There is a new video game out there called Nanny Mania.
“Nanny Mania puts you in the heart of a household with 4 children, 2 parents and a whole heap of trouble. Juggle domestic duties as you try to keep the house in order. Fold, cook and clean your way to becoming the perfect nanny!”
Oh look. It’s my life – in video game format.
I played it. And you know what? It really is my life.
In all its drab, monotonous, oh-goodness-are-we-doing-laundry-again glory.
And by ‘glory’, I mean ‘wretchedness’.
Is there anything as depressing as realizing that your life makes for a very dull video game? Seriously.
However, I did figure out my Ultimate Sweater Machine yesterday. Now, if that had been part of the game, there might have been more excitement! Laundry, cup of coffee, make the beds, figure out Ultimate Sweater Machine, answer emails, drink coffee…
I’ve owned this thing for eight years now, and never done anything more than move it from one closet to another. But yesterday, I finally sat down and sweat it out and made a baby blanket.
Once I figured out how the machine works (which I’ve decided is completely not the same as knowing how to work the machine), it took me about 40 minutes to “knit” a 20x20” preemie blanket. Add two hours to crochet a border around it and bang!
Done.
Except that my crochet has not improved even a little bit and I’m going to be putting this particular blankie into the “playthings” category and the girls can use it to put stuffed animals ‘nite-nite’. I can’t even give this away, that’s how bad my crochet-work is. **sigh** Oh well. We all have our talents. Some of us more than others.
But don’t worry. I’m not about to become a machine knitter. While it is exciting to whump out that much fabric that fast, I’m more of a “process” knitter – I love the feel of individual stitches as they across my needles, I like the feeling of individual personal skill and frankly the fact that it slows me down a bit.
However, the “leftover” balls of yarn have been breeding like rabbits around here. I was forced to realize just how many of them I had when I was moving my stash around recently, and that my plans to “someday” make a bunch of squares to join together into an afghan (or two) (or ten) had better move toward the top of my To Do list.
Of course, making a bunch of squares to then sew together to make a blanket-thing is, to me, about as exciting as scrubbing the bathroom grout.
Enter the Ultimate Sweater Machine. Now that I know how it works, I think I can take all eleventy-billion tiny balls of miscellaneous yarns and produce however many squares to whip together into afghans before I have time to realize how mind-numbingly dull a task it really is. Go ahead. Ask me what I’m doing this weekend…why, I’m going to be removing about eleventy-billion balls of leftover baby acrylic and/or wool from my stash! And adding about eleventy-billion squares I intend to sew together into blankets!
And I will do it.
Someday.
Although I think I’m going to knuckle down and do a knitted-on border on them. Because my crochet?
Lumpy moose piss.
Through a straw.
Sucks that bad.
**sigh**
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4 comments:
I am entirely certain you have already thought of this, but... don't knit squares on your machine. Knit strips where you change the color every 20? 40? however many rows you want, and make the strips as long as you want it to be. When you have 5 or 7 strips, you sew them together along the edges and Bam! You got a blanket. Much less sewing!
Do knitting groups collect squares for charity? A crochet group I belong to collects squares to make "comfortgans" for charities or members of the group going through tough times.
Whoever is spearheading the particular effort asks for squares and they will coordinate stitching them together and getting them to the recipient.
I like to use my random ends for stuff like this and it's mindless crocheting on road trips and waiting on doctors and such.
I haven't used a knitting machine so forgive me if I am being dense here - but couldn't you change yarns every other row so you have one big striped blanket rather than lots of little squares?
I recently destashed a big bag of oddments - I gave it to a lady who was (hand)knitting a blanket this way. She tied knots at the ends of the rows where the yarns joined and machine sewed a fleece (fabric) strip around the edge (like bias binding) to finish it. Personally, all that garter stitch would have driven me nuts, but it was eyecatching when finished. And no handsewing or crochet!
Nobody's crochet is that bad... I watched a woman today crochet crap stitches with crap yarn, and it still looked good...
And that nanny video game? precisely why I don't clean house...better wrinkled shirts than wrinkled psyche.. (today's code: txajoxjx)
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