Making history

Yesterday afternoon two women from work and I took the afternoon off and went to watch the 82nd Academy Awards on a big screen in the Gold Lounge foyer at Reading Courtenay. You paid $15 for a ticket and got a glass of bubbly and constant canapes throughout the afternoon. It was a lot of fun, I put a flower in my hair, Janet wore her high silver shoes, and Sharon wore a cute yellow scarf to match her cute yellow skirt.

There was a real Oscar statuette there that had been won by one of the Wellington members of The Lord of the Rings production team. His wife was there minding it but we were allowed to pick it up and have photos with it. It was surprisingly heavy!

Here I am, really happy to have won...

And now quite emotional about being recognised by the Academy.

I will definitely go again next year if I can, it was a really nice afternoon. We liked Sarah Jessica Parker's dress and felt that Charlize Theron's was a big mistake.

Then it was Monday night Knitting Circle where another historical event took place. After 6 months, Penny finally finished her first ever knitting project. A cabled scarf.

Here she is weaving the ends in while wearing it.
(Of course the blur is the speed of her hands rather than my poor photography...)

And here is a close-up of the pattern. Very impressive for her first ever scarf and such an awesome colour!

The Baby Knitters Club did not have such a successful evening. I changed to circulars and did my 8 rows casting on 5 stitches at the beginning of each row and somehow ended up with a hole. Anita thinks I did a yarn over instead of a backwards thumb cast-on somewhere along the line. It took me so long to cast on the stitches and knit the 8 rows I couldn't face unpicking the 8 rows and fixing it so I carried on. As Anita pointed out, it's not for any particular baby so it really doesn't matter. It's still annoying though. I want perfection!

The Hole

I'm really going to have to let go of perfection because at this stage it will be a miracle if I ever finish this thing and it has any semblance of the picture on the pattern or a Baby Shrug in general. Especially because when I counted to check I had cast on the right amount at the end of the 8 rows I counted 98, then 88, then 98, then 88 stitches. I went with the 88 because that was the right amount and I didn't want to count again... Overall, it currently looks like a crab and I have no idea how what I'm knitting turns into something you can knit together to make a shrug.

The Crab

Meanwhile, Anita was feeling very bootie confident and marveling at her speed until she cast off and realised she had forgotten to knit rows 9 - 13 which meant her bootie had no sole (and yes, I am appreciating the fact that being a knitter means you get to legitimately say amazing sentences such as 'feeling very bootie confident' and 'her bootie had no sole' and not be talking about Beyonce).

Luckily neither of us are planning on having our own babies anytime soon because we need a lot of practice before we would be able to clothe them in garments that aren't holey or sole-less. However, we shall continue to fight the good fight and potentially conquer these tiny baby creations. Potentially.