YOP #32-34 or is Ravellenic a real word?

It has been a quick three weeks. So quick, in fact, that I thought there had only been two of them but it appears I've missed two weeks instead of the one I thought I'd missed. Oops. One of the goals for myself is to do the weekly update on time. This is not happening for several reasons. The biggest one is that I'm not sitting in front of the computer a lot. To be fair, I've probably spent the last 30 minutes doing anything other than blogging because I needed to get something out of my system before I started writing. I think it was some excess energy about work and I didn't want to go too much into that. The biggest plus side to work is that when there are shows, I get a lot of knitting down.

Earlier in February, the Lunar New Year was celebrated. Every year, the Vietnamese Student group puts together a show. It is always entertaining for several reasons. Another plus is that there's enough down time for me to work on my knitting. This means I made a ton of progress on the Blood Orange Newton sock. I managed to get onto the foot. Of course, I've not touched it since then. For this, I blame the Olympics.

On Ravelry, there is a group that hosts the Ravellenic Games. It's all about personal challenges during the course of the Olympic Games. This is honestly the first time I've cared anything about the Olympic Games since some time in the 1990s. I usually find the theatrics of the opening ceremonies interesting (though never enough to actually watch them; I read about them later and how they did things) but it's hard for me to get into the sports competitions these days. It was a good motivator to finish Husband's socks.

I had started the Angels Have the Police Box socks back in October. I hadn't touched them since.....December 1st.  The next step was to sew up the cuff and then pick up stitches for the leg. I remember this step being amazingly tedious and annoying and I hadn't wanted to do it. I love the look of the cuff but I really don't like picking up stitches along the edge. I don't know if it was because the yarn was wanting to split on me or the color but it wasn't fun to do. Once I got that part started (which I did while helping to navigate to Madison, WI), it was a piece of cake. Picking up stitches and navigating is a talent and a skill though and I don't recommend it lightly. I did manage to finish them though it was a doozy. Husband's feet are large for his frame but they are big feet. That's the part where I get hung up because I want to be done. Part of me also finds is a little sad how much bigger the foot of the sock is when compared with the leg of it. It's a decent leg length though. The best part is that Husband likes the socks. They were finished last night and he wore them today. The cuff is a little tight going over his heel but once they are on, they look beautiful.

Since I last wrote, I've started a new hat. I had hoped to have it finished by the time we got to Madison but I needed larger needles, which weren't in the car. Many years ago (the late 1980s), my mom had a hat business. She made machine knit hats and her mom would make hand knit hats. I'm sure my mom made some of these hats as well but I mostly remember Grandma making them. It's actually one of the reasons I didn't like knitting for the longest time. I've always been one who likes to talk but Grandma would get annoyed if I tried to have a conversation with her (or just talk at her) if she was knitting because I always seemed to pick the moment that she was counting stitches.

This March it will have been 15 years since Grandma passed away. I still have a hat she knit for me but I think wool moths have gotten into it and it needs to be replaced. I wanted to use the same pattern so I asked mom for it. This pattern that I'm using is one that Grandma figured out on her own. I believe it's based on a pattern she saw in a book but she didn't like the way it looked so she changed it. The pattern, which I happened to find over the week of Christmas while organizing mom's needles (she has her needles, Grandma's needles and my Great-Aunt's needles; and I simply sorted them by needle type so it would help her narrow down her search), is written on an old yellow post-it note. There was a modification for the pattern for different yarns on another scarp of paper but that was it. And the directions assume the person making the hat knows what you're doing. For the increase of the crown, it simply says "increase to 119 stitches". I'm use to patterns that tell me exactly where to increase. This increase isn't a simply every other or every third either. I've sat down and figured out where the increases need to go so that it's even and have written it out. I asked mom if I could write it up and put it on Ravelry for others to make and she's okay with it.  I'm in the process of making the hat (just started decreasing) and then I need to write it out and get it tested. In some ways, I think I want to do this so something of Grandma will still exist. It's also a way to thank her for making 100s of these hats and, in some way, to express gratitude that she figured out this pattern. She started to knit again after I was born. Her knitting (and that of my Great-Aunt) got my mom to knit, which has led to me knitting. It's a gift that has managed to be passed on even though I didn't learn until after Grandma had died. I feel like it's a way to reconnect to my past while moving into my future.

Finished Objects

• Japan Scarf
• Birthday Bag 
• Socks, the Final Frontier
• Ladders to the Sky Socks (Test Pattern)
• Waves of Love 
• Colormatic  
• Here Fishy Fishy I
• Gingy
• Fuzzy, the baby blanket
• Japan Scarf II 
• Scarfowl
• Here Fishy Fishy II 
• Gillian
• The Angels Have the Police Box  
• Mini-Socks 

Works in Progress

• Police Box
• Blood Orange Newtons 
• Grandma's Tam