Right now, I have two obsessions.  Knitting the stitches from A Treasury of Knitting Patterns and Candy Crush Saga.  I know, I know, back in the summer I claimed to have beaten it, but apparently it is not that simple.  Number one, I didn’t admit it at the time but I had not conquered all the dream-world levels.  The parallel universe with the owl Odus.  I managed that a few weeks ago.  In the meantime, They have released new levels every week or so, so I have to keep beating them too, right?

Bite me Odus

Last night when my insomnia was in full swing and I was working away at yet another new set of levels, I was struck by the fact that the rainbows I am knitting are almost exactly the same hues as the candies in candy crush.   And I have a whole ball of each colour and I have only used a fraction on the three hats I have done so far.  It may be a while.

I am trying to decide what knitting I should take with me on my upcoming trip.  Six weeks of knitting on planes, trains and auto-mobiles, not to mention in hotel rooms, coffee shops, etc…  I think I will have to crack into the lace chapter.  There is a lot of knitting with not much supplies in lace…lace weight wool is pretty thin.  Too bad The Book hasn’t fallen apart much around that chapter yet.  It is quite a heavy section still.  I think I mentioned last trip that I only take one carry-on backpack and a fanny pack.  I have to take my apnea machine and clothes.  I will probably take my Ipad. The laptop is way too heavy and bulky.  Luckily, even though we are going to a myriad of countries, I only have to take one (1″) Lonely Planet.  It actually has all but Greece of the 12 countries my brother Charles has on his list.  Eastern Europe doesn’t have that much on offer I guess.  I never actually start planning the trip until I am on the plane, so I haven’t looked at it yet.  I am not even sure why I do it that way.  Travel never really seems real to me unless I am actually doing it.  I don’t think about it much when I am not there yet.  Anyway, I am not leaving for almost two weeks and I tend to pack in about 10 minutes, so I don’t have to worry yet, except of course to make sure I have enough to knit.  After all, one can only take this failure to plan thing so far.

Barbara stuff: cast on 105 stitches, Dutch Pyramids, pg 30 for the hat band.  Increase to 108, then Chickenwire Check, pg 80 for 5 repeats, with a rainbow in the third repeat.  Decrease one stitch per 6 stitch  repeat 2nd and seventh row of the 6th-8 row repeat, then on the 3rd row of the next 8 row repeat and the 2nd row of the next 8 row repeat.  Slip one, knit one around for 4 rows with white, then k2tog around do two rows with black, k2tog around again and finish.