Knitting A Mile Square

I’m the primary laundress in this house.  On good days, I don’t mind it – I like to fold clothes but I get bored when it comes to putting them away. I like to match socks.  I also go through pockets and remove all the stuff – pens, guitar picks, those little flash drives and money, put it in nice piles and return it to the laundered.

But no more. Oh, I’ll still give back the scrunchies and the mechanical pencils, but I’m keeping the cash, and converting it into yarn.  I’m keeping a tally there on the right hand side of this blog.

Already though I am in the hole on this deal.  Each year I eagerly await Knitting Nation’s very excellent winter sale, and it is this weekend.  Are you with me, knitting sisters? I’m going to take an advance on the laundry money.  Certainly I will be able to make up the difference over a few weeks by throwing in an extra load or two a week.  I get yarn, you get clean pants.

Everybody wins.

A whole week into the New Year and for the first time ever, I have kept a resolution past January 2nd.  Not only have I cast on 4 new projects, and spent cold hard plastic in a yarn store,  I’ve already ripped out two projects due to serious gauge derailments.  There is way to much to be done this year to waste time on funky gauge!

I kept a giant, Christo like wrap and a Debbie Bliss sweater with crazy cables and bobbles, both selected for the serious amount of repetitive knitting that is best accomplished at the start of a new TV season.  If course, there are no pictures yet but I did wear the half finished wrap today out in the cold.  Another big step in 2010: who says it has to be finished before you wear it?

This week brings the return of Project Runway, and I hope at last they’ve seriously considered adding a few knitting challenges to their lineup.  The last season was so dull, an hour or so of watching someone knit, say, stockinette would only liven it up. I’ve decided to cast on some hip and happenin’ fingerless mitts to work on during PR, either these or these.   (Sorry for the Rav links – what, you still haven’t joined Ravelry? You don’t need to be a knitter, go ahead, be the guest).  I’ll also be pretending not to watch Big Love, even though I couldn’t find any patterns for Mormon ritual undergarments on Ravelry.

Today, though, brought the premiere of the anticipated-since-I -learned-about-it-yesterday “Return to Cranford”.  I loved           the  original Cranford, and I’ve read the book many times. In fact, you can read it right now if you’ve got a few days. From what I  c an tell, some of the original story remains.There’s an odd bit of casting with Tim Curry playing one of the characters. Do you think he invites Miss Matty Jenkins up to the lab to see what’s on the slab?

I taped it to watch later, but the thought of a new Cranford series makes me shiver with antici-

Most of the last quarter of 2009 was occupied by imagining and executing a vest that maybe Don Draper would wear on a nice fall Saturday. Something like this:

It was a gift for Brendan for his birthday, and it was a miracle of double blocking and seaming. You can see the front right panel here, but I don’t have a picture of the actual vest itself as of yet.

If I did, I would call your attention to to the almost invisible  seams and excellently placed armhole facing, but I would get an 8 year old to mix me another Manhattan while I bemoaned the inexpert buttonhole situation that could not be remedied.

News Update: here’s the guy, here’s the vest. It looks to me like this picture was definitely taken on a Saturday afternoon.

Inspired by my knitty neighbor Mrs. H, (and even though I am in the middle of serious fall knitting madness) I foolishly believed I had an evening to spare to quickly whip up the very popular Star Crossed Beret for Emily.  I thought: look! It’s size 11 needles, bulky yarn, some sassy little cables, I could do this with my eyes closed and one needle tied behind my back.

Well, readers, let me give you some advice:  RTFP*.  This hat was frogged and reknitted 3 times in three days, ripped out right down to the ribbing.  First – and one word describes it all: gauge.  Second, I misread the cable pattern, making twice as many cables as called for, because I’m so cocky I just look at the pictures not the instructions.  And lastly, I misjudged Emily’s direction to make it “slouchy, but not too slouchy, just slouchy enough”.  What’s the median circumference of slouchy, can you tell me?

Luckily I finished it in time for the snow on Saturday.

In the end, it was only middling slouchy but I needed to get on with my knitting life!

* Read The F$%#%& Pattern

This rainy Saturday found me perched on a hard metal chair at our local museum, knitting away and eagerly anticipating a lecture on Knitting in the Civil War. What I learned: there is nothing like attending a lecture about the history and culture of knitting  to make you want to run home and violently unravel every project in your project basket .

I was hoping for a slideshow with some ruffly sontags or homespun socks, and maybe a few sad stories of soldiers cherishing socks sent by consumptive sweethearts. And maybe an actual artifact! But after a few interesting facts (provided by an 8 year old Civil War buff and not the lecturer) the conversation took a sad slide down into the abyss of  Why Knitting is Trendy.

All of the women at my table started frothing at the mouth and screaming obscenities as this topic emerged. Why, why, why must the simple pleasure of creating warm garments for loved ones be reduced to a sociological treatise? Why do I knit? Because I believe that my knitting skills will come in handy in the post-apocalyptic society.  I knit because I can’t sing.  Because I can.

Anyhow. It was an opportunity to get a solid couple of hours of knitting done, and that extra knitting time in November is  crucial.  Hopefully I will have some pictures at the end of the week of the beautiful yarn I bought at Sheep and Wool from Persimmon Farms.