UGH! All I want to do is knit. Here’s the second-last thing to come off my needles…
I have named them the SUNRISE SUNSET mittens. Here’s what they would look like if I were wearing them whilst carrying a pile of invisible firewood.
And here’s what they would look like if I were warming my hands over an invisible fire in the woods.
I thought I would share the pattern, mostly because Amy asked for a link to it, but also because it’s the first pattern I’ve written up and I’m curious to see if A) anybody will use it and B) it’s readable.
About a month and a half ago, Evan gave me a bike for my birthday. It was the best birthday present I’d ever received in my life… aside from the flight home to Hong Kong from my parents. (Though these gifts do beg the question: did I deserve it? Any of it? But that’s a whole other discussion.) Still, the bike was spiffy.
Sadly, I didn’t get to ride my bike for a few weeks because I went to Hong Kong. But I’m back now, and I got to ride my less-than-new bike yesterday. The verdict? It’s awesome!!!!!!
But what happened later wasn’t so awesome.
And I should have seen it coming.
It all began when I rode my new bike across the city, savouring the smooth-shifting gears, delighting in the melodious ding-ding-ding of my bell, so happy to be riding my bike that the potholes and characteristically Toronto-ish bits of garbage on the road were barely noticeable to me. BLISS.
I arrived at my destination: Story Planet. Katherine told us that one of the volunteers wouldn’t be coming in because she had been in a bike accident. I hear she’s okay, but a bit scraped up. Then she told us about an old colleague (who’d been in a bike accident) who claimed that the weirdest part about being in a bike accident was having to write the email reporting that he wouldn’t be coming in to work because of it. (“Hey, everyone. I was in a bike accident. DON’T BE ALARMED!!!! Okay, be alarmed. But I’m okay. My bike, on the other hand…” Yeah, that’s a pretty weird thing to type up. As is this blog post.)
Anyway, we overheard a six-year-old student proclaiming that she’d just learned to ride a bike without tires.
my bike without tires
Wait, WHAT?! She clarified: “without training wheels.” She was really proud of her latest two-wheeled accomplishment, though I hear she has trouble getting going and needs a bit of help. Anyway, with all this talk of bikes, I should have seen it coming.
On my way to meet Evan, I rejoiced once more in the smoothness of my new wheelz. In fact, I raved about how much I loved it over dinner. I even had Evan leave the restaurant to double check that I’d locked it up properly — it’s so awesome that I’m pretty sure everybody wants to steal it.
I SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING!!!
This is what was coming:
We rode home. I braked too hard at a zebra crossing. I flew over my handlebars. My bike flipped over my head. I was sprawled on the road like a squashed bug. Thankfully there were no moving cars nearby. A pedestrian who was about to step into the crosswalk asked if I was okay. I said I was okay. I said, “That was crazy!” He said, “That was crazy!” He double-checked to see if I was okay. I double-checked and saw that I was fine. He crossed the road. Some guy on his phone went on talking on his phone like nothing had happened. Evan was a block ahead of me like nothing had happened.
Then I looked at my hands.
MY KNITTING SAVED MY LIFE! Look what my accident did to my wristwarmers!
my knitting saved my life!
And look what my accident did to my hands!
my hands are fine!
Nothing!
i’m smiling!
If I hadn’t been wearing my wristwarmers, I’d be all scraped up. And if I were all scraped up, then my life would be ruined, because I’d be making all kinds of excuses to get out of doing stuff — important stuff like playing Candy Crush and washing my hands and writing back to important emails, and my life would be RUINED!!!!
The moral of the story? Always keep your knits about you.
The End.
One last note to self: brand-new bikes tend to come with brakes that are actually responsive. Maybe too responsive.
Did you know that you can dye yarn with Kool-Aid? IT’S TRUE. Like, if it worked on your hair as a badass tween, then it should work on all kinds of other natural fibres, right? Right. Logic! Anyway I found two really useful-looking tutorials at knitty and snowangels.com, with Kool-Aid palettes that are really to dye for (get it? dye?). I say these are useful-looking because I haven’t actually tried this Kool-Aid dyeing process myself yet. But I am dyeing to.
I’ve never even had Kool-Aid before!
Sadly, the only colours I could find (or flavours, rather) in the one supermarket I checked out were grape, cherry, and orange. Boring. Like, where were lemon lime explosion and electric blue raspberry?
cherry & tropical punch, from halimeade’s flickr stream
Anyway! Before I found out about this awesome dyeing process, I bought some yarn from KnitPicks to make this Super Easy Baby Blanket, in these colours here:
owbrain blankie. (owbrain? rainbow? get it? ‘cos the colours are all mixed up?)
Wouldn’t those look even better in shades of Kool-Aid??? You might have already guessed my inspiration. In case you weren’t sure, I was inspired by one particular Google image search result for “eric carle”:
eric carle cotton fabric, hijacked from apartment therapy
Now I eagerly await a package from Canada Post.
As you can tell, I am reviving this blog. Don’t be sad, though — I won’t just be writing about knitting. Stay tuned for posts about my hunt for good Kool-Aid colours, the cartoons I’m watching, things I’m working on, and maybe even some photos from when I open the parcel of rainbow yarn. Yay!
The other day I felt a very strange longing. And when I saw a cool dude wearing a toque to match his tight skinny pants and cool bicycle in this blazing hot 40 degree weather, I remembered that I haven’t knit anything since March (!!!!). So here is a post dedicated to some things I knit over the last year or so, under the desk at the back of the classroom when the teacher wasn’t looking.
I’M SORRY, BUT I REALLY HAVE TO INTERRUPT THIS POST FOR A SEC TO GET SOMETHING OFF MY CHEST. I know on Facebook I said, “if you comment on my blog i will give you something cool.” We all know that this was really just a cheap marketing ploy to get you clicking. But guess what??? It worked! I got 100 hits over three days!!!! And out of the 100 visits, 8 fantastic people left comments (Allie, Safia, Jessica, Kenny, Evan, Chiara, Ryan, Justin). That’s 8 percent. Now I can’t remember anything from that statistics course I faked my way through in second year, but I’m pretty sure 8 percent out of 100 is pretty ghastly.
(Don’t worry!!! This post is still about things I’ve knit!!!)
OH!! Here’s a thought. My suspicion is that I am Facebook friends with too many people that I’m not truly friends with. i.e. we don’t hang out in real life. So maybe you guys don’t feel like it is OK to comment on my ~intimate~ blog even though it was OK for you to click on my ~intimate~ link and show up in my Google Analytics. Â Who are you, o visitors from Willowdale, Kimhae, Malaga, Singapore, Oxford, Cambridge, El Paso, Kassel, and Brisbane (oh wait, I do know the answer to the last one, o sender of that strange anonymous email)?
Let me please assure the other 92% of you that I will not think you weird/socially wrong/awkward/creepy if you leave a comment on here, even though I don’t really know you and you don’t really know me despite the fact that I have shown up in your Facebook feed. In fact, if you leave a comment, I will think you are really cool.
As for the Holy Eight (Allie, Safia, Jessica, Kenny, Evan, Chiara, Ryan, Justin), I am actually going to think up something cool to give you in thanks for your Internet-courage!!! So brace yourselves!!!
OK, now, onto the rest of my post (for real):
I was going to try to knit socks, but after making a baby trial sock (which wasn’t too terrible), I remembered that I hate wearing socks so I shouldn’t assume that anybody else likes to wear them, either.
