More Fiber in My Diet

A Very Knitteriffic Post

It seems that my life moves like a pendulum between sewing and knitting. Until recently, I've been slavishly devoted to fabric - I have quilts, clothes, and stuffed animals hanging around the house in various stages of completion. On a good day, I'd escape the fabric store with only a small bag of remnants; on a bad day, I'd stagger away with five yards of velvet and a mountain of wool suiting, and only the vaguest idea of what I wanted to do with it all.

In the past few weeks, though, I've been returning to my love of all things yarn-y and pointy stick-y (and occasionally hook-y). Maybe it's because it's been too hot to sew, or because I never seem to have time to pull my machine out and get anything done before Adam wakes up. Maybe it's because my stash has gotten so out of hand that it's trying to eat the laundry room (pictures of that soon!). Maybe it's just because knitting is so much more portable, and I seem to be forever on the move. I mean, I'm not a hand-sewer; I can't very well fire up my machine and piece a few blocks when I'm stuck behind a train on my way to work.

It's not just that I'm doing more knitting, though; I'm immersing myself in the world of knitting blogs. Despite the fact that I've had this blog for a few years now, I only really got in touch with the larger blog culture while I was on bedrest. I read pregnancy blogs insatiably (it wasn't as though I could do much else). I still keep up with a few of those, to see how their kids are faring, but I'm not as interested in pregnancy blogging now that I'm not immersed in it. For a while I was filling the void with webcomics, but so many of those have scaled back their publishing schedule lately, and it wasn't really meeting my need to spy on other people's lives.

Enter knitting blogs. There are five million new ones every single day, and yet they don't deplete the interweb's natural resources, nor do they cause global warming. It's a beautiful thing. I love seeing other people's works in progress, and getting inspired by their projects.

I read way too many to list them all here, but I'll probably link to most of them at some point. Such is the nature of the internet. In the meantime, here are a couple of my current must-reads.

The thing about knitting bloggers is, they're joiners. There are all these knitalongs out there, and every knitting blogger has about twenty buttons on her* sidebar to show which ones she's involved in. After clicking on a few thousand of those, it started to sound like a pretty good idea. After all, I work much better when I've got someone else with me, to keep me honest. It's the guilt and shame theory of productivity - it's not that I'm all that motivated, I just dread the scorn of my peers when I show up empty-handed. Maybe having a few hundred friends out there in the ether would help me actually finish a knitting project.

So here I am, all signed up and ready to go. Today I started the Monthly Dishcloth Knitalong (knit cotton dish scrubbies - I love small projects!), as well as Knit the Classics (okay, I haven't actually gotten the book yet, but I have a whole month, right? This is going to be college all over again come August 30th). I'm still working on that button thing.

Oh, but that's not all! I also went to a knit in at the Blue Star Cafe last night. It was great - I met Jessica, who kindly pointed me toward some kippah patterns, and a bunch of other women whose names escape me. I'm pretty sure there was a Molly and a Debbie (or was it Deb?). Jen? A couple of other people too. In any case, they were all lovely, and I made good progress on my tea cozy, and as soon as I can convince Matt to watch Adam all evening**, I want to go again.

I think I'll have to steal Matt's camera tonight so I can post pictures of yarn. Maybe that will shame me into finishing some of my never-ending projects.

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*Yes, I'm aware that men can (and do) knit. The majority of knitting bloggers are still women.

** Matt actually watches Adam every Thursday, and I'm on duty every Wednesday. It's just that if I want another baby-free evening, I have to take another night on to make up for it, and before you know it we're out of week and can't remember each other's names.