Newbie thoughts on purling

Over the weekend, DH got started back on his latest golf club cover project (no, his scarf project for me isn't finished yet; I'm trying to be the bigger person and have so far refrained from saying anything - not too tough to do since it doesn't really bother me much). He is now knitting using the continental method - I demonstrated it to him some weeks ago and on Sunday, he asked for a refresher. The piece is being worked flat in stocking stitch, so we started with how to knit continentally, and then the next row obviously was a refresher on how to purl continentally.

And that's when he made this comment:

"In some ways, this is easier than knitting. But it's still purling, and therefore we must bitch about it. Or they won't let you onto the blogs."

Out of the mouths of babes, eh?

In other news, even if you are not into listening to podcasts, I highly recommend checking out this week's episode of Cast On (#28). The song that is played at slightly before the 39-minute mark, "Knitta Please", is FANTASTIC. And hey, while you're there, you might as well take a listen to episode #25, too - in it, Brenda plays a comment I sent her, where I describe my somewhat harrowing experience knitting this blanket.

Garden Shawl for MIL

Saturday we went to visit my mom's cousin in Barrie for the afternoon, so I took this project. It was just about the only thing I could work on in front of both DH and my family without blowing a surprise for somebody.

At first I was pretty bummed. Here I was, the ultimate knitter in public - a person who knits on the subway every day, standing if no seats are available, who has knitted while walking down the street, at movies, the list goes on. Basically, I am totally willing to 'whip it out' in a public situation. And yet...on World Wide Knit in Public Day, I was not going to have the opportunity to knit in public beyond doing it in a car ride where hardly anyone would see me.

Fortunately, however, we decided to go out to Swiss Chalet for dinner with my parents after our afternoon visit, and so I did actually get a chance to KIP on the big day. My mom watched me and remarked on it with surprise - she hadn't thought doing that was entirely appropriate, so she'd left her crochet in the car. But she revised her opinion when I told her what day it was. :)

Stornaway sweater for DH

I'm approaching the end of ball #2, which means once again I will somehow have to break out the cone of wool and my ballwinder, and create a new skein without DH noticing.

I'm also fast approaching the division for the armscyes. Very exciting stuff.

Simple scarf for DH

I was hit with the realisation that Father's Day is this freakin' Sunday!!! So I tried to haul a bit of ass on the project this weekend. Didn't do too badly - the thing grew by probably about 10cm in the half-hour or so that I snuck away and worked on it. But I am going to have to work on it every evening between now and the weekend to have a hope in hell of having something long enough to be called a scarf.

DD also got into the action at one point. DH was downstairs, so I showed her the progress I'd made. She insisted on sitting down and doing some "knitting" herself. (Again, refusal of help from Mummy to get some genuine knitting done.) But the pretend knitting is sooo cute. She has the basics totally down. She sticks the right-hand needle into anything that looks like a hole in the work and waves the knitting around a bit, pushing back and forth with the needle in and out of the hole. What a kid.

Arabesque baby blanket

I recently found out that another co-worker is expecting! Now, I know I said I was going to limit myself this year and not knit for every baby that crosses my path, but one of the projects already in my yearly plan is a self-designed baby blanket, using a lace design based on a hispano-araby motif. I could use this project as the gift for my co-worker, at no cost to The Schedule or my sanity. Perfect, right?

Well, the first step towards consolidating this decision is to finalise the actual lace design. So I'm going to have to do some fiddling and come up with something that I definitely like.

The second step is to determine whether it is culturally appropriate and considerate OR culturally insensitive (given the horrible history of Spanish conquest in south America) to give a guy of Mexican heritage a blanket for his baby which has a Spanish design feel. Anyone want to help me out with this one?