Sunday

Today, for something different, you're getting an intentionally bad photograph. Really. It's bad, and it's intentional. I'm curious as to how much can be identified by this shot.

Here are the clues:

1) It's a popular (possibly even viral) knit.

2) At least one of you has knit one.

3) It's an incredibly addictive pattern, and I've done nothing but knit this since I cast on last night. I had to rip back completely once, because I made a mistake and it bothered me, and I had to do some significant tinking twice. The first time was because I was knitting in bed without my glasses on before I got coffee. This was a big mistake. The second time I got distracted by the show I've been watching (Dead Like Me) and couldn't figure out where I dropped a stitch.

I'm also curious if anyone can identify the yarn. I promise there will be better shots of this. It's working up rather quickly, but I also think it will end up being a bigger knit than I expect. For indoor flash photography, the color's actually fairly true. In person, in daylight, the color is a bit more crushed grape, and it has almost a velvety quality.

Now to sneak in a bit more knitting on the couch before I collapse. I should by all rights do that now, but I'm not quite ready to call it a night yet.

Day 3.

It's Saturday night, my apartment is clean, and mostly tidy. I have some laundry in the machines downstairs, and the rest of the evening is mine to spend relaxing. I did very little today - I slept in, talked a little on the phone, napped, knit, and watched silly tv shows. It's been very nice. I'm a little blue today. Weekends are harder than the weekdays, and I have a tendency to become overly tired. It affects my mood a lot, and it's easy to slide into a negative mood. Tidying up helped, sort of symbolically moving on and getting ready for the week. A fresh start, I suppose.

Things are, for the most part, good. I like my job, and I'm learning a lot. I still feel behind, and under pressure, but that's going to be true regardless of what I'm doing. I haven't taken the easiest path, but there's still hope that this will all work out. I've met a really neat group of people to knit with, and if I were in less of a hermit mode, I could probably go out and socialize more with them too. I'm trying to do things for myself.

I just started knitting a new project - a Shetland Triangle Shawl. I just finished 2 triangular shawls (no, I didn't take photos yet) and I'm not sure why I really wanted to knit this, but the yarn and the pattern were calling to me. I actually have a few things clamoring at me. The other is a pair of Fiddlehead Mittens, which I'm likely to start tomorrow, and there's a sweater that has tried to materialize on my needles. So far, the sweater hasn't taken, so there's a possibility I can hold off on that until I finish something up. It's fall. I think this is the equivalent of spring fever, and I'm feeling a strong urge to swathe myself in handknits. I know it makes for boring blogging, as I keep starting things and having little followthrough. I knit for myself though - what I want, when I want, with no pressure. It's one of the few things in my life that is like that. Maybe the only thing.

Part of trying this daily blogging is to determine if the blog is something I'm going to continue or not - I know why I knit, but I'm not sure why I'm blogging. I have met some really neat people, friends even, online. However, I'm finding it much harder to connect these days. I like Ravelry, but I don't do so well on message boards. I don't leave comments often, and I don't think I have many readers left. I'm okay with this, but I wonder if it means that I'm done with blogging? On the other hand, I don't email much either, and it is a way of keeping in contact with the friends I have who do read this.

Sorry for the moodiness tonight. Weekends are hard, and I miss my family. Tomorrow is a work day, but hopefully the light will be better and I'll get some shots of knitting.

Last minute post

Ok, so I'm sneaking in under the wire today.

Just finished watching season 6 of Wire in the Blood. I don't know if I liked the series or not. It started out strong, but I think it lost something as time went on. Interesting to see how much grittier of a crime show is put on by the BBC. I hate that the male psychiatrist became the key to solving every crime, and that the female lead police investigator depended on his input way too much. There was more humor and incompetence on his part earlier on. I think the writing got sloppier, but it was entertaining enough for me to watch 24 episodes.

I'm watching a lot of junk this year, since many things are on Hulu and elsewhere online: Heroes, House, Gossip Girl, Castle, Vampire Diaries (yes, I know, it's crap), Bones, Dollhouse. I think that's all, and that's a lot. By the end of the day, I'm wiped out, and don't have much left for anything else.

I finished another scarf last night - that's 2 down. Photos tomorrow, as I got home far too late to take any shots.

Tomorrow will be a better planned and more interesting post than this one.

So I've got this thing...

But it's not golden. (Ok, I thought it was funny.)

Anyhow, when I moved, and left my washer and dryer behind (oh, how I miss them so) I purchased this thing on sale from Target.com:

I paid a lot less than that asking price for it, but I have to say - it's a nifty little gadget. I'm not a big fan of drying a lot of my clothes, and I used a drying rack a lot at my house. I did think this would be a pretty cool accessory for a knitter. Basically, it's just a fan blowing air over the stuff you have laid out flat on a mesh shelf, but it does cut down on drying time significantly. If, like me, you are both cold and impatient, this is a good thing.

At the moment, I'm using it to dry a Simple Yet Effective Shawl. Once it's dry, I'll weave in the ends and eventually I'll take a photo and post it here and on Ravelry. I used less than one skein of Trekking XXL, and honestly had a lot more yarn left over than I intended, but I was ready to move on and at the end it was really about deciding that it was more important to end with a garter stitch section than to use all the yarn.

Next up is another less fabulous than practical knit, which is another triangular scarf-like item that is very close to completion. It comes with a mildly cautionary tale, which I'll share as soon as I am done.

It's October 1st, and I see many of my friends are doing daily blogging. I'm too noncommittal to commit, but I'll take a stab at it without officially joining anything, because for me, joining increases the likelihood of my failing to follow through... Tomorrow's topics may include: "You have no idea how glad I am it's Friday," "E. Coli, or Bacteria really do not smell good," or "I'm so old and out of touch I can't tell if my new friends are hipsters or not and who cares anyhow because they have yarn."

See you then.

Moving on.

It's been a while since I wrote anything here. When I'm knitting, I'm working on a lot of slow, simple things, and they're dragging on. Hopefully in the next week or so, I'll be done with some of them and have something to show. It's fall here, and I'm trying to resist the urge to cast on 3 new things. There are enough things in life that I do because I have to, not because I enjoy them. I don't want knitting to become onerous, so I'm not stressing finishing things, just trying to have the perspective that I would have more room and things would be tidier if I finished a few things first. Time has not been on my side.

Speaking of which, I'm grateful that it's now Wednesday. I'm ready to be done with this week. I have no plans for the weekend, but sitting on the couch with tea, knitting, and movies sounds about perfect.

Persisting despite it all.

You know how instructions for circular knitting always say "join, making sure to not twist?"

Yeah. I finally managed to get a twist in my knitting, and I've been persisting, regardless of the mistake. I'm knitting a self-fringing scarf, so it will be cut open at the end anyhow, and I figured, oh, what the heck.

It's a lot easier to knit when it's not twisted, but at this point, I'm Committed.

Speaking of which, I just jumped into another project, thanks to the ladies I met today for a KIP in the park. I may have found a group to hang out with. They're knitting mitered squares for a sock yarn blanket, and swapping yarns. Of course, this sounded like a fantastic idea to me because it's really pretty, on tiny needles, and is going to take up an insane amount of time. And we all know how quickly I knit things these days.

While sitting outside, I worked on my Charade sock. Pretty. See?


One slight problem:

It's too big. So, I'm going to have to think about what I want to do to make these work. The patterned section isn't as stretchy as the rest of the foot. Going down a needle size for the foot isn't going to work, because I don't want to compress this yarn any more. I might just use the gauge for the plain section, rip back to the heel, decrease faster for the gusset and knit the rest of the sock plain. Haven't decided yet.

I'm itching to start new things, but I really want to get some of the old projects to go away. I've now completed 12 pattern repeats of the Trellis scarf, out of a total of 23. Which means I'm now feeling motivated to try to knit one repeat a day, which would get me a pretty lace scarf, and a clear needle in 2 weeks. I have a second sock for my husband - finished decreases, so plain knitting to the toe. That's not more than a week of knitting (I dislike the yarn.) My Badia still needs seaming, as does the Cutaway cardigan. Tangled Yoke is still waiting for the arms to be joined to the body, and I only have a yoke to knit. I'm also about 50% and 75% done with 2 other laceweight scarves, because I'm nuts and seem to not knit with anything thicker than fingering weight right now. I'm craving sweaters and a new shawl, and I have an afghan that requires seaming (but we aren't talking about that today.)

I think it might be fall, finally.

Knit critics

I think the knit world needs more criticism. And by that, I mean more constructive criticism, not snark. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy a good snark, and I certainly think it has its place, however, it's not what I'm looking for. I like praise, as we all do, but I want it to be meaningful. Bells posted about viral knits recently, and it got me thinking. I agree with her that it's absurd to denigrate a knit because "everyone has made one." It's also silly to expect everyone to design their own knitwear, or to talk about how there are no good designers out there. I also can see the value in a cute, quick, 1 skein project that makes a thoughtful gift. What I wish we had more though, is serious discussion about what people liked about a pattern, what they wish was different, and suggestions from readers and bloggers, as to what they'd change next time.

I like socks a lot, and I'm really fascinated by what Cookie A designs. I don't love all her designs, nor do I want to knit some of them. A few I want to make because the construction is cool, or because I want to see how the charting fits the pattern. A few pairs I want to make because I want to wear them. Some, frankly, just don't do much for me. I think Monkey went viral because it was a very clever sock - a simple pattern, neither too big nor too small, that looked good with solids, semisolids, and wildly colored yarn. That was the sock that made me think about how diagonal lines are good for breaking up repeats in handpainted yarn, so that you get less striping. Yeah, it's not an earthshattering concept, but I hadn't quite internalized it until I knit the pattern.

Some designs are classic and universally flattering. I'm going to be a bit of a jerk and suggest that the most popular sweaters (as listed on Ravelry) don't fit that descriptor. Which makes me think that the reason they become popular is due to KALs - I assume people are still doing those. I also think a KAL can be very useful, if people are sharing information about how they are modifying a pattern or finding errors or ambiguous directions. I haven't participated in many of them, as I have commitment problems with my knitting. But the few I have tried, I haven't seen that kind of criticism taking place.

I suspect a lot of my attitude about this comes from my day job, and I know people sometimes interpret the critical eye as being overly negative. The truth is that all crafting isn't equal, yet we dole out praise as though it was. We should celebrate the act of creating something with sticks and strings, and encourage people who are just learning to keep trying. I wouldn't mind though, if could find a little more discussion of things like "Next time I'd consider angling the decreases in the opposite direction" or "Short rows in the bust would fix the pulling problem as the waist" or "I really like it - the only thing I might change would be to start the shaping 1/2 inch higher, but that's nitpicking." If I saw that more, I think I'd take the 5 star ratings on patterns and yarns more seriously, and perhaps the really good viral knits would get the respect they deserve.