Random updates

After Tuesday's megapost about my unfortunate encounter with blueberry toddler poop (thanks for all your great comments!), I haven't had much time or energy to post. But here's just a little update:

• I haven't done anything more on Cozy since Tuesday night - I just haven't been able to sit and give it the attention it needs. I'm bummed about this. I must admit that part of my failure to work on it is just out of discouragement.
  
• I've been doing a few rows a day on my Never-Ending Baby Blanket for Baby J. It's just a basic diagonal garter stitch blanket, done in Rowan Baby Soft. But I've never been able to maintain any momentum on it b/c it's kind of boring.
• I frogged and restarted the Simply Lovely Lace Socks, which are looking much lovelier this time. Thanks again to Leilalu for helping me figure out what I was doing wrong with the picot edge!
• I'm still avoiding finishing seaming on the two dinosaurs I made.
• I finished sewing my dress! I had my last sewing class on Wednesday and I finished 18 minutes before the end. I'm so proud! I need to take it in a bit on the sides and give it a good ironing, but otherwise it looks pretty nice. I hope to post pics soon. [It's pretty amazing to be able to crank out a major FO like this in roughly 10 hours. 10 hours of knitting would produce far less. But I find knitting far more enjoyable, of course.]
  
• I'm discovering that I'm likely to be the same kind of sew-er that I am knitter - one with too many WIPs to count. I anticipate that this could be more problematic with sewing, since it involves having lots of fabric and tools and patterns scattered all over the place.
  
• I suddenly find myself wanting to learn to quilt. Note to self: you have too much on your plate already, let it go.
  
• Towards meeting my 2nd birthday goal, I started taking Italian classes yesterday! I'm delighted to discover how similar it seems to Spanish, which I used to speak fluently (I'm a little rusty with it currently but have discovered that it's not too difficult for me to pick back up when I need to).
  

I don't usually take classes, let alone 2 in a row, but there's just so much I want to learn these days, and this summer I seem determined to learn them.

Okay, I'm off to do a little more on the blanket and the socks before I go to work. Ciao!

The Opposite of Zen

So I frogged and started over again, feeling encouraged by your comments and good about my commitment to doing this thing right.

Just a few rows in, I found I was still having edge problems, so I frogged again and cast on again.

Which brings me to this afternoon. I am zooming along, adoring the yarn, thrilling to the rhythm of the pattern, which has a great balance of consistency and variety. I really, really love it. I am on the 7th row of the 2nd pattern repeat, which means one more row after this and I will be back to where I was before I frogged yesterday morning. And then something happens, a momentary inattention, a tiny blip, and a stitch is missing. I tinker with it and think I've fixed things, get to the end of the row - and I'm still somehow short one stitch.

And so begins the tinking. I can sort of see where the problem is, but can't figure out how to fix it. So I begin to unknit. Usually unknitting is a little bit Zen for me, a small practice of letting go, and in a nice little rhythm. Only how do you get in a rhythm when every 6th stitch to unknit is actually : sl 1, k2tog, psso? I slog through.

I tink and tink and tink. But I'm still missing a stitch. Oh wait, now I'm missing two stitches. I keep unknitting and reworking little sections, but without progress. So I go further and unknit the next row (a purl row). I think I see the problem, and I think I can fix it once I start knitting things back up. So I do the purl row. Then I do the pattern row, which has constant little problems in it now. I press on, trying to give painstaking attention to what I'm doing. With a nickname like Miss Approximate, I can assure that "painstaking" is not my forte.

I get almost to the end of the row. I have two extra stitches. I count, I tink, I rework. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It looks fixed. I get almost to the end. I have an extra stitch.

I sit there in shock, counting, looking, trying to make out where my problem is. I'm not far enough along in the shawl to be able to readily see how this row looks compared to how it's supposed to look. Where exactly is the freaking problem? And how exactly can I fix it? Things are starting to blur. Possibly because of the tears in my eyes. My Old Man asks questions that don't help, but then listens patiently as I try to explain.

I don't have a lifeline.

I can't figure out where my problem is.

I don't know if I can keep tinking back, or if it would actually be more efficient to just frog all over again. Or maybe I can just unravel back to the 3-row garter border.

I put the shawl away without finishing the row (something that goes against my grain). It's time for the boys to have a bath. I'll take a break, get them to bed, revisit the shawl a little later. I had intended to bathe the boys right after dinner, but they were sitting so sweetly in their room on the floor looking at books, that I decided to let them stay that way a little longer. They had shut the door to their room, and I left it that way, happy to have some quiet moments to knit.

Let me preface what comes next by saying that if you have a weak stomach, have never had toddlers, or are offended by potty talk, you will want to skip the rest of this post.

Let me further preface what comes next by saying that the boys split a pint of blueberries yesterday.

So I open the door to find them both naked (no surprise there; they strip several times a day and I regularly clean up after them since they only use the potty every sporadically at best). Little Buddha has gone poop. To his credit, some of it is in the potty. Okay, so it's actually smeared all over the potty, in every part of the potty, including the underside of the potty. But at least the potty was involved.

It is also in or on the following places:
the shag rug
the hardwood floor
the dresser
the door
the doorframe
the wall
a few books
Little Buddha's hands, legs, and face
and - perhaps most disgustingly - Tiny Dancer's hands, legs, and face

Let me remind you that Little Buddha ate mass quantities of blueberries yesterday.

I have to say that if I had a choice between cleaning up smeared blueberry poop and tinking back a few rows of lace, it would honestly be a tough call.

My Old Man immediately bathed the boys while I went about cleaning their nasty room. After all was cleaned up, and he was diapering the boys while I was putting fresh sheets on their beds (since they had of course both stripped and gone pee in their beds at naptime - yes, these are exciting times in our household!), My Old Man turns to me and says with some surprise in his voice, "You didn't freak out."

So maybe this evening wasn't the opposite of Zen after all. Maybe I'm learning something from the slow, patient work of making stitches, unmaking them, and making them again.

I have also learned this. Diapers and lifelines have one very critical thing in common: if you don't use them, you could end up with a pretty crappy situation.

Back to square 1

I'm loving Cozy - really enjoying the yarn, the pattern, and how things are looking. But 2 repeats in I realized that my edges do not match each other. One edge is more of a chain and the other is more bumpy (like garter ridges). I was slipping the first st purlwise but not compensating at the end by knitting the last st of each row. And since every other row is a purl row, well, that accounts for the difference.

So I'm wrapping this baby back into the ball this very moment. Waah.

I'm kicking myself for this, and for forgetting that white/cream yarn doesn't felt well. I love my little purse but wish that part of it had come out better. It does look better than in the picture, though. I should've taken better shots, b/c IRL the flap is not crooked like that.

I think the most frustrating part of unraveling Cozy is that this is likely to count as my knitting time this morning. Happy Monday morning.

just a sweet little thing

I thought that after last night's post I needed to post a little light something. So here is my most recent FO (at last! actual knitting content!). It is a sweet little felt purse designed by Amber. I love it! It has been a nice diversion, and quick. I have skeins of Wool of the Andes lying around in random colors (thanks to my knitted Easter egg obsession). I only had a skein of WOTA in "hush" (lavender) so my purse isn't as long as Amber's; it's more square. And oddly, the cream colored yarn ("cloud") didn't felt as much as the lavender. (I seem now to remember reading somewhere that white/cream yarn doesn't felt well; could that be right?). But overall, I am quite pleased with it. And I found a cute little butterfly button for it.

The purse will go with the dress I'm sewing, which is linen with embroidered flowers and butterflies.

before-and-after felting pics:


You can see how much the body shrank in proportion to the flap. Other than Easter eggs and a test swatch, this is the only thing I've really felted. I can see why people are so into felting. It's fun.

Meanwhile, I'm nursing a burgeoning sewing obsession. Pics soon.

And I've made a start on Cozy! I've got maybe a little more than an inch done (basically the 3 garter rows and then the first 8-row pattern repeat). It's definitely going to take a little more concentration and perfectionism than I usually give to my projects, but I think it will be worth it.

By the wayside:
Simply Lovely Lace Socks - soon to be frogged and restarted, since I now realize I did the picot edge cuff all wrong (which is what I get for thinking I was repeatedly misreading the pattern and ignoring one very obvious instruction because of it). Thank you to Leilalu for setting me straight.
Dinosaurs - Bronty has been stuffed and mostly seamed. He has one leg right now and a seam that should've been his belly is on his side. He is put away for now till I decide whether to take off the head and leg to make the seam be on his belly, or to forget it and just add the other three legs. Trice still needs to be stuffed and seamed.
Layette - just need to add the buttons for the placket-neck sweater. And finish the other half of the diagonal garter stitch blanket.

Must finish up the dinosaurs and the layette, as I have declared this to be the Summer of Selfish Knitting! And I'm ready to get to it!

Women's Work

I am so tired. So much, including thoughts about gender and my "place," weighs on me these days. And then I sit down with my little piece of the earth - yarn. With my women's tools - needles. (Or tonight with sewing machine and fabric.) And suddenly I vault away from the male world I live in. I am doing "women's work" and I revel in it. I hold my yarn and needles and suddenly I am sitting with my grandmother Thelma, and with so many great-grandmothers, and with women everywhere who have created things slowly, quietly, without recognition, and without being questioned. I sit at my machine and suddenly I am sitting with my grandmother Edith, and with so many great-grandmothers, and with women everywhere who have sat in front of cold, mechanical machines, with furrowed brows and hunched shoulders, pushing shimmering fabric through to create warm, lively garments. The world has not always valued such work as this, but it has always been valuable. And when I do this work, I know its value in my very bones.

Tonight more than usual I am grateful, especially after such a hard week, to just sit and make my little things. To be left alone. To think only of sensual matters - the feel of the yarn, the smell of the silk, the click of the needles, the sight of the colors, my bare feet on the wood floor with toes on a whirring pedal. It is not that I think one world is better than another. It is not that I think "men's work" and "women's work" are categories that should really even exist. It is just that when I sit down and take up this kind of work, it is like walking through a door where I am only myself, without all the other projections and constructions. And I am free.

Mandalay!

So, here it is, in all its silky, tweedy, toasty, earthy goodness. Mmmmmmm.



Here I am, right after I made the score. The woman at the LYS was so funny. She said she called me as soon as UPS came with it, because she knew how anxious I was to have it. She raved about the yarn as I was making the purchase, and throughly stoked my enthusiasm. As I left the store, she called out after me, "Don't stay up all night knitting!"

The yarn is 100% silk. I love the smell of silk. I mean, really, really love it. I think I will be smelling this yarn a lot.


I like for other people to smell the silk, too. CJ, smell the silk! Smell the silk! Smell the silk! Smell the silk, CJ!













She liked it, too.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just picked up a message from my LYS.
My yarn is in! My yarn is in! My yarn is in! My yarn is in!
With any luck, I'll be picking it up before they close at 6, and casting on for Cozy before bedtime.
Wheeeeeeee!!!!!!!