Goodbye, Times Three

Goodbye, fair isle bag. We like your colorwork, but the design (by me) needs a bit of refinement, and the needles were awful. You'll be knit again some day, but on different needles and with a better thought-out design.




















Goodby, Kyoto Banff. Nice pattern. Lovely yarn. But when you put them together, meh. The fabric just wasn't working for me. Kyoto, you'll be knit again someday. Banff? Maybe not.























Goodbye, Snicket socks. You drove me crazy almost from the second I cast you on. Yarn is lovely and will make a beautiful pair of socks, just as soon as I find a new pattern.

An Unholy Mess

This is my knitting. I have reached the turnaround point in my stress saturation level -- bottomed out, beginning to climb back up into the land of the normal -- and I know this is the case because I am suddenly possessed by the urge to clean out all my closets and drawers, empty all my bags, reorganize my filing cabinets... you get the idea. When I get busy like I've been since last winter, I can't stop to think about how my life is organized. I just shove things in drawers and cabinets and hope for the best. Then when things begin to calm down, I wake up and realize that my home and office aren't quite where I want them to be.

So today I started the Great Knit Reclamation Project, which begins with emptying out all my knitting bags to see what, exactly, might be hiding in them. Now it is all on my kitchen table. As you see.





















The pictures are dim because it is dark and rainy today -- really, the perfect day to start this sort of thing during the lunch hour. Starting with the dark green yarn in the lower left, and working clockwise, we have--
1 - St. Brigid in olive green, about a third done
1 - a cabled cardigan in marine blue, about a third done
3 - two cones of purple Kyoto, swatched but never started
4 - three balls of cream bamboo for a scarf
5 - purple crack in a bag for a lace tee
6 - a disgustingly huge pile of notions, notepads, and medications left over from pneumonia
7 and 8 - two socks in the middle, the green snickets and the plain Malabrigo socks






















Starting again with the green St. Brigid yarn, this time lower right and working clockwise, we add,

9 - the fair isle bag of my own design
10 - Catherine Parr, inches from completion
11 - Fulmar, about half done


I have to make some decisions this weekend, not the least of which will be what to do with that Catherine Parr. I hate the lower band on it to the point where I can't bring myself to complete the project. I need a solution that won't disappoint, and that might mean ripping and reknitting.

I think the Snicket socks are done for, too, because I'm just not digging the pattern. And the marine blue cardigan -- despite perfect gauge, the finished piece is several inches narrower than the pattern claimed it would be, and my attempt to block it wider has failed.

Somewhere in my closet is that purple Lady Eleanor. My radar is picking up its vibe now, too.

But these decisions will have to wait until tonight. I have quite a bit of editing yet to accomplish this afternoon, and once that's done, it will be time to figure out the knitting. I'm anticipating a fun Friday night. Just me and my yarn. I can't wait. After I sort through my works in progress, I'm going to pull the yarn from my closet and figure out what I've bought since the last time I logged onto Ravelry for more than five minutes. There isn't much new yarn, but there's enough to keep me busy for a bit. Busy in a happy way. The kind of busy we like.

The Saturday Curse

So, last Saturday was a big day. I spent a good part of the day in a tv studio out in the western suburbs, taping a talk show about writing and publishing. Cool stuff. When I got home from that, I thought I would have an hour or two to knit and unwind.

No such luck.

We have the worst golfers on our course. I swear, it's like they give a special rate to anyone who can't tell a nine iron from a tire iron. As I was changing out of my tv clothes and checking email and so on, I heard a crash. Thought a golfer had probably hit one of the contraband tomato pots on the patio and shattered the planter.

They hit something a little north of the planter.
























There went my knitting time. I had to go to the golf clubhouse to report it, where that nasty woman who works in the golf clubhouse amply demonstrated why all the residents refer to her as "that nasty woman who works in the golf clubhouse." It took forever, got me nowhere, and I'm still annoyed over how difficult she was.

But that was last week. This week, I thought I would get an hour or two of knitting time on Saturday after I finish up some line edits and a revision letter. But I woke to the sounds of an unexpected visitor who was imitating Santa Clause and coming down my chimney.





















This poor little morning dove has had quite a difficult day. It got its foot caught in the mesh that hangs over the glass windows, finally worked free, and took a rest on the kindling. Thanks to all the facebookers and twitterati who gave me tips on how to get it out of the fireplace. As you can see, opening the fireplace doors didn't persuade it to leave. It just sat there and watched me for a while. It seemed very dazed.

So I got an old towel and thought I would wrap the bird in the towel and carry it outside. Of course, it took one look at the towel and freaked. Me, it would tolerate. The towel? OMG, utter terror. It flew up the chimney, then somehow out the fireplace door, all over my house, into the ceiling a few times (ouch) and finally came to rest on an umbrella stand in the front hall. You would think with all it's blind, frantic flight, it might have accidentally managed to go through one of the doors I'd opened, but no such luck.

While it was on the umbrella stand, I was able to get the towel around it and carry it outside, where it sat on my railing for a good hour and a half. I was afraid it might be hurt, so I sat out there and talked to it and put out some bits of bread. Me, it tolerated. But as soon as it saw the bread, it flew to the roof. It's still on the roof, but I figure if it could fly up there, it should be okay. Just needs a bit of recovery time.

Anyway, that's two Saturdays in a row where my hope for knitting time was dashed by odd occurrences at the house. Wonder what next Saturday will hold.

One Is a Lonely Number

This is the one and only thing I've knit since February. It's a sock. My feet can take turns wearing it.

(sigh)

It's not lack of interest keeping me from knitting. It's lack of time. Things are improving in that department, though, and I expect to gradually add knitting time back onto my calendar over the next several weeks.

It's either that, or turn into a superstressed renegade rogue killing machine.

GOD DAMN, DO I MISS HAVING TIME TO KNIT.

Look, Ma! No Holes!

So, we could sum up the last six weeks as: construction, car wreck, employee issues, sick grandma, major national conference, and way, way, way too much work. It has been chaotic and at times stressful, but there have been a few good things, too. Notice what's missing in the picture above? Anyone who has been in my backyard the last, oh, two years or so has seen the giant holes next to the foundation. There were another several days of muddy boots tramping through my house and loud noises sloshing the coffee right out of my cup. But in the end, they must have run out of ways to waste time and make messes, because they filled in the holes.

Does that mean the foundation is repaired? Uh. Maybe.

See what else is missing? No more bobcat! No more day-glo orange safety fence! No more lawn, either -- the damn thing was parked there so long, the grass has died and disintegrated.



















There hasn't been much knitting. Less than two pattern repeats for the front of St. Brigid, less than a gusset for one sock. But I did cheer myself up by breaking my yarn rules and splurging on some new sock yarn.





















That's Lorna's Laces Mixed Berries on top, some Regia on the left, and some Fortissima on the right. I picked them up at Ivelise's yarn shop in Benton Harbor, Michigan, during Memorial Day weekend. Isn't it pretty? I wonder if I'll ever get to knit it.

The Back Is Off the Needles

Well, gosh, that only took ten weeks.

There's one mistake. Can you see it? I think it's totally obvious.

A Sad Story With a Happy Ending

Once upon a time, there was this knitter, and she mostly went about the business of living and working and knitting and being a smartass without much trouble or interference.

But then this knitter got sick and things got pretty shaky, and between the effects of the illness and the cure, her brain shut down. Couldn't read charts or instructions or her live stitches. Couldn't count past three. Couldn't look at math she'd done in the past for pattern alterations and understand her instructions to herself.

She cast on a very easy lace scarf, knit a few rows, fucked it up spectacularly, and ripped it all out. Six. Times.

She tried to understand her snicket socks, already in progress, but no amount of staring could help her find where she was in the charts.

She even tried casting on a simple, plain, dull-as-dust sock. Made it through less than half an inch of cuff before giving up because, no shit, she was too weak to hold up the yarn and needles.

(Yes, this is a scary story. Terrifying. We're talking about a knitter with a couple decades of experience here. Ponder, if you will, what it must be like to suddenly be unable to remember which way to wrap the yarn for a yarnover. Have you ever felt too weak to hold sock yarn? Eek!)

So she put her knitting aside, slept 20 out of 24 hours, and occasionally thought about how much she missed things like breathing and her voice. Went to the doctor a couple more times. Work piled up all around her and her knitting collected dust.

Four different drugs later, she could no longer remember which project was in which knitting bag.

But she felt a lot better, and she was working like a demon to get caught up after all the time away, and this meant no knitting time. Still. Employees went on vacation, employees resigned, cars broke down and were fixed. iPods developed mystery playlists, DSL spasmed, light fixtures failed, and a string of repairmen concluded that, yes, there is something mighty wrong with the house's foundation. Somebody better get a bobcat out here right quick.

Three, four, five days at a stretch, she would go without touching her knitting. When she did risk a half hour for knitting here or there, it was always a row on St. Brigid. Others around her finished their St. Brigids. But she couldn't even complete the back.

Weeping hot tears and raging at the heavens, our knitter concluded that her knit-fu had abandoned her.

But then....

It came back.

The mojo cometh, and the mojo goeth away. It is a fickle bitch. But it's back. And I'm gonna duct tape it to my stash boxes so it doesn't ever get away again.

(Pictured above is the plain sock, actually not dull as dust but quite gorgeous in person. Malabrigo sock weight, color Persia -- imagine jade smoked over with charcoal, and you'll get a feeling for the depth and complexity in this deceptively simple yarn. The camera can't capture the hints of green and teal accurately.)