Up to my neck

Yeah; I finally made it up to the neck on this danged sweater!  Actually, I made it up to the neck, knitted the neck band, folded it over, picked up stitches on the inside and did a three-needle bind off.  And got it skewed to one side.  So I tinked back the bind off and did it again.  It's still skewed a little bit, but I think it'll come out in the blocking.  And frankly, I'm getting sick of ripping this thing back and reknitting it.

I also did the button bands this week.  The pattern calls for them to be only 4 rows, but they looked a little wimpy so I made them 6 rows.  I did make the 3-stitch buttonholes using EZ's one-row method.  I hadn't done those before; it's a pretty neat trick that I'll keep using.

And yes, that is a container from blank CD/DVDs that my yarn is in.  My ball winder makes cakes that just fit inside so ToolMan cut off the spindle inside and made a nice smooth opening in the center for me.  The yarn pulls nicely from the center and the ball stays neat and clean inside no matter how much I drag my knitting from home to work to knit night. 

This afternoon, I carefully pulled out the crochet chain and picked up the stitches for the left sleeve on dpns. Then I had to make notes on reversing the tapering for the sleeves. The pattern has the sleeves knit up and joined to the body before the yoke is knitted. But since my yarn is limited, I made only the top six rows of each sleeve for joining. Now, I can knit them down until they're the right length, or I run out of yarn. I have about 2/3 of a ball plus another full ball, so I think I might have just enough for full length sleeves.

Now that I'm on the sleeves, I should make pretty good progress on this thing.  Especially now that Dancing With The Stars starts tomorrow and American Idol is in full swing.  I really like Lauren Alaina, but I think a boy will win this year.  Will it be Paul McDonald with his raspy tenor and crazy dancing, or Scotty McCreery with his country twang that's way down deep, or James Durbin with his not-so-bad boy rocker persona?  Who's your favorite for this year? 

True Confession

I love knitting to television shows. 

American Idol is good knitting television.

Almost as good as Dancing With The Stars.

But neither of those quite filled the bill for knitting this sweater, what with it's rows of 276 stitches in light fingering weight yarn on size 5 needles.

That calls for the best knitting television show of all time!

I must confess, I am a total Gleek!

So, here's the deal, Dawg.

I really don't like reality shows; I don't like the back-stabbing, alliance making, breaking of promises, avarice and greed of most of them. "Winning" a reality show usually means winning at any cost: being better at lying, tearing down other players, and reneging on agreements. Not my cuppa Darjeeling.

But there are two exceptions: American Idol and Dancing With The Stars. I love these shows because they are about each contestant building up themselves to something better that what we saw last week, improving their skills, and enlarging their confidence, not defeating someone else.

At the start of American Idol this season, I really wasn't enthused about any one contestant, but I really don't really get into the show until it's down to the final 12 anyway. Sure, there were some that showed some talent, and some I knew would never make it into the final 10 let alone the final eight.

Now that it is down to the final eight, almost all of them could be groomed, dressed, trained, electronically vocalized, and put out on the concert circuit and would do very, very well. I'm not sure which one will win, but I'm pretty sure the final decision will be between these two:



Danny Gokey has a personality and honesty that comes through in his singing. Danny's wife died just a few weeks before this year's auditions. In the clips of him during auditions and the first few cuts, you could tell how raw his pain was. When Danny sings, it's as plain as the nose on your face that he's singing to his wife.

But he's going to have to work very hard and very long to beat Adam Lambert.

He could sing the phone book and win over the audience. He doesn't need to be polished and trained and engineered. He could record a CD today and hit the road on tour tomorrow. Adam has a rare combination of talent, stage presence, and confidence which is seldom seen. Mix those with his Elvis Presley good looks and Michael Jackson showmanship and he's unbeatable. It think we'll be listening to and watching Adam in 10, 20, 30 years from now. And I think he'll still be surprising us with every performance.

And in my other favorite, Dancing With The Stars, I think it will come down to these two:


Melissa definitely has talent. She was on The Bachelor and got dumped in front of America, and got brought on to Dancing With The Stars as a last minute replacement. But she's a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, so she's had some dance training which put her way ahead of the curve.

Gilles was the "sexy, naked neighbor" in Sex and the City. I'd welcome Gilles to my neighborhood any day. As long as he dances with his shirt off!

Who will win Dancing With The Stars? Who knows. I'm just glad Steve Wozniak got voted off!