Enchanting Juno

No smiling please.

The invoices are gathering dust in a pile on top of which I have placed my new keyboard. 

I'm restless and not working, and I might as well admit it and do something that is purposeful, if not useful.  This is a key thing I'm still learning after nearly 10 years as the boss  - work has an ebb and flow thats about productivity and balance rather than hours in the day with your butt in the seat.  I waste a lot of time not accomplishing while denying my procrastination in such a way that I don't just go do something else enjoyable or useful. Its an strange internally-enforced passivity with a strong note of conventional thinking behind it.

This is on my mind a lot these days.  Allocation of time.

I'm beginning to see someone new and he got me talking about fiber the other day, a thing I have given some time to in the past.  Afterwards he said he'd been looking for a way into that conversation for ages, both because he is interested (He has Opinions about goats; namely, that they are Good) and because I am.  (It was oddly shocking to feel the absolute truth of that statement.  You know when someone's really interested in you, of course, but there's knowing and then there's feeling it like a shock in your ankle bones. In the ankle bones of your psyche.  Impact.  Real.)  What followed was a very amusing conversation revolving around his definition of gauge (diameter of wire) and my definition of gauge (stitches and rows per inch). And the economics of the cashmere industry.  And commercial vs. handmade sweater weights. 

Describing it - knitting, spinning, the tactile pleasures, the outlines of the art and technology of it - to someone with no prior frame of reference for it has me thinking about the fiber arts though.  So I like wool, right, this reminded me I have lots to say about it, but truly I must admit, I've barely been near it in months.  Lots of reasons. 
Why HAVE I let them lie fallow for so long? What are those reasons?

No spinning for more than a year really - I've had an on and off shoulder problem since December of 2008, and that didn't help.  I skipped the last SOAR because of money and worries.  I only went to Rhinebeck last year, rather than Rhinebeck and Maryland and Cummington and maybe New Hampshire and bought...a project bag I think. I didn't visit Toronto last year either.  Or buy any fiber and VERY little yarn (Oh Colourmart, I cannot resist you).
I've been reading about sewing, though not in any kind of action taking way. I've been a bit adrift.

I've knit the same yarn into a 8 inches of top down raglan THREE times between Thanksgiving and Easter, before realizing that I was not listening to the message I was being sent and switching to a knit-in-pieces design.  I have made a sleeve so far.  In 4 months. It's very nice.

So I still LIKE fiber, that's clear, my house is still full of it, as well as a strange spreading contagion of piles of fabric for the clothing I do not yet know how to make (I'm afeared of the serger, I am).  I made a passing and limp remark about getting rid of some of it recently, one that felt like a gesture to conventional thinking and, really, bullshit.  

It's been a frightening and challenging 2 years, hasn't it?  And that's what it is, the real reason.  I practice yoga and go to the gym not least because they help me not freak out, help me be in the moment rather than frantically trying to control outcomes that are out of my hands or just panicking.  But making things, learning things for pleasure, creating, writing all feel like the most profligate waste of resources.  Felt like.  Sit and knit, in selfish quiet, when I could be Planning What Comes Next?  Go on a date, enjoy myself and extend emotional energy to another, when I could be worrying pointlessly? This is Not Allowed.

I think its slowly dawning on me that denying myself pleasure and the refuge of things I love and am good at are increasing my sense of paralysis, decreasing my ability to shape my ideas for the future. These things are not a cookie I can reward myself with when I have Solved Everything.  They're part of the fuel that makes me run well.  It's hard to let go of the stern prohibition against enjoyment and to understand the difference between procrastination and experiencing creativity and creation as a life force.

I'm pulling it apart a little now:  as I said I'm involved with someone and it is, oddly, freeing more energy for creative thinking instead of sucking it all away, I'm reading more and I spun for the first time a week or so ago and the next day I felt amazingly good, lively and peaceful.  

I have these ideas and I need to make them into a thing and all this time I've been not doing anything that wasn't Making The Thing, and yet, not being able to quite Make the Thing because of fear, and punishing myself by taking away the things that make the fear less and the mind more clear.  When I say it like that it's a bit ...well I'm going to have to go with dumb. 

Book Tour!

Adrienne Martini has just published her second book, Sweater Quest and was kind enough to ask me to be part of her virtual book tour. 

It seems to me that the book isn't a really a Sweater Quest - your motivations for knitting are something you seem quite at peace with - but it is possibly a quest for understanding – Alice Starmore in particular, your community in general, self-knowledge as well, maybe.  

I hadn't viewed the idea of the "quest" that way, as a "quest for understanding." The title initially came about because the original title I wanted was deemed legally actionable and so we had to come up with something else. And, no, I can't tell you what the first title was, at least not in a public forum. Ask me in person and I'll whisper it to you under penalty of a closet full of Red Heart yarn.

The quest was really about trying to get to the crux of why knitters knit. There are so many other ways to spend time. Very, very few people knit because they don't have access to places that sell clothes. The craft itself is slow - both in terms of mastery and production. So why do we do it? My hope was that the narrative could fill in some of those gaps.  

Why do people golf? Or collect dolls?  Or model trains? Knitting to me makes more innate sense than golf, for example, because it has the maker's spirit in it; I think human beings have an innate need to make things - one that is impoverished in 21st century life. Unless you like to cook. And even then it not really something that leaves you with a thing you can hang on the wall or from your shoulders.  We like to line our dens?  

I think the reason knitting makes more innate sense to you and I than golf or dolls or trains do is that we are knitters. My husband, a golfer, doesn't get the appeal of knitting. He's a collector of experiences, of time spent playing, rather than of tangible things. His job, however, does involve the making of things - so that might be where the analogy breaks down.    I still don't know why people collect dolls. I find them creepy and useless. But to each his or her own.   

I'm not sure the desire to knit springs from needing to make things. How many times have you sat down with the end goal of making a scarf rather than the urge to simply put your hands through the knitting motions just to have done so? And why do we knit rather than sew or crochet? Both of those will get you to a finished product much faster than knitting will.  

I used to collect dolls, ha!  But I know why people find them creepy. There was a creative aspect to it, but it was mostly a grief thing for me - occupying a very precise space between my father's death and the day we invaded Afghanistan.  I think for me FIBER is a collection of experiences (particularly communal ones) but knitting is more end resultish.  If I just want to feel up the wool, I'd spin or knit with handspun, which is far more tactile-y satisfying. I like swatching if I like knitting with the yarn - I'm having a terrible time right now getting through a felted tweed swatch, it's breaking my heart that I hate to knit with it. I love textiles and clothing and always have, but a good part of it for me is ending up with something useful and beautiful.  

Fiber as a collection of experiences works for me. I have a tendency to buy souvenir yarn. I know I'm not alone. :)  

I loved the bit about Om Yoga and Cindy - one of my yoga teachers trained there and there was such resonance in what she said about learning the form and surrendering to it first, before it becomes a part of your practice. That's creativity right there - mastering form so that you can transform it later. Be transformed by it. Did you ever make up your mind if what you were doing was art or craft, or if it really WAS a Starmore once it had been meddled with?  

I still haven't figured if it was art or craft or a Starmore. I lean toward craft, frankly, since I didn't put much of me into it and stayed fairly close to her original specs. I'm not sure it's a Starmore, tho, since I didn't use her yarn. I could easily be talked out of either position, however.  

The thing that struck me when you talk about Alice Starmore is that I have never heard one person say that she has a right to protect her name as it related to her creativity and livelihood. She may have gone too far or been irrational, I don't really have a perspective on those knitting days, it was before my time on the kniternet. But she is a compelling figure - both for her exceptional skill with color and design and for her sheer obstinacy. I think I want to ask you if you think this is because it's such a female community and she was female but playing by other rules?  

As for Alice S. and her need to protect her name - I don't know that many folks argued that she didn't have a right to it in certain circumstances. She (and her name) did get taken advantage of, in my opinion, by at least one business partner who saw what he had and tried to cut her out. But, again, my opinion, the whole protection idea got a little out of control and alienated a lot of knitters who were on her side, which doesn't seem like a great idea when you're running a business. It also all gets tied up in the growth of blogs and eBay. The boundaries were pretty fuzzy during the frontier days and there were land grabs.     Still, I love what she has come to represent in my mind, which is all I have to go on. She stuck to her guns, in a way that a lot of other women would not have. She has designed some amazing sweaters that, yes, exploded what we thought about Fair Isle rather than copying what had come before. And the Hebridean yarn is beyond compare. We should thank her for it alone, if nothing else.  

I find it fascinating that you say you didn't put much of yourself into it - do you mean just in terms of design and color input, or emotionally?
Maybe the fact that your position on whether it meets the criteria to be a starmore isn't fixed means that's not the right question to ask? How do you feel about the FO now that some time has passed?  Do you LIKE it?

I didn't put much of myself into the sweater in terms of design and color. My goal was to follow where ever Alice went. Emotionally, there is a lot of me in the sweater, I think. It was a solace and source of irritation by turns. Mostly, tho, I was simply amused by watching the design unfold.    It's interesting that you should ask about how I feel about the FO now that time has passed. I don't feel compelled to keep it or display it or wear it. And on that last one - I can't wear it as it stands now without losing 40 pounds and shrinking 4 inches, both of which seem unlikely. Or, if I were more sensible about it, doing the math and reknitting it, which is also unlikely because other designers keep coming up with other items that I want to make. I'm am proud of having knitted it and having written about having knitted it but don't need the sweater itself to remind me of the journey.   Does that make sense?  

Happy decorative gourd season, motherfuckers*

Thanksgiving packing:

Camera

Ginger Felted Tweed in mid swatch

Charcoal merino/cashmere for top down raglan in progress**

Red cashmere for Shawl That Jazz.  Ditto pattern. 

Gray Old Maiden Aunt lace 2 ply Wing of the Moth*** in progress.  Ditto pattern.

Chinese lace pullover pattern and Polworth yarn to cast on

Knitting from the Top

Sweater Design in Plain English

Vivian**** and Kelmscott***** patterns (I just like to be with them)

Computer (to look at yarns for Vivian and Kelmscott)

Tiniest hairdryer in all the land, assorted toiletries

Birthday present for nephew

Wine for dinner

The Russian Debutante's Handbook

(My knitting mojo is back with a vengence. After 18 months or something.  Hi there!)

Am I forgetting anything?

*I blame Danielle (Update: Apparently am quoting McSweeny's without knowing it - go and read.)

** Hourglassy, but top down (Rav link)  You should have seen me working out how to cast on for the turned neck hem first.  Talk about springs coming out.....

*** Three years it took me to find the right yarn for this. THREE years.

****Ysolda Teague is some kind of genius.  That is all.

***** I am obsessed with this pretty pretty thing. 

By the power of Graystoke! Knitting!

I have been very, very worried about something.  I have been working on the same sleeve for months, about three stitches a week.  I hate it. 
I have this scarfy thing I started months ago too.  About 1/3 done.  I hate it too.

Since my shoulder went kaflooey (and yes, yes, yes, I will  have assorted medical persons look at it.  I swear.  Big knot in my trap, and as it has eased the soreness has worked its way up my neck and triggerd this arm thing.  No worries.) I have slowed down to nothing though I have been spinning, 10 minutes at a time.

It's been a slow 12 months for knitting - had a lot on my mind - and I have been worred that the stash was going to become objects d'art around the house only.  Worried I didn't like it any more.
Had to make myself pick it up, make myself take a stitch.  But feeling like I had to finish SOMETHING before I started anything new.  Locked into a little spiral of stupid.

As I mentioned I've been in a bit of a mood for the last little while and this weekend I hit the wall of cranky with the speeding Ferarri of self pity and wailed, I wanna knit cashmere!  My arms hurts!  I hate fat needles!  Woe!

And a little voice said.  You have cashmere.  DK weight cashmere.  Lots of it.

And you know what? I do.

I made a little swatch. 

I LIKED it.

And tonight I cast on.  My arm IS sore, so I can't knit long.  But the 4mm needles are way easier than the 5.5 and 6.5 ones I've been arguing with for months.  I really don't like knitting on anything bigger than the 4mms (4.5 maybe) with or without my little spasm.  I prefer the garment I get at the end too, for comfort and wearability.  It's taken me a long time to accept my fate as a fine gauge knitter.  I may still resist sometimes, for the sake of exceptionally beautiful yarns and handspun, but it is clear to me now. 

I even found myself picking it up without thinking and working another row.  You know how LONG its been since that happened?

(Yarn is DK 70/30 geelong merino/cashmere from the Colourmart.  It's verra nice.)

Pride & Prejudice is still amazing too.   This day is ending better than it began.

the yarn we make OWNS the yarn we buy

Also I want to make sweet sweet love to the Verizon network specialist. 

My Internet went bye-bye Sunday night and unusually, it was not a problem with the Mac Time Capsule thingy, which is a clever idea but an imperfect technology and takes a little time off every once in a while, but with the FiOS router which lost it's IP address. Or something.  I was describing this to someone last night and I said iSp which makes me feel retroactively dumb, but there's no way to correct that without looking like a tool, so I shall have to just soldier on.

Tech A got a little forest-for-the-trees about the presence of the secondary Mac router which no-ma'am-we-cannot-provide-support-for, and obviously the failure of the Mac unit to communicate with the Verizon base-station is not our problem.  No matter that I pointed out that a) it had never had a problem in the previous 6 months of my FiOS relationship and b) it was the VERIZON router that was failing to be seen wirelessly, not the Mac router, which was, by the way, disconnected and unplugged and no longer involved IN ANY WAY, please imagine it to be in Tahiti enjoying a pleasant rest, and yet the Verizon router was still not working, let us focus on that please.

He was a Mac hater and once he exhausted the 2 steps on his script had nothing to add except to explain to me that he found the Mac upgrades difficult.  To which I said, I would be sure to take that into account the next time I buy a computer, but it was rather late to do anything about it NOW.  Could we focus on the moment?

Fortunately he recognized the moment I was about to go from Forgive me, can you tell me what comes next now?  to WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CANNOT OFFER ANOTHER SOLUTION YOU MISERABLE SON OF AN ACRYLIC AFGHAN and passed me up the line to Tech 2, a network specialist, who helped me change my encryption, which had mysteriously reset itself and got me back on line in 40 seconds, at which point I professed my love and elevated him to the status of god.

I get antsy when deprived of email.  I am however, trying to spend less time on line.  Someone said something on Facebook the other day that struck a cord:   Am I going to get where I want in life spending 6 hours a day on Ravelry?
Now, I do not spend 6 hours a day on Ravelry, but I have been, if you add it all up, a little more involved with the ether than is strictly useful, or even healthy, for the last little while.  It is so easy to get distracted and read fascinating things and chat with friends and flirt with boys and look at Facebook and scan patterns and order shoes and cruise how-tos on any possible subject until suddenly, it's bedtime and you've been on your ass all evening and how did that happen? 

Life's Rich Pageant includes many things that are outside the magic box and this is good to remember.

In other news:

So, new president last week.  That was cool.  I am keeping the counter in the sidebar for a little while, I like seeing it at zero hour.  And I have added the White House Blog to the sidebar.  Someone asked me why I didn't blog the Inauguration/transition.  Truth is, I didn't have much to say:  It was a good show, I'm a fan, Dick Cheney in a wheelchair was noteworthy but in the end a bit unsatisfying (I would have liked it maybe if the earth had opened and Satan had come to collect his soul personally, but then, I only believe in Satan as a metaphor anyway). The speech was good, I got a bit choked up watching our new president's face assume the office - it was nice to see a political figure who takes that seriously, who has some gravitas.  I enjoyed watching the previous president's face while Obama indicted his entire philosophy of governance.   I was glad that there didn't seem to be anyone with a gun, I was on edge for the worst possible thing all the time.  And for sure, this is a remarkable moment in marking progress in race relations.  But only a moment. 

And nothing's fixed in a moment.  Racism and sexism still haunt this nation, and there is much work to be done to repair the errors of the past and build a nation we can all breathe in.   He's made a start I approve of.  It IS nice not to flinch with shame when the news comes on.   I really liked that that was the tone he took, no more easy solutions. Or non-solutions.

In a very positive way, I say....we'll see. 

Been losing yarn recently - the gorgeous gray Shetland I spun several years ago eludes me - I am trying to lay my hands on it so I can finish the last bag of locks and make a determination as to what I can do with it.  (Also I had a house guest this weekend I wanted to show it to).  No where to be found.

2 skeins, dk-ish to light worsted weight 2 ply, a bit sheepy smelling, answers to the name Freedom?  Seen it?

Also I made a thoroughly awesome and somewhat sparkly skein of fat fluffy yarn at SOAR.  Well I began it at SOAR in Maggie Casey's excellent retreat session, and finished it over Christmas (yay for remembering a new technique for several inert months.  Can't find my notes either).  Can I find it?  No.  I took it to the office for a daylight picture a month ago.  It's not at work any more.  It is in none of the usual places.  SUPER bulky but light and airy.  Natural gray with streaks of blue firestar.  Yarn I made the way it is ON PURPOSE.  And pretty.

 
It WAS going to be a hat.   A really, really good one.  The fiber was from Morro.  Sob.

I'm obsessed with gray yarn right now. 

The only knitting going on is slow progress on an old sweater.  Somehow I have made up my mind I need to finish it before I go on and lord, it bores me.  It's blue.  My favorite blue, mind you. 

Took this months ago when lady bugs were in season.  So it is even a LUCKY blue sweater now.  Not that you could tell by my progress. 

I want gray.  Or cashmere. Or new.  Or all three.  Or two of the three. 

I know, I know, start something.  But the thing I detest most about myself recently is the not finishing a damn rubbishing thing.  So it's a struggle for my soul now, not just a sweater.  Rassenfracking transitional stages.  Fucking evolution of the self.  Dammit.

I spun this weekend, that was cool. 

As the good doctor said to me recently, really, I am great.  I know how it might look from far away, but I am.  There are half written posts littering the place, posts that might even be good and worth reading, posts with books, and racism and growth and steam curled around cooking pots and books and lost skills and respecting history, but me, I have been as settled as the wind for a while and nothing is finished.  I might have mentioned it?

(I know the title makes no sense, I started out intending to write about the spinning.  Everything in the fullness of time, my poppets)

What I'm On About These Days

Sometime while I was off living instead of writing, typepad appears to have changed everything. And my picture is ENORMOUS.    I wonder how I fix that?

This is what I've been knitting. Cari says cowls are the new hoodie and I agree.  Except for I don't wear hoodies much, they don't suit me, but a little not-floppy warmth around the neck is ace.  In this case some sweet, fuzzy single ply merino-cashmere is even more ace.   2 skeins of Karabella Boise Color 62, knit-and-purl rib loosely on Addis, 130 stitches I think.  It's fluffy.  It'll look nice with my suede trench coat.

I do love me some goat.  I've starting making oaths on cashmere goats instead of any more formal gods.  It's good - try it:  By the undercoats of all the cashmere goats in China.  Better than the power of Graystoke, by far.

Since I took Robin Russo's goat fiber workshop at SOAR, I may have to extend that to all goat fiber.  Do you KNOW about Pygora?  I was was on a mission to find some Pygora B at Rhinebeck and I didn't, but I got some super fantastic Pygora A and Pygora/Merino and I was greedy, greedy and didn't share it at all, just grabbed and bought.  Not even sorry neither.

AND I learned to make a fat fluffy yarn from Maggie Casey, who is such a safe person to make mistakes around I find myself learning with a degree of effortlessness that I thought was gone with my 20s.   I also played with silk fibers with Judith McKenzie which just seemed like fun, except I realize now I learned a lot about how to match fiber and spinning technique and Estonian lace with Nancy Bush, who said the most profound thing - It's a SAMPLER, if you don't like your gauge, just change needles and keep going.  I had been going to rip back and start again in a highly controlled and perfectionistic way.  Moving on is a totally new concept.

And then Rhinbeck was a giant cocktail party of all the wonderful people I get to see so infrequently.  Too huge for intimacy except in fleeting moments, gorgeous color in the trees, knitwear out in force, frantic, overwhelming, hectic, with sudden pockets of stillness and serendipity.  Wonderful.  I barely shopped until the very end when there was a Shetland accident, because it isn't about the acquisition, none of it is.  It's about learning and people.

There was a Peruvian textile accident at SOAR too though.  I cannot tell a lie.

I'm suffering from the post-SOAR, post-Rhinebeck eyes-bigger-than-stomach desire to cast on everything I ever dreamed of knitting, of course.  Gonna have to work on the focus thing, as I've been scattered for months and there isn't much point in starting three sweaters if I am only knitting two rounds a night.  I'm scattered still - the next thing I am thinking is that I saw some gorgeous Finnish fingering weight yarn yesterday and more and more I just think I should only knit lighter weight yarns, if I want to actually have clothes I can wear.  But I think I need to work on my zen because if I am going to knit fingering weight sweaters for my 48 inch chest I am really going to need to be in the moment more than I have been able to swing since about January.

Do you guys have trouble with that - not just with knitting, but with life?  How do you stay all the way present for the good things?

Mulligan.

I wrote this email yesterday to a friend, all about my improved mood and non-specific happiness and old friends and circles closing and how self-image defined by the opinions of others was stupid and I was done with it and it left me feeling full of light and goodness and I was a new person, yay.

Then I went to therapy and got run over by a truck.  Before I even sent the email, which now needs revision.

Therapy is like that.  My belief that I am on top of something is chum to that man.   I asked him about it - he thought I was assigning malice to the incident but no.  It is just that I've noticed that when I have a week where something really feels like its fallen into place and I want to talk about that, he always, always, always directs my attention to something that is still in progress.  Maybe something that couldn't be looked at until that piece fell into place.  He's fucking uncanny, he is. 
I'm a little bitter about not getting to dwell on the happy for a bit longer, is all.  But taking the long view that the fact that he is not always as gentle as he used to be is maybe an indicator that I don't need kid gloves they way I used to.  I am stronger.

All I have to say is that anyone who thinks therapy is self-indulgent ego massage has clearly never been.  This stuff is incredibly, ass-kickingly, hard work. 

However, I was wearing a new mascara and I would like to recommend it on two fronts.  It is  a completely non-flaking formula that stayed out of the lines under my eyes all day and when I cried snottily all over myself in therapy it came off neatly onto the tissue without leaving those flattering raccoon smudges all over my face.  Thumbs up.

Actually I have two new mascaras :
Inju Fiberwig - a lengthening mascara.   
And Kevyn Aucoin The Volume Mascara

but they have in common their style - not waterproof, but gel (or possibly magic) based, non-smudging and remove with warm water.  No plastic waterproof mascara thing.  As always, wipe the brush down first and go to town, use a Q-tip for application clean up (or is that just me?).  Then you're good for the day.

(For the record, I was wearing the Kevyn Aucoin.  But the Fiberwig works in much the same fashion and is a fantastic lengthening mascara if that's what you need.)

In the same spirit of getting things right EVENTUALLY:

Original curling mitts.  I followed the pattern without, apparently, using my cognitive processes at all.  Despite the fact that this left a chunk of the gorgeous SuperYak unused.  I adore this yarn, it makes this plush velvety matte surface.

It is, clearly, a bit scant.  My knuckles were cold, a draft wafted up the back of my hand whenever I wore them and the curl of the bind off was both a practical and an aesthetic annoyance.

   

As you can see, when the subject employs fuller use of her native intelligence (two years later), the result is a more pleasing and useful object.  Only 2 feet of yarn were left, an efficiency that adds to the over all satisfaction of the project.

1 skein Karabella SuperYak on 4 mm Susan Bates dpns, Fetching mitts.  Originally knit in Feb 2007, revised in Sept. 2008.  No visible difference between old and new yarn, which is rather nice, and not a pill on them.

I'm wearing them right now.

A generous mistress.

You know what I love about knitting? 

You could be forgiven for thinking not much these days, but really - this blogging thing can create a sense that one must knit ALL the time if one is to be other than a slacker, and I just haven't wanted to for a while.  Even I began to doubt my love.

I am not - forgive me - even reading knitting blogs very much.  The thing about blogging your knitting is that it's SLOW.  The narrative arc develops stitch by stitch by stitch - which is what makes knitting so intrinsically tactile and satisfying and wonderful.  But as a subject for the Internet, you are better off with modest progress pictures and a big reveal and truly, I think Ravelry is better for showcasing the work that way for a useful majority of folks and has sapped some of the vitality away from blogs.   I'm a fan of evolution, this is OK. 

Blogging is still ideal for the emotional narrative of what knitting means in a life - for whatever emotional narrative any passion means in a life. 
Hell, I have an emotional narrative about a bag of roving - it may LOOK like it's sitting in the same chair after 3 months, but there are passions beneath that fluffy surface - that has a 4 year backstory and no known ending yet, but it's connected to things, other people, feelings and friendship and love and hope and disappointment and irony that are just too complex and personal for this forum. 
Not even sorry about that.

The blogs I have been reading are perfume blogs and sewing blogs and arts blogs and political blogs and food blogs.  I started reading blogs after 9/11 - discovered them when I was looking for better news sources and then had this whole world opened to me.  Right now the other stuff - perhaps because the creative arcs tend to be more immediate, perhaps because the world is so urgently with us right now - compels me more.  I've even fallen out of the yarn-savant information gathering cycle: I was in a yarn store last month and the only thing I bought was Knitscene (which was great, except for featuring mostly heavier yarns for faster, on-trend knitting. I understand the choice, but have very strong feelings about the need for dk and finer patterns.  But I AM glad to see Knitscene pick up some of the style slack so regrettably dropped by IK.  Which I would cancel my subscription to if I had more than an issue or two left.).  There was some Felted Tweed made up and it made a gorgeous garment and I wasn't even TEMPTED.  (The Purelife Sheep Breeds stuff is conceptually interesting though - like what it says about market maturity that Rowan is developing this.) (I'm not DEAD.)

But I do love knitting.  Today it is cold and raining and I have no sinus headache for the first time in a month and I am wearing my lone pair of self-made socks and the Dream in Color cardigan I made last winter (I think that is the maximum acceptable handknits:body style ratio) and I am warm.   Last night I finally sewed in a snap and hook and eye to hold the thing in place (almost a year, yeah) and found myself making mental notes about what I would change the next time, which is the unmistakable intellectual stirring of a knitter exiting summer hibernation.  I even began a foolishly simple scarf a week or so ago, to ease myself back into the motions - between books.  Because the other thing I have been doing is reading until my eyes fall out.  And I can't - nor do I want - to do both at once. 

But the thing I LOVE about knitting - back to my original point - is that it is infinite.  Never done if you don't want it to be.  It is as infinite as self knowledge, as infinite as learning itself.  And it waits for you until you are ready to move again.

I coped with my political angst by spending the conventions ripping out the poor unsuccessful Truffle Darling sweater from several years ago (Sidebar if you want details.   But the precis is as follows: heavy yarn + tight gauge + fitted and off the shoulder styling = Flattering Armour.  Unwearable.  Particularly if you drop 30 pounds and the fucker is suddenly a shape you are not, as it more or less stood on its own). 

And last night I found a pair of Fetching mitts that have always been too short.  The pretty picot edge on those has a tendency to roll back and since I followed the pattern without thinking about my hands or needs, I stopped them right at the broadest part of my hand, encouraging flare and giving the rollback maximum scope to irritate me.  I made them out of one skein of Karabella SuperYak (I adore this yarn - content, colors, spin, texture, seductive cushiness, density, everything - if it came in a dk or 4-ply weight I would not be responsible for my actions) and had two little skeinlets left over. 
Gorgeous luxury yarn.  Pattern from wrist to fingers.  Yarn left over!  And yet I left them too short? 
So I unpicked the sewn in end last night, found those two little skeins (in two places no less) and tonight I will please my sense of efficiency by knitting them until the yarn runs out and snugging up the pattern to fit my hand. 

Knitting almost always leaves room for you to get it right someday (felting, after all, is forever).  That's what I love.

Week 1, Day 1

Not as bad as I thought, though I expect that will change.

Day 1

rest 60 seconds between each level

               Goal               Actual

Level 1     10                  10

Level 2     10                  10

Level 3     8                    9

Level 4     6                    6

Level 5     Max (min 7)      20

I will say that I don't go as deep on the arm bends as I should, but I know from the past that that will come once things start to sturdy up.  And I am so going to have trouble with the time between sets.  I'll have to get a timer, as I am more of the school of - OK ready, in a 20-lets-call-it-60 kind of way.

My knitting group reconvened for the first time in months last night.  Not that we did any knitting - it was more stories of every one's huge summers full of change.  Explains why we haven't been knitting so much, or meeting.  Who has time with all that personal evolution, love, change, family and adjustment?  Love and death.  Adventure.  Fighting.  Pirates.  Life.

One of the hard things is knowing when to hold onto a group and when to let go, and this summer I have been worried that it was time to let this one go.  How happy I am that the changing of season means a new beginning rather than an end.  Autumn ought to be spring really.  Always seems to work this way.

And when will I learn that few things ever really end?  Particularly the important ones?

So this knitting stuff. How do you do that anyway?

So I went looking for needles and have now concluded that somewhere in my life there is a cord with a 5.5 Harmony wood on one end and a 6.0 on the other, because I am missing one of each.  What could I have left it in?

What was I knitting before anyway?

Um.

Well, I made those mitts over Christmas - which I thought I had lost in March and found LAST week in the pocket of my winter coat, which makes me very happy because, dudes, I LOVE them (I so couldn't believe they were gone gone because I saw them while I was packing for Arizona and that was after winter was over but then I cleaned the house pretty damn thoroughly and put away all kinds of random shit they might have been hiding under and nothing! and then one day I'm in the shower working up some lather and staring at the wall in a very non-intellectual fashion, and suddenly I go, POCKETS, that's where gloves always go.   Which was non-sequitorious but, although it took me two weeks to remember to look, inspired.  Because they were there.  The end.)

I was going to stage a picture of the discovery, but I'm too lazy to get up.  Particularly since if I enter the kitchen - where the coat closet is - I have to do the dishes.  No deal.

Then I finished that crochet laprobe (Hi J!).  And there was the silk wrap I worked on in the hospital when my mom was rehabilitating.  Which I never showed you because it's too narrow and I can't face the idea of ripping it.

See, pretty but useless.  The weight of it makes it a foot too long and 8 inches narrower than I planned.

White Night Scarf, but wider and in smaller yarn, in 3 skeins of, um.  Silk.  Chunky. Light blue.  Ah, thank you Rav.  Woodstock Wool Company Lux Silk.  990 yards.  Is very long.

Oh, and I made a hat for my trainer.  That was cute.  It was one of those projects that had 3 false starts and then came out great.  Um.  Never showed you that either. 

That's a strand of Silkroad Aran held together with a 3ply handspun that was one strand of brown CVM and 2 plys of Grafton Fibers in green.   Some kind of giant, chunky, on-the-fly modification on Bonne Marie's Shaker Knit hat.

I haven't finished John Adams either. 

Oh! A sweet little orange alpaca scarf for TMW for her birthday.  Same pattern as the blue silk wrap above, but narrow scarf sized.  Which I have no pictures of.  Go bug her if you'd like a gander.  I think it might have been Blue Sky Melange.  Salsa.  And I made a couple of false starts on this cashmere shawl I want to do.  But I hate the yarn color (Note: follow up on that).

That was January, February, March.  Ta Da!  And then, then....uh.

Nothing.

I checked the blog and everything.   And Ravelry.  No wonder I haven't posted shit this year.    I haven't KNIT shit.  And it's not like I've finished any major spinning projects or anything.  A bit of this and that, is all.  I went to SOAR, had my world rocked and then never did much with the fire.

Why didn't anyone tell me?

And what on earth HAVE I been doing?  Other than smelling perfume, which is fun and all but doesn't take up all that much of each day.

Anyone?