It has been much too long since I came here and blogged my wee heart out. Life has been somewhat upside down in the course of the last month. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much time to knit, much less a lot of time to blog. I have finished a couple of socks (though they're not sibling socks, not even cousins), but not much else. One is a classic, stockinette sock that I did in my Fawkes yarn in order to see the colorway. The other is a monkey sock from knitty.com. I think I'm going to rip back the Fawkes sock and redo it in the socktopia.com Fawkes pattern, which I sadly discovered after my stockinette version was already done. I also cast on several things, including a baby hat for my brother's darling tiny, a sweater, and a simple but gorgeous scarf. I don't have knitting ADD though. I can only work on one project at a time, knitting on it until completion. Funny, I multitask so well in other ways, but I just can't manage to do it with my knitting.
Anyway, now that I've settled into my new job (though I keep getting new projects piled onto my head on a weekly basis... long term projects with no foreseeable end date), I hope that I can return to the knitting and blogging world. Autumn is my favorite season for a number of reasons, so hopefully the glee that it inspires in me will encourage me to capture it all in blog form.
Until then.
8.26.2007
7.17.2007
Seventh: On the Eve of Something Big
All of us have degrees of affection for things. I classify them into likes, addictions, and (most severely) obsessions. I like diet Pepsi. It may be nearing an addiction, but without it I am fine. I am almost certainly addicted to knitting, evidenced by the fact that if I don't have an opportunity to knit during the day, I find myself tense, sometimes grouchy, and often unable to sleep. I tend to think that obsessions are unhealthy and rare, and I like to think that there is nothing with which I am obsessed. I recently realized that this may not be entirely true.
This is another instance in which if you breathe you likely know about all of the Harry Potter madness going on. I am a huge Harry Potter fan, and only recently realized that my adoration may be nearing obsession level. The big clue for me was when I started buying, you guessed it, Harry Potter hand-dyed yarn colorways. In fact, now that I look back on it, I distinctly recall that my first trip to the yarn shop to buy something with a particular project in mind, I was buying maroon and old gold yarn to make a Gryffindor scarf. I couldn't find a pattern at the time for the "trapped bars" style Harry Potter scarf I wanted, so I took a stab at it myself. It came out reasonably well, but it could certainly be better if I did it today. Now, of course, I have sock yarn (and I wasn't even really a sock knitter!) colored in imitation of Fawkes the phoenix (one sock done!), Professor Sprout, The Half Blood Prince, Salazar Slytherin, and Lord Voldemort. I'm tempted to start dying yarns myself in order to avoid having to buy anymore custom yarn. I am hesitant, though. There's something magical about watching the yarn change colors and not knowing what is coming next.
I am distracted and this entry is most certainly an unfinished work, but for now, I post. Jesse Dear is sick and I'm going to go and check on him. Perhaps I'll return when I have a bit of focus.
This is another instance in which if you breathe you likely know about all of the Harry Potter madness going on. I am a huge Harry Potter fan, and only recently realized that my adoration may be nearing obsession level. The big clue for me was when I started buying, you guessed it, Harry Potter hand-dyed yarn colorways. In fact, now that I look back on it, I distinctly recall that my first trip to the yarn shop to buy something with a particular project in mind, I was buying maroon and old gold yarn to make a Gryffindor scarf. I couldn't find a pattern at the time for the "trapped bars" style Harry Potter scarf I wanted, so I took a stab at it myself. It came out reasonably well, but it could certainly be better if I did it today. Now, of course, I have sock yarn (and I wasn't even really a sock knitter!) colored in imitation of Fawkes the phoenix (one sock done!), Professor Sprout, The Half Blood Prince, Salazar Slytherin, and Lord Voldemort. I'm tempted to start dying yarns myself in order to avoid having to buy anymore custom yarn. I am hesitant, though. There's something magical about watching the yarn change colors and not knowing what is coming next.
I am distracted and this entry is most certainly an unfinished work, but for now, I post. Jesse Dear is sick and I'm going to go and check on him. Perhaps I'll return when I have a bit of focus.
7.03.2007
Sixth: Lucky Ducks
Ever so seldom in a knitter's life, a thing of beauty occurs.
You wake up, totter to your computer (for some, this might not be the first step after waking up, but let's all remember that I'm 23; I was raised in the age of computer dependency. If I could have a microchip drip into my arm it might make life a little less twitchy when I'm away from my laptop), and power it up to check your email, you know, just in case someone wrote to you in between the hours of 2:00 and 8:00 AM. You see that you have, as you sometimes do, an email newsletter from your local yarn shop. This could be a missive like any other, but it's not. You can feel it.
Something emanates off of this email. There's a ethereal glow around the from line. Your skin tingles as your mouse's pointer moves to open it. You just know, deep within your knitter's soul, that this email is special. Maybe they've finally gotten the color of Cascade Pastaza that you ordered. Maybe they've received a shipment of rare bone needles, and you are one of the lucky few they've decided to tell before they hit the shelves (though why would they do that? it's not as though you rush to the shop immediately each payday and consider whatever you spent to be a standard, government-withheld "knitter's tax"). Maybe, if you're lucky, they're having one of those delicious tax-free weekends.
Maybe it's something better, but you don't dare get too hopeful.
You open the email, and it's far better than you could have imagined. Your favorite local yarn store, the one that always looks like little pixies have come in to clean and organize and decorate (which must be the case because everyone who works there is always happily knitting in cozy chairs or lovingly fondling the yarn; they're never doing REAL work), is having a sale. An incredible sale. You will get to draw little duckies out of a "duckpond" and they'll be marked with savings. You'll save a minimum of 10% on your entire purchase, and one lucky duck has 100% savings. You could get all your yarn for free. You knew this email was special, but you had no idea just how special.
You keep reading, and it gets better. There will be grab bags. Little, mysterious bags that will contain, this heavenly messenger tells you, a minimum of two times the purchase price worth of goodies. Your heart races with excitement. You're nearly drooling at the thought of grab bags, the little pouches of joy that you first met at the Hello Kitty store in the mall as a child. Back then a $1.00 bag that contained two pencils and a pack of gum was thrilling. But now! Now, the goodies will be knitterly, and presumably worth far more than a dollar!
You wake up, totter to your computer (for some, this might not be the first step after waking up, but let's all remember that I'm 23; I was raised in the age of computer dependency. If I could have a microchip drip into my arm it might make life a little less twitchy when I'm away from my laptop), and power it up to check your email, you know, just in case someone wrote to you in between the hours of 2:00 and 8:00 AM. You see that you have, as you sometimes do, an email newsletter from your local yarn shop. This could be a missive like any other, but it's not. You can feel it.
Something emanates off of this email. There's a ethereal glow around the from line. Your skin tingles as your mouse's pointer moves to open it. You just know, deep within your knitter's soul, that this email is special. Maybe they've finally gotten the color of Cascade Pastaza that you ordered. Maybe they've received a shipment of rare bone needles, and you are one of the lucky few they've decided to tell before they hit the shelves (though why would they do that? it's not as though you rush to the shop immediately each payday and consider whatever you spent to be a standard, government-withheld "knitter's tax"). Maybe, if you're lucky, they're having one of those delicious tax-free weekends.
Maybe it's something better, but you don't dare get too hopeful.
You open the email, and it's far better than you could have imagined. Your favorite local yarn store, the one that always looks like little pixies have come in to clean and organize and decorate (which must be the case because everyone who works there is always happily knitting in cozy chairs or lovingly fondling the yarn; they're never doing REAL work), is having a sale. An incredible sale. You will get to draw little duckies out of a "duckpond" and they'll be marked with savings. You'll save a minimum of 10% on your entire purchase, and one lucky duck has 100% savings. You could get all your yarn for free. You knew this email was special, but you had no idea just how special.
You keep reading, and it gets better. There will be grab bags. Little, mysterious bags that will contain, this heavenly messenger tells you, a minimum of two times the purchase price worth of goodies. Your heart races with excitement. You're nearly drooling at the thought of grab bags, the little pouches of joy that you first met at the Hello Kitty store in the mall as a child. Back then a $1.00 bag that contained two pencils and a pack of gum was thrilling. But now! Now, the goodies will be knitterly, and presumably worth far more than a dollar!
I hope that I'm not the only lucky knitter out there who has known this exhilaration. If I am, well, then all of you should move to Atlanta and start shopping at Knitch. I got more amazing yarn than I can even catalogue there this weekend. I just have to figure out what to make with all of it. And those grab bags? They were even better than I expected (8 balls of Debbie Bliss silk alpaca for $20.00 kind of good).
6.30.2007
Fifth: Detractors and Enablers
All of us have detractors in our knitting realms. They come in many forms, and all of us have known at least one.
There’s the significant other who warns you that your yarn spending may be getting out of hand if you want to be able to afford to have a child and send it to college one day (doesn’t he know that good wool is a sound investment?). Maybe you have the sibling who suggests that you could chip in for Dad’s birthday present if you didn’t insist on knitting him new dress socks every year (well, yeah, but he enjoys wearing the socks far more than he likes mowing the lawn with the new mower). If you started knitting at a young age, you likely had the college roommate who suggested that you keep less yarn in the dorm room because it was getting a little crowded (if you look at it as part of the décor, it doesn’t feel so cramped). It’s generally easy to write these folks off as unenlightened. The brave among us even try to win them over through explaining how fun knitting is or introducing them to the comfort of hand-knitted socks. Even still, the majority of knitting nay-sayers remain so despite our best efforts. In my head I call these folks knitmares.
There’s the significant other who warns you that your yarn spending may be getting out of hand if you want to be able to afford to have a child and send it to college one day (doesn’t he know that good wool is a sound investment?). Maybe you have the sibling who suggests that you could chip in for Dad’s birthday present if you didn’t insist on knitting him new dress socks every year (well, yeah, but he enjoys wearing the socks far more than he likes mowing the lawn with the new mower). If you started knitting at a young age, you likely had the college roommate who suggested that you keep less yarn in the dorm room because it was getting a little crowded (if you look at it as part of the décor, it doesn’t feel so cramped). It’s generally easy to write these folks off as unenlightened. The brave among us even try to win them over through explaining how fun knitting is or introducing them to the comfort of hand-knitted socks. Even still, the majority of knitting nay-sayers remain so despite our best efforts. In my head I call these folks knitmares.
The lucky knitters have a few knitting enablers to balance the negative juju that the knitmares ooze in our general direction. The luckiest of us have more enablers than detractors, resulting in a life full of Merry Christmases with rightfully appreciated knitted gifts and happy trips to the yarn shop. I am blessed. As I’ve mentioned before, my mother is a serious enabler. She drove all over the city with me the last time I visited her in an attempt to help me find the area’s only yarn shop before it closed. She looks at and coos over everything I make. She even took up knitting briefly when I first got into it. Her encouragement keeps me knitting on the days when I think that I can’t barrel through another inch of knit two, purl two ribbing.
Another fantastic enabler, I’ve found is Jesse Dear (yes, another person who will likely come to be referred to by initials. Did anyone else have a flashback to “John Dear” from Lady & the Tramp when I named him? Was that just me?). Jesse is an enabler to the second power. Not only is his mother a knitter (my first real knitting friend, I might add) who accompanies me to the yarn store and shops, oohs, and ahs as much as I do, but he also seems to appreciate the things I knit (and if he doesn't, he wisely pretends that he does). Much of the time we spend together, when we aren't harassing one another and I'm not kicking his rear at MarioKart, is spent on nice, peaceful pursuits. There's a lot of idle-ish time spent simply enjoying one another's company. We watch tv, talk, lay around on the couch with a movie on, and read together. The great thing about these little ways in which we pass the time is that they grant me lots of guilt-free knitting opportunities. He reads; I knit. We watch tv; I knit. He creates awesome websites on his computer; I knit. The point is, we're both people who often choose to stay in together rather than go out. We're not partying types (What's that Courtney? You're a 23 year old knitter, but you're not a party girl? I'd never have guessed!). Occasionally, though, we both break character and go out for the evening. We have a fondness for art gallery openings, Wednesday night trivia at the local Mellow Mushroom, and snooty beer at the Belgian pub on the square.
Friday night, we decided to go a little crazy and head out for a bite to eat and a movie (hush, you! for us, it was a little crazy). We started at Alon's, a local bakery that now has the distinct honor of being one of only three places in the city where I will order and actually enjoy a sandwich (I don't like sandwiches, generally. Don't ask me why; I don't know.). After a light meal we drove to Atlantic Station to see Ratatouille. I have long been a fan of Disney/Pixar films, but Ratatouille was phenomenal. It was so fun and funny that JD and I were both laughing out loud the entire time. It was a huge improvement over our last movie choice, Spiderman 3, which was so bad that it left both of us unsure of whether it was worth it to ever go see another movie again. In fact, the movie was so good that I didn't knit a single stitch the entire time.
And you know what? I had so much fun that I didn't mind not knitting for an entire evening one bit. Just don't expect me to do it again any time soon.
6.28.2007
Fourth: The Balance of Things
SD is a technologically fascinated boy. Since long before I ever met him, he has been something of a gadget hound. He's the type of person who will not only watch the Steve Jobs release of a new Apple product 10 times, but if you fail to watch it with him, he'll essentially recite it to you later. He buys new, state of the art cell phones before they're released in the US. He's the first person to own whatever the gadget of the moment may be. In fact, he often owns it long before anyone knows it's the gadget of the moment.
This, of course, is in stark contrast to my fascinations. I am a self-professed nature baby. I take inexplicable pleasure in sitting outside for hours on end and watching all the creatures go by. Waking up before the sunrise is worthwhile to me, if only because it affords me an opportunity to sit outside and listen to the world before the city wakes up. By virtue of my earth-loving nature, I often feel somewhat out-of-place in the concrete and steel of Atlanta, but I manage. The point is, if it isn't soft or fluffy or natural or born and growing from the earth, it doesn't really interest me for too long, no matter how many bells and whistles it may have.
This difference between SD and me has never been more evident than it is right now. If you ... well, if you breathe then you're likely aware that the iPhone premieres here in the US tomorrow. In fact, when I just IM'd SD to ask him when the release date was he said, "Tomorrow, 6pm... Say your prayers. It might be the end of the world; the second coming. I might go to confession just in case." The thing is, he's not kidding. He's been worshipping at the altar of this gadget since it was little more than a rumor. I was forced to endure the announcement that Steve Jobs made about it at least four times. I'm relatively sure that the fact that it's debuting tomorrow while SD is overseas and unable to get his hands on it will cause him to spontaneously combust, if only a little. Thankfully he will be nowhere near my stash when it happens.
Two nights ago, while I was being put through torture-by-listing-of-iPhone-features for some undisclosed crime against humanity, I gave SD a little taste of his own medicine. He was telling me the nine ways that the iPhone can toast your bread (or something like that. I've really started to tune it out), and I linked him to some sale yarn that I found. For each mention of the iPhone, he gets another yarn link. I'm excited about this little form of reinforcement. Either he'll learn to stop trying to make me excited about gadgets, or if he doesn't, he'll at least start learning what yarn I like. We haven't gone head to head yet, but I'm pretty sure I have more wool than the iPhone has functions. I suppose we'll soon see, though if you ask me, the most exciting thing about the phone is that it will give SD something to do other than juggling the yarn balls when I drag him into the shop with me.
I learned my lesson about lecturing him on how expensive his little gadget-habit is, though. When I told him that the iPhone seemed an awfully expensive purchase considering that he just bought a new laptop, he pointed out that I very likely have more than $600 worth of yarn in my stash. I am loathe to tell him that I know he's right, and that's just one basket.
This, of course, is in stark contrast to my fascinations. I am a self-professed nature baby. I take inexplicable pleasure in sitting outside for hours on end and watching all the creatures go by. Waking up before the sunrise is worthwhile to me, if only because it affords me an opportunity to sit outside and listen to the world before the city wakes up. By virtue of my earth-loving nature, I often feel somewhat out-of-place in the concrete and steel of Atlanta, but I manage. The point is, if it isn't soft or fluffy or natural or born and growing from the earth, it doesn't really interest me for too long, no matter how many bells and whistles it may have.
This difference between SD and me has never been more evident than it is right now. If you ... well, if you breathe then you're likely aware that the iPhone premieres here in the US tomorrow. In fact, when I just IM'd SD to ask him when the release date was he said, "Tomorrow, 6pm... Say your prayers. It might be the end of the world; the second coming. I might go to confession just in case." The thing is, he's not kidding. He's been worshipping at the altar of this gadget since it was little more than a rumor. I was forced to endure the announcement that Steve Jobs made about it at least four times. I'm relatively sure that the fact that it's debuting tomorrow while SD is overseas and unable to get his hands on it will cause him to spontaneously combust, if only a little. Thankfully he will be nowhere near my stash when it happens.
Two nights ago, while I was being put through torture-by-listing-of-iPhone-features for some undisclosed crime against humanity, I gave SD a little taste of his own medicine. He was telling me the nine ways that the iPhone can toast your bread (or something like that. I've really started to tune it out), and I linked him to some sale yarn that I found. For each mention of the iPhone, he gets another yarn link. I'm excited about this little form of reinforcement. Either he'll learn to stop trying to make me excited about gadgets, or if he doesn't, he'll at least start learning what yarn I like. We haven't gone head to head yet, but I'm pretty sure I have more wool than the iPhone has functions. I suppose we'll soon see, though if you ask me, the most exciting thing about the phone is that it will give SD something to do other than juggling the yarn balls when I drag him into the shop with me.
I learned my lesson about lecturing him on how expensive his little gadget-habit is, though. When I told him that the iPhone seemed an awfully expensive purchase considering that he just bought a new laptop, he pointed out that I very likely have more than $600 worth of yarn in my stash. I am loathe to tell him that I know he's right, and that's just one basket.
6.20.2007
Third: The Mysterious Black Hole Project
I like to think of myself as a kind, capable knitter. One who teaches patiently without judging and learns graciously and with humility. I have always accepted that there are things (ok, ok, many things) that I don’t know.
You know, I am learning that there is definitely some kind of fiber-karma floating around out there. If you think hateful and disparaging things about the knitting perils of others, you will soon come to have a project so frustrating that it forces you to think hateful and disparaging thoughts about your own knitting, all the while questioning your skill and sanity.
Case in point, I recently bought Stefanie Japel’s Fitted Knits, and I fell in love instantly with the young, stylish knits that I found in it. I wanted to start with something light that was easy and quick enough that I could start and finish it with time to wear it most of the summer and fall. I chose the Perfect Periwinkle Turtleneck Tube Vest, though I chose to knit it in a lovely, lightweight, soft brown wool that has been making eyes at me from within my stash for months now. I began the sweater several weeks ago and started to knit on it, finding the project to be an absolute dream. Simple, classic, and best of all seamless construction that seemed to just fly off of my needles. By the end of day two I had made it all the way down the neck, divided for the arm shaping, rejoined, and knit several inches of beautiful, bust-hugging bodice. I estimated that at the rate I was going, I'd have a gorgeous sweater in no more than a week, four or five days at best. I considered the fact that I finished an enormous lace baby blanket in just a couple of months (very shortly after I started knitting, actually! how is it that I managed to do that?) to be proof that I had the stamina to pull it off with no trouble.
Then, I entered... the Twilight Zone (you have to say it in Rod Serling's voice in your head - it sounds great that way).
I'm pretty sure that in the knitting twilight zone there are little goblins that crawl onto your needles and release one stitch for each one you complete. There is no other explanation for the fact that over the course of 3 days during which all of my free time went to working on my sweater, I made less than 2 inches worth of progress. Where were my stitches going?
I'm sure it seems like this is the point in my entry where I tell you that I'd made some error and I was knitting twice as many stitches as I needed in each row or something and that the Black Hole Project doesn't exist, but I didn't make any sort of mistake. There's no explanation. No matter how much or how fast I knit, I just couldn't make progress. The BHP is all too real.
So, to fight my way out of the black hole, I did what any other sane knitter would do. I knit a sock.
My first sock.
More on that later.
6.19.2007
Second
Okay, I'm a nerd, but I can't contain my excitement that Stephanie Pearl-McPhee herself, the woman whose blog and knitting books I worship and reread until I can nearly quote them, was the first person to ever comment on my humble little knitting blog.
Seriously. I had to put my glee here because there is no one who I can call and tell who will appreciate it. And, you know, that's why I started this thing.
Seriously. I had to put my glee here because there is no one who I can call and tell who will appreciate it. And, you know, that's why I started this thing.
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