Slogging

It was a beginner's mistake.
I thought, Oh, I will knit lace, and I will use this lovely twilight-colored misty yarn.
(I may have mentioned that I have a thing about saving money on yarn. I feel there's a particular creative alchemy in creating something wonderful from something that didn't cost very much. When I buy really expensive yarn, I get nervous. As a result I regularly buy whole bags of yarn at yarn sales and from Knitpicks. That, I can justify. So it's really no big deal that I have four large boxes of yarn in the top of the closet. I just think of the money I saved on it.)

Anyway, I bought this.



Then I picked out a beautiful lace pattern and sat down to knit my first lace shawl.

I didn't have any problems; I zoomed along; I kind of enjoyed the process.

BUT.
A big part of my enjoyment of knitting lies in my sensuous delight over what I've already knit. I like to spread it out, touch it, feel it, look at it as I go. Call it my own take on process knitting.
Now, I know lace does not really reveal itself until it's been blocked.
But even a mother has trouble loving THIS.



The problem, obviously, is that in my inexperience I chose the wrong yarn. I think variegated lace is fine, but when it goes from white to dark blue like this you can't see the pattern at all. And while I rather like the speckly effect the variegation makes on the sides, the pooling in the middle, and the stripes around the border, are just plain ugly.

See?



Now, I know exactly how to fix this. When this lovely shawl is done, before blocking it is going to have a little bath in some blue dye. (I may even graduate from Kool-Aid to real, grown-up dye.) That should take care of the contrast problem and help the pattern to pop - right now you can hardly see it at all! - while retaining enough variegation to be interesting. (And if I hate that, I'll just overdye the whole thing black.)

The problem is that I have to finish it before I can do that. But I'm only about 1/3 through, and I tell you, it is hard to stay motivated with a project you don't enjoy looking at. A finicky, high-maintenance project you don't enjoy looking at.

Now, however, comes the slog-along - a chance to come clean and, I hope, find some moral support as I continue to slog toward the finish. I know it's going to be worth it when it's blue. And done.

Add "picky speller" to that list

>

Read my VisualDNA™     Get your own VisualDNA™

Aww, it's my first cute blog-test-type thingie (is there a better name for these things?). For years I have taken these tests and now I have somewhere to post the results. A real Kodak moment.

But I still prefer "sophisticate" to "sofisticat." (I also say "tomah-to." You got a problem with that?)

Sock it to me

A call to help from serious bloggers - how do you take attractive pictures of your own feet in socks? Mine always come out looking like my legs were by Botero. They're not that bad, honest. (Or maybe I'm just in denial.) Until I learn better sock-photo technique, thank God for the Crop tool.

These are the most recent socks I knit, but with some of the first yarn I bought. It was my very first yarn expedition in New York. I googled "Yarn Store New York" or some such and landed on Alison's blog. Wow, I thought, imagine that, here's a woman who has a whole blog about knitting; how cool. (Reader, I was naive.) Alison had taken a trip to New York and listed all the yarn stores she'd visited, and thus I made my way to Downtown Yarns, which was not at all conveniently located to my residence, but sounded properly hip (into image? me? oh no). My journey was rewarded with some cherry-red alpaca and a pattern that replicated almost identically a sweater I'd loved that burned up in our house fire. (Another story for another day.)

And there, by the cash register, just happened to be some sale yarn that had my name on it. In fact, it literally had my name on it (hm, somehow I knew that my pretext of anonymity on this blog wouldn't last long). So I bought it, thinking a) it would make a nice sweater and b) one big skein would surely be enough for the airy, short-sleeved sweater I would make of it. (See "naive," above.)

Fortunately it sat in the stash so long that I was able to learn what sock yarn was, and, equally importantly, how to make socks, before I picked it up one day in a train riding through the Alps and cast on my toe. (Since I have already confessed being into image, I will also confess that I would have cast on at least an hour earlier had I not had to overcome my reluctance to pull out a knitting book to find the instructions for casting on from the toe up. Somehow when you're sitting on a fast train through the Alps it seems far more sophisticated just to whip out your needles and cast on from memory. There is something rather, well, touristy about rifling awkwardly through the pages of a book - a book in English, no less - to figure out what you're supposed to be doing. But sock-lust finally won out over sophistication.)

Alas, I fear that these socks' beautiful crisp colors have gotten lost, or leeched, in the translation from iPhoto to Internet. Yet pale shadow though they be, I aver that these photos justify my ever-firmer preference for the short-row heel (see how the stripes match up?). As for the self-styled sock photo - just wait til my sock blockers come in for some real blog fodder. Until then, well, at least I can furnish proof that I knit both of them.

Knitting for Knieces and Knephew

My colorful knitting history, continued: here are my second and third sweaters, made for my two nieces.





(These are from patterns at The Yarn Co., which has a whole archive of projects, but which I later started effectively boycotting because I found them a little snotty in the store itself. And I belatedly realized just how expensive the yarns were that their patterns called for. And then through reading blogs I learned that lots of other people felt the same way. But they sure do think up some cute kids' sweaters.)

So then it was announced that my brother and sister-in-law are unexpectedly expecting number 3.
Fortunately I had just been waiting for an excuse to log-cabin.



A work-in-progress. (It needs a border. And perhaps one more round of stripes, first? And, of course, those ends have to be dealt with).

I had visions of creating a beloved baby heirloom like Alison's inspiring blankies.But as I said in a previous post, I fear my log cabin is pretty wonky. Don't ask me why I can turn out sweaters with no major problems, but I can't manage a basic log cabin.

Let's hope that baby boy won't notice that his stripes are wobbly until he's already fallen in love with them.

Back to the Beginning

Now that life is settling back to normal (or maybe I'm just getting used to my husband being in the hospital), I wanted to go back and pick up where I began. My original plan for this blog was to start off with my archived knitting content, but since life threw us a curve ball right after my first entry, I ended up posting an unexplained knitting picture and never went back to explain it.

It's tied up with how I started knitting. For some reason, some time in 2004, I started thinking I wanted to knit. I am not sure what brought this on. I had no idea about knitting blogs; I didn't know knitting was a trend; I didn't have a particular pattern I wanted to knit, or any friends who knit. I had once knit a sweater in high school, advised by my mother: it was white mohair, knit in horizontal garter-stitch stripes; it was hideously unflattering and didn't want to stay on, and I never had the urge to knit again. (The fact that I started with a sweater might have been an indication, though, that there was actually a knitter inside waiting to get out.) But the concrete impetus, I believe, is that I have to listen to a lot of music, and I thought that having something to do with my hands might help focus me better.

Anyway, over Christmas in 2004 my husband and I were visiting my parents in New Mexico and I ventured into one of those big chain craft stores at the mall, since I figured that was where people bought yarn and needles. Needless to say, I ventured right back out again, empty-handed. Mind you, I was innocent of the appeal of the LYS, but I certainly knew that nothing this store was selling was particularly speaking to me.

Lo and behold, when I mentioned my quest to my mother later that day, she said, "I have yarn! I have needles! Take them all - I never use them!" And she pulled me upstairs into the small sewing room off her study, where I never had much occasion to go. There, indeed, was a lot of yarn. (I didn't learn the term "stash" until later, but my mother certainly had one.) It was the stash of someone who had intended to take up knitting again and never quite gotten around to it: bags of yarn discolored by years of sun, lots of bright colors and a good amount of acrylic - but it was yarn. She pressed into my hands a copy of Knitting in Plain English, and I went back downstairs with needles, some baby-blue superwash wool, and this eminently sensible, down-to-earth book. It was New Year's Eve of 2004/5: my stepfather went to bed early, my mother and my husband dozed, and I knit away at a long swatch of blue stockinette (though I didn't know the words "swatch" or "stockinette" yet). Little did I know that with this simple act I was ushering in a year of yarn addiction.

Scroll ahead a few months. By now I was a confirmed Knitter, an avid reader of blogs, a nascent stasher: you know the signs. I had made a sweater for myself and sweaters for my two nieces (of which I will, of course, eventually post pictures) - nobody told me beginners were supposed to start with hats and scarves - and I was starting to realize I could knit anything I wanted. And then I found Larissa's post about starting a pinwheel blanket. And I was hooked. That was the first project I truly obsessed over. I couldn't stop thinking about pinwheels. (The baby didn't hurt, either; we were in the process of an IVF (one of many), and I wanted some of that baby mojo.) I couldn't wait to start. I couldn't even wait to go buy yarn, so I took out the old blue superwash my mother had given me and cast on. (I reasoned that this was a practice pinwheel,which I would give to my stepniece, whose baby was expected later that month, so that I would not jinx our IVF, but I did go out and bought some - totally inappropriate - cotton yarn for another pinwheel that I intended to knit if it turned out I was pregnant.I may have scared the baby away with that cotton, come to think of it.)

Anyway, we didn't get pregnant, but I did finish that pinwheel, and I loved it more and more the more I worked on it. It was definitely my favorite thing I had ever knit. I documented its first moments off the needles.



(This is also a picture of twilight in June at our country house, in the time after our old house burned down, when we were having drinks at the battered patio table from my grandmother's house (since refinished and as good as new), sitting in front of the trailer we'd set up on our property while the new house was being built, and everything was dusk-blue and summer-new.)

I was just worried that it was too small. What I didn't know is that superwash grows. (I only figured out that it was a superwash property when I began reading about other less happy "growing" experiences (I think the Harlot documented one in one of her past books, as well). Anyway, it certainly doesn't matter when a baby blanket goes. And was I ever proud to see my blanket among the others in Larissa's gallery. (Check out the detail.)

I had a hard time sending it off. But the nice thing was that it ended up being a gift from my mother to me to my stepniece and thus to my stepfather's first great-grandson. And my stepniece was so pleased and surprised that I was glad I had followed through on my instinct.

So that's how I really started knitting.

Questions for Sunday

Question: How long do frozen strawberries survive in the freezer?



Answer: quite a long time, if your definition of "survive" involves making them into a smoothie.



For the record, mango sorbet has a much shorter shelf life than frozen strawberries. (The time frame we're talking about is around a year. I blush. The sorbet was beyond blushing. Out it went.)

Question: What is wrong with the corners of the strips on my log cabin blanket?



Oh, it may look all right, bright and colorful, and I'm sure that new baby nephew-to-be will love it when he arrives in May. But just compare it to the precision of THIS.

Clearly I am not grasping something here. My strips are too fat, and wonky. What am I doing wrong?

And the KAL is closed so I can't even send out an SOS for advice.

For the record: I found our good camera. But it still won't take a close-up of the whorls and dimples on my shell. And I fear I have ruined my doily - I think I got off by one stitch a couple of rounds back. I haven't had the time or mental energy to fix it, or to do much of anything else knitting-related, for that matter.

My husband was in the hospital for 12 days. THAT'S 12 FREAKING DAYS. Now he is in a rehab facility. This is getting really old, for both of us. I finally succumbed to the stress and am now as sick as a dog.