The day I thaught my collegaues to knit

The day was today... the turnout was nice, even some of the men came. It was fun,... after the initial struggle with the cast on, they got the hang of the knit stitch pretty fast. There were some girls who had learned how to knit but they didn't knit for ages found out that if they try it comes back pretty fast. So without further ado, here are a couple of pictures...Oh my cakes did well too (doing the disappearing act :-).

My boss concentrating hard...He said it would take some practice for knitting being meditative:

Interestingly the boys did very well:

Haircut

Just an other picture for the sake of my friend, Timea, who didn't see my new haircut in real life... Actually I rather like my hair now. In the last two decade I had my hair from very short one to long one down to my waist... As with the others this took a bit getting used to, but it generates nice comments and it is also easy to care for...

Economics

The current situation found it's way to my knitting... the exchange rate went crazy, which partly means P. is happy as a cat that ate the canary, his pension worth more (hopefully he will pay those bills he kept putting aside as I just found out :@(...), but I just cannot order yarn from abroad. It was expensive to begin with, adding to it the shipping made it even more so, but now I just cannot pay so much for yarn... So as much as I love the good stuff I have to make my stash work for a while I guess, or figure something out with the yarn that is available here. Thankfully the selection is getting slightly better with more yarn that has higher percentage of wool for example.
BTW... I have to teach my colleagues to knit. We have these events about once a month where one of us shows something of his/her interest. There was a "presentation" about India, a yoga class, they went to Nordic walking (all before I started there). I was telling my boss rather jokingly "well, I was thinking about this and I could take you all to fly... or I could teach you to knit..." to which he reacted surprisingly with "hmmm... you know what? that is a really cool idea!" and didn't left me alone until I organized it. It will be on next Tuesday. And some of the men will come too. Since everyone replied with "please bring me needles and yarn" I went to a second hand shop where I knew they also sold yarn. Of course I rarely buy there as these yarns are never enough for even a pair of socks, but now I collected some odds and ends for the "class" with the thought what we wouldn't use now I could take to Chris's school for craft classes, and I found a few small skeins of very fine, very soft gray yarn. It is even finer than regular lace weight. Of course I bought that all, and along with the other yarn for teaching I paid less than I would have for a ball of Noro...

Dahlia

I would go crazy without knitting. All those who say that knitting has health benefits are right...so are those who say knitting is like meditation. Even if I do something at the same time like watching TV...

Sometimes there are results too. My Dahlia got finished, blocked, and an I cord knitted for the tie. The pictures were shot at the California Coffee company, at the weekly meeting of the BICC, which is always great fun. At the moment there are seven of us. From six different nations. Seven different way of knitting.
Here is my Dahlia... Oh, and my new haircut. I almost forgot to mention it.

(I hope you noticed the matching socks! LOL)

The details. Dahlia by Mary Weaver, pattern can be found at Knitty-com.

I used ten balls of Debbie Bliss cotton-angora yarn bought from Ebay. Addi circular needles 3.25 mm at the bodice, 3.75 mm at the "skirt".

Modifications: I added a few rows of ribbing (mainly to prevent rolling) before the picot edging at the neckline. Did the skirt somewhat longer and instead of the sewn cast off I cast off loosely, making a picot at the end of the cables and adding and extra cast-off stitch at the purl part between them.

Also I got this far with the orangey bamboo sock I started again. The colors of the yarn are way too busy, so for the fourth try I just did ribs.

Ps.: Nicole, thanks for the pics :-)

Waves above my head

It feels like that at work. I have no idea if I do my job OK, or not. I keep getting tasks thrown at me with absolute disregard of the fact that I DID TOLD THEM that I have no idea how to use power point and excel.. Yes I will do it, but I need to ask for help, and it tales me MUCH MUCH longer... do you think anybody cares? I feel like putting out a table "No new tasks please -until I finish some of what I have now"...
But I do learn a lot. PowerPoint and excel stuff too. There was some knitting done to, hopefully I can post pictures in a couple of days.