Knit Reads & Fair Isle Hotness

I went to the bookstore & like I always do, I made a beeline for the Knitting section. This was directly across from the Relationship section, which turned out to be a problem.

There was a man standing in the Relationship section talking/arguing on his cell phone with his Significant Other. I hurried up & picked out my books because being forced to listen to his end of the drama & why "Paul called you at 2 in the morning" got to be sort of annoying. I felt like picking up a Relationship book & beating him about the head with it, as if to say "Since you're standing in this section, why don't you use it?" He could've gone outside to argue or at least stood in the restroom (but the background noise of flushing toilets might have made the argument worse, I don't know).

Once I got away from him, I sat down & started reading Crazy Aunt Purl's book, Drunk, Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair. After a while, I began to wonder what was worse: the guy still standing there arguing (again, aren't you standing in front of a book that tells you that you are from Mars!) or me sitting in the middle of the bookstore laughing out loud (alone). Thinking perhaps it was me, I just bought the book so that I could come home & read it & laugh out loud in the privacy of my own home.

I know a lot of you probably already read her blog & the book is just as hilarious. It's not just about knitting, though. As a matter of fact, knitting is only a small part of it. What's bigger is how she copes in the aftermath of her divorce & more importantly, how this changes her perception of herself as a person. In a grander view of things, this could apply to all of us women who don't feel "complete" without someone else. I mean, I'm married, but I do ask myself from time to time, if something happened to Weedinator who would do all the yard work?, would I be all right as an individual? And I really think I would be OK. After I hired a lawn service.

Before I go out of town for the weekend (I really don't feel like going anywhere), I'm going to leave you with this image from the Woodland Woolworks catalog (it's on the cover of this book).

"I am The Hotness"

When I saw it, I started laughing out loud (again). I had to dub this Fair Isle Hotness. Now, it's not the sweater. The sweater is great. It's the man in the sweater & the come-hither expression on his face & the arm-behind-the-head pose. Like, I am so sexy in this sweater that you must come closer. No, closer. Gaze upon my sexiness and then turn away. But wait...on top of the multi-colored sweater, I am wearing a plaid shirt underneath. Because there can never be too many colors.

We had a German Language teacher in high school who looked just like that. Who knows, it might be him. He had a love of sweaters & smoldering looks (giggle).

Have a great weekend, all!

Pin It Now!

Christmas knitting & why I'm not doing it

My knitting this year has been mostly selfish. Most of my projects have been for me, with the occasional gift for someone else. Near the beginning of the year, I decided not to knit Christmas gifts this year & having that pressure off of me has been wonderful. For the most part, my knitting gifts are well received, which makes me happy. No one likes to go to the time & trouble to knit something for someone & then see that it's not appreciated. But I just didn't feel like drawing up a list, finding yarn, finding projects, etc. I just wasn't feeling it. This doesn't include my household members because I'll probably knit Weedinator another pair of socks or something & maybe those sweaters for the kids that have been on my list since I learned to knit.

Last year, I knitted this rag for my mom. She's a very generous, hard-working, charitable woman, but she just doesn't get crafts. A few days after Christmas, I called her to see if she'd opened the box with the scarf in it (because she & my dad don't always open their gifts right away) & she said "yeah, yeah, that was nice."

That was when I mentally crossed her off my list for anything other than gift cards or soap baskets.

Maybe next year will be different. I'll see how I feel come January, but I don't feel bad or guilty for not knitting things for everyone in the family & then getting stressed about it because I'm up at 4 a.m. Christmas morning weaving in ends.

So, in keeping with 2007's selfishness, here's another WIP for me...my Modern Quilt Wrap, the first 12 blocks.

Because no one appreciates your knitting like you do

Pin It Now!

Why I Knit

I'd like to start this post off by pointing out that I've always been inquisitive (not nosy). I ask a lot of questions. If I don't know something, I don't pretend to know it. I ask. So I encourage this same habit in my kids because I would hate for them to feel they couldn't ask me anything.

I am beginning to regret this.

One of Them: What's that?
Me: Shrimp.
OOT: What are you doing to it?
Me: Deveining it.
OOT: Why?
Me: Because the recipe told me to. (What can I say? I see directions, I follow.)

One of Them: What are you doing?
Me: Stretching.
OOT: Why?
Me: To stay limber.
OOT: What does limber mean?
Me: Look it up. (Hey, my dad did the same to me & look at what a good speller I am today!)

One of Them: What does V-O-D-K-A spell?
Me: Medicine.
OOT: It looks like water.
Me: Mm hmm.
OOT: You're filling up that whole glass with medicine?
Me: Water.
OOT: I'm going to look that up. I don't think it spells medicine.
Me: Okay, okay. It spells Prozac.
OOT: What's Prozac?
Me: The difference between me standing here or being in a padded room.
OOT: What??

As you can see from recent examples, it just never stops I don't always have the right or correct answer. I will be knitting this weekend because too much vodka medicine can be frowned upon before 10 a.m.5 p.m.

Med-i-cine

Pin It Now!

For all you Ravelers...

...I have a question.

I peruse the new patterns at Ravelry every time I'm there. Not daily, but apparently, I need to be there daily. My queue is already growing exponentially, but if I let 2-3 days go by, the number of new patterns is staggering. Who knew there were so many patterns? And I have to view every single one of the new patterns because my queue is only 70-odd items long; a queue isn't a queue until it hits triple digits.

Retro Rib sock-in-progress & Lizzie Rectangle #3 (color 95)

Any other Ravelers who can't keep up with all the new patterns added there every second day? Why am I so afraid I'm going to miss something if I don't look at the 10,000th bootie pattern? What is different about bootie #10,001? There must be something because I've made it to page 83 of booties & I'm still looking! And why do I need booties anyway? Why, for that matter, am I looking at crochet doilies, mittens & Chauncey??

'Tis a sickness. And I don't want to be cured.

Pin It Now!

The Mojo is Back

So there I was this past Friday afternoon, thrilled because I was all caught up on work & I could spend the entire weekend knitting. My knitting mojo had been flagging lately & I was excited about having 2 whole days to see if I could get it back. Saturday, I woke up with pain in my right hand & wrist, which I assumed was the result of more hours spent clicking my computer's mouse. I couldn't even grip a pen to write anything, so I put a brace on & spent the weekend feeling sorry for myself & watching movies on cable, like Unbreakable.

I've seen Unbreakable before & I think I enjoyed it better than the critics seemed to. Still, because my hands were idle & my mind was wandering, I found myself wondering why the heck Bruce Willis didn't realize until the end of the movie that Samuel L. Jackson was the villain. I mean, look at Samuel L. Jackson's hairdo in this movie. Doesn't that just scream Clarence Williams III Mad Scientist to you? Besides the Evil Villain trenchcoats & glass walking stick. Come on, Bruce, get it together!

Anyway, Monday morning, my hand felt much better, but by then, I had work to do. Ugh.

Still, I've been playing knitty catch-up the past few days & cast on for 2 more projects. This brings my WIP total up to 5 or 6, depending on whether or not I count the Maze socks which I'm going to start over. I'm working on socks for Weedinator's birthday now.

Retro Rib Socks, Favorite Socks

I was so happy to get my sock mojo back. I have until the 28th to finish these.

And there's the Modern Wrap Quilt.

Modern Quilt Wrap, first 3 squares

A word of advice to anyone planning to knit this up: this is a weave-as-you-go project. After doing the first 3 squares, I had so many ends to weave in. I'm going to weave after every 3 squares or so; otherwise, I imagine I'd go pretty wacko if I waited until the end & had to confront a billion or so loose ends of wispy yarn. Just my advice.

Lastly, a few of you commented that I've inspired you to try the Montego Bay Scarf after my last post. I was even accused of being an enabler (!). My response: mission accomplished. :-)

Pin It Now!

New Things

Thank you all for your well wishes & congratulations on my writing job. I also found out I landed another one & although the topic is different, they told me that what impressed them was this knitting blog & the writing I did on it. I never would have imagined when I started this blog last year that it would help land me a job outside of the knitting community.

With all the training & working, I've had to squeeze knitting in when I can. I needed yet another simple project, so I finally cast on for the Montego Bay Scarf (IK, Summer '07).

Handmaiden Seasilk in "Bronze"

This has been on my list since that issue first came out, but because I bought a hank of Seasilk that wasn't wound into a cake, I waited until I had a ballwinder to use it. I wasn't going to wind 400+ yards of laceweight by hand. I've done it before & believe me, it's much better with a winder.

This yarn is a dream. The texture of this scarf is like a fishing net. This is one of the few times I went with the recommended yarn for a project & I'm glad I did in this case. Since it only uses 1 hank, it's not exorbitant. A little bit of luxury that will go a long way.

Pin It Now!