Whoopee!

Today was a real changeable day: I woke up early after a very bad night...leg cramps, nightmares, too much pain everywhere,  etc.  I had a meeting to attend but had to beg off and spent a good deal of time in bed but by noon I felt a little better and started working with the knitting machine again...the one that the very kind lady on FREECYCLE gave me yesterday.

The first few strips I knit with the machine nearly made me tear my hair out, but I kept telling myself that I was smart enough to do it...same as yesterday.  That really didn't help very much, actually.  Eventually it occurred to me to try YouTube, and voila!  There was a whole course on using the newer version of the knitting machine.  The final strip attempt today was 36 inches long...needs to be 48 inches long, so I am making progress, though still a long way from getting 6 strips completed.

In  the interest of sanity I stopped with the Incredible Knitting Machine around 2:30, picked up my bag of sock projects as well as the spinning workshop mitten project and went to Elsie's for knitting group.  It was SO GOOD to see her and Sharon and Cameron again. It has been a whole month since I was there with them.  Last week Elsie had a wonderful class at the library teaching kids to knit. She had 8 kids and one mom--7 girls and one boy who, by the way, picked up on Elsie's Continental knitting style and learned to do both knit and purl that way!  Good for him.

Anyway, after knitting with Elsie, Sharon and Cameron and watching Cameron's slide show of his trip to Ghent, I batted out for a shortish set of errands to include getting another skein of yarn for the strips and border of the homeless blanket. I do not believe it will be completed by Monday night, but will be much closer.

So, after coming home I worked a bit more on the last strip then picked up the mitten project. and WHOOPEE!!  I finished the first of them. It looks a little funny and it fits a little funnier, but I love it.  I showed it to Bob and he said..so? in a very sweet and gentle way.   I told him he should be impressed because it was the first project knitted with totally me-weighed/blended/carded/spun yarn.  I am so happy to have it done.  Parenthetically, I was so sad to hear that Bonnie, one of our spinners, was run into by a unthinking woman who was having her dogs drag her down a ski slope.  When she ran into Bonnie she broke Bonnie's shoulder/upper arm.  Bonnie's doctor says it will take about six months to heal before she can start spinning and knitting and weaving again.  So sad.  Plus she has missed her trip to Alaska and the Iditarod.

Mitten photo will be here soon.