep myself awake!

Despite being in pain I managed to get along to my Stitch 'n' Bitch's World Wide Knit in Public Day in the park on Saturday for a couple of hours. The weather just about held out for us, although it was a little chilly. It was really nice to sit and have a chat in the park, our local Starbucks usually plays their music a bit too loud for us to be able to have a proper group chat when we're there on Wednesday nights. Hopefully we will have a few more sessions of knitting in the park throughout the summer.

World Wide Knit In Public Day

For any of you who don't know already, this Saturday 14 June is World Wide Knit In Public Day. Yes, that's when all us knit lovers all get together and sit somewhere conspicuous so lots of members of the public can see us indulging in our favourite hobby.

If you happen to live in or around Geneva, you are more than welcome to come and join the Stitch 'n' Bitch Geneva public display of knitting solidarity. We will be in Parc des Bastions on the lawn in front of the Reformation wall from 14:00 until 18:00 if the weather is fine. If however, the weather reverts back to its gloomy self, we will be in the cafe in the park next to the giant chess boards. (In case you're not familiar with the Reformation wall, here's a photo on the right).

I guess I need to find my motivation so I can get a new project started...

A general lack of motivation

I have no motivation to do anything at the moment, which is made worse by Mr H deciding to have a clear out today. I can't be bothered to knit, study, tidy or sew and I have been in a foul mood all day for no apparent reason. I decided I should at least post on my blog so I've at least done something creative today.

I finished my string shopping bag a few days ago. It's OK, nothing special but what could I expect from a black string bag? I expect I will knit some more but will make them more colourful, I just have a lot of black cotton that needs using up and I don't really like knitting with it so a quick-knit shopping bag seemed like a perfect project to use some of it up.

I think next time I make this bag I will make it a little deeper as I don't think it will hold too much but it is good as I can just pop it in my handbag or pocket and pull it out at the supermarket.

I don't know what to knit at the moment. I have to restart my Noro socks as I changed my mind about the stitch pattern, but a few repeats into the new pattern I realised that it's really not showing up so I have to choose yet another. I have lots of socks on my list to knit but just don't feel like doing them. I'm really uninspired. There are a few more summer things I'd like to knit but I don't have any appropriate yarn in my stash and am seriously lacking the cash to buy anymore. I keep browsing through patterns on Ravelry that people have knitted with yarns that I have in my stash but I just don't have enough of anything for a whole, decent project.

Euro 2008 started yesterday so Geneva was full of Portuguese and Turkish football fans, all very noisy. I'm pretty glad I wasn't in town and was off in Veyrier babysitting an adorable two year old boy, much better than watching the footie I think! When I got home, Mr H and I decided to venture out into town to see if anything was still going on, we figured that there would be since it was about 1am and the bars are open at least until 2am, so we thought there'd still be a lively atmosphere in town and that we'd go and join some Portuguese fans in a celebratory beer. We were wrong. The fanzone was closed and everyone who was left in town was waiting at tram stops, the bars were empty. We decided this was typically Swiss and that we shouldn't really have expected anything else. Personally, I think it's a good thing that England didn't make it through as I'm not sure the Swiss would be able to handle all the English football fans!