"You haven't got a prayer" shawl

I haven't checked into blog land for awhile. I'd like to say it was because something fabulous was going on, but really life just keeps getting in the way.

I've been riding my trainer faithfully, hoping that I will see some improvement when the days get long enough to ride outside again. But holy stationary bike Batman, it is BORING! Still haven't figured out how to knit and bike; but believe me I've tried. And no, I don't have a picture of it. I will tell you though that biking with sharp pointy needles is not one of my best ideas.

The bike dude and I went to Stanford to watch the time trials for the Tour duh Californee. I was shocked to see so many people. It was cow bell hell though. Who ever came up with the idea of ringing cowbells at a race? There is nothing more jarring than the sound of cowbells. It was fun being a part of the crowd and seeing all those bikes, but watching individual bikes whiz past every minute or so was a little, well, boring. Probably what would have made it better was if I could have brought my knitting, but then I would had to have suffered THE LOOK from the bike dude. Still not sure how I'm going to bring up the subject of knitting while at Sea Otter, but considering we sat for HOURS watching downhill races last year, I'm thinking just a wee bit of glove knitting is not out of the question. It's not like I'm going to knit instead of watch, I'm just going to knit during the in between times.

And speaking of which, I started a prayer shawl the other day. I saw the pattern on the lion yarn website and I was fascinated by the idea of knitting something so purposeful. The idea is to dedicate the shawl and have it be a blessing for someone. The website talked about saying a prayer before hand. You know, really making it something special.

Anyway, I loved this idea, so I bought the yarn (gorgeous soft blue green yarn that looks like the waves of the pacific ocean), and the needles and cast on. And I'm knitting away in a very easy stitch; knit three, purl three. It's called the trinity stitch. So appropriate for a prayer shawl. And so simple, all you have to do is count to three. Knit, knit, knit, purl, purl, purl, over and over again. So easy. And everything is going great; knit three, purl three, until I get to the end of the tenth row and I have one stitch left over. What the??? All I had to do is count to three, and I ended up with one stitch left over! So I patiently undid the yarn back to where I missed a stitch and started again. Knit three, purl three, all the way to the end of the row where I ended up AGAIN with an extra stitch. So I undid it one more time; a little less patiently this time, and in the process of starting over AGAIN the stitches slipped off my needle and I lost a few. Argh! Except I didn't say argh. I said something else.

I cursed while knitting the prayer shawl.

Damn it.

Oh well, it'll make a nice shawl anyway.