Like most I started with the basic tools, circular needles and a skein of yarn.  Being the age of the internet though I didn’t have to wait and find someone to teach me, I just asked YouTube to show me. Searching on “how to knit a scarf” turned up a nice series of videos by knitpicks.  The initial video assumed you knew all the pieces of knitting and just put them together.  But searching though their video list turned up tutorials on all of the pieces.

Unfortunately even with this assistance I wasn’t doing to well.  My turns were a disaster, I was picking up weird stitches, and dropping others.  The cord from the needle was constantly in my way and I was struggling with tension.  But I pressed on, knowing this was something new, and that it would take practice.  I worked on it a little every night, hoping to get better, but even better was eluding me.  Thankfully I had hope, my very own Knitti-wan Kenobi.  I managed to get up with her, and watched as she gave me a clean row.  She watched me a bit and gave me pointers and ideas.

With Tanya’s help I turned the corner on my edges, and my overall work.  I was much more pleased with what I was doing, but all was not perfect yet.  At this point I was 66 stitches wide, which is exactly where I need to be for my eventual project, but my needles were too short.  The loops would fall down to the cord in between, and while that wasn’t a problem getting them back off was.  Seems that the beginners needles didn’t have the best joint and the tension in my stitches would bind on the joint.  As I said before though the loop was constantly in my way, so new tools were needed.

So off to the store I go.  My intention was just to get a set of straight needles similar to what I had.  Straight needles seemed to come in two sizes, regular (9″) and large (14″?).  I figured regular would suit me fine, but they were out of my size.  Just right next to them were bamboo needles.  I had read that they would help to avoid splitting the threads of the yarn, which I had a problem with.  The price wasn’t that different and I had a good coupon anyway.  I got home, finished the row and started on the new needles.  Bamboo has it’s quirks as well, but it was working for me.  The only thing is that they are probably still just a tad short.  I’ll probably get the large needles before I move on to the final project.

If you ask Lisa if she can knit, her answer is always the same.  “I know how to knit, I don’t know how to stop”, hence she doesn’t knit.  Reasonable I guess.  She learned a long time ago and never picked up the knack, so back to the internet.  I watched the video and said some words I probably should have “That looks theoretically easy”.  My tension would get in the way again.  Pulling one loop over the other, seemed to be a struggle, but I eventually worked my way down the line.

So now I have a finished piece.  It definitely started out ugly, but by the time I decided to finish it I had worked out the kinks.  I have a lot of work ahead of me, and the final project is a beast.  Based on how fast I was doing rows here, the final project will take me close to 122 hours … 5 days of knitting.  What’s crazier is I might do more than one…

I’ve moved on to a second project, have to work on changing colors without screwing things up.  I’ll post again with the results of that.

Full Gallery

It’s funny I was going to edit my signature before I posted this, but it’s very appropriate to what I was going to post:

So some statistics:

My nook was not delayed, matter of fact it shipped Jan 27th.
I did not finish that book.  For multiple reasons, I wanted to play with my Nook, it was dragging anyway, and it wasn’t available in eBook.
Neither I nor my wife have purchased or read a DTB since we got our Nooks.
I have 19 items in my B&N eLibrary, 6 of which were purchased, 8 of which I’ve read.
I’ve purchased 2 books from other sources, both of which I’ve read.
I’ve read 6 other books that I obtained from other free sources.
I’ve not spent more that $7.99 on any one eBook Purchase

Now for some predictions:

I will not purchase or read another DTB for leisure reading.  I qualify the leisure part because as I’ve said elsewhere the nook is not suited towards textbook or  technical reading where flipping back and forth between sections/chapters are necessary.  To the people who would say, but what is XYZ author isn’t available in eBook?  There’s already too many authors that I can’t keep up with as it is, and plenty more new ones that are available in eBook that I haven’t heard of yet.

I will not purchase an eBook for more than $9.99.  Why $9.99 when I haven’t spent more than $7.99 to date.  I do eventually want to finish “Toll the Hounds” (It is book 8 of a series after all) and I just recently realized that it’s has been made available for eBook purchase.  This is a hefty tome in Paperback and cost $9.99 when I bought it that way, so I’m willing to spend the same amount on the eBook.  I’m also willing to let the price rise for inflation, but I’m hoping that the prices will come more in line with “reality” before I have to worry about that.

I’ll continue to love my Nook (and whatever comes after it) to read much faster then I ever have reading dead trees.  I’ll slowly replace my 2000+ collection with eBooks as I want to reread favorites, and maybe I’ll actually be able to let some books go.

So here’s at least one person that can commit to not buying at the inflated pricing.  I have quite a few books on my wish list now that are at these inflated prices.  But I have just as many that aren’t.  Guess which ones will be bought first.

To put some things in perspective.  Sine Lisa started Weight Watchers she lost around 90 pounds, since I started I lost 20 pounds.  She’s managed to keep herself close to her lost weight, I’ve gained it all back.  I mostly blame my gain on my lack of physical activity in the past 6-8 months.  Since I stopped going to Tae Kwon Do in the summer I haven’t replaced that with any other physical activity.  With the cold weather we’ve done much less walking.  The path has been fairly obvious, but I haven’t done much about it.  I said I’d start something after the cruise.  Lisa on the other hand wanted to do something sooner.

There’s a fitness center in the “new” shopping center right next door.  It has the convenience of being close, and being open 24 hours.  It’s not much more than a big room with treadmills, stationary bikes, and weight equipment, but it’s more than the equipment in the house, and it’s easy to ignore the equipment in your house.  I find that when you setup a schedule to go do something, it’s usually a lot easier to stick to it once it’s routine.  With both of us going, it’ll be easier for each of us to keep the other on the routine as well.

Our bodies aren’t the only thing we’re trying to get fit.  Our finances, while not a disaster have too much money going out against debt and not just bills.  I’ve tried getting a handle on the credit cards before, and while none of them are maxed out anymore they all carry balances a high percentage of their limit.

When we agreed to let our daughter move back in for a time we all agreed to a rent amount.  While we certainly  didn’t need that money, it will help to offset increased utilities etc.  The thing Lisa and I agreed to do with the money was put it toward the credit cards.  So part of what I did Tuesday night was plan out all the payments for serveral months.  Credit card number one should be paid off in March.  Credit card number two in May.

It’s amazing what a little planning can do for you.  I’ve tried this method of paying off credit cards before, but I didn’t do enough planning, so while I eliminated one or two cards from the list I didn’t have a good road map for the future.  Even this time until I started planning out all the payments it was a vague sense of sometime in the future.

I’ve been somewhat displeased with my site as of late, so I decided to do an overhaul.  WordPress let’s you integrate everything in with it, so I went that route being happy with their software.  I’m not overly thrilled with my theme right now.  But one step at a time.

We rounded the year out quite well with movies.  The first movie of the year was on New Years day, and the last was December 30th.

• 01-01 – The Curious case of Benjamin Button
• 01-11 – Yes Man
• 01-24 – Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
• 01-31 – Taken
• 02-14 – Push
• 03-06 – Watchmen (IMAX)
• 03-28 – Monsters V. Aliens (3D)
• 03-31 – Knowing
• 04-18 – Fast & Furious
• 05-03 – X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• 05-09 – Star Trek (IMAX)
• 05-20 – Star Trek
• 05-23 – Terminator: Salvation
• 05-30 – Angels & Demons
• 06-03 – Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
• 06-13 – Taking of Pelham 123
• 06-20 – Up (3D)
• 06-28 – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (IMAX)
• 07-03 – Public Enemies
• 07-04 – Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
• 08-01 – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (IMAX)
• 08-16 – District 9
• 08-29 – Inglourious Basterds
• 09-05 – Star Trek (IMAX)
• 09-06 – Gamer
• 09-12 – 9
• 09-27 – Surrogates
• 10-10 – Zombieland
• 10-18 – Fame
• 10-31 – Cirque Du Freak: The Vampires Assistant
• 11-13 – 2012
• 11-20 – Law Abiding Citizen
• 12-23 – Avatar (IMAX)
• 12-25 – Sherlock Holmes
• 12-30 – Avatar (IMAX)

…..

Meh, I’ve been sitting on this post for a month.  Always the way it seems.  The movies of 2010 are already rolling in, we’ve already seen 3.  I might talk about things in more detail later.