two knits of ivory

I finished my eighth(!) Shetland Triangle this weekend. No, that picture above is not the Shetland Triangle. I don't have any recent pictures. I'm not motivated to take pictures of anything lately, even the record number of yarn skeins I wound into cakes on Saturday. Instead of bemoaning my creative paucity, I've decided to fill in the blanks with an unblogged project from last year's deadspot. Last spring I knit a lovely Serenity baby blanket for my husband's best friend's first child, a baby girl. Did I mention this is a free pattern? It is a free pattern, and from the charts at least, an error free, free pattern. I really enjoyed knitting this project. And the reason's why are, what? What did I like about this project? Do I even know? Hmmm. 1) The lace was challenging but not fussy. 2) The occasional cabling was easy, and eye pleasing. 3) The yarn is Dream in Color's Classy, in the Chinatown Apple colorway. I took a big ...

Most of the time I don't like using patterns. With larger items, like sweaters, it's a crap shoot on sizing. Even worse, I usually take long breaks with sweaters, so I am guaranteed to lose my place. I am meticulous about many, many things. Medical professionals might even add obsessive compulsive, but tracking my knitting progress is not one of these things. When I put a sweater down for a few weeks, I'm not going to remember where I was. I'm just not. And to be honest, I don't want to track my progress so minutely, so carefully that I'll be able to pick up the project a week or two after having last worked on it and be able to pinpoint exactly where I am. That's just not my way of knitting. If you couple this with a nature that thinks backtracking is the root of at least one or two evils, and a general preference for winging it, it makes absolutely no sense for me to knit from patterns. Now this means it took me a lot longer to ramp up to the kno...

I've learned a lot of things while not blogging. 1) I've been spelling won't wrong for 42 years. I really didn't know it was a contraction. How did I not know that? 2) I must accept that I am not a blogger. I am not a social creature and blogging is about sharing, which is a social behavior. As callous as this sounds, I do not want to open a dialogue with other knitters on a consistent basis. I don't want friends, I'd really rather be alone. With Ravelry I can weigh in when I want and then ignore when I want. There is no sense of obligation to be social, and this blog has become dead weight with obligation. 3) I don't really like knitting with lace weight yarn. My foray into needle arts began with crocheting lace. In college I would buy cheap mercerized cotton thread from the Coolidge Corner Woolworth's and try to make lace, and add lace onto whatever I could. I still have a bambooesque drink coaster that I added some Estonian lace work to. ...

My mind's been laid up for a few weeks. Two days after my last post I succumbed to a full week with the flu (again!). This time it ended with a nasty mental diversion à la The Yellow Wallpaper . The idea of conversing with the world, even in the one-way medium of a blog, was anathema. Knitting was rare. Yet, my return to knitting was hindered not just by depression, I think, but a lack of motivation. It wasn't until I realized I should get cracking on some baby knits for a little bun in the oven of my husband's best friend's wife, that I was inspired to cast on and cast on with a vengeance. And so the daily knitting routine reasserted itself to much personal glee. In retrospect, my exclamation a few weeks back about streamlining my gift knitting was short-sighted. The bad choices I made in allowing the gift knitting to take over last fall was reinterpreted falsely. I am propelled, as a knitter, by gift knitting. Giving it up dried up my motivation to knit fo...

When I take pictures of my knitting, and my yarn, I really take it seriously. I really love looking at pictures of knitted items and yarn. I love seeing the colors and textures and the overall object. The more detailed the picture, the more natural the lighting, the more joy I get in looking at it. Pictures of the tiny little stitches of socks represent my most favorite type of knitting p0rn. I kinda feel weird about this fascination. Among knitters, I surmise, I may be in a minority, but probably not alone. Yet, it is not a topic I have ever seen discussed in the knitosphere. I'm sure, now that I am reflecting on it, there is a group on Ravelry for people like me. If I was more of a social creature, I would have flushed them out by now. In the meanwhile, though, my latest attempt to capture my own piece of pictorial heaven was done in poor light yesterday afternoon. These are a Christmas gift for my niece, Meaghan. Even though these are not my colors, I was still impell...

My compulsive nature impels me to blog my projects in sequence. Is it needless to say that my failure to do this, as evidenced by my meager post count for the past three months attests, stifles me? It may be, but it's still cathartic to put it down in black and white, or black and yellow as is the actual case. Where I seem to have mastered the hiccups to fend off the loss of my coveted knitting mojo, I have not found the magic bullet to regain its blogging cousin. In the early days of ravelry , there was concern that people would put all their effort into maintaining their projects page and reduce, or omit, their blogging altogether. In my own case, it hasn't held back my blogging as much as it has reduced my blog reading. I find my web surfing time is often spent reading the drama threads (go rubberneckers !) or perusing patterns and projects, rather than lurking my favorite knitblogs. But in the past few weeks, as I've reflected on my blogging, I've come to reali...

I've been trying to put my finger on the source of the all-encompassing malaise that settled into my life this past spring. It is like a hundred pound albatross. I'm not depressed or even a tad dysphoric. I'm just tired. In an email exchange with fellow knit blogger, Kristin , a phrase came to mind that encapsulates what I'm feeling: high maintenance. Every single activity I engage in, whether it's as banal as tooth brushing, or as fun as reading, anything other than malingering, just seems to be experienced as high maintenance. Once I could define what I feel, my spirits lifted a bit. Sounds strange, but it's true. Once I understand what I'm up against my natural drive to adapt kicked in and one of the first things I found the energy to tackle was my Sunshine and Shadows Shawl...errrr triangle. A week and a half ago I spent a solid half an hour struggling with the beginning of the final lace pattern, redoing the first 20 stitches or so who knows how many ti...

The past two weeks have been all about the two pair of Cherry Tree Hill socks I've been working on. I still haven't had the presence of mind to bind off the one sock of Candy I finished over a week ago. I scoured the web and Ravelry for information on tubular casting off and found some conflicting information. I found one source says that it must be in k1p1 rip and scads of bloggers and posters at Ravelry saying they just do it no matter what rib pattern they've knit up. My Candy Socks are k2p1. Oddly enough many Ravellers and bloggers referenced Montse Stanley's The Knitter's Handbook , which so happens to be one of two knitting books I purchased when I began knitting five or so years ago. I rarely ever reference it because I am a visual learner and it's pictures are drawings, rather than photographs. That has always put me off. So here I sit on the tubular cast off bible and I'm still no where near attempting it. In my defense, I have been trying...

Who can't help but pick up the excitement in the blogoshpere and at Ravelry regarding Rhinebeck, where New York States Sheep and Wool festival is happening this weekend. I've been vacillating all summer about whether I could handle such an overload of yarn and people and I didn't make up my mind until I had some serious help from my Aunt yesterday. I am going, but only for a morning. Tomorrow morning to be exact. It'll be a brutal 4:00 am wake up to get to my Aunt's and then to the festival by the 9:00 am opening, but I have no doubt it will be worth it. I don't intend to spend a lot of money, but from what I've read that type of belief usually turns out to be delusional. I don't know if festival virgins like myself are more susceptible, but we'll see come tomorrow afternoon, wont we. At the Rhinebeck Ravelry forum on how much others are spending I've read over and over again how people are refraining from buying sock yarn. That's my primary...

The other day I was on Ravelry doing my thing and realized that maybe I should spend a little time seeing what other people were doing. I began my poking with a search on Jo Sharp Silkweed Aran yarn, that yarn I made my Steely Winter Set out of. I might not have made clear how in love with this yarn I am. It feels like heaven knitting. It feels like heaven once it's knit. A Ravelry member named Andrea is using this yarn on a hibernating project from the Fall issue of Interweave Knits. Dos_Cable_Shrug1 Originally uploaded by andrea_murley This project, or type of project would be perfect for me. I love cables, the Silkwood Aran would look beautiful cabled, and the yarn would make a very warm and cozy shawl which I need since my work cube is freezing year round. I think I could design a beautiful shawl in the icy baby blue shade of empire . Question is do I wait to buy the yarn until I finish some projects or do I splurge now. Since I'll have to buy this yarn o...

And just in time for me to be away for the weekend. Wah!