Knitting Marathon at my place

Some friends and I have started up a monthly knitting group at my place - fun! I anticipated it would run for a few hours over lunch but yesterday it stretched into a 11-hour knitathon (6 of which we spent watching Pride and Prejudice). There are 3 experienced knitters in the group and 2 complete (left-handed!) newbies. Messicat has a way to go but Saxra took to knitting like a fish to water, most impressive.

My husband and Camee's boyf were very understanding and made us all pizza for dinner as we knit. Lovely reversal of gender roles there, and lots of jokes about needing to restore testosterone in the house. So after dinner we let them pick the movie - Hot Fuzz which is always a great action/laugh.

Knitting for so long with company was great, I got through a large chunk of my triangular shawl which I want to finish so that I can wear it in this spring weather. It's pretty boring to knit at this point (incredibly long rows) so it's just a matter of pressing on.

Bellydancing Princess Leia

So here's something clever and different....a bellydancing Princess Leia from Return of the Jedi. The dancer, Amira Sa'id, dances at a lot of conventions. You can read more about her on the Wired Blog.

As a bellydancing star wars fan and sometimes costumer, I was tempted to do something here in Australia, maybe work up a costume and do something for the cosplay at Supernova. But the negativity of the comments on the Wired blog made me wonder....perhaps the worlds of bellydance and Star Wars don't mix too well. When it comes to bellydancing, it is really a celebration of womanhood by women, primarily enjoyed by women as well. The Star Wars world, much as I hate to say it, is quite male dominated....and perhaps not quite ready for the art of middle eastern dance. Plus the connotations of Leia, dancing as a powerless slave...again, not celebrating the true strength of the dance.

That said, I think Amira/Leia is an awesome dancer, her technique is a delight to watch and more power to her!

Eurofest

Anara
Originally uploaded by jedi_enna

This is the reason I haven't been knitting lately. I had a conference in Perth all last week and then performed twice at Eurofest this weekend. I had to take up the hem of this skirt by hand which cuts into valuable knitting time (and isn't nearly as fun). Sadly it's still a little long so I will have to redo it before my next performance in October.

More photos at my flickr photostream or check out my Facebook page (for friends).

Tangled Branches

I am feeling a little discouraged at the moment. I think I am on my fifth attempt to get through the 6-row pattern for Branching Out correctly. I plunged in rather ambitiously, starting with the lovely mohair straight away. Bad idea - very difficult to rip out mistakes in mohair. I was also cursing my cheapie 4mm needles which are impossibly blunt. It was a rude shock to go from my lovely pointy knitpicks to these, especially when the pattern calls for you to knit 3 together!

So after the third or fourth attempt, I switched to some 8ply practice yarn and my 4.5mm knitpicks. Much easier. But I still somehow ended up with the wrong number of stitches by the fifth pattern row. Sigh! I shall persevere, but what I really should do today is take up the hem of my bellydancing costume in preparation for our peformances in a few weeks.

Fairytale Knitalong

I've taken the next step in knitting obsession and joined a Knitalong with the Fairy and Folk Tale Group on Ravelry. Each season they pick a fairytale and them their KAL to match. The Autumn KAL revolves around the Scottish Ballad "Tam Lim". I'd never heard of it before but there are many variations (here's just one). I recommend you read it but here's my poor summary anyway.

Tam Lin extracts a tithe from all those who pass his well - be it a kirtle or a maidenhaid. One maid discovers his story - Tam Lin was a knight taken by the Faery Queen and destined to be their next sacrifice. She determines to rescue him and must hold onto him while the fairies change him into various animals before returning him to human form. She hides him under her green mantle, thereby breaking the hold the fairies have on him.

It's exciting to experience a new fairy tale, and I've always had a vague interest in the Celtic stories. The group have recommended some fiction variants so I'll be borrowing them from the library. The green kirtle and mantle are strong symbols in the story but I think I'll try a slightly less ambitious project - a green "Branching Out" scarf like GreenKri's one here.

Progress Bar

Feeling very proud of myself as I have managed to add a Ravelry Work in Progress bar. The instructions on the wiki were very straight forward. Bless xml Blogger layouts!

Circling the point

I planned my first foray into circular knitting to be legwarmers in a lovely wine boucle. Lots of preparation went into this - finding a pattern on Ravelry, purchasing some gorgeous Touche boucle at the Darling Harbour Craft Show, waiting ages for my knitpicks order to come in. Finally all the material was assembled. I watched the knittinghelp.com tutorial on knitting with two cable circulars a couple of times, assembled my beautiful new Knitpick harmony tips, and got started.

And got very tangled very quickly.

When I gave it some thought, I realised that learning a new knitting skill while using expensive mohair/marino boucle is a bad idea. The dark colour and loops made it very hard to see what I was doing, and I didn't really want to ruin my lovely wool by ripping it out several times. After all that planning, it was back to the drawing board.

So today I cast some good ol' Lincraft acrylic 8ply onto my harmony tips. The result won't be as classy as the boucle, but I won't shed too many tears if it goes wrong. It's much easier to see what I'm doing and where I'm up to in the rib stitch the new pattern starts with. Plus it was a humbling reminder that it's always good to learn a new skill with some basic, cheap yarn!