Spring Fever

I've got the worst case of startitis. Making myself even crazier than usual. I've spent hours and hours this past week browsing ravelry and my extensive magazine collection. (Side note -- hey! Did you know you can log your magazines on ravelry now? I've already logged two out of my nine boxes of magazines and have added patterns from them to my favorites list. Love it!)

So, to begin at the beginning of my almost crippling case of startitis, one week ago tonight I was struck with a wicked urge to start something new. Never mind that I have lots of great projects already OTN. I finished something on Monday, and therefore my crazy knitter gene went into overdrive on Tuesday.

I spent most of the afternoon staring longingly at a couple of bags of yarn clearly visible from my desk. They're stashed behind a piece of furniture, so you can't see them from almost anywhere in the room except my desk.

I stared at pink yarn for a bohus.

Silvery blue yarn for the Mendocino cardigan by Alice Starmore.

Shetland yarn for the Fair Isle cardigan by Veronik Avery.

Stared and stared.

By 7 p.m., I was ripping apart my bookshelves in a quest for patterns. I think if I could have found the bohus pattern, it would have been on the needles. Took me two hours to find the copy I made of Mendocino, and by that time, to be candid, I was overwhelmed by the urge to cast on every single pattern in my collection. I was almost paralyzed by it.

I decided to stall and keep working on the OTN patterns for a little while longer. I knit a few rounds of the lace blouse, a few inches of a ribbed sock leg, and a few more rows of St. Brigid. The more I knit, the more the urge to start something new faded. I saw this as a good thing.

Then two funny things happened. Two people did something unexpectedly nice for me over the weekend. Without getting into detail, one involves someone who really helped my family in a way I'll never forget. My family has been in turmoil for months, and this woman -- who knows nobody in my family except me -- has blown me away with her kindness and generosity.

She needs a white hat. Good guys always wear white hats, right? So back I went to the startitis frenzy, until I found this gem of a pattern in ravelry. I already have the right yarn in my stash, and so this will get cast on as soon as I can locate the yarn. It's here somewhere! But seriously, how adorable is this hat?

Eye Candy and Brain Food

Dear Tricia,
You can look, but you can't touch.

That's the Eye Candy. Now for the Brain Food. I just heard of something really wonderful started by a pair of college girls who are tired of bad behavior being left unchallenged. They want to make a difference in this world, and they've found a way to do it. It's called Nickels for Change, and in their words,

Every time we hear something sexist, rape-defending, victim-blaming, or flat-out misogynistic (an also just plain prejudice - whether it be sizeist, classist, racist, ableist, or anything else), a nickel goes into Our Jars. We plan on doing this for a year. At the end of the year, the money will go to a charity that works towards ending violence.

This sounds like a fine idea to me, and I've already added two nickels to the jar. The first is in honor of our friend Catherine who, as I heard it, responded to an anti-gay rant with grace and dignity. The second is due to the comment on the blog where the Nickels for Change initiative was announced. You'll know the comment when you read it. It's the one that says Indian men would stop raping if they got laid more often.

In other news, I spent the afternoon knitting the lace skater's top at Nana's with a table full of people I want to see more often. Great time. Any day now, I should be able to actually share knitting content. Shock, right?

This Has Little To Do With Knitting

My parents returned from their winter residence last Thursday. If there was ever any doubt that my dad is awesome, that doubt was firmly removed when he handed me this little care package.










































These are Norman Love chocolates direct from the artisan's shop in Florida. Those of you who are Food Network afficionados might recognize his name from the Challenge series. He sometimes judges the confectioner's challenges.

And trust me, these handcrafted chocolates taste exactly as you'd expect. They were made by the guy good enough to judge everyone else. They're decadent and delicious and make Godiva (which I love) taste like Barbie chocolate from the toy store.

My dad is awesome. Clearly. And how much does he love me? A ten-piece box much. That's a lot.

With their return came a flurry of events. First my sister took over the kitchen to make a clutch of princes and princesses out of sweet stuff. The dresses are fruit roll-ups, yo. Best part? Watching her try to roll out yellow starbursts to make the crowns.























Then we set fire to a cake in honor of my niece's birthday. Good times. There was also a cousins' slumber party at my house, complete with a wii tournament, sledding in pajamas, and chocolate chip pancakes.





















In the midst of all this birthday shopping, Danger Boy scored a new ripstick. He's managed to ride it several times without ever drawing blood. Benefits of maturity?




















I show you all this in lieu of showing off my knitting. There has been knitting. I just can't show it off now. Someday I'll explain that. But also not now. :) The kid is due home from school in mere moments, and family madness has claimed my life for the moment. As Martha would say, it's a good thing.

Ravelympics Countdown!

Marking my starting point -- I'm about halfway through the fifth pattern repeat of the front of St. B. The back is done. And that's all we have of that.

We'll see how far I get between Opening and Closing Ceremonies. :D I'm very excited to be able to say that my knitting will be a regular part of my day for the next couple weeks. I've logged a lot of extra hours recently to make that possible. I'm ready!

PS. My camera is toast. I need a new one. This one can't be fixed.

February 2010, Taking Stock

I signed up for the ravelympics. There's been a little more knitting time lately even though I don't always have the inclination for it. This isn't the fault of knitting. This is the fault of overcrowding and other people wanting to sit in the knitting chair, plus the noise and disruption associated with all these new bodies in the house. It's not that they're being bad or awful -- they're not. It's just that the second I get into the knitting chair, the dog wants attention. Or the boy. Or the sister. Knitting is my quiet time, my time for contemplation and unbroken rhythms. Or I want it to be that, anyway.

In any case, I'm on ball three of the green afghan, and I'm making progress on the second sock of the burgundy bearfoot. I would gladly show off some pictures, but my camera lens has broken. I think it can be repaired but I haven't had time to deal with it yet. I just keep forgetting. This will have to be repaired before the ravelympics, of course, because they want photos.

So far, the only project I've designated is St. Brigid. My hope is to finish the back and get a good start on the sleeves. That would be a wonderful accomplishment as it would represent a big chunk of time set aside for knitting.

It's possible. Not easy, but possible.

My urge for the past several weeks has been to take stock of my routines and schedule and try to get some better routine and balance. This is merely a function of the chaos around me -- I'm searching for some sense of control, and not finding it. But I'm within a few hours of finishing a major, major project, something several months in the making, and once that is off my desk, I have the sense that a routine will be possible. So this has been much on my mind. What I wouldn't give to be able to block out a rough schedule for each day -- so many hours for this task, then an hour on that, then an hour on that, and so on. That's how I function best, and that's beginning to feel within reach.

And the ravelympics may be a great motivator to reestablish that kind of daily rhythm. I'm looking forward to it.

So what about the rest of you? Who has signed up, and what events will you be competing in?

Made It! Whew!

Back at Stitches in early September, Adrienne and I made a yarn diet vow to each other. Shook on it and everything. I vowed to buy no yarn at all, and she vowed to buy no yarn other than a special dispensation for her trip to Ireland. (Overseas travel should come with an automatic dispensation, right?)

We agreed our deal would last to the end of the year. Perfect, because The Fold's New Year's Day sale would be the ideal feast at the end of the diet.

I was perfect. I bought a couple of magazines but not a speck of yarn. And when our annual trip to The Fold came around, I was ready for it.

Funny thing, though. I got up there and didn't really want to buy anything! I fondled dozens of gorgeous yarns and put them all back. We must have browsed an hour before I snapped out of it and realized this sale comes around once a year. Plus, Adrienne and I had already vowed to extend the yarn diet from January 2 to April 30. So with the realization that this would be my only chance to buy yarn from September through April, I decided to splurge a little.

Even so, I came home with extra cash in my pocket. Quite a bit. Which strikes me as the perfect balance, actually, because I felt like I splurged and still managed to feel virtuous about under-spending.

In the picture above, you'll see three skeins of baby yarn on the right side. I bought enough in these three colors to make a winter set of hat, gloves, and scarf. I've been browsing my Latvian mittens book, trying to pick a pattern. Kris helped me pick out the colors -- I never would have selected that orangey red on my own, so I'm very glad she helped me because these colors really pop against my black coat. I can't wait to see how they knit up.

In the front are two skeins of Malabrigo sock yarn in semisolids. I need some plain, dark socks to wear with my closet full of black turtlenecks and sweaters, so the charcoal and cream Opal and the charcoal Malabrigo will get lots of use.

When will I knit it? Only time will tell. I've been picking at the green afghan for Danger Boy in the spare moments I have available for needlework -- an increasing amount of time, but still not enough to really make any headway on existing projects. Nevertheless, it's an improvement, and I do feel that with the New Year, I've turned a corner and am heading for a sunnier field.

Spooky Cuffs

I've been wanting to show these off for weeks, but my camera wasn't working. Or so I thought. Turned out there's a switch that does things I didn't know about. Pays to read the manual, right? Anyway, now I can take pictures again.

These cuffs were a gift from my batty friend DisGrace as part of our Secret Spook exchange for Halloween. She knit them. Lovely, aren't they? And they fit perfectly. Danger Boy says they're good for superheroes and punching things, and that they make Wii work better.

Over the years I've accumulated a lot of bats as a result of my involvement with this bat writing group, and my nieces and nephews are fascinated by them. I think it's because it's so unusual to have an office decorated with bats. I mean, who does that! Well, I do. The kids have named most of the little bats sprinkled all over my writing and editing corner. There's Batscot, Stretchy Uno, Sparkles, Nocturna, and a few more whose names I can never remember.

The kids are currently debating names for the bats on these cuffs. I voted for Bam! and Pow!, but I think they've about resolved on Scritch and Scratch. They say it's because the of the wool, which feels like a good Shetland wool, very sheepy and a bit crunchy. (Well, they don't know that it feels like a good rustic wool -- but I do.) It's not ruggy, not too coarse to wear, but it's rougher than the cheap acrylic gloves from Old Navy which these kids usually wear. So to them, this is a hallmark characteristic of the mitts and Scritch and Scratch might end up being the winning names.

Which leads me to an important question. How will I ever get these mitts back to myself? lol