Change of Course

They say the devil lives in the details. Not that I would know anything about that....

On Friday, I realized I was within two rows of dividing the front of Catherine Parr for the neck shaping. As this is a crew neck, more or less, that means there's very little knitting left to do. I did some rough math and realized I could probably finish the sweater before the end of the year.

And then I also realized I would need a second ball of yarn to knit from, once the neckline is divided into two pieces.

This isn't the kind of detail that would normally pose a problem. Normally. I had wound off several skeins of the dark green Cascade 220 and put them in a sack in my knitting bag for just this moment. Er, better make that the previous moments when I finished skeins. All the pre-wound balls in my bag have been used.

Again, not normally a problem, right? Just haul out the swift and wind off another cake. So out comes the swift, out comes the winder, and both are clamped in place. Then I went to my storage closet to get a skein, and that was when it hit me.

I had no idea where the rest of the yarn might be.

You might remember that a couple of months back, I photographed and catalogued most of my yarn in preparation for moving it to a storage location. At that point, I tried to also reorganize it more neatly -- like yarns together, every bin filled, and so forth. Somewhere on that journey, I decided to remove the "knits in progress" yarns from their usual home in the stash closet and put them --

Somewhere else. Somewhere really clever. Somewhere, I'm sorry to admit, that I couldn't for the life of me remember.

While I tried to remember what my brainstroke had led me to do, I grabbed the pink sweater and cast on the sleeves.





















Because I'm not sure there's enough yarn for full sleeves, I decided to do a provisional cast on at the widest part of the sleeve, just below the sleeve cap shaping. You can see the gray waste yarn of the provisional cast on in the picture. Then I knit the sleeve cap in usual fashion (bottom up). Then I picked up the stitches at the provisional cast on, and will knit down until the sleeves are done or the yarn is gone, whichever comes first.

I've used this "middle out" sleeve construction technique in similar circumstances, and it's the best argument in favor of knitting the sleeves last. Do both sleeves at once, and you won't end up gimpy-armed if your yarn runs a bit short.

About the Sock Yarn

In one corner of a tightly packed closet, atop a narrow bookcase teeters a stack of storage boxes filled with enough yarn to make 63 pairs of socks.

63. I know. I counted.

And that doesn't include the several yarns in the fingering to DK range that could eventually be made into socks. That's just the stuff that was bought expressly to make socks.

I made 9 pairs of socks this year. So at my current rate of knitting, I have enough sock yarn to last me seven years.That's assuming I continue to knit socks at the same rate, which is by no measure a certain thing. I'm planning more sweater knitting, which means less sock knitting.

Three years ago, before I started hoarding sock yarn, these bins held the yarn for sweaters-in-progress. They held needles and notions. Now, to make room for the sock yarn, all those things have been crammed into nooks and crannies on bookcases, which are bowing under the weight of everything I ask them to hold.

2009 will be the year I stop collecting sock yarn as if it doesn't count towards the stash. I'm sure I'll still buy some here and there, and I've "budgeted" to allow myself to purchase new sock yarn after I've completed three pairs of socks. After. Not before. The storage closet has no more credit to extend.

Last year, I granted myself two exceptions in my personal rules. I said that sock yarn didn't count, as long as I paid cash for it from my weekly pocket money allowance. And I said that the rules didn't apply to Stitches and to The Fold's annual New Year's Day sale. This year, sock yarn counts, whether I pay from my weekly allowance or from gold that rains down from the skies.

Will there be an exception for Stitches? Still debating that one. I may leave it an open question until I see just how many pairs of socks I manage to knit between now and September. But my usual splurge mentality for the Stitches marketplace has started to come under heavy scrutiny, too. So we'll see, I guess.

Goals: Not Just for Soccer Anymore

I love goals. I love planning things -- setting the vision, crafting strategies, breaking a process into pieces. I love thinking about what's possible, the big dreams, and then trying to imagine ways to turn possibilities into facts.

Yeah, and I love New Year's resolutions. Let's face it. The new year is a great excuse for making goals, and not just for people like me with our daily, weekly, monthly and annual goal lists. January 1 is the one time of year when the whole world gets in on the game. Fun times.



That's a snapshot of a week in my planning book. I developed a numbering system for the things I want to accomplish every day, day after day, and use that as a shorthand in my book. Some of these numbered things may seem silly -- for example, one of my daily goals is to clean something in my house for 15 minutes. But I have to put that on the list because if I don't, I might not ever get up from my desk. I tend to get sort of stuck here. Wrapped up in my work. One of the challenges of working at home is balancing the whole life/work thing -- you never leave the office, you know. It's always here. My goals have to reflect the ways I struggle for balance.

And then there's my project wall.
























Each white card is a manuscript which I've acquired. Again, because I'm a bit of a freak, I've developed a notation system to help me track where each manuscript is in the development and production process. The best ones are upside down with an X through them, because those are the ones I'm done with. They're not out of production yet, so they can't come off the wall, but I can more or less ignore them.

The delightful Miss Seven loves my office -- what little girl wouldn't love a room filled with colored note cards and pencil sharpeners and scissors? Two of the notes on my project wall were placed there by her when she was playing office with me. One reads, "everyone loves you well ... and people also like you very much." The other reads, "Hi TT, I (heart) you and I know other people do to." I think those notes will probably stay on the project wall forever. Just cuz. Y'know.

So, now that you've had a glimpse into my ordinary world of lists and planners and notation systems, maybe my decision to make some knitting goals for 2009 will seem more understandable. I'm a driven person, and knitting is where I usually let all that drop. I just forget it all and make my stitches, one after the other in soothing rhythms, confident that eventually I'll wind up with a garment. No deadlines. No obligations. No plans or goals.

Yeah.

So that's how I came to have project bags hanging off every doorknob, and I'm up to my ears in stash. Because I didn't worry about when I would knit different things, or where I would put the yarn. I just figured I'd get to it eventually, right?

That's not a system that works particularly well for someone like me.

So I'm crafting knitting goals for 2009. I have a rough draft of them posted on the sidebar of my blog. Still pondering them, and some of those goals may change between now and January 1, but they're starting to take shape nicely. I'll be focusing more on garments and less on socks. Finishing what's already been started, knitting what's already been bought.

What about you? Any knitting resolutions for the new year?

The Best Gifts Are You

So, at the holiday party at Nana's Knitting Shop on Friday, in between collecting bribes to buy me a senate seat, Tricia gave us all these lovely kits.


















I say Tricia gave them, but actually it was her husband The Prince, dressed in a beautifully knit red sweater and a custom knit white beard. (Yes, Trish, the sweater is beautifully knit. Forget about that teenie row error on the back. It's a design feature.)

This is a kit with instructions to make felted cherry blossoms as pictured on the pattern card. I love the yarn -- Cascade Lana D'Oro -- and have decided it's far too soft and decadent to felt. It wants to be a neckwarmer. Or underpants. It's that soft.

Then at the SnB annual holiday shindig -- a party for the oldtimer SnB crew, many of whom don't make it to our weekly gatherings any more, but all of whom are still definitely part of the team -- we did our annual gift swap. This year's swap was supposed to be gag gifts and white elephants. I had a neatly wrapped package sitting on my dresser and walked out of the house without it. Pout! So I thought I wouldn't get to play along as Knifty Red read her little story about Mrs. Purl Right knitting gifts left and right. (It's one of those stories where you pass the gift to the left or right every time the word left or right is used, and it's really fun.)

I wasn't the only one who forgot her swap gift. Two of us forgot our gifts, and by coincidence, two people brought extras to compensate for the boneheads among us. Ahem. So I got to play along, and look what I got!




























That's two precious, shiny skeins of Knit One Crochet Too Souffle -- perfect for a drapey scarf -- and a skein of Fannie's Fingering -- or as we think of it now, sock yarn for dirty girls. Did you know that in certain parts of the world, "Fannie" refers to a woman's girly bits? Fannie's Fingering, indeed.

But the best thing I got for Christmas this year, without question, was the chance to enjoy the company of my knitting buddies. Twice. When I first moved back to the creative wasteland known as "my childhood neighborhood," I knew I would have a hard time finding like-minded people around here. Creative class members are in short supply in these parts. And always have been. People like me tend to run away from places like this, you know, and congregate in areas where like-minded people won't scorn work that's done for something other than money. (Or worse -- activities done to improve the work that's done for something other than money. Try explaining that one to an accountant sometime.)

So I thought I was in for a few years of loneliness when I came back here. Family reasons drove me to do it, and I dreaded it in many ways. The first few years were every bit as isolating and frustrating as I expected.

And then I met the knitters. I was shy of joining this group at first. I knew about it long before I came to that first meeting, but I hesitated. I was afraid I would find nothing more than a group of crafty housewives -- you know the type, the women who do these things because their friends are doing it or because they heard about it at the mall. They are driven by different needs -- the need to be part of the group, to be popular, to fit in. And that's fine, but that's not what drives me.

But I took a chance and went to a meeting and found a mix of people that really does feed my heart and soul. And from there, I met some more knitters, and some more knitters, and pretty soon my weekly calendar was formed around knitting events with two different overlapping groups of people, all of whom delight me every time I'm in their company.

I love yarn. Jeez, everyone who knows me knows how much I love yarn. But what I love even more than yarn are the people around me who also love yarn.

Happy holidays to all of you.

When Looks Deceive

These may look like rather ordinary, lumpy cookies. But the taste is really something special. Several of you who participated in the cookie exchange asked for the recipe. It started off as a recipe ripped from a magazine, but -- this may come as no surprise -- I tend to tinker with recipes. Yeah, that's right. I cook the same way I knit. Recipes, like patterns, are never made as written. I may only fool around on the margins, but I always read a recipe and think, "Ooh! That sounds good. But it would be better if...."

In any event, this started off as a recipe for a sandy cookie with jelly swirls. And now it is...

::drumroll::

Raspberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

5 T butter
1/3 c dark brown sugar
1/3 c white sugar
1/3 c raspberry jam
1 egg
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1 generous cup dark chocolate chips
1 1/4 cup chopped pecans

Cream butter, white sugar and brown sugar. Add egg and mix well. Add vanilla and raspberry jam. (Jam will be easier to stir in if you nuke it for a few seconds. Be careful not to overheat it, but just warm it slightly.) Add flour, baking soda and baking powder and mix thoroughly. Mix in nuts and chips.

Drop by spoonfuls onto well-greased cookie sheets and bake at 350 for 9-11 minutes. Don't overbake. Allow them to cool for just a couple of minutes on the pans before transferring to racks. They need a bit of a rest before handling.

Just fwiw, I like the Girardhelli 60% dark chocolate chips. They're nicely shaped and have a good flavor and are very easy to find. The combination of tang from the raspberries, sweetness from the pecans, and richness from the chips is a real treat.

Hence, the Name

Here is the craptastic, crapalicious, craparrific crapghan. If you put on sunglasses, you might be able to look at this picture closely enough to see that I'm just beginning to apply the border. Warning: Viewer beware! I won't pay your medical bills if your corneas are burned.

This is a Red Heart afghan for my oldest nephew, The Teenager Who Drives. He's military-mad and his bedroom is decorated in American flags, video game boxes, dirty clothes, and White Sox paraphernalia. So, when it came time to make his special blanket in grandma's "single" pattern, we picked out this insane variegated yarn named, appropriately, Stars and Stripes. I hate the yarn -- there are too many imperfections, too many variations in spin and thickness and loft and color -- which gave rise to the nickname. Crap + afghan = crapghan.

My grandmother crocheted bed-sized blankets for all of us -- her kids, their kids, and in some cases, their kids. In 30 or so years of crocheting, I'd be willing to bet she made 150 of them. When she ran out of beds to blanket, she started making enormous "throws" (actually, also twin bed-sized) for the backs of couches. She also made a good number of crib blankets, but she preferred the bigger ones because they would take her longer than ten minutes.

If you were reading the blog this spring, you know I pulled out her special "double" pattern to make a crib blanket for my uncle and his wife, who had their first baby this July. That double pattern and the single pattern I'm using for the crapghan were the only two patterns she ever used to make afghans. No granny squares for her! She taught me the patterns one day sitting at a picnic table in her backyard, under an enormous old oak that we all referred to as "the shady tree." Many of my happiest memories developed under the shady tree, and that's certainly one of them.

I get wicked nostalgia whenever I think about this, and making the blankets is a way of honoring her memory. The crapghan is number 3 of 5 for the nieces and nephews. Number four will be a forest green one for Danger Boy, but I'll finish a sweater or two before I cast that on.

And it looks like this one will be done in time to pass it off to the teenager at a family gathering on Sunday. Whew!

Getting Closer!

Today I finished knitting the back yoke of Catherine Parr. This was knit in the round to the armholes, split, and the yokes are knit separately. I've already threaded the live front stitches onto the needle, and it's ready to go.

My original hope was to have this done by the end of the year. But I've also been working hard on the crapghan -- I'm into the last 6 oz. ball on that, and believe me, 6 ounces is nothing when the whole thing tips the scales at 84. Yeah, that's right, it's a seven-pounder. I want that thing done so bad I can almost taste it. It's too big and heavy to lug from room to room, so I keep ducking into the back bedroom, where it lays on the couch in all its eye-killing glory, to add a few stitches.

If I can finish the crapghan this week, I still have an outside chance of finishing Catherine Parr before the end of the year, which is another one so close to the finish line that I can hardly stand it. Much depends upon my job. We keep having these odd production issues due to technical/software problems, and every time that happens, I lose several hours trying to repair things. And I don't have spare multi-hour blocks of time laying around just waiting for a technical disaster to claim them.

Take Saturday. Case in point. I rarely take a whole day off -- I'm almost always reading or editing for at least a few hours each day. But I planned to take Saturday off and wrap gifts, do some cooking, and, of course, play with my yarn. I'd bought a new movie some weeks ago and still hadn't watched it. (Marie Antoinette, the "new romantics" version.) And you know, a day off once every few months or so doesn't make me a slacker.

But then one of our books came back from the typesetter loaded with major errors due to this technical glitch, and I spent 10.5 hours in my chair, fixing the manuscript. Pissed me off.

I'm starting to give some serious thought to goals for the New Year, and much of my thinking now revolves around time management. Change begins with me. It may affect others, and they may resist it, but I have to initiate it or it won't happen. And you know, I'd like to actually wear Catherine Parr someday.

One of my favorite time management tricks is the kitchen timer. I keep one on my desk. Set it for 45 minutes or however long, and buckle down on a project. Then when the timer goes off, I stop. No matter what. I get up, walk around, refill my mug or water bottle. Throw a load of laundry in the machine, wash the dishes, anything that keeps me on my feet. I usually set the timer for between 5 and 15 minutes during this stage, and when it goes off, I stop, return to my desk, and dig back in to my task for another timed sprint.

It may sound counterintuitive, but it's a technique that can keep me fresh throughout the course of a day, alternating desk work (in long sprints) with short bursts of physical activity. And there's something mentally satisfying about portioning out my tasks -- so many turns of the timer for editing, so many for submissions, so many for management tasks. As an added bonus, I always know exactly how much time I've put in on any particular project. (It's an old lawyer thing -- tracking time per task and project for billing and productivity purposes.)

So do you have any time management or productivity tricks that you can recommend?

Nom Nom Nom

I've had a frustrating day, one of those days where bewildering things pile on top of you all day long. My windshield wipers wouldn't work this morning, but started working again on the way to the mechanic. My neighbor had a flat tire, and I helped her change it and got all dirty. Euw. The family business has been slammed with annoying paperwork, and another neighbor, not the one with a flat, inexplicably told me that I have the voice of a five-year-old. WTF?? My doctor's office billed me for tests that I paid for the day I was in the office. I tried to cancel my old dial-up service (which I was keeping strictly for use at the lake house), and the very kind gentleman from Whatthefuckistan kept me on the line for twenty minutes insisting that I need some other package which would be free for the first 30 days only. Every time I told him, "No, thank you," he would go right to the top of his script and start reading the whole thing over again. Every. Damned. Time. How much you wanna bet it shows up on my bill?

Oh. And a check I've been waiting for -- I did some extra freelance work a while back -- still hasn't showed up. Every time I follow up with the payor, she tells me, "I just mailed it today." I wouldn't normally fuss over delayed payment, but she's going to screw up my taxes if she doesn't cut the check in this calendar year.

So I knit for a while, but it wasn't quite taking the edge off.

I needed something more ninja.

I needed to use a knife. A sharp one.

So I made my trusty stir-fry, an easy and dependable dish I've been making since college. Everyone who's tried this very easy recipe has raved about it. Well, it's probably a stretch to call it a recipe. More like a blueprint.

You'll need:

• 3 c. or so chopped fresh vegetables, dealer's choice (The above was made with cauliflower, broccoli, and red radishes, but really, there are no bad choices -- this is a great way to use up leftovers)
• equal parts toasted sesame oil (or peanut), soy sauce, and rice vinegar (roughly a tablespoon or two of each)
• a few of drops of tabasco
• a generous dash of five spice powder, maybe around an eighth of a teaspoon, or to taste
  
• a good sprinkle of garlic powder, or one clove minced
• 1T sesame seeds (I'm out at the moment, so there aren't any pictured)
  

Put everything except the vegetables and sesame seeds in a deep skillet or wok and stir to mix. It won't mix perfectly because of the oil, but it's better if you mix the spices to dissolve them a bit. Heat the sauce until the garlic is just starting to sizzle. Add the hardest vegetables first and let them cook a bit before you add the softer ones. (Soft ones cook faster -- asparagus, radishes, summer squash, eggplant, and the like -- so you want to give the hard ones a head start.) Cook over a high flame, stirring frequently, until all the sauce is absorbed and vegetables are at desired tenderness.

If you're using sesame seeds (strongly recommended), dry toast them in a nonstick skillet for a minute or two, then sprinkle them on top of the vegetables before serving.

Leftovers reheat beautifully. Serve with rice or noodles. If you don't have any aggression issues or time for chopping, you can use the precut bags, baby carrots, canned water chestnuts, even frozen (though the texture will be different). You know those salad and dip platters you get at the grocery store for parties, and then have mountains leftover? Now you know what I do with mine. Into the wok!

My mom uses leftover cooked beef and chicken when she makes it, adding the meat when she adds the soft vegetables. My sister uses uncooked chicken or shrimp and adds it with the hard vegetables to cook thoroughly. Really, it's an anything goes kind of recipe. The sauce is both basic enough and versatile enough to dress up just about anything.

And all that chopping sure does restore a gal's equilibrium. Or if it doesn't restore her, it at least arms her.

Pondering January

Oooh, look at that purty purple. So yummy. Torino feels every bit as soft as, say, Malabrigo, but it's plied and perfectly round.

Round enough for good cabling?

Thanks, Knifty Red, for the reminder in the comments. Honestly, I've been so focused on other things -- like finishing other knitting, and creating that interactive e-book, and let's not forget the mumblety-mumble holidays and the way they hoover up huge chunks of life -- that I'd completely forgotten about our new team project set to start in January.

We're knitting St. Brigid. And I think mine might just be in the purple Torino.

I purchased this Torino several years ago at Kool Knits in Naperville. I think this predates the opening of Nana's Knitting Shop in my neighborhood, because Nana's carries Torino and if Nana's carries something, I buy it there.

I'm actually getting much better at self-control while breathing that delicious nectar of yarn fumes at Nana's. Used to be, I couldn't get out of there for less than $100. These days, it's often under $50. Rumor has it that I've been witnessed leaving after open knitting with no new purchases. But my stash closet doubts the truth of these rumors.

Financial self-discipline has become a pressing concern for me lately. I have enough money to live on, but I'm very worried about the economy, as are most people. This past week, though, in back-to-back explosions known around the publishing world as "Black Wednesday" and "Gray Thursday," the axe fell on many heads at many houses. Editors, artists, sales specialists, managers -- at one house, I hear an entire production department was laid off.

Publishing is a small industry and requires a specialized skill set. It's not enough to know where to put the commas. You have to also be able to predict the future and know what people will want to read a year or two from now, which cover graphics will be more appealing, which topics will be hot. It's not guesswork, though gut feelings do come into play.

The people who lost their jobs this week, a staggering number of people, have demonstrated abilities to both predict the future and get the commas in the right spots. They were smart, talented, capable people, folks with track records of creating best-sellers and prize-winners.

And now they're out of a job, and frankly, this is probably just the beginning of an whole-industry contraction in publishing.

My job is safe. For now. And for the foreseeable future. But, to be perfectly candid, I can foresee less of the future than I used to. And in a job that requires a fortune teller's ability to see the future, this troubles me more than I can express.

I was going to use the purple Torino to knit a FLAK aran according to Janet Szabo's instructions. I bought extra yardage to allow for all the sample swatching she recommends, and if I use this yarn for St. Brigid, I'll have around 500-600 yards leftover.

But, with the future so uncertain, I might just hang onto my cash and use the stash. It's a tough decision.

What do you all think? Have you changed your shopping habits even though your income is unchanged? Am I being overly panicky?

There has been a bit of knitting. Not as much as during a typical week, because work and the holidays shook up my schedule, but there has been knitting.

On Sunday, I read submissions and finished this sock. The second is cast on, but barely so.





















And here's the latest view of Catherine Parr. I'm knitting the back yoke now. It's at roughly 6 inches, maybe a touch more. Once it reaches ten inches, I'll probably put it on stitch holders and knit the front. Or maybe -- brace yourselves -- I'll take the time to figure out just what I'm going to do about the neckline before knitting the front yoke. My current thinking is V-neck with colorwork bands to match those at the sleeve cuffs.

My second choice might just be a turtleneck with no colorwork.

Then again, that colorwork is nice, and it would feel so toasty warm around my neck, and it would be easier if I didn't have to do any math. So maybe I'll just follow the pattern.

(Yeah, right.)

Yet Another Sock

I don't know why I feel compelled to have two pairs of socks in progress. You'd think one would be enough. And yet it's not. I like to have one pair of plain socks on my desk to knit while dictating and reading submissions. And I like to have another in my purse so I always have something with me to knit. Comes in handy for doctor's appointments, long queues at the bank, and other assorted inconveniences.

So this girly thing is my purse sock right now. I have barely started it, as you can see, and it will probably live in my purse for a while to come. There's no rush to finish it. Its purpose is to live in my bag for random knitting moment, not to be wearable by any particular date.

I love the yarn, Filatura di Crosa Maxime Print. Very spongey and soft. In the ball, it squeezes like a high-end stuffed animal, compressing more than you expect and then springing right back into shape. My only gripe with this yarn is that their colorways tend to be outside my tastes. But for that, I'd probably own more of it, because it's very nice to knit.

Pushing It

I've got a lot of projects OTN again. And I'm pretty darned sick of all of them. Not because they're bad projects or boring or not something I'd wear, but because they have been hanging around FOREVER.

All week long, I've been dwelling on that. It's not good to have pleasurable things take on the shape of a burden.

So I've been talking about not casting on any new projects until I clear all existing projects off my lists. Socks are the exception to that rule, of course, because I need mindless desk knitting and something portable for my purse. But, not including socks, look at what I have OTN:

1. Catherine Parr.

This was cast on November 2007, one year ago. The sleeves are done. The body, knit in the round, is done to the armholes (where the fabric divides), and another three inches of the back is done above the armholes. This one is probably 80% done, except for a little knitting and some math for the neckline.

2. The Crapghan.

Remember this butt ugly thing? It's 2.5 balls away from completion. It's crocheted, and crochet hurts my wrist, so I can only work on it in the tiniest increments. Takes a long time to crochet a bed-sized blanket in five minute increments.

3. Fulmar.

I'd rate this at about 30% done. And you have no idea how much I wish that number was larger. I love this project, but it requires thought, and I can't always think about my knitting.

4. My Husband a/k/a the Cardigan.

The back is knit. That's it. I got stalled by the sleeves, but after a Stitches class this summer, I have a new way of short-rowing the cuffs so that I ought to get a decent result. I hope. 30% done.

5. The Fair Isle Bag.

Love the colorwork yarn on that one -- Plymouth Outback Wool. Nice wool, great colors. I wanted a true black yarn to go with it, and ended up with some Berrocco single ply that irritates my skin. So like the crapghan, I can only work on this one in short time increments. Maybe 10% done.

6. The Pink Sweater.

Started out as a vest, but I have enough yarn to make sleeves. We'll see how long those sleeves end up. Should be at least bracelet length. I'm nearly done with the front, so we'll soon discover just how long the sleeves will be, as that's all that remains to knit. Around 60% done.

7. The Kyoto Sweater.

I cast it on. I knit a few inches. I realized I would need to rewrite the entire pattern. And there, I stopped. Sometimes I get tired of not being able to knit patterns as written. Not even 5% done.



So that's four sweaters, a cardigan, a bag and an afghan. Catherine Parr, the pink sweater, and the afghan are all in the home stretch. I could conceivably finish all three before the end of the year. I thought about trying to knit my dad another vest in January, but now it looks like it will be Fulmar all the way, with the Kyoto (after I rewrite the pattern) for braindead days.

And even then, there will still be the cardigan.

Sheesh.

Definitely time to ignore the call of new projects. I may not achieve perfect completion of all these items before casting on something new, but if I push it, I can clear out a lot of them and make substantial progress on the rest.

Analyze This!

I found this over on Jennie Crusie's blog. Some company has come up with a way to insta-analyze your blog and give it a Myers-Briggs rating. (If you don't know about Myers-Briggs, it's a personality evaluation survey used by psychiatrists to help with treatment and by writers to help with character development.)

Here's the rating for this blog:

ESFP - The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves. They enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.


When I first saw my result, I waved it off because it's almost a perfect opposite of my actual personality -- only three of the four letters match my own Myers-Briggs inventory.

But then I read a bit more on the website about the way the blog analyzer works, and one of the things mentioned was that different blogs written by the same people can yield different results. It's not the writer's personality being inventoried, but the blog's.

And then I realized something else. Knitting is where I escape. Hard for me to be a manager? Shoot, I'm a manager at two different companies. My default position is telling everyone else what to do, delegating, making everything around me run smoothly.

But knitting is where I escape all of that. Or try to, anyway.

Live in the present moment and don't like to plan ahead? People make fun of me for being so hyper-organized. I have a plan for how to plan my plans. But in my knitting life, I do my best to keep that urge at bay. Yeah, okay, so I gave into my natural urges and invented the monster database of patterns cross-indexed a dozen different ways. But I don't know when I'll pick up my needles again, and when I do, I don't know which project I'll choose. I knit by the seat of my pants.

I could go on, but I guess the point is that this blog analyzer showed me a few truths about why knitting is so important to me. It's not just a pressure valve, not just a place to blow off steam, but a place where I act so different from my usual driven self that the steam never has a chance to accumulate.

The Pink Sweater

Maybe I should have titled this post, "Why I'll Never Be One of the Cool Knitbloggers." The proof is in the picture. I thought I'd be all clever and such, and lay out the sweater back under the sweater front to demonstrate how far along we are in this project. It was such a great idea in my head, and believe me, my imaginary photos are more visually magnificent than that curly, bunchy mess up there.

Anyway. I'm past the armhole shaping for the front, and within maybe four rows of splitting for the V-neck. Precious little knitting time these days. Luckily, this project is so lickety-split fast that it makes up for the scant time I'm spending on it. Yesterday, during 90 minutes of Sunday morning new shows, I knit about3.5" of the front. Fast knitting. With only an hour a day, it's possible I could wear this thing to Thanksgiving dinner.

Yeah, right, like I'll get an hour a day for it.

I'm using one of the Ann Budd "Handy Book" charts for this sweater. If you haven't seen these books with the sizing charts, you're missing out. She gives precise instructions in chart format for standard patterns in a huge range of sizes. You pick the finished size you want along the top of the chart, pick your yarn's gauge along the left side of the chart, and she tells you everything you need to know: how many stitches to cast on, how many inches to knit, how to work any shaping -- it's all there in the charts.

Of course -- and this will come as no surprise to anyone who knows my knitting habits -- I can't just follow the charts. I have to change them. God forbid I should knit a pattern as written.

I decided I wanted a little less armhole depth, so I cobbled together chart instructions from two different sizes on the chart. If you think about it, we knit sweater pieces in two dimensions, height and width. I preserved the width of the body pieces, and preserved the height between the hem and the lowest point of the armscye. For all that, I followed the charts for my true size.

But for the armscye, I switched to a smaller size spec so that I will have a neater fit under the arm. This means I also have to knit the sleeves to a smaller size on the chart, so that the sleeve cap matches the shaping of the armscye.

This is an incredibly easy alteration. And the Ann Budd book makes it even easier. No math, just plug-n-play with the charts. Anyone can do it. Heck, I can't even take a decent photo, and even I can do it.

Buh-Bye Now

Do you see what I mean about this yarn? The colors work together so much better when they're not pooling.

I haven't decided what to do about this yarn. Thanks so much for all the great suggestions. Changing the gauge would also change the fabric density (and would therefore change the durability and wearability of the socks), so I don't think that would work in the long run, even if it would certainly disrupt the color pattern.

But a pattern, that might do the trick. With the help of ravelry, I've identified several patterns that might work better. Anything that breaks the tendency to pool the colors would do it. At the moment, I'm leaning toward entrelac of some kind. Either that, or I might bag the idea of socks altogether and do a scarf of some type.

Truth, though? What I really want is a finished fabric that looks something like the picture above. Because the colors don't pool, the eye sees them a bit differently. File this under "Yet Another Longed-For Impossibility."

For now, we're going to let this yarn rest. I won't bother trying to straighten out the kinks from having knit it, but winding it back onto the ball and ignoring it will help it relax. In other words, I have a great excuse for avoiding a decision on this yarn for a while.

And let's face it. It's not as though I'm hard-up for knitting material. I'll just knit some of my other hundred thousand yards of yarn.

It Looked Good in the Hank

I don't have a picture of this Schaeffer Anne in the skein, and I regret that now. I regret it because, as knit, this yarn looks like an entirely different creature than it did when it was looped and twisted and on the shop shelves. It was mostly steel blue-gray, with a strong shot of rich purple, and just a dash of teal and yellow. Based on the color changes, I suspected it would knit to a purple/gray body with shots of hot color, maybe with a resulting pattern something like this:






















As you can see, though, the Schaeffer Anne doesn't look anything like that. It's barberpoling, which is like a pox on my house in any event. Me and the barberpoles, we don't see so much eye to eye when it comes time to knit the second sock, which never, ever manages to stripe in an acceptable manner.

But the bigger problem in the barberpole is the way the green and yellow come together. Separated, they looked like nice shots of color waking up the darker shades. Together, they make an odd, jarring splash between the purple and the gray. The green takes on a kelly cast, where it's actually more of a hunter-teal shade on its own.

I'm also disappointed with the way the gray is pooling. It's flat and a little dead-looking. The other stripes in the barberpole are shaded and intermingled with at least two tones. The gray is all gray.

Right now, I'm debating whether to keep knitting in the hopes that the pattern will grow on me. Option two would be to rip it, wind it back into skeins, and just overdye it some dark color. Like black. Black would wipe this mess right out of existence, right?

I don't know. Anyone have any better ideas?

Easing Back Into My Rut

I'm slowly -- very slowly, I'm sorry to say -- reclaiming a normal routine. Things continue to interrupt that process, things such as the phone company guy who spent hours at the new shop on Friday trying to arrange for our phone number to ring on our phones. This was more difficult than anyone anticipated, and I spent many more hours at the shop with him than I had planned.

And then there's the shoulder, which continues to ache intermittently, but is getting better. It's very strange to me to read submissions without working on a plain sock. The two things go together so much that I almost don't want to read if I can't also knit a sock. But my shoulder won't tolerate a lot of movement, so I'm learning how not to multitask again. Except, to be honest, it's hard for me to sit still and just read. Without that sock in my hands, I find myself popping out of the chair far more frequently, so instead of getting caught up on submissions, I'm just sort of picking at them. But at least there's forward motion in that department, too.

Anyway, with a few fits and starts and interruptions, normal life is resuming again. For the most part, I'm at the shop for a few hours in the morning. For the most part, I work at home in the afternoons and evenings. The mountain of laundry which grew during the move is back to manageable dimensions. I even have groceries in the fridge again.

And I have these:



















Two skeins of yummy new Malabrigo sock yarn. I've cut way back on my yarn shopping in the last two months or so, but I made an exception for these. Soft, luscious, with a depth of color and intricacy of shading that's hard to see in pictures. The skein on the left, for example, is steel gray shot through with a dark teal jewel-tone, and once I started looking at the way the colors threaded together, I got sort of lost in the yarn. It doesn't show at all in the photos, no matter the background I used, the photo doctoring, the lighting -- nothing can capture the subtlety of the colorwork in this yarn. It's almost kaleidescopic in person.

So I'm happy with these new purchases, even if it felt like the worst kind of self-indulgence to buy yarn when I can't even knit. And when I'm in stash-busting mode, on a personal quest to minimize the cubic footage of my stash. But the way I look at it is:

a) It's Malabrigo.
b) After the hell of the last three weeks, it was either buy yarn or eat a mountain of chocolate. I've lost six pounds in the last six weeks and would like to keep them off, so yarn is better.
c) This puts me two skeins closer to completing the sock club thingie at Nana's.
d) Did I mention that it's Malabrigo?

Change

Last night, I stayed up very late to watch the election returns. Yes, this one was called pretty early, but I wanted to witness the moment that Indiana turned blue. I lived in Indiana most of my adult life. I never thought I'd see the state cast its electoral votes for a Democratic president. The state is too stoically self-reliant to go in for all that Democratic social-justice stuff.

It's like a miracle. A skinny black sou'sider turns Indiana blue, and now there's a chain reaction of other miraculous change happening in my life this morning...

... Money we've been waiting for for months and months at the family business arrived this morning. (This was big money from a fat cat oil company -- they had no reason not to pay, except for being jerks.) But, get this. They actually apologized for the late payment. WTF??

... We were supposed to have another foundation inspection this morning at 9. Imagine my surprise when the doorbell rang at 8:15 and it was the repairmen themselves. They decided to stop arguing about details and just fix it already. They're down there banging around again. Still no word on whether they need to re-excavate the backyard.

... When I called my dad to tell him the repairmen were here, he told me the city inspectors are on their way to inspect the new place. I can't describe all the reasons this is good news. The building failed the first fire inspection, but that was before we took possession. The new place was a shambles when we moved in, and we've been busting our butts with an eye toward new inspections.

... Best of all, I actually get to go to stitch and bitch tonight. I might be late, but I still get to go. I might not get to knit much because of my ouchie shoulder, but I still get to go. :D

It feels as though the whole world is coming unstuck this morning. It's not even 9 o'clock yet. The new day is just beginning, and already I'm being greeted with smiles and miracles everywhere I turn. A friend sent me this quote from Daily Kos:

It's a great day for Democrats and Republicans alike. For Democrats, Barack Obama was elected President. For Republicans, there was finally dancing in the streets and Americans greeted as liberators.

I think I'd better go buy some lottery tickets. What the heck. Today it feels as though anything is possible.

Sign me,
An Inspired Swing Voter, Grateful for Change

ETA: Holy Crap. A couple of months ago, around the time of the conventions, I entered an election pool with some old buddies. I just got an email letting me know that I nailed the popular vote split to the tenth of a percent. Yeah, time to buy lottery tickets.

Hello, Life? Please Come Back. I Miss You.

Today is the first semi-normal day for me in weeks. I still have to unpack a gazillion boxes, and the phones at the new shop still don't work properly, and we're a loooooooooooong way from being moved in. But I've put myself back on a regular schedule as of today, so we're definitely drawing closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. The "all hands on deck" phase of moving the family business has officially drawn to a close, and now we're at the stage of "where the *&!@ is the (_insert lost item of choice_)?"

Fortunately, that isn't a phase that concerns me much.

Unfortunately, there will still be no knitting.

Remember the day it snowed last week? Was that Tuesday? It's all a blur. Whatever day that was, I was carrying a load out to the wagon, and I slipped on some mucky, snowy leaves. Because my hands were full, I couldn't catch my balance and went flying. Landed badly. Ouch.

I was pretty torn up from that fall -- bleeding palms and knees, sprained left wrist, sprained right shoulder. But the old, heavy typewriter I was carrying, well, I managed to save that. It landed on my legs. Don't ask me how. I still can't figure out how I managed to scrape my knee and land on my ass all in one fall.

The scrapes have healed, but when I tried to knit a row last night, I couldn't do it. Shoulder is still too ouchy. (pout, pout) I was really looking forward to knitting again, too, after the insanity of the last couple of weeks.

But it will heal eventually, and in the meantime, it's good to be back to a more normal routine. Every day gets a little bit better. In all departments.

Road Trip

Last week my mother asked me if I wanted to go to the Covered Bridge Festival in Parke County, Indiana, for a long weekend. We used to do this every year with a group of women, including some of her high school girlfriends and their daughters. In recent years, what with mom's health concerns and my travel schedule, we haven't been able to manage it.

Anyway, it sounded like a fine idea to me, so away we went for a long sunny weekend of shopping, eating, chattering --

-- and driving. We put 600 miles on the car, about 200 of which was at night. But the daylight drive time was sufficient for me to finish the HPYC socks pictured above. My feelings about this yarn haven't changed. Great dye job, lousy base. The finished socks feel a bit flimsy.



























Luckily, I brought another ball of sock yarn just in case I finished the HPYC socks. This is Alpaca Sox on size 1 needles. This yarn is lovely to knit, soft and springy and responsive to the touch. It's fuzzing a little already from the alpaca content. We'll see how they wear over the long run. Using size 1s instead of my ubiquitous 1.5s ought to minimize any pilling.

The editor in me is compelled to say this....
As you're listening to the news these days, regardless of your political slant, try to keep one thing in mind. The difference between "voter fraud" and "voter registration fraud" is much like the difference between "lightning" and "lightning bug." Get upset if you want to, but know what it is you're getting upset about.

(apologies to Mark Twain for that one)

A Friend Sent Me This Lovely Poem

All Over The World

women are knitting
in Ireland they are knitting thick
cream cables each with their special stitch
so when their man is dragged out of the sea
with his face bloated purple
they will know him

in New York they are knitting on subways
with bright orange yarn stitch after
stitch and folding up their needles
tucking them into the plastic bag inside
a flowering tote
in time to the train wheels as
the subway stops and they get off

in England they are knitting in airports
not only the English the Indians
the Pakistani the Americans they are
all sitting in Heathrow Airport knitting
long indecipherable scarves for persons
unknown

in Italy they are knitting black sweaters
for the saints with the methodical care
they perform upon their rosaries

women in Wales are knitting the dawn into
peat bog afghans girls in Ghana are
knitting tribal chieftains into unimagined
legends women in Chile are knitting
blood into the stockpile of tourniquets
waiting for the next round young women
in Istanbul are knitting far into the future
which is a replica of the past and it keeps
shrinking the closer they move into tomorrow

women in Iran are knitting insignias of the
oil companies to be sewn into the
covers of the coffins women in Ethiopia
are knitting green and white and red ribbons
to be worn around the heart of those who
will not recognize the outcome

women in Russia are knitting peaceful parables
that will win the Nobel Prize
with long Slavonic colours of melancholy
and heart despair

women in Kansas are knitting according to the
latest catalogue in yellow and white
they are knitting strands of wheat into their
needles and they will
fill their kitchens with the abundance
that smiles because Kansas has not been bloody
since the time of the fierce old man John Brown

women in Amsterdam are knitting blue and white
porcelain doilies that are brittle and break
quickly unless purchased by tourists
their daughters are knitting with the
precision of an etching deep brown
quilts to cover themselves and their
lovers against the piercing sky

women in Paris are knitting bright Picasso
sweaters that they will never wear because
even now they do not know what makes them
choose those colours

women in the swamps and rivers of Indochina
are knitting the reeds and nettles into the
steel of machine gun bullets that will
explode with warmth into the bodies of
the men that are cold with the ignorance
of trespassing and longing for comfort

girls in vacant towns
inbetween cities inbetween rivers on
maps are knitting their hopes in
small stitches echoing into each other
like muffled mirrors the needles
click smoothly in the language all
of the same word over and over
that no one can read the
same word over and over

Christina Starobin.

Pink Things, and Why I Love Australia (Even Though I've Never Been There)

Here's the back of the pink wool vest. Seven inches into the armholes. 4.5 to go. Also, that ball in the upper right corner is only ball four. I have thirteen. Which means this vest might end up with sleeves.

Blah blah blah, enough of that. Look what the mailman brought!

























Yes, I have Tim Tams. No, I won't share them. Mine! All mine! (And a clever viewer might note the package is already open.)

Tim Tams, for the uninitiated among you, are like the Oreo of Australia. Two chocolate wafer cookies, sandwiched with chocolate cream, and the whole lot drenched in milk chocolate. Dude. These cookies make me happy. Big happy.

Other good things from Australia:
-- Violet Crumbles. Imagine a crunchy honey pillow coated in chocolate. (Imagine, because I won't share these either. Heh.)
-- Chocolate koala bears filled with caramel. Like a chocolate Santa, only Australian style. (These didn't make it into the picture because my dad made off with them. The candy koala rescue posse will be meeting in the front hall in five minutes. Bring weapons.)
-- Wool. Of course! I didn't put it in the picture because I was wearing it and forgot to take it off, but Bron knit me a lovely buttoned scarf. That girl can knit.

Best thing of all from Australia:
-- that book!!! Hot diggity day-umm! I was going to read submissions all weekend, but screw that! I want to read Bron's book! It's not available in the US yet, and I feel downright special for being able to get an advance look at this book from "a thrilling new Australian voice." :D

So, if any of you are looking for me, I'll be the sugared-up reader clutching candy wrappers and turning pages as fast as I can read them. Oh, yeah, baby, that's what I call the makings of a great weekend!

Happy September 29!

I MADE IT!

I went two solid months without casting a new thing on. Not socks. Not slippers. Not hats or scarves or mittens or sweaters or vests.
Not.
One.
Thing.

*snoopy dance*

And of course, I celebrated by casting on two things.












This is some pink worsted-to-bulky wool which has been marinating in my stash for, um, well, let's see.
*gets out calculator*
*performs complex math*

Yeah. Forfreakinever. That's how long. 13 skeins, 87 yards each, taking up a lot of space. All I ever wanted to do with this was a simple stockinette vest. No frills. Just knitting.

So I cast it on, and with a gauge of 4 stitches to the inch on size 10s, it whips up quick. That's about 2.5" of the back, knit this morning while I loafed for as long as it took to watch last night's Mad Men episode on demand. (Roger's an ass. I hate Jane. Pete is mean.)

This project will live on my desk for a while. Here's my theory on this one. I've been keeping plain socks on my desk, and socks in my purse as my travel knitting. With only one sock OTN now (woo hoo!), I'll carry that in my purse and leave some other plain, simple knitting on my desk to work while I dictate revision letters and read slush. And I need to clear out drawer space currently occupied by this pink wool. Hence, a new desk knitting project is born.

But you know what I've really been longing to cast on....
---drumroll----

The Kyoto!












Oh, baby, how gorgeous is that. Look at that sheen, that halo. I think I'm in luuuuuurve. This yarn feels like a dream.

I cast on the sleeve, ignoring the directions -- well, not ignoring them precisely. More like, I looked at them, said, "Nope. Not doing it that way," and cast on something different. So I did pay enough attention to the directions to decide to throw them out. That's not exactly ignoring, is it?

Right. Semantics. Now that I've knit three inches of the cuff, I reckon I'd better go figure out what I'm doing here. I don't want to get caught in my usual cycle, which as we know goes like this:

1. Scorn the pattern with much harrumphing.
2. Knit blithely without doing any math or planning.
3. Realize what a disaster I'm making.
4. Keep knitting anyway.
5. Realize the disaster is failing to magically self-correct.
6. Frog it.
7. Do just enough bad math to have to repeat these steps indefinitely.

But not with this yarn. This yarn has a high mohair content. I'd forgotten what that meant until I started knitting with it this afternoon. So now that I've remembered, three inches into my knitting-on-the-fly highwire act, I'm going to pause and redraw the pattern and calculate my increases, and all that good stuff, and then I'm going to double and triple and quadruple check my numbers, because DANG it I DO NOT WANT TO RIP THIS BACK. EVER.

(Bonus points to anyone who remembers those pink needles.)
(No, I haven't found my addis yet.)

FO: Sockotta Socks

Take a close look at those toes. There's just the thinnest slice of green there, where I kitchenered the toes closed. It's a perfect match on the stripes, in fact, and even the jogs in the striping come in exactly the same spots all up and down the socks.

And yes, the length of the legs and feet is identical, to the eighth-inch.

That's the best thing I can say about the Sockotta. Crissy, if you're out there, I bet you would also appreciate the striping in this yarn. You share my obsession with matching feet.

I have another skein of Sockotta in Christmas red. I've decided that eventually, when I get around to it, I'll double the yarn and knit dish cloths as Christmas grab bag gifts. This yarn would be great for scrubbing pots. It's got that stringy, kitchen-cotton feel to it.

So that's another FO in the 2008 column before my self-imposed ban on new projects ends. I'm debating my weekend knitting. Fulmar's sleeves have an error a few rows back -- and, remarkably, I managed to duplicate the error in both sleeves. So I may tink that. Or I may try to finish the last pair of socks currently OTN -- the Hand Painted Yarn Co socks. I'm on the second sock, but not far into it, so finishing is probably not within reach.

Anyone else fighting massive allergy attacks right now? I can't hear or breathe. Thank you, Mother Nature. Allergy medicine seems to improve things only in that it knocks me out so that I'm no longer conscious of how miserable I am. I'm having a hard time focusing, and this may turn out to be a knitting weekend if only by default because any other activity feels beyond my reach.

Farewell, Summer of Sleeves

I blinked, and the summer was over.

This was going to be the summer of sleeves, the summer in which I dedicated myself to knitting six sleeves on three sweaters-in-progress. I declared it so around the end of May, and then promptly set about knitting two brioche berets, two pairs of mittens, some socks, a vest -- just about everything EXCEPT sleeves.

Is it any wonder that my driving determination lately has been to recapture my focus? I've been living a butterfly's life, flitting from task to task with no plan and little comprehension of my own personal butterfly effect. This is highly atypical behavior for me. And I can't say I like it.

But the truth is, I hadn't even realized how bad it had gotten until we were at the editing retreat in August, and one of my friends made a gentle joke at my expense about unfinished manuscripts lingering on my desk. Dammit, she was right. My lack of purpose and plan has led to lingering, unfinished business in every corner of my life.

These things don't happen all of a sudden, of course. It's not like one day you're driven to succeed and the next, you're coasting. Instead, I found myself jiggling my schedule to make room for things like tv -- and that should have been a big warning sign in and of itself. I bet I haven't averaged five hours of tv a week over the course of my life. So why would I suddenly need to stop everything to watch American Idol, of all ridiculous things? And why would I skip a trip to the gym in order to do so?

I know why I did that. There were reasons. We all go through times when the urge to play ostrich swamps other concerns.

But since returning from Goat Rock, I've been taking stock and pulling my head out of the sand. Just as the change from focused to unfocused didn't happen in an instant, the return to focus is also taking some time. I started by reprioritizing my workload. I took inventory, set up a schedule, made goals. I created ways to hold myself accountable.

And I knit some damn sleeves.

Anyway.

So what's next? Right now, I'm working on finishing the Sockotta ribbed socks and the Fulmar sleeves. On Monday, I get to cast on something new, and that "something" will be a sweater from that purple Kyoto.

By that time, I expect I'll have finished the Sockotta socks -- or they'll be very close. That will leave me with one pair of socks OTN, and that's where I'll keep that number. I'll keep one plain sock on my desk, as always, to knit when I'm dictating or reading. My other knitting time will go toward finishing things in progress and toward Banff.

Banff is an easy sweater which won't take a lot of thought. Knitting the Veronik Avery halter vest this summer reminded me how much I enjoy making simple fabrics with just a bit of design interest in the shaping. So I'll have Banff, and Catherine Parr will be wearable before the end of the year, and Fulmar will continue to be the project I knit when I have time for something a bit more challenging.

I'll finish Catherine Parr, the Fulmar sleeves, and the new Kyoto sweater before the end of the fall. And that means we've moved from the summer of sleeves into the fall of finishing.

Oh, Snap!

Someone out there is shaking her fist at this picture right now. Heh. We're not racing or anything, but I know she wants to finish her Catherine Parr sleeves, too. So we'll call this photo extra motivation.

I'm really glad to have these sleeves done. Cascade 220 is a dependable, reliable yarn, but it isn't all that glamourous. Now that the sleeves are done, I'm going to knit something softer for a while to break up all that Peruvian crunch. The skin on my fingers needs a rest. I'm starting to develop a callous on my index finger from the yarn, and no amount of lotion seems to help with the dryness.

Still churning along in my no-new-projects groove. I left for San Francisco on July 29, and that's also the last day I cast on something new, a pair of plain socks perfect for the airplane. The embargo is in effect until September 29, two months later.

And I feel like this is a worthwhile experiment. I'm making progress on outstanding projects despite not having a lot of knitting time. I think I'm down to 6 projects OTN, which is as low as it's been in quite a while. And of those projects, I have two pairs of socks, both of which are on the second sock now, and neither of which is all that exciting. Catherine Parr, which now just needs a yoke and some reknitting on the hem. Fulmar, a forever project, and the cabled cardigan which has been in almost perpetual time-out. And the felted bag, which is rough felting wool, irritating to the touch, which I almost have to bribe myself to work on.

In other words, I'm not feeling that any of the current projects are at the top of the queue, yearning for my attention, for various reasons. But I will chug onward until the 29th, because these are all projects I'd like to finish.

And then on the 29th? I have something planned for that gorgeous Kyoto. 'Nuff said.

Holy. Crap.

I haven't counted up all the yarn yet. I've merely counted up everything I can reach -- minus the organic hand-dyed homespun that was a gift from author Nathalie Gray, which I can't count properly because I don't know the yardage.

There are at least two more boxes of yarn that I can't reach. As far as I can remember, anyway. I know I have some raspberry pink boucle that's in there somewhere, and some natural aran wool -- I'm dead sure they're not packed together, which means at least two more boxes of yarn yet to count.

And without those two boxes, my current yardage total stands at

::drumroll::
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
92,519 yards

FO: Dale Olive Socks

I kind of like this new focus on finishing things. I like it that I now only have two pairs of socks OTN. Really, one is enough. But I can live with two.

Yarn: Dale Baby Ull in Olive Green
Needles: Crystal Palace 1.5US double points
Pattern: One of my favorites, the ribbed baby cable from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks.

Notes:
Not much to say that I haven't already said. This yarn is wonderful. One of my perennial favorites for socks -- durable, colorfast, washable, and incredibly comfortable to wear.

The Stash Logging Project

I've photographed every bit of yarn in this house. I've made notes about all of it. I've uploaded maybe a third of it into Ravelry. It's a start.

I don't know how much more yarn I have in storage, but I'd guesstimate that I've processed about three-quarters of the stash so far. The rest is in unreachable boxes and will have to wait until it's time to move. My plan is to pull out the yarn and set it aside as I'm loading the truck to move. I have a couple of boxes of wool sweaters that are too small for me now, and I think I ought to pull those aside, too. I just want to bag all the wool with sachets to protect against insects. You know how those storage places can be.

I have to start repacking the yarn tomorrow, or maybe tonight. It's EVERYWHERE. The hard part will be deciding what to keep close to hand, and what to send to storage. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around that decision now! It's like freaking Sophie's Choice!

A Peek Inside Pandora's Boxes

Ahem. This is so unexpected. I don't have a speech prepared. Thank you to the members of the academy, to --

Oops. Wait. Different award. ;)

Thanks, Knit and Run. It was a surprise to pop over to your blog this morning and see that you'd nominated me! I also love your blog!









In Other News





















I pulled out a few bins of yarn from my storage room at the family business. We sold that building, as some of you know, and I have to make other storage arrangements now. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. We haven't found a new property to move into yet -- we had a deal in place last week, but it flamed out in rather spectacular fashion earlier this week. So I've been trying to cobble together alternate arrangements. It's not going well.

In the meantime, I have to figure out what is in that storage room, exactly, in preparation for moving. I know I have several thousand books. An old couch and a desk. And, of course, my knitting stash.

That picture up there represents about half my stash, about 20,000 grams of yarn strewn across the corner of my living room. I'm documenting it as I go through it and bag it for storage. (Most of it was just tossed in the bins without much thought to proper storage.) This is partly an exercise in futilty because I can't even get to all the boxes with yarn in them. But I figured I could take a stab at it as long as I have to sort through the stash anyway.

I don't have time for this project now, but I also don't have a choice. The clock is ticking. We have to be out of the building by a certain date, and it's not negotiable. There are a lot of problems I can't solve now -- or, I should say, can work on endlessly without solving -- but this particular project has the advantage of being measurable and finite. It needs to get done at some point in the next month, and it at least gives me the illusion of progress.

By the way, in case you're trying to work it out, there's enough yarn in that photo alone for 14 sweaters, one afghan, and various scarves/hats/etc. There's only one skein of sock yarn in the lot -- my sock yarn is stored separately. In any event, this might help explain why lately I've been mentioning that I have enough yarn now. Even by my standards, it's enough.

Status Report: Sockotta Ribbed Socks

This is the problem with having too many projects on the needles and not enough knitting time. It takes forever to complete something, even something simple like socks. If I just knit a pair of socks, I can finish the pair in ten days to two weeks. But when I knit four pairs at once, plus three sweaters and a bag, well, I can go ten days without even touching a particular item.

And then it starts to feel as though I've been knitting the same thing forever.

This was brought home to me again on Friday. We were knitting at Nana's around the back table, and a woman came in who I've met once or twice before. She's nice. I like her a lot. Even though she said, "Oh, you're still knitting that?" when she saw my Catherine Parr.

Not her fault. Mine. All mine.

My September decision to not cast on anything new is starting to look like a decision of rare genius!

PS. Nope. Still haven't found the missing needles.

Status Report: Olive Baby Ull Socks

Sometimes I forget how much I love the Dale Baby Ull. Then I pick it up again to knit with it, and fall in love all over again. It's springy, round, soft, and durable. The colors are marvelous and stitch definition is fantastic. I swear, I could knit a whole wardrobe out of this stuff. Including underpants.

I don't think we'll need to talk about politics any more. I watched both conventions, did my due diligence on the candidates, and made my decision. I will watch the debates, but barring any huge revelations of importance in the next two months, I won't be changing my mind.

The new Knitter's magazine arrived at Nana's today while I was there for the Catherine Parr/ knit-your-own KAL. (That's the KAL that started off as a Catherine Parr KAL, but quickly expanded when some folks wanted to knit other Starmores, other sweaters, other items.) I thought this was the best issue we've seen in a long time. Too long. There were several decent, knittable patterns. Yes, there was still the insane moment when they started doing something for no better reason than someone figured out that it was possible -- the "party trick" knitting that is all flash and no substance -- "OMG, you guys, look what happens when you knit upside down and backwards!"

This month's party trick was knitting intarsia using two balls of the same yarn. Ooooookay. There was also a cowl/yoked/tank/heftybag thing that could be worn right side up or upside down, a most excellent choice for drunk chicks trying to scramble away from their one night stands. Dude, who cares if it's inside out. Just get dressed and get a cab. Fast.

But I'm glad to say that for those of us interested in actual knitting, there were several good patterns in this issue. Dare we hope that this represents a rebirth of Knitters? The cover sweater is good. At least two other sweaters had me thinking about which yarn I might use. All in all, a marked improvement, and one which I am glad to see.

Status Report: Catherine Parr

This is the first sleeve for Catherine Parr. Another two inches or so, and I will shape the sleeve cap. I've already cast on the second sleeve but haven't started the colorwork yet. That won't happen until I wind off another skein of yarn.

The Catherine Parr knitters are starting back on our informal KAL this week. We're meeting Friday to tackle the sleeve shaping. The pattern is written with standard drop shoulders, but I'm doing a modified drop, and I'm going to show the others how to make this absurdly easy modification.

I suspect the first sleeve will be off the needles within a week. We'll see. A lot depends on work and other issues, and how much knitting time is available to me.

Back on the politics thing. I don't often talk about politics, but you should probably know that I'm what pollsters call an independent or a swing voter. (And believe me, once the pollsters identify you as such, your phone tends to ring a lot during election season. I've already been surveyed a half-dozen or so times in this election cycle.) I have in the past voted for Republicans and Democrats for president. And for other offices.

In any event, I make it a practice of watching both conventions and watching the debates, as much as possible of all of it. I generally know who I intend to vote for before all that coverage starts, but I have changed my mind in past elections based on things I learned during the election season. So my scrutiny of both conventions is nothing unusual.

I was very interested in knowing who McCain would pick for VP, because this was one of the factors I knew might sway my vote. Plus, let's be real here. McCain's getting up there in years. I wish him a long and fruitful life, but still. His VP pick matters more that it might otherwise matter with a younger candidate. Right now, I'm listening for evidence that Palin deviates from her party platform on any particulars. And I'm not hearing it, but it's a little hard to hear real politics at the moment when all anyone wants to talk about is the unwed teen mother thing.

It's not easy being a swing voter. I have to listen to a lot of rabid outrage from both ends. I do listen to it, but frequently from an abstract rhetorician's mindset. Spin is fascinating stuff.

And as long as we're on the topic of full disclosure here, I worked in the government long enough to gain a good understanding of the way things really work. I worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations. The two sides have very different approaches to managing a government office, but I must say I met good people and bad people on both sides.

So I'm going to do my best to drop the topic now, even though this is going to be a hot topic for the next two months. But just in case I do start waxing political, I thought it made sense to lay this foundation now so that people might understand where I'm coming from.