Today we were evacuated (badly) from our building. I was in the lunch room and the fire alarm sounded for a couple of seconds and stopped. Then it went off again and then stopped. I packed up my knitting (I have on repeat left on the DS cozy) and my lunchbox and headed back to my desk. (it is about now in the retelling that I realise how stupid I was being.) The rest of my team were gone. I assumed that, as I had been told that it was not a real drill (!!) they would be back, and the rest of the people on my floor were still sitting there, working away. As the sweet vending machine on my floor isn’t working I picked up my bag and headed for the canteen for a chocolate fix. As I stepped out of the lift, I noticed that there was a big crowd hanging out at our evacuation point, and there was a lady in a yellow vest at the door. Hmm. So I wandered over and said “should I be evacuating?” which was confirmed. Then I said, “everyone else on my floor is still sitting there, working”. They sent someone else up to check. There was a cross person complaining about this as I left the building. While I was out there, I chastised myself (in my head, so the world doesn’t know I’m crazy) for not picking up my knitting, so I was stuck out there with nothing to do. We weren’t out there that long though, I’d probably only have managed a couple of rows, and cabling while standing up is hard!
Lace Knitting
I’ve also been chatting with some other knitters in the Muir-along group on Ravelry. I asked them whether they thought it was too tough for a beginner. They said no, but with caveats:
- knit a swatch. this will be hard for me. I don’t like swatches. However, it will give me a good idea about how the yarn will look in this pattern, whether I have the patience and whether I know how to count.
- use stitch markers to keep count of where you are
- don’t use stitch markers because you have to keep moving them. Yes, I know these contradict. It seems to depend on whether the knitter in question is happier counting or whether they’re prepared to have to jiggle their markers about a bit.
- LIFELINES yes, lifelines are lines of thread (or apparently dental floss works) which run along your knitting at regular intervals so that if (or when) you make a mistake (that you can’t either tink back to or fix as you go) then you can frog back to the lifeline and pick up the stitches including all of those pesky yarn-overs without any problems. Brilliant! And we have plenty of dental floss, though I wonder if it will make my knitting smell minty?
Podcasts are fun
I’ve been listening to Brenda Dayne’s podcast, Cast On, for some time now. She lives in Wales and chats about mainly knitting. I like to listen to Cast On in the bath. Now, a long time ago in an old Cast On, Brenda mentioned some other knitters who were podcasting. Since I was listening to her back-episodes, and I was in the bath, I totally forgot to look them up. They were, and indeed are, Lime & Violet: two crazy Americans who so far talk about yarn, dogs, alien babies, stalking Brenda Dayne and yarn. Oh, and also yarn. And knitting. And more yarn. You get the idea. They’re quite funny to listen to, and remind me a little of some of the banal conversations I used to have with my best mate on the bus on the way home from school. Anyway, I’m on something like episode 6 which was back in 2006, and they podcast weekly, so I’ll be catching up for a while. But they’re funny and distracting enough for lunchtime without distracting me too much from my cables.
Signing off
Yeah, I’m done for this time. mental note (or, well, blog note): take some pictures of something to make the blog look more interesting.
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