We're All Mad Here

It's all Kate's fault.

See, I've been knitting all this plain vanilla stockinette in the round. I couldn't seem to break out of the funk to start anything interesting. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing like a good stockinette-in-the-round project for meetings, sitting in front of the television, and just generally never having to purl, but it's not exactly interesting, just a way to keep my hands busy.

What I needed, I decided, was a goal. Something ridiculous to aspire to.

I considered the TKGA Master Knitting program. Intriguing, but a little spendy. Plus, there's that whole judgement and condemnation aspect, which is why I never participate in team sports or group activities if I can help it.

No, what I needed was something bigger. Something grander. Something so insane I wouldn't dare fail.

Thank you Kate. Thank you Sharon Miller. A rather shocking number of British pounds later (that exchange rate is always an unpleasant surprise), and I am the proud owner of the Wedding Ring Shawl pattern.

Have I ever in my life knitted lace, you ask? Why, no. No I have not.

But, hey, Kate makes it sound pretty easy...

I thought I ought to start a little smaller, so I cast on for Sivia Harding's Diamond Fantasy Shawl. It took me forever to choose a yarn for this. I finally settled on Misti Alpaca in a dusty rose-ish colorway, but I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with it. Maybe if I ever make it past row 26 and get to see more of the pattern, I'll like it better.

Huh. This lace business sure is slow. Look for the Wedding Ring Shawl when I'm eighty years old and nearly blind.

K2tog, YO, Count stitches, Why is there an extra?, Throw knitting across room in disgust

Blog? What Blog?

Oy vey.

I have two gigantic posts half-written: one fun, one not-so-fun. I also have a coldgraciously shared by Adam, and a rather large amount of baby-duty, since Matt is having to work some late nights. Combine with a few intractable messes at work, and it's all too much; it makes my head spin.

I have not forgotten about you, dear readers. Postiness will resume at some point.

Yarn-Related Miscellany

Right. Time to make good on a few of the posts I've been promising. It's difficult, you see. First I have to steal Matt's camera, then I take photos until one of them comes up looking like it should, then I spend twenty minutes trying to figure out how to delete the rest, until I finally give up and figure Matt will deal with it. At some point, Matt pulls the photos off the camera onto his computer, and he saves mine off onto a flash drive. At this point, of course, I've forgotten all about the photos I don't want, so I get the whole lot of them to pull down onto my computer and sort through. Delete, delete, delete. Eventually I get them all sorted and renamed, and then I have to write up a post to house them, and --

You see what I do for you people? Who loves ya, baby?

So, then. Posty goodness:

Thing 1: The Birthday Gnomes
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Spend Lots of Money

I'd been thinking that I ought to buy myself something expensive and frivilous for my birthday. I had pretty much decided on a digital camera, but the researching and deciding phase seemed daunting, and I never did quite get around to it. (You might have actually guessed that, based on my photo woes.)

As fate would have it, however, something even better came my way. Fate's insrument? Craig's List.

Not only is it a place to find lousy roommates and dodgy job postings, people sell things on Craig's list! Wonderful things. Things like this:


Yup, it's a spinning wheel. More importantly, it's my spinning wheel. Do I know how to use it? Not a clue. That's not the important thing. The important thing is that Sleeping Beauty? Complete moron. There's nothing sharp anywhere on this thing. How she could possibly manage to prick her finger, I have no idea. Clearly, she was not the brightest. Although, given that her father's solution to evil curses was to deprive the country's old women of their livelihood, I suppose she didn't have a lot to work with, genetically speaking.


The wheel came with lots of wool roving, too. There are five more bags of the brown color, so I suppose once I figure out how this whole thing works, I'll have entertainment for a very long time.


I immediately ran out an bought this. I don't even really like sparkly yarns, but I fell in love. Not my fault: yarn store amnesia.


Thing 2: Yarn Stash
Being a Cautionary Tale Regarding the Dangers of Making Plans But Having No Time to Implement Them
I've moved my yarn stash to new housing, but it's threatening to break free again. I suppose I really should invest in some sort of moth repellant - it's pretty much an all-you-can-eat buffet right now. Photos soon, I promise. Some of this yarn actually even has a purpose, really!

Thing 3: Finished, Mostly Finished, and Totally Unfinished Objects
The blue scarf that haunts my days and fills my dreaming nights. It's done in seed stitch with a nice variegated blue/white/grey wool and fun fur. No, I have no idea what posessed me. I can only offer as an excuse that I was a very inexperienced knitter when I started it. It's too wide and too short; I think I'll have to seam it up into a tube. It needs the ends woven in, but between the fun fur and the seed stich, I can't even find where they ought to go. I hate it. Hate, hate, hate. If you know, or are, a twelve-year-old girl, please contact me, I have a gift for you.

Baby hats. Always good to have around, just in case Adam starts wearing hats and simultaneously shrinks, like in Alice in Wonderland or something. This was my mindless pattern for a while; very good for meetings. It's adapted from the Umbilical Cord Hat from Stich and Bitch.


My first dishcloth for the monthly KAL.


Finally! The Kureyon Cozy from Knitty. I've only been working on this thing since I was put on bedrest - what, 13 months? Thank G-d I didn't go for the large version. Of course, after I took this photo, I realized I had gotten a little too excited about actually finishing this thing, and bound off the I-cords without making the bobble and loop to secure them.I'll test the length - if they're too short to tie together, I can improvise with a needle and thread. I need to figure out something to block this on.

Umm... anybody have a teapot?

You're On Notice!

My Stash, Dude

The fabric was getting out of hand. It needed to be tamed.
Containment devices were selected and rigorously tested:

Items which had been been spilling out of the closet were moved under the crib:

And the bed:

And into the laundry room:

Somehow, the closet doesn't seem much emptier:


Next up: yarn porn!

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.

---

*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.

Internet Poll!

On the way home from work this past Friday, I ended up behind a Chevy's van - you know, that Mexican chain? I didn't even know we had them here in Seattle. Anyway, it had the big Chevy's ad splashed all over the back, saying "Voted best Mexican restaurant in an internet poll."

Um, right. An internet poll. What, like Am I Hot or Not?

So, in the spirit of Chevy's, I proudly present Zeigeist Poll #2!

Who has better hair?
(a) Sarah
(b) A ficus