two knits of ivory

Sometimes I'm mortified by what I write here. Mortification. Shame. Self-loathing. Part of me tells me that's the lesson. Be you. Expose yourself. It's the only way to build armor against a world that is designed to dislike you. Or should I say a species built entirely different than you and designed to dislike you. The snark is just armor too. Yeah it's learning to be funny and quick and highly intellectualized, but it's still fucking armor. I was beginning to fool myself that it was something else. And I'm scared and proud to have derailed that subterfuge. So what interesting thing has derailed me this week? Jane fuckin' Austen. Last week I read a few chapters of Mansfield Park and the world was right again. Light, crisp snark. Every sentence a gem. As I read I let the precise perfection of her prose envelope me. Until it abruptly stopped and I was unwittingly unmoored (why is this not an antonym of moored?), untethered, disjointed...

OMG do I need to get that self important drama llama ding dong from Tuesday off the top shelf! It hurts to look at it, but look at I do and do and do. I'm obsessed with my own experiences. I'm obsessed with squeezing every fucking drop of meaning out of every gosh darn thing. Hello, calling Mrs. M. Umm, that's how you roll. So deal. And deal I do. But today (yeah!) I am beginning to grasp at the fringes of self mockery and it feels awesomesauce. A.W.E.S.O.M.E.S.A.U.C.E. Ring around the drama llama. I've decided to blame Wharton for this recent setback. I finally took out a book and used my eyes to read it and it wasn't about Bella fuckin' Swan. Miracle of miracles! (OMG! what's that song?!? - "vanity of vanities the whole thing is a vain parade" - Hand of God, Soundgarten.) (Yes, welcome to two knits, the home of the vain parade. Snerk.) I haven't picked up Wharton in many years and my perspective on her writings has cha...

It is the fate of a sarcastic bitch to be, well, considered just a plain old coldhearted bitch. Our humor is dark and oftentimes inappropriate; inappropriate in pitch and inappropriate in content. I've changed a great deal in the past year. I feel I am both a better me to me and a more selfish me to everyone else. And I'm happy about that. But there remains a part of me that feels responsible for everyone and everything. If someone hurts, I need to make that hurt go away. Even if it is my enemies' hurt. I want to snark and cut things down to size but then I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Politically correct and snark spells o.x.y.m.o.r.o.n. Or just plain moron. This morning I followed my heart down a road it's been too timid to travel for two decades or more.. I drove past a cat that had been run over and I did not keep driving. I sated my impulse to care and to be responsible for this helpless creature. I cried at the trauma drama t...

New interim look. Not finished but at this point so preferable to the old look. Went to the movies, saw Ridley Scott's Robin Hood . WTF was Scott thinking with this reimagining of the Robin Hood myth? I haven't wanted to walk out of a movie since 1999. The penultimate mis en scène: It's aproximately 1199 AD and it been hours since the movie started and Robin has yet to take to the wood. That's because: 1) The French are storming the cliffs of Dover in transport boats , a la Omaha Beach, aka D-Day . Look at the picture in the link and then watch the movie. I am not shitting you. It was D-Day in the theatre tonight! 2) William Wallace Robin preHood, a commoner, and an archer in the crusades, (an infantry position that lacks swordsmanship and horse riding skills) astride deceased King Richard the Lionhearted's snow white steed (which he has been in possession of for at least an hour and yet no one seems to notice the horse is bedecked in ye Plantagenet...

Does fiber have a sound? No, but I swear it vibrates. Hmmm...now that I ponder on this, it's me that vibrates, not the yarn. The yarn just sits there all stuck up and aloof and perfect and je ne sais quoi. I turn to mush and worship at its feet. I went to the NH Sheep & Wool fest on Saturday and I bought only three skeins of yarn and three buttons. I was good. Very good. And not in a deprivation kinda way at all. In fact, I have become such a narrowly oriented yarn stasher, there were very few things there that sang to me. (Oh yes, I went to Volterra this weekend, why do you ask?) For yarn only one vendor stopped my breath, Mocha's Fiber Connection . She had a lovely two plied fingering silky merino, as well as some worsted or aran singles, in the same vein as Sundara's FSM and ASM. The pic above is the one purchase I made of the FSM in a colorway called Ashes of Roses. The yarn base on the tag says Kizzie's Toes/sock. This base of theirs isn't ...

There are changes afoot at Two Knits. Usually change is very difficult for me. In fact learning how to make the upcoming changes has been difficult, but when the change happens, it should be easy as pie for me to acclimate. You see I've been trying to teach myself a little html in order to redesign my blog. Every few weeks or months I get wholly absorbed in the project, pore all of my time, and 110% of my mental energy, into learning this trade and then before I know it I become super saturated and loath everything I just learned. Time passes. Rinse. Repeat. But I haven't given up. So maybe it'll be this weekend, or maybe this summer or fall. Who knows, but the cyber home of chez Yarn is getting a facelift.

That's seven yarns. Seven iterations to express my joy, my love of my yarn, and my love of my current project (no matter how bad it turns out). I am knitting the Tea Leaves Cardigan (<--- rav link). Oh yes, you read correctly: I am knitting.From.A.Pattern. Moi. (Geesh of all the German I've ingested, I haven't learned how to say me? How can that be? Is it mir?) Mir! But true to form I am hacking my way through it already. My first hack was to replace the garter stitch with seed stitch. I love the way garter stitch feels, but I'm not that into how it looks. Garter stitch is bold, where I prefer seed stitches' coyness. I prefer to project dainty and demure rather than what I am in actuality, loud and brash. 'Tis my prerogative. I tried something new. I cable cast on in ribbing and I absolutely adore the x o x o look of this trim. On the neckline. I'll probably do a basic bind off on the wrists and body. Someday I hope to garner the p...

Many, many, many moons ago I went through a Herman Hesse phase. I devoured, rather than savored, each book of his I read. So it is no wonder that I remember very little. Only one idea I came across in his writings took root in my chaotic mind and this was the supposition by a character that the act of biological reproduction is a necessary psychological step, or evolution, for man. The narcissism of youth must make way for the selfless devotion, an all important transformative experience, of parenthood. Now that I am an adult, and a little less naive, I can plainly see all around me that birthing babies doesn't cure narcissism. My birth sure as heck didn't cure it in my family. But that doesn't mean there is no truth to Hesse's belief. I still believe in his theory even though I was never able to test it out myself. By the time I was healed enough to embrace motherhood my body no longer could provide for me. I am both proud and angry about the four years I ...