I declare my independence from… July 4, 2009

Honestly, I don’t know. I celebrated the 4th of July by going to see fireworks with my boyfriend, and then getting ice cream at Dairy Queen. I didn’t bring knitting with me. There is no knitting of anything but lace this summer. Well, lace and a pair of baby booties. (The baby booties are a present. And they’re small. It’ll be fun!)

I finished Summer Into Fall, and enjoyed it. I did offset an entire chart by one stitch, but it isn’t quite as noticeable as it could have been. I mean, it could have been on fire. Right now I’m working on the smaller version of the Sampler Shawl from Victorian Lace Today, and it’s going splendidly. I tried to compensate for knitting so tightly by working the shawl on US 5s instead of US 3s, and I think it’s coming out a little looser than Ms. Sowerby intended. I really like the results I’m getting, though I’m glad I have more than the pattern says I need. It seems like I would be coming up a little short if I only had what the pattern requires. Though that might also be a function of it coming out looser. It is an utter mystery, left and right. Still, it is a very pretty shawl. I can’t imagine what I’ll knit next.

Moving my yarn. May 3, 2009

I always knew I had a big stash. I have been working on it for maybe… maybe five years. I made some bad decisions, but haven’t we all? This has led, however, to a Situation. I am moving from a very small apartment into an even smaller room, and my stash needed to be consolidated. My stash is far bigger than I want it to be. I haven’t added to it in four months, but it’s still very hefty, and I want to have less yarn, because I want to have used the stuff I already possess.

For now, this is translating into all kinds of good things. I’m knitting socks out of the stash, little scarves, fun things all over the place. But I really need to make some sweaters. This summer I am going to knit lace, and by the fall I will be so sick of lace that I will want to knit sweaters. This is my plan. Nobody look at me weird. I know I can do it.

Zigzag is on the list. So is a cropped cardigan from Hip to Knit. I have yarn for both of these sweaters. Hell, I have yarn for many, many more sweaters. For now, I am going to take a bag of lace yarn down south with me for the summer, and make lots of pretty blobs. And before that, while I continue fighting my way through final papers, I will continue knitting socks. Also, finishing that Tilli Thomas scarf I’ve been doing, the one that makes me crazed trying to get every little bead on the right side of the work.

The story of two scarves. February 14, 2009

She knit the first scarf for herself, something to do at work and in class. There were two skeins of Malabrigo in this incredible blue in her LYS, and she got it for no particular reason, just because it was beautiful and made her smile. She started with three stitches and an idea. She increased on each side until it was the width she wanted along the bottom edge, then she kept increasing on one side and decreasing on the other side to create a diagonal. She felt clever, her diagonal garter stitching coming seamlessly out of the original triangular corner. It made her feel good whenever she looked at it. The brilliant sky blue reminded her that better days were coming, coming fast. It wasn’t for her, exactly. She knit it to make it. She even tried to give it away, but it never left with the intended recipient and she took it as a sign. She wore it once in a while, but it mostly hung on her scarf rack where she could look at it and grin.

She knit the second scarf with someone else in mind. She had bought the yarn for herself, to make a hat. (Two skeins of Malabrigo for a knit watch cap. She has never had much of a sense of scale.) But it was the color of moss and forests, the perfect color for this scarf. Once again, she started with three stitches and an idea. The idea, now that she knew how the knitting was supposed to work, was to give him something soft and warm that she had made. She knit half the yarn up before she realized that it was turning out all wrong. So she started again with the second ball of yarn and knit half the scarf, then knit the first, messy half into the second, better piece. It was a metaphor for their relationship. Starting without quite knowing what’s going to happen, and reworking as things go on.

He loves his scarf completely, and his affection for it has made her love hers even more, too. Because hers was the beginning, and she took what she learned from making that scarf and used it to make his. She was able to recognize when things weren’t working, and figured out how to change it so that they did. She didn’t try to make his scarf exactly like hers, she left room for the pattern to evolve.

She still doesn’t have it all figured out yet, (him or the pattern) but the knitting is worth every stitch.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

There she goes again. February 7, 2009

Here I am, just past midnight, sitting at my desk. Surrounded by knitting projects and school books. My two great loves, yarn and words. I’m trying to organize things. To banish the books to one side of my desk, exile the knitting to the other. There will always be overlap, but at the very least I want to keep the yarn from being dragged into the printer again. Miranda’s handy hint for the day: Do not leave your sock-in-progress on the paper tray. (One time unjamming that mess was enough.)

I’m listening to Edith Piaf. The language barrier doesn’t bother me. I can at least pretend I know what she’s talking about, and there is something so Sabrina about writing in a small apartment in a big city, listening to “La Vie En Rose.” Maybe I too will fall in love with a millionaire from the North Shore of Long Island. You never know.

I just started Tubey, from the Winter ’05 edition of Knitty. I’m making it out of Berroco Pure Merino in a color that reminds me powerfully of Dexter. Who doesn’t want a nice sweater that reminds them of a fictional serial killer? Ever since I saw that sweater, I have been mildly lusting after it. I never had the right yarn for it, and always had the sneaking suspicion that the ribbing would look weird across my stomach. However, I just decided that I was going to make it, but change the ribbing from 3×1 to 4×2, and cable the four-stitch sections every six rows or so. I think that will look good. If not, I’ll probably just give up and have a beautiful red shrug.

I would post a picture, but there are only eight rows right now, and so help me, it looks like a scarf. Instead, I will leave you with the following:

Mmmm, Matching Malabrigo

More on this later.