In Which I Demonstrate the Awesome Force of My Will

This afternoon, I stopped at one of those big box craft stores and bought a knitting mag for the flight tomorrow. The new Interweave Knits, in fact. One of my favorite magazines.

On any other day, I would have flipped through the magazine while waiting in the checkout line. A sneak peek at the designs, a taste of things to come. A little foreplay, you might say.

But not today. Because this is meant to be for the airplane tomorrow. Today, I just ogled the wild tank on the front cover and the ad for Stitches Midwest on the back, and almost quivered out of my skin with the effort it took not to crack the cover.

It's been Seven!! Whole!! Entire!! Hours!! since I became the owner of this issue. I left it in the plastic bag on my car's front seat -- usually I would decline the bag because it's not environmentally sound, plus it's awfully hard to read charts through the white plastic. And even harder to turn the pages.

But today, that bag helped me resist the temptation to sneak glances at the article headlines while stalled by traffic.

When I finally made it home from work, I carried that magazine into the house and set it on the bed next to my open suitcase. I took it out of the plastic. I brushed my fingers along the glossy photo on the cover. I wondered, not for the first time, what kind of yarn they used for that tank.

And I didn't open the magazine.

I finished packing. My suitcase closed on the first try, which is a sure sign I've forgotten half of what I need. I unpacked, checked everything again, and repacked, this time with my shoes. Every now and then I glanced at the magazine and tried to decide what we might call that precise shade of green in the vertical stripe on that tank top.

And I didn't even touch the magazine.

I packed my carryon, a roomy purse-tote thingie. It's just big enough for that magazine,

which I still haven't read,

and a few essentials like a granola bar, gum, notebook, yarn and needles. The Cascade 220 is flying in the cabin with me. So are the Country Garden socks. I know I don't need to take both projects on board with me, but I will, and by the time I get into my seat, I will most likely forget they exist.

Because that is when I will finally get to read the magazine.

Narrowing the Field

I'm closing in on a packing decision. I think I'll take the Country Garden socks-in-progress so I can finish at least one of the pair, or maybe both. And then I might take either the navy Cascade 220 superwash (destined to become an aran watchcap for my nephew) or the Fiesta la Luz silk (purchased from the Patternworks catalogue last fall, but I'm still dithering over stitch patterns for a skinny scarf).

Everyone keeps saying, take socks. Socks are easy and portable, it's true, but I'm scared of snapping my smaller needles during airplane turbulence -- I get a wee bit tense in the sky sometimes -- so that rules out Lorna's Laces, Trekking, and my other finer weight sock yarns. So I'm considering taking some of meatier sock yarn in this picture. From the left, we have Socks That Rock (colorway: Mist), Mountain Colors Bearfoot (colorway Flathead Cherry), Socks That Rock (colorway Sapphire), Mountain Colors Bearfoot (colorway Wildflower), 2 skeins of Wildfoote (colorway Symphony), and some Koooooiiiiiguuuuuuuuu wound into cakes. I don't really expect to take the Koigu, but had to put it in the picture for a certain Koigu-loving SnBer who has mentioned wanting to see my stash someday. Here's a fraction of the sock yarn, doll. Just for you, and you know who you are!

I'm leaning toward the blues because they can be worn with my husband when he's finished. I'll be getting back to knitting him after this trip. I've decided against taking my husband in the suitcase because the back is finished, which means knitting either the sleeves or the fronts next. That means working with two balls at once, not to mention the cable needles. Did I mention that people party at this conference? Of course they do. They dress up as giant fish and Matrix clones and Annie-git-yer-gun types, which makes it pretty much inevitable that there will be drinking. Probably a lot. Do you think I want a bunch of tipsy conventioneers anywhere near my husband? Hell, no. I've got a hard enough time keeping knitters from stroking his tender flesh, without adding a buncha drunk muggles in fantasy costumes into the mix.

Anyway.

The other nice thing about sock yarn is that it doesn't take a lot of room in a suitcase. My husband would be a bit greedy in that department. So he'll just have to be patient and wait until I return. (Though I'm already jonesing to cast on the sleeves, because they do this nifty bell shaping with short rows and it looks like fun.) (I'd be knitting that tonight, I'm sure, except I still haven't finished the can-can costume for Wednesday night's costume party. Why do I keep sewing when I'd rather be knitting?)

In any event, now that I've at least narrowed it down this far, I feel like I can start packing other stuff. Why do we have to pack yarn first? And why do we have to pack more than we could possibly knit? I'll be taking about a month's worth of knitting for a five-day business conference. This only makes sense to other knitters. (Please, I'm begging, tell me this makes sense to other knitters!)

Sockgress Report

Here's the most recent picture of the sock. The cuff is 1.5" of 2x2 ribbing. The leg is 7", including the cuff. I find this a nice, cozy leg length for a normal sock, though I do sometimes make 4.5" or 5" legs for a shorter, crew type sock.

Because I know knitters like to see the seams and guts, here's the heel flap and the start of the gusset. This picture also lets you see the range in colors on this yarn. See those bits of forest green and darker blue mixed in? There's even a bit of burgundy. How gorgeous is that? Cherry Tree Hill makes me drool. fwiw, on both my camera and my computer monitor, this picture shows the colors best. ymmv.

Another view of the heel flap. For a denser, longer-wearing heel flap, I do a slip one - knit one on the right side, slip one - purl one on the wrong side. The back of the heel is nice and cushy this way, too. But yes, the color pattern does look a little different as a result. Fine by me!

Responses to comments:

Hi Becca! No, I don't get my yarn wet in the tub, not usually. I roll up the knitting and pin it to itself so it's not draping into the water. Also, I set my yarn behind my shoulder on that lovely deep ledge so it drapes over my shoulder from behind. This keeps it dry. For the most part! I do occasionally do something very clever indeed, like drop the whole thing into the bubbles. But that's okay. Yarn dries. :D

Hi Nia! I love it that we can keep in touch through blogging even though you abandoned us for the glamorous big city high life. (sob!) (kidding!) (But you know we do miss you!) No, I don't think I would ever try to publish that pattern because it's basically just a riff on a pattern from one of those page-a-day knitting calendars. That pattern called for worsted, and I altered it for DK, which meant adding another two columns of cables and redrawing Chart B (which will be mailed to you tomorrow or Tuesday). I don't think that's enough of a change to be able to claim that it's original work. But yes, someday, I think it would be great fun to design a pattern all of my own. Because, you know, it worked out so well for me when I tried to design those socks last fall. *cough*cough*

Hi Anne! Thanks for dropping by! Those kiddie playmats are cheap and incredibly durable. Waterproof, pinproof, and with a textured grid pattern pre-carved into the surface. What more could a knitter want for twenty bucks?

Now, if you'll all excuse me, I have to go decide which knitting to pack. Brace yourselves. This could get ugly.

Buzz, Buzz, Says the Bee

Every queen needs a throne.

I am always busy, but the last week or so, busy has turned into chaotic. I think my bout of illness on Wednesday was, at least in part, my body shutting down for a few hours' rest. It happens, right? I mean, you can only work from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. at lightning pace for so many days in a row before you body goes on strike. Just to put another spin on it, for all of the week before that, every morsel of food I managed to eat was eaten either at my desk or in my car as I raced from one work commitment to the next. I've been reading manuscripts at stoplights. Talking on two different phone lines while simultaneously writing letters. My to-do list currently fills four sheets of regular sized paper, and I need to complete as much of it as possible before Wednesday morning.

Dudes, I've been busy.

When I get like this, I force myself to get into the tub every so often. OK, let me clarify. I bathe, of course I bathe, whether I'm busy or not. But instead of a rushed shower, I force myself into the tub. A bath instead of a shower means that I get to lie there, in that gorgeous little nook, in a tub big enough to swim laps, and just aaaaaah.

You can rush through a shower. But a bath, now that's a venue for relaxation. And unlike other forms of relaxation -- tv, radio, lying in bed like a beached whale while whimpering at the unfairness of it all -- you can't just pop out of the tub and start racing madly again. You get in the tub, you're committed to it. It can't end on a guilty whim. There are towels involved. It can't be rushed.

Plus, you can knit in the tub. Am I the only one who does this?

Later tonight, I'll show you a sockgress report. Thanks to bathtime and other stolen moments, I've managed to grow sock one from a four-row baby all the way through those difficult adolescent years a/k/a the heel.

Hardly Worth the Trouble

Here is the vest back. This is now my FIFTH attempt to load the damn picture. I wouldn't keep bothering over it, but it's starting to feel like the holy grail.

Good to Know

It wasn't me! *cartwheel* It really was because of blogger! Heh. I feel totally vindicated.

Blogger Status
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
RESOLVED: We are seeing reports of uploaded images not appearing properly on blogs. We are investigating the issue.Update (12:36AM): there was a problem introduced during the maintenance earlier today which has now been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Look Who's Blocking

I give up. I've tried three times to upload the picture of the vest back, and blogger won't let me. My choices are to say bad words, put my foot through the monitor, or walk away from this for a while. I'm choosing to walk away. But I'll be back just as soon as I can stop in my mind comparing blogger to Pat Robertson, child molesters, and the IRS. Evil hardheaded bastards, the lot of them.

There are several disadvantages to knitting with black yarn. It's hard to read your work, even under good light and with bright contrasting needles. It picks up every bit of lint in a four-mile radius. And it photographs for shit.

This is the back of the Wall Street vest which is intended for my father. He's a big, burly guy and the vest is sized accordingly. 52" chest. DK weight wool. Approximately nineteen thousand four hundred seventy-two cable crossings, not that anyone resembling me counted them as she was knitting cable after cable after cable. 234 stitches across for front and back each. So 468 stitches around per row. Depending on how much yarn is consumed by neck and armhole banding, I figure this vest will take between 1900 and 1950 total yards of Filatura di Crosa 501. There are entire sweaters, wearable by normal sized adult humans, that take less yardage than that.

Okay, I may have exaggerated the number of cable crossings ever so slightly for dramatic purposes. But those other numbers are verifiably accurate. But do you want to hear the funniest number of all? I honestly thought I would have this thing knit and finished in four weeks. It ran to about double that, not including the repeat sentences to knitting jail, which lasted almost as long as the actual knitting time.

But it'll be worth it if it makes my dad happy. He's worth every last stitch.

Birth of a New Baby Sock

Aww. Look at how cute and tiny it is! It's only four rows old.

Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in the Country Garden colorway. These colors are insanely beautiful. I want to dive into that teal blue and swim laps. The cuff is on size 1 Brittany Birches, and the body of the sock will be knit on size 1.5 Crystal Palace DPNs, my all-time favorite, all-purpose sock needles. I adore these needles. They're slick like aluminum, but grip the yarn like bamboo. Plus the size 1.5 --no, that's not a typo -- is exactly right for most medium weight sock yarn.

In other news, I've got a raging cold and might have to miss SnB tonight. I'm going to lay down for a bit and see how I feel later. Sob! I want to go to SnB!

FO: Purple Magic Socks

Eenie weenie teenie socks. To make them grow, just add a foot:

Ooooh. Aaaah. It's magic!

And here is the man behind the curtain. See all those faintly blurry cables? They make this very roomy and comfy pair of socks draw in tightly when they're off my feet. FWIW, some of that blurriness is due to the fiber content of the yarn. There's a healthy dash of mohair in there, and the socks are a bit blurry in person. But you can sort of see the pattern. And two mystery pieces of lint that give it that certain je ne sais quoi.

Anyway.

The stats.

Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot, color Grape, purchased at Nana's Knits in, er, Decemberish.

Pattern: 4-stitch baby cable from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks.

Results: This yarn knits like a dream. I used size 2 DPNs, 56 stitches per round, at a gauge of around 7 stitches to the inch in the stockinette portion. I think this yarn could stand to be knit at 8sts/inch, but anything tighter than that would start to get plywoody. This is my second pair of socks in this yarn, and the first were a bit too loose in gauge -- only about 6.5 stitches to the inch -- and they developed a halo of sorts from wear. I'm hoping a tighter gauge will diminsh that. I don't much care to pick clouds of fuzz off my socks!

I have a habit of starting a new pair of socks the same day I finish a pair, so tomorrow, I'll show you the new sock-in-progress. You will all be astounded and amazed to discover it has purple in it.

Score 3 Points to the Imps of Inconvenience

Paroled!

Look closely at that picture, and you'll see why this project is on parole instead of completely out of knitting jail. Damn miscrossed cables. The parole officer (a/k/a/ me!) is preparing to duplicate stitch over the miscross, because the thought of tinking back this far (over 10") just makes me want to cry. And I can't ladder that far down through this particular cable pattern. There are just to many layers of cables for that.

This is what the pattern is supposed to look like. See how well-behaved these cables are? See how they arch away from each other? These cables get to go to finishing school instead of to reform school.

Here's the vest front with the shoulders ripped back to the point before my math went wonky. I figure I have another 5 or so inches of knitting on either side of the V neck, and then this is ready for blocking.

Which leads to an important question. Do I fix the miscrossed cable before or after blocking? I can think of reasons for and against either method, but would like to hear from anyone with real experience in this kind of repair.

Slush and a Book Report

I would like it duly noted for the record that I spent most of Easter Sunday, Monday and Tuesday busting the slush on the left hand side of my desk so that I could open my shutters and look out my window at the pretty spring courtyard.

At which point, the Imps of Inconvenience said, "You think you can get rid of slush? Watch this!" And then they conspired to dump a load of a different kind of slush all over my pretty view. The bastards.

Book Report

Anyway, with all that paper off my desk, I felt able to read something other than a submission. So I finished the Harlot's new book, "Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off: The Yarn Harlot's Guide to the Land of Knitting."

I've heard a little minor grumbling about this book, and I think I understand why. Don't get me wrong. I loved reading it. It's an extremely well-executed delivery of a high concept premise. It's clever, too, but we knew it would be. She's a clever writer, and she obviously thought through this book very carefully as she was preparing the manuscript.

She avoids the pitfalls that often trip up writers trying to deliver a high concept book like this. She kept the tone consistent, which must be hard to do, given the failure of so many similar books to remain consistent. And -- more important, to my way of thinking -- she kept it fresh all the way through the text. How many times have you read a nonfiction book and discovered that it was little more than a great first chapter, followed by various restatements of that first chapter? Books like that are thin and stale, and Stephanie's absolutely does not fall into this category. Her concept was strong enough and deep enough to sustain the entire book. It held my attention and never felt like it was repeating itself.

For those of you who haven't seen the book, the premise is fairly simple. She equates knitting to a foreign land, and the book is meant to serve as a travel guide for visitors. The book is broken into sections on population, geography, health warnings, customs and traditions, sports and culture, and so on, and each section talks about the bits and pieces of the knitting lifestyle in a different context from what we're used to. For example, the section on Politics talks about typical knitting debates -- straight vs. circular, acrylic vs. natural -- and classifies people who hate knitting as "enemies of the state." Clever. Witty, even.

So I really enjoyed the book. But it didn't quite read like the other Harlot books, did it? I've been struggling to understand what makes this one feel different, and I think I finally hit on it. Even though this book is meant for knitters, because it's a travel guide, it had to be written as if it were meant for strangers to knitting. Or, at least, it had to make a nod at that kind of tone. The other Harlot books have a very cozy, welcoming, "us girls" kind of feel to them. Apologies to male knitters -- that's not meant to be sexist, and her books aren't sexist. It's just the best way I can think of to describe the friendly, inclusive tone. Because those previous books are very friendly and inclusive, and I think some of that was necessarily sacrificed for this new book.

When you read it, read it with fresh eyes. Don't go into these pages expecting to find what's already been done before. It's new and different, and in this case, different doesn't mean bad. I liked this book, I laughed out loud many times, and I recommend it heartily. I admire the author for stretching, and especially for keeping her writing so fresh. I don't know how she does it. But she does, and the book succeeds.

Anatomy of an Obsession

In 12 days, I leave for RT, which is a five-day publishing conference in Houston. The RT organizers haven't yet provided me with my schedule, but I know that at least part of the time I will be in meetings and speaking at a workshop. And the rest of the time? Who knows. I could be swamped, or I could be lounging poolside with my yarn and needles.

Which brings me to the central question that's been occupying my every waking moment for the last 48 hours.

Which knitting should I pack?

My thoughts on the matter are starting to wear a groove in my brain. The path looks something like this:

1. I need knitting for the plane and the airports. Security is unpredictable, and with my luck, I'd be the knitter who loses her needles to security. Best to take something that can come off the needles without too much damage. No lace. No cables. Something simple. A plain stockinette sock, maybe. I have boxes of stashed sock yarn and plenty of DPNs.

2. But plastic needles get through security more readily, and I have those "kids can knit" shortie plastic needles which would be perfect for a skinny scarf. And I have that handpainted silk which would also be perfect for a skinny scarf. Which means I would have to decide between the cat's paw and the diamond trellis pattern. I've been dithering over that one for months already. Am I really capable of deciding this question in the next twelve days? Ha. Not even close.

3. Plus, it's lace. If they make me surrender my needles, I'd never get it back on in proper order. I'm just not that good at lace yet. Maybe I should go buy something new to put on those kid scarf needles.

4. NO! I have enough stash, dammit.

5. But Nana's Knits is having a trunk show next week. And it's all those Tahki Stacy Charles yarns. I love that stuff. Have they ever made a bad yarn?

6. CRAP! Stop thinking about buying more yarn already! Take either a sock or the handpainted scarf on the airplane. Done. Or take both. And done.

7. Except that's not very much knitting. What if I have a lot of knitting time during the conference? I could wind up spending days in the lounge, networking and knitting. And drinking, but that's a whole other issue.

8. I Could Run Out Of Knitting!!!!

9. I could so.

10. (panic)

11. I better take some sweater yarn, too. Just in case. Something big enough to keep me from panicking about running out of knitting. I could take my husband. Or something new. God knows there's plenty in my stash to choose from. I'd have to pack the straight needles in my suitcase, and probably the yarn if there's a lot of it. I have hardly begun to think through the clothing options, but I know I need business wear for the day, and all those freaking costumes for the parties, and maybe just a couple casual outfits for between times. That's a lot to fit into the suitcase for a five-day conference.

12. Of course, there is that yarn shop in Houston. I kinda want to check it out anyway. Bring home some souvenir yarn. They carry Muench. And Fiesta. I've never actually fondled a Fiesta yarn. Can I do it and retain control over my wallet?

13. My suitcase is only so big. Might have to mail my purchases home.

14. Screw that. Mail the costumes home, keep the yarn near to hand. But what if they lose my suitcase with all that lovely new yarn inside? Better carry on as much as I can. I'll need knitting for the plane anyway.

15. Repeat steps 1 through 14 ad infinitum.

The Things We Do For Love

I'm one of those lucky people with strong, positive family relationships. I actually like my parents and enjoy the time we spend together. My brother is one of my favorite people, and has been since the day he was born. And my nieces and nephews? Smitten. Completely and totally and helplessly smitten.

Here's the all the proof we need of that:

Miss Six, our very own kindergarten diva, has a keen fashion sense and the confidence to use it. Her preferences run to anything pink, sparkly, pink, sequined, pink, glittery, or pink. I'm very sorry to tell you that one day, while innocently shopping with Miss Six in our local Tarzhay, she spotted a ball of what might be referred to very loosely as "yarn."

It's not yarn as you and I might know it. Aside from the fact that it is long and thin and wound into a vaguely ball-shaped blob, it has little in common with actual yarn. In fact, calling it yarn probably insults all the other yarns. It's more like a cheap rayon embroidery thread with these weird flat fringey blocks every inch or so. Here, take a closer look at a strand of this stuff laid across my sleeve. The seam on the right of this picture is the cuff seam and might give you some idea of scale. The central thread on this so-called yarn is no thicker than the line on a t-shirt seam.

Can you believe that anyone would put the word "yarn" on the label of this stuff?

Whatever we call it, in the eyes of Miss Six, its value was above rubies. She took one look at it, gasped like a true diva, and started rubbing the yarn on her cheeks. Then she refused to put it down. (Those of you who have been yarn shopping with me will note the family resemblance there. Miss Six has all the makings of an obsessed knitter.)

In her eyes, this yarn has several things going for it. It's pink in places. It's shiny. It's very soft to the touch. It's got lots of other colors generally reckoned "good for girls" by the kindergarten fashion cabal. As an added bonus, it's fun to reel out a length and brush the fringey parts over your skin. Kinda tickles.

So. After I capitulated -- it helped that the yarn was from the dollar section of the store and had been marked 75% off -- we brought the yarn home and she's been playing with it ever since. For months, she asked me to knit her something out of this stuff, but couldn't decide what. Finally, after long deliberation, I sort of made the executive decision to make her a little head scarf, one of those triangle things that ties under your hair. She wears these sometimes, so I figure she'll like it. As an added bonus, it will use only about half the blobby skein, so she'll still be able to play tickle with the leftovers.

The knitting is torture. The needles fall out of the stitches. The yarn has -zero- elasticity. I've seen cement blocks that were stretchier than this yarn.

And somehow, my intense hatred of this yarn doesn't matter. All that matters is knowing how she'll sparkle when she sees her new scarf.

But I'd still like to finish this thing quickly and never ever knit with this yarn again.

Introducing My Husband

This is my husband. He's a very good husband, as husbands go. Even when other women want to pet and fondle him (and they do! Oh, do they! You should have seen the heavy petting at the Harlot's booksigning!) he remains Mine, All Mine. He's very nice to touch -- hence the hordes of women wanting to stroke him. He's an extrafine merino and you know what that means. Very soft, almost feels like cotton, but retains some of the elasticity and hand of wool.

When I knit the gauge swatch on this a few weeks ago, I was so amazed by the hand and feel that I took it to my SnB and went into paroxysms of ecstasy right there in the old coffee shop. Total yarngasm. I confessed a desire to have this yarn's babies, and now all my SnB buddies call the yarn my husband. They also keep acting like a buncha husband-craving hussies, but that's a whole other story.

I bought this yarn at The Fold, which is a very holy and mystical place, and also very dangerous. Do Not, under any circumstances, take credit cards with you to The Fold. The Fold has been sanctified to the worship of extremely gorgeous and elite natural fibers. When plastic crosses the threshold of a place like that, the plastic is cursed to its limits. Sometimes, in rare cases, this curse has been known to exceed the plastic limits.

Ask me how I know.

Don't mess with The Fold's supermojo is all I'm saying. Next time, I'm taking cash. Lots and lots of cash, because I'm only human after all. But still. Cash.

Anyway. Silver Creek Yarns sportweight merino, color Marine. The top picture probably comes closest to representing the true depth of color. That's the cardigan back of a fitted cardigan. The cables angle in at the waistline by decreasing the reverse stockinette field between each cable, then increasing again above the waistline. This picture shows the upper part of the waist with some of the above-the-waist increasing.

The hardest part of this project so far has been related to this waist shaping. There is a single purl stitch separating the columns of cables at the narrowed waist. That single purl stitch was distorting like crazy at first. I've never had ladders in anything before, but my first go on this almost looked like a cabled clapotis. Big honking holes.

I tried ptbl and other standard fixes, but nothing gave me the result I wanted. I ended up ripping back and re-knitting and paying very, very close attention to the way that single purl stitch seated itself on the needles so that it would not distort. It was slow and tedious, but it seemed to work. I'm not 100% satisfied, but it passes the prancing pony test.

Just to complete the picture, here's a shot of the below-the-waist shaping on those cables. It's a very simple cable with a 12-row repeat, cable crossings on row 3 and 7. I like the hourglass shape that the irregular crosses give to the cable and I think it complements the shaping of the actual cardigan. (I hope! Still lots of knitting left on this one.)

Holy Shirt!

I'm going to try to explain the shirt thing, but since my knitbuddy Knifty Red was the architect, she explains it better.

The short and highly suspect version of the facts-as-I-understand-them --

Guido, the guy from the "It's a Purl Man" podcasts, needed someone to design a logo. This was somehow connected to the Represent event in New York City and an appearance on the NBC Today show.

Kris designed something, and part of it was used, along with something else from a lady in Italy.

Kris has some contacts who were able to take her design and put it on t-shirts. The very first one went to the Harlot, and the rest went to our happy little SnB gang. See the Knifty Red blog for a picture of some of us with our shirts.

I love mine. It's soft and perfect for a nightshirt. Keeps me dreaming of cables all night long.

Thanks, Kris!


About the Pictures

My picture-posting woes continue, but I'm beginning to find ways around them. I've discovered that I can post up to three pictures without text in the time it takes to knit five rounds on the purple Bearfoot sock. If I add text to anything more than one picture, my pictures turn into those funky letter X boxes. I hate those things. Hate. Those things.

But at least it's no longer a pictureless blog. Progress, eh?

What She Got

What We Saw

What She Saw

Murphy's Law Strikes Again

The Knitterary Corollary to Murphy's Law: If there's a way to arse up a blog, it will be arsed most arsily.

If any of you can see actual pictures in the previous post instead of annoying little boxes with Xs in them, please, for the love of Addis, let me know.

Is it just me? Or does everyone have problems like this?

Mommy, What's a Harlot?

What she saw. Chicago knitters turned out in hordes for this event. Way to represent!

What we saw. The bohus is a thing of beauty. The woman wearing it ain't so bad, either.

This was my second time attending one of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's booksignings. The first, last summer, was a real turning point in my knitting life. But what led up to it was even bigger.

I'd been knitting quietly, in isolation, off and on for almost two decades, when one day about two years ago, I stopped in at the library to browse the pattern books. This was shortly after I began making that grand cosmic personality shift from "someone who knits" to "KNITTER" with a capital KNIT. And there on the bookshelf, wedged between a hat book and a ragged Mary Thomas, I saw the first Yarn Harlot book. Reading that book opened my eyes to the existence of the online global knitting community. (Not to mention that she helped me laugh at my own yarn obsession, which had lived in a pretty secret place until then. But that's a whole other story.)

So when I went to the signing last summer, it wasn't just about the book. It was to pay tribute to the woman who made me aware that there was an internet knitting presence. I knew about a local knitting group by then, but hadn't managed to attend any of their weekly meetings yet. I met two members of that group in the audience that night, and meeting them -- plus all the other knitters -- helped me get over my shyness about joining a knitting group.

I'm not a shy person. But for years and years and years, I didn't know any other knitters. Not really. I had met a few in the yarn shop in my former hometown, but it wasn't the kind of place where people mingled and bonded. It was more the kind of place where the clerks sniffed at my humble projects and scorned my student budget, and the patrons were afraid to touch anything. I wasn't all that sorry when it closed except that it left me nowhere to buy yarn except the big box stores. And we know what that means. We call those the Acrylic Years, and we try not to think about them much.

The funny thing is, I had witnessed the way the internet revolutionized the writers' community. And it just never occurred to me that it might have a similar effect on the knitting community. Maybe I'm just the slow knitter in more ways than one. But those early harsh experiences with the snobby knitting shop had pretty much closed me off to the possibility that other knitters might be worth finding.

Something else might have flung itself in my path and made me aware of all that I was needlessly missing. But it wasn't something else. It was that first Yarn Harlot book, and it changed the way I thought about knitting and the way I interacted with other knitters.

I went to the signing last summer to pay tribute to that book, and found a knitting community while I was there. I went last night because now that community has become such an integral part of my life that staying home would have been unthinkable.

All of which is just to say, Thank You, Stephanie.