Super Sunday

Let's see, it's Sunday night. In Knoxville its *very* cold and dry. In Miami a bunch of people shelled out hundreds of bucks to sit in the pouring rain and watch this thing called the Super Bowl. It's a ball game. A football game. It's supposed to be a really big deal, but I usually don't care about it as pro football isn't my thing. But this year is an exception because there's this guy named Manning, Peyton Manning, who is the quarterback for one of the teams, the Indianapolis Colts. I love Peyton Manning. Why? Well, he was a star football player for my beloved University of Tennessee Volunteers. Even better, he graduated from UT--very important in my book if you are going to be held in high enough esteem for me to consider a person qualified for hero status among kids. Being educated is more important that playing football, no matter how good you are. Then there's this thing about just being a really, really good, honest person who does good things for others. Integrity is such a rare bird in today's world, esp. in athletics. The Manning family (Dad Archie, Mom, and brother Eli included) stand head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to integrity. And if you don't have integrity, you don't have anything really.

So I'm happy about this super thing. And it's half-time and Peyton & the Colts are ahead. And I'm watching the Knitty Gritty marathon on DIY. I'm not watching Prince do the half-time show, that's for sure (don't like his music, and let's not even go into where he stands on things like values and integrity). Host Vickie Howell is blogging live over on the DIY website so I popped over and posted a comment to show my support. It would have been more fun if it would have been a live show, but Vickie is doing a book tour so that wouldn't work this year. But if the blogging goes well, maybe next year.... They're promoting knitting blocks for Warm-Up America during the game. I feel marginally guilty, but I'm not doing one. If I were doing good-deed knitting tonight I'd finish daddy's Christmas socks--but I'm not doing that either.

I've been sicker than all get out this week. It's been a weird kind of sick though, and I have no idea why or what's going on really. But I do know that all the stress I've been feeling from the dissertation is part of the problem and the best answer I had was to cool it for a few days and sleep a lot. And since my brain hasn't been too functional, knitting has been good therapy as well. I'm half-way through chart 9 on the Hidcote shawl and the end is near! I'm at the point where I'm tired of knitting this one and at the same time I'm really anxious to finish. It's a huge shawl to begin with and I think mine may block out to be even larger since I opted to go up one needle size from what the pattern called for.But since my cashmere is going to bloom once I wash and block it, I felt I needed the bigger needle size to achieve the look I wanted.

Since it's been so cold lately I've been wishing I had a pair of fingerless mitts to wear at night while working at the 'puter or knitting. I don't really have any pretty aran wt. yarn to knit Fetching with, but I have some dk cashmerino and some fluffy fingering wt. alpaca. I opted to use the cashmerino and design my own pattern but I knew I needed to wash this ColourMart yarn first in order to feel confident with my stitch counts and needle size. So that meant unwinding the yarn off the cone and into big hanks--no small feat since I don't have a swift or a niddy noddy--and then washing the yarn and dry it--partially air dry plus a short fluff in the dryer. I ended up using one of those lattice looking cup holder thingies you hang on the wall to serve as my swift and I carefully wrapped the yarn around the outer knobs (42" circumference). I placed cotton thread ties around the yarn in four places after every 25 wraps to prevent tangling and ultimately turned the 150g cone into 3 balls. Thank goodness I have a ball winder! The yarn fluffed up nicely and I'm playing with a simple ribbed lace pattern. I started out with size 5 dpns, but they were too big and I had too many stitches. This go around I'm using size 3 dpns and 54 stitches (the pattern is a 9 st repeat). I've knit about an inch thus far so I'll keep you posted.