Mittens from Schoolhouse Press May KAL done

thanks to Ravelry
and the Works In Progress Wrestling event in the RavelOlympics!

I've decided I'm not good under knitting deadlines -- the thumbs could have been much better. I also duplicate stitched the one color on the middle of the sun pattern on the thumb, thinking it would be easier. Didn't like it much, and next time I'll just knit it in as I did for the rest of the mitten.

Live and learn, but these will get packed DONE, thank goodness!

All thumbs

I finished the second mitten yesterday and started the thumb:

note to self: do not try to pick up stitches in the late afternoon with dark wool -- you really need good morning natural light.

This morning I knit along, watching the Olympics and jumping up constantly to lesson the stress on my arm. But I was not happy with my "pattern" -- it just wasn't coming out evenly.

So I frogged it back to the start of the thumb ... I feel like those poor athletes that come in 7th... at least they are at the Olympics and they've trained well, and at least I finished the body of both mittens.

Olympic Knitting breaks

We are two hours ahead of Beijing, so I was able to watch the entire 4 hours of the opening ceremony live last night, courtesy of Eurosport TV -- in Russian.

So today I didn't feel that I needed to watch the whole thing over again in English, but I am glad I took a few minutes to listen to some English commentary. I found out the little boy that came into the "Bird's Nest" stadium with the Chinese flag bearer was a survivor of the recent earthquake in China -- somehow I missed that in translation.

And Eurosport TV continues to have coverage, with the air rifle event shown first in the morning.

But I can't knit all day -- those mitten dpns are murder on my shoulder.
But I have progressed a tiny bit. I can't sit at the lap top all day either, so I bounce between the two, and find it is a good time to catch up with favorite blogs.

Franklin in the Panopticon mentions the Knitting Out Loud version of The History of Hand Knitting. I think I'll have to eventually end up getting the CDs. It is taking me forever to get through the book as I only pick it up for 5-10 minutes at a time -- it is very dense. A simple discussion of "art versus craft" on page 25 of the book really popped out though -- if you have the book, take a look.

Otherwise, there is a whole chapter on Shetland Lace shawls to study. The Russian square Orenburg shawls are put together exactly the same way. Considering, according to the book, that the Shetland island were part of Norway a LONG time ago, perhaps the Shetland shawl format eventually made its way to Russia?