The tank is complete, and, if I do say so myself, it looks very nice.

I did not quite finish before the end of the game, despite France’s attempt to keep me in the game by taking the World Cup to penalty kicks. But the tank was came off the needles as Italy hoisted the cup aloft.

Many thanks to Yarn Monkey for hosting the cup and encouraging me to take on a project that taught me a couple knew skills (even if I hope never to need to use the provisional cast-on again).

The front:

Tomorrow afternoon, as France and Italy square off to see who can claim domination in the world’s favorite sport for the next four years, I will be swearing softly to myself (or aloud for Rudi and the cats to hear) as I remove 140ish stitches from the lovely yellow yarn they’ve been sitting on for a month and ask them to hop back on my needles to finish off my tank top. I am going to knit two extra rounds (to account for the difference in row guage between my Rowan summer tweed yarn and the yarn the pattern called for) and then bind off in a fancy ruffly way. I’m very excited.

Last night I finished the back right strap. Then I tried the tank on again and remembered that when Rudi and I first measured me to figure out the sizing that we noted that I’d need to make the straps longer because I am low-busted and much of my height can be found between my boobs and my shoulders. So I unbound the front straps and added 2 1/2 inches to one last night and to the other this morning (when I was pleasantly surprised to find Brenda Dayne’s Cast-On downloading into iTunes after a month-long hiatus between series).

Tonight, the final strap!

As the real World Cup revs up toward the final three games (the semi between France and Portugal tomorrow, the consolation match between tomorrow’s loser and Germany on Saturday, and the final domination game between tomorrow’s winner (come on France!) and Italy on Sunday), knitters around the world are loosening up their fingers and clicking their needles together in speed drills for the final stretch.

On the home front, the tank top is going to fit. My first fitting was so discouraging, that I really thought this might all have been in vain. But I just tried it on again and was so delighted that I showed it off to Posey (who looked hopefully at the dangling pieces of yarn), danced a jig, and then awoke Rudi so he could look at me bleary-eyed and smile pleasedly (let’s see if he remembers that on his own or if he has to read this entry to jog his memory).

The front right strap has been bound off and the left front strap just needs a few more inches to go (but we’d reached that dangerous 1 a.m. time when knitters still feel confident but shouldn’t). The back neck and straps will be started tomorrow. And then after I seam the straps, the last thing will be to go back to the bottom and deal with the provisional cast-on. I need to put 140 (or so) stitches back onto the US9 circulars, which will be tricky. If I have enough yarn, I may try to add another row or two to the bottom to even out the spacing between the decorative purl rows and then I will bind off in a ruffly fashion.

With more than a full skein and nearly five complete days remaining in the project, I feel confident that (barring catastrophe) I will finish by the time the final whistle blows to mark the end of the contest.

As some of you may know, I joined the Yarn Monkey’s Knitting World Cup last month and decided to make my first tank top.

While I make no promises that the darn thing will actually fit once I’m done (I may have to rely on the idea that cotton stretches out over time or maybe I’ll have to lose weight — is there such a thing as a knitter’s diet?), I have made good progress. With a week left, I have finished the bottom of the tank and the bodice shaping and am about to move onto the necklines and straps. I also will have to shift the bottom stitches back onto the original needles and bind them off in a fancy, frilly way.

This is the progress at the end of last night. The yellow yarn at the bottom is holding those live stitches in need of binding off, although it is pretty on its own.

For people who love books, Rudi and I tend to leave them on the floor. Normally this is fine, but not when two of your rooms flood.

I bought a hair dryer this morning and have been blow-drying the wettest (and thickest) of the books for an hour or so while listening to podcasts. I think it will work out okay. (Yes, I have heard a rumor that some people use these machines on their heads. I have never been one of those people and gave away the one hair dryer that was ever given to me. But desperate times called for desperate measures and I am now the owner of a book blower.)

One of my knitting books may have bitten the dust, though. It has glossy pages that all seem to have melded together as they dried and my attempts to pry them apart have not been good for the paper. I’m going to try steaming them apart, but if that doesn’t work, we may have the first significant casualty of the floods. (Or it could become an off-roading instruction manual offering the beginnings of patterns but not the ends where the pages have ripped.)

P.S.: For those who are wondering, yes, we had a great time in California. The present woes have shifted those nice memories into the background, but they will rise again into the foreground soon and then I’ll be happy to bore you silly with tales of 70 degree temperatures, books, visiting loved ones, and hitting the beach.

When I was in high school, I liked joining things — French Club, Key Club, Environmental Club, volleyball, softball, basketball, drama performances, creative writing magazine, yearbook…. You get the idea.

I thought that had worn off as I’d gotten older, but in the last week, the joining gene seems to have resurfaced since I have signed up to take part in two new projects:

The Kat with a K Summer Reading Program
Kat thought back to her childhood summers and remembered how much fun those summer reading programs the public library used to offer were. So she decided to create her own summer reading program and invited folks to join her. How could I resist?

For this challenge, I aimed low: only 10 books over the course of the summer. I thought about 15 or even 20, but given I only managed two last month (and since I can’t read and knit at the same time (see below)), I decided to play it safe.

But Kat also offered the chance to have a bonus goal and here I aimed high. As I mentioned here, I want to read Alexis de Tocqueville. So my goal is to read the complete text of Democracy in America — all 769 pages of it.

The Knitting World Cup 2006
Since I did eventually finish my Knitting Olympics projects, I thought I would try my hand at the Yarn Monkey’s World Cup knit-along. Who knows? Maybe I’m more of a summer sport girl. (I also thought I would hand the mousie booties from the Olympics over to their new owner, and Heidi seemed pleased by them.)

So what am I turning my needles to? A summer tank top from the most recent issue of Interweave Knits. I’m adapting it to work with Rowan’s Summer Tweed in Exotic (a turquoise tweed in cotton-silk).

The project has stumbled a bit in the early days as my guage swatch seems to have no bearing on either the pattern or the yarn’s specifications. I gave up on the math and decided to just cast on. Except that the pattern calls for a provisional cast on, which I didn’t know. Rudi went to sleep last night to the sounds of my bemoaning the yarn, the needles, the pattern, and my own inability. To give you some clue of how miserable I was, it took me about three hours to cast on and to knit three rows. Three hours. Today’s work is still moving slowly, but there does seem to be actual progress. Let’s just hope it’s not for naught and that the silly thing fits.

And let’s keep our fingers crossed that this is all I sign myself up to do for the next few months….