Has anybody else notice a correlation between knitting and geekery, knitting and music, or knitting and food?  These three themes seem to run through so many of the knitting blogs and knitting photo sharing I follow.  For instance, I'm about to start a shawl pattern called Evenstar Shawl designed for a Lord of the Rings collection of shawls.  Maybe it’s because these are the things I’m interested in or is it bigger than that?  Just a curiosity.


Some yarn for eye fondling.  The top two yarns are possibly going to be used in a secret project.  Femmebot BTW is my new fav colorway from BMFA.  Bottom pic are some yarns that I'm possibly going to use in designing my own shawl pattern, maybe. 


BMFA - Turquoise and Femmebot




BMFA STR in  (Left to Right) Koi Koi, Flower Power, Femmebot,
and Chapman Springs (x2)

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do it

"I really need to get off my ass and put some of my knitwear designs down on paper and then put the needles to yarn and get them knit."

Note to self on February 23, 2011 lets see if it works.

What do you do?

I ripped.  I frogged.  I actually did it.  I decided that the previous weeks worth of knitting that was hugenormous; was my own fault and I needed to put my big girl pants on and frog it.  Like ripping off a Band-Aid I just had to close my eyes and pull out the needles.  At least with a Band-Aid you can soak it with alcohol and it will not sting so much when removed.  Pulling the needles out stung.  

Let’s discus the Flared v-neck cardigan.  Shall we…

When I cast on the cardi I was unconcerned if it was bigger than the store model.  Actually I was quit okay with the possibility.  Comfy sweater to curl up with, who doesn’t like that?  What I didn’t want was a huge multi-person cuddle sweater.  Saturday I compared my sweater with the store model sweater, faced with the evidence I came to my senses and realized the enormity of my knitting (litterally), I made the decision to plow through and keep on knitting.  She was already 2 inches too long.  I didn’t care, she was going to surround me in comfort and warmth (and style too).  I heard the voice telling me “it’s just not right”, “It is really long and in pieces so what’s going to happen during seeming?”  I again made the decision to squash those negative Nelly thoughts and knit on.  

Today on the other hand I guess I was thinking a little clearer, or less optimistic. While listening to a podcast, the podcaster talked about finally making the decision to frog because the arms of her sweater were going to be the wrong size.  I’ve also succumbed to my inner smarty.  Partly because it dawned on me that I’m knitting with a yarn that contains a substantial amount of cotton.  Yes there is some wool but not enough to counteract the wet cotton growth phenomenon.  It grows and grows and grows.  So, a cardi that is huge now will be hugenormous once wet and blocked.  

Here is where we find out if a lesson is truly learned.  Will I swatch or will I simply drop down a needle size and cast-on again?  

it's back

… with jazz hands.  Not really, but it did come back carrying a novelty(ish) yarn.  

For the past year I have done little to no knitting.  I know.  I know.  I used to dye yarn/fiber and knit (or spin) all the time.  Then I just stopped.  I carried some projects along, but didn’t knit.  I would meet with a few friends and carry my knitting projects with me but didn’t knit, just hung out.  I can’t specifically put my finger on it but I know it’s related to post-partum and quitting smoking.  It just didn’t work for me and I just didn’t have interest in it at all, even the spinning was put away.  I just excessively focused on Nuggy and nothing else.  

Slowly my mind has rallied and I’m feeling more and more normal.  Not the same obviously but normal again.  My friend wisely said that it just took me a while to find my new normal.  I think she is right; it took me a while to find my new normal and then learn to live with that normal.  

That same friend also has been gently poking me to come out to knit night at a LYS, Four Purls.  She would mention it or text me.  I just could never commit to it.  Then one day I felt I was ready.  Ready to go to knit night.  I packed up my everlasting bagstopper WIP that I had started using natural colored cotton (not the noveltyish yarn; I’m getting to that) and headed off to knit night.  I walked around, fondled yarn, and oogled the wonderful selection.  I also knit of course.  And laughed to the point of tears.  I also found that to my surprise I was attracted to the bling yarns and in particular some really soft recycled sari silk yarn.  It was bright jewel tones, soft, and slightly fuzzy.  My idea of a Novelty yarn.  Probably not really novelty yarn, but it is to me.  I didn’t buy it that night but it haunted me.  2 days later I had a Doctor’s appointment a couple of blocks from Four Purls.   It just happened that this Dr. appointment took no time and I had an entire afternoon to spare.  Somehow I happened to go to the LYS and somehow I bought 2 skeins or the silky goodness.  **ahem**

A recycled silk yarn handspun from silk weaving mill waste.  I decided to do a rather thick bulky version of the Wisp.  

That yarn and that scarf could be considered my gateway drug.  I have since bought the yarn for a sweater and 2 hats.  It’s only been 7 days since the first purchase.  7 Days.  I should probably be a little ashamed, but I’m kinda not.  I’ve got 3 more projects that I badly want to knit.  Yep, the knitting mojo is back.  Seriously, I’ve had to place a self-imposed limit on myself.  1 project for the car (traffic lights and trains = many stitches knit), 1 sock to go anywhere, 1 large project, and 1 just for fun.  

Here’s the breakdown: 1 project for the car = the bagstopper.  Its big needles and mindless pattern make for great red light knitting.  1 sock to go anywhere = I’ve been knitting on one pair of socks for over a year.  Shameful.  First sock is done, I’ll be finishing the second soon.  1 large project = Sweater (see below).  1 just for fun = um, I had to fit in the wisp somewhere since I had already started it with the silk wonderfulness.  4 projects at one time.  I can’t cast-on until I finish something.  Of course as most of you know I have several projects that have been chillin’ on the needles among all my WIPs for a long time.  One of which is the Noro blanket.  I’m not taking off the needles, but I’m just counting it either.  I’ll get to it, but cut me some slack; it’s a blanket after all.  

Oh, the sweater.  It’s the Flared Bottom V-neck Cardigan from Cascade Yarns.  The original version was knit using Cascade Venezia which is a great wool/silk blend yarn.  I used it to make a sweater that I will not discuss at this time.  All I’m saying is “felted”.  You can probably guess the rest.  Anyway, I decided to knit this sweater using Cascade Sierra a cotton/wool blend.  Not as much sheen as the Venezia, but soft and will have great drape.  Within 4 days I had 5”, not much as compared to what I used to knit but pretty good considering I can only really knit once Nuggy has gone to sleep.  

To wrap up this post…The knitting/spinning Mojo is back.  Oh, I didn’t even talk about the spinning…next time.  

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daydreamin from a cubicle

Why can’t we survive on only 4 hrs a day sleep? If I only had to sleep for 4 hrs a night I would get lots and lots done. It was a long night with the Nugget last night and the sleep fairy was no where to be found. She can be such a bitchh sometimes. She was probably off sprinkling sleep dust onto some teenage boy who had been up for 32 hrs playing WOW (World of Warcraft) while neglecting all us sleep deprived parents. Is WOW even a cool game to play anymore? Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I was sitting at my desk at work yesterday and while doing a very boring part of my job I started daydreaming about things I would like to be doing. Side Note: Does it really make me a bad employee for daydreaming at work or an honest person for admitting to doing something that we all do on occasion? So, I got to thinking about cooking, knitting, playing, relaxing, etc, the list goes on and on. You ever notice sometimes how weird a train of thought can be? How one thing can lead to another? Well, today I was thinking about “The Next Food Network Star” finale. Congrats to Aarti Sequeira! who had/has her own online cooking show and blog called Aarti Paarti. We (Paul and I) were so happy when she won. I recently found her show and blog and I’ve been catching up with past episode. Anyway, in one of her episodes she mentioned something about a type of frozen dessert called Kulfi from India. I thought she said coffee, so I started thinking about coffee. Now hang on for this train of thought. Here we go. She said Kulfi, I thought she said coffee and thought about hanging out at the coffee shop and visiting with friends. I’m southern and we call it visiting. I then thought about how I used to do a lot of visiting while knitting but the knitting mojo has been lacking recently. Then I contemplated that maybe the reason for the lack of interest in knitting is due to the absurdly hot weather we’ve been having. This made me thankful that I cut my hair short so that I can still be slightly stylish with my hair down instead of in a twist or crappy ponytail. It was so long that I couldn’t even do a stylish ponytail or twist, it was just a “keep this mop out of my face” deally.

Then I started thinking that I could knit a cutesy little beret/slouchy hat type hat which by-the-way Aarti wore super cute one in one of her episodes. This gave me a little spark of interest in knitting, thinking that it would be good for when it does eventfully get cooler. While wondering what type of yarn to knit this conceptual beret out of I started going through my mental index of yarn choices that I have in my craft room. Which led back to an idea I had last week for doing an open house of sorts to get rid of some of my crafting accumulations and get all my crafting stuff into one closet instead of one room. This led me to thinking about what I would like to do with the extra room and thinking about how it would be nice to have a spare bedroom for overnight guest or moving Nugget into a bigger room and making the smaller room into a guest bedroom/playroom. Then I thought about how much fun it would be to have people over more often to hang out with and cook for, so now I’m planning (in my head of course) a really cute guest bedroom. Not that having someone over for dinner would mean they would need a bedroom…weird, right. This led me to think about recipes I would like to try. And so on and so on… this could go on for another hour. The point. Is there a point? I know I had a point when I started. Well, here is what I go out of it. I would like to entertain more. I want to knit a lacy beret. I would like to fix up a guest bedroom. I would like to try making fish tacos (Aarti made them which made me think of another fish taco recipe I saw and how good fish tacos look). Now, this is why I need to survive on only 4 hrs of sleep of day.




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