Best Quote I Heard All Day
Some rainy winter Sundays when there's a little boredom, you should always carry a gun. Not to shoot yourself, but to know exactly that you're always making a choice.--Lina Wertmuller

When will this neverending winter cease? I can almost understand why people move to Florida. Almost.

Blogdumb
Well, once again I've spent the past week being sick, having to drag myself around in the snow, and in general suffering from winter depression. I do believe that winter sorely depresses me. Don't feel much like knitting, writing, working, nothing.

Never mind that. In the meanwhile, I've at least solved the web host problem. I'm probably going to redesign the blog if I can get my lazy ass in gear and just do it. But on February 1, this blog will officially run from www.knittingcurmudgeon.com.

Just so you know.

Lavold Stuff
Despite my whining about being sick, I did manage to finish the back of the Ran tunic from the latest Elsebeth Lavold book.

Her designs are great. Her directions are strictly from hunger. I feel for inexperienced knitters who are working from her not-so-pithy instructions.

Here's the deal with the Ran tunic. Besides the mistake on the chart, which we shall forgive her because we know that shit happens, the shoulder shaping directions were just awful. She short-rows the shoulders...that's fine. But never tells the reader what to do with the stitches once the shortrowing is done.

That's not fine.

Does one work back across the shortrows, does one then bind them off, does one put them on stitch holders? She simply tells you to put the remaining 52 stitches on a holder for the neck but never says a word about what to do with the shoulder stitches. I opted to put them on holders for a 3-needle bind-off.

And when I began the sleeve, I realized that she does not give you the correct stitch count IF you want to center the cabled design. Not hard for an experienced knitter to figure out, but what about the rest of the great unwashed, eh? I didn't look at the other sizes, but I'm guessing that if you cast on the number of stitches she tells you, the design will not be centered and you'll be left with a weird number of stitches at the end of the row.

Caveat knitter, that's all I'm saying.

There were other little omissions in the Ran directions. You most absolutely need to add selvedge stitches. I believe it's the designer's (or editor's) responsibility to TELL people they need to do that and to incorporate said selvedge stitches into the directions. Yes, you do need to hold people's hands when writing directions. Especially in this country, where everyone seems to have to be spoon-fed.

That's my rant about Lavold. The interesting thing about her designs is that they're basically a one-trick pony deal. I love the cabling and it's certainly challenging, but we're still talking 4-stitch cabling nonetheless.

Stethoscope Covers
Kathy sent along this thriller from Knit U. Glad she did because I haven't read any of the lists this week and God knows I wouldn't want to miss a gem like this. Now they're talking about knitting stethoscope covers.

I envision myself in a hospital bed feeling like shit, when smiling Miss Nancy Nurse Knitter comes bouncing into my room, perky and doing her Nursey Happy Dance, and swinging a fucking stethoscope with a knitted pink Dazzleaire cover.

Now, that'd have to kill me. Death by Dazzleaire.

A fitting end to the KC, don't you think?

Stay warm, stay dry, stay rare and handy. I'm going to go upstairs and knit. It's the only thing to do when there's 10 inches of snow.