I love to knit lace

I love to knit lace. Well that's kind of silly because truly I love to knit. I find the repetitiveness relaxing and meditative, calming. That said, I am always amazed at how just the act of making loops in yarn, or string, you can manipulate the loops to make such beautiful designs. With only 2 stitches, knit and purl, one can knit countless designs. I am trying to teach girl child to knit. She sits with great concentration and has gotten the knit stitch mastered...more or less. She still has a tendency to start knitting in the wrong direction making an impromptu short row and periodically holes and great loose yarn ends appear, but she knits back and forth learning to tension and make loops. I do remember that part of learning to knit, even if I have no memory of actually learning. I do also remember my first sweater it was blue, garter stitch. I knit it my first year in high school and I wore it to death. There have been many many projects since and a great many of them have not stuck in my mind quite like that first "real" project that wasn't potholders or blankets for my dolls, and such began a lifelong love of knitting.

Knit on

A mom of a couple of girls in girl child's karate class is pregnant with her 6th baby. She doesn't know if it will be a boy or a girl so I tried to be as gender neutral as yellow and lavendar can be. I'm sure that baby (or mother) will not care about the color of the sweater. The pattern was easy peasy (tulip cardigan) kit from some yarn I picked up from a yarn outlet (great place, name brands marked waaayyyy down).

We survived the holidays

and have been spit out on the other side. The sister-in-law languishes in the hospital with the brain function of a houseplant, and we await her death which makes me feel very much like a vulture. Two days before Christmas our middle boy left us. At 18 he's decided that he knows everything. He'd been gone for a couple of days "buying pants at the mall" that was the excuse he gave me when he left and he showed up two days later stoned. He was told that he needed to go into drug rehab and he decided to leave and live with a friend (his pusher, but I have no proof). So he's off telling people that we kicked him out two days before Christmas (no, he's more than welcome to live at home, but he has to obey the laws and the rules of the house).

And I knit on. Exercise and knitting are my stress relief and I've been indulging in both. May 2009 be a better year than 2008, and we're off to a shaky start.

Holiday times

My sister in law overdosed Saturday afternoon. It was a mixture of crap that she took that took her. She's been an addict for over 30 years. In the nearly 25 years that I've known her I've only seen her sober (or happy) a handful of times, mostly I avoid her because so much of her venom seems to be aimed at me. But that said, I knit my other sister in law a lovely lace scarf when she turned 50 and Lesley's 50th birthday was to be in a couple of years and I was beginning to ponder if I should knit her a lace scarf too (yes). Not that I'd begun to plan after all Les is merely 47, I have about 2.5 years to plan. Then came the call on Saturday night. Her husband and middle son found her. Oh, her body is alive, but as far as anyone can tell as she lays there in a coma, she's killed her brain. She has enough brain waves to breathe, but that's it. We hope, we hope that in this coma that her higher functioning brain waves are just suppressed, but we know that if she does manage to survive this she won't be the same. I'd like to think that she'd survive and come back as a happy version of herself. I've always wished that she could be happy, that she'd find peace. I wish that she'd quit abusing the prescription drugs and booze and become the mother, sister, wife, friend that she should have been. I wish I wish that she could have a good relationship with her siblings. It pains me to see the pain my husband is in (and his sister, brother and dad) because the door is shut, there's no hope to repair the damage that's done.

Meeting the not famous famous

It's funny when you think about famous people. We've all heard of wildly famous people....Robert Redford, Brittney Spears....you know movie stars, tv stars, rock or country stars, well known authors. But there's the not-so-famous famous people too. These "not-so-famous" people are well known in certain circles. I certainly don't know whose famous in my husband's line of work, but there are certainly people that are well known, but not famous. For me it was meeting Wendy Bernard and Leah Radford (and Mary Kay of Mamascrapalota fame)...and forgetting my camera. I had finished my "Slinky Ribs" from Wendy's book and wore it, it was a surprise to me while I was browsing around waiting for the thing to start to look up and see Wendy standing there and a surprise when she exclaimed "hey you're wearing the sweater from my book!" Perhaps it shouldn't have been such a shock, but I was so star struck. She's very pretty and funny and laid back and just the person you'd want to hang out with. I didn't chat with Leah Radford, but she too is pretty and seems like someone who'd be fun to be around.

So, that was my exciting evening. For a non-knitter perhaps it would be a huge yawn, but for me I practically floated home (it was cold enough when I left home I was concerned that it would snow, but it actually warmed up enough that nothing was freezing when I got home...so no worries). So, I returned to a check register for the PTO that needs some work before the meeting tonight and wine that had reached the "specific gravity" for the next step of stuff that needed doing, but even today collecting my things for the meeting and such I'm still floating.

Still puttering along (at a breakneck pace)

Summer sped by this year with a minimal amount of knitting. Actually when I look back I can't really think of anything that we did this summer besides doctor appointments (once the husband was employed again). We did manage to go camping a whopping three times, which I admit is better than not at all. The youngest son did keep us busy with his inability to remain healthy, I believe that we're on the right path and the poor little guy is doing much better.

I did manage to finish a little top for Girl Child out of Knit Picks Cotlin. It's a "Drops" design and is quite fetching I think on her. She liked the purple yarn, but so far hasn't really worn the top. I'm hoping that she'll wear it with a nice little turtleneck underneath it this winter, or perhaps next summer or at least wear it before she outgrows it. I wasn't enamored of the pattern and for some reason found it to be a tedious knit, don't know why, it could have just been my mood.

I also started (and finished) a little cardigan based on the "Tess" pattern by Marie Grace Designs. I had wondered what would happen if I just cast on for the neck of a sweater did a couple of rows of garter stitch and then added on for the front, back and sleeves just like I do for most of my sweaters. The result is a lovely little square neckline. The problem is my child is pretty narrow and I think that were I to knit another sweater like this (and I probably will) I would narrow down that neck a bit....and perhaps add some short row shaping to the back to bring the back neckline up just a wee bit.

I am nearing the end of a "Slinky Ribs" from Wendy Bernard's book for myself. Love the pattern, which for once I am following, but am already making changes in my head for the next sweater I knit....which I would say is going to be fro that pattern, but the changes I have in my head are so many that the only thing I appear to be planning on keeping is the rib knit stitch and the fact that it will be a sweater.

That's pretty much my life in knitting right now. I'm staring at several "obligation" knits...which, perhaps it's wrong to call them "obligation knits" when truly they are slated to be gifts. But I guess when the yarn is in the stash and it's not been cast on yet so there are still so many many possibilities for it except for the fact that if it's sock yarn more than likely it will be socks and when it's your mom's favorite color...well, those socks will be a gift for your mom...no, no matter how you slice it the yarn and project become "obligation knitting" of course I could do what she's done to me in the past and just wrap up the pattern, yarn and needles and give them to her for Christmas....

Just how long does it take to knit a sock

I am asked that question often, perhaps it's because I always seem to have a sock in progress with me, tho not lately. During the school year when I seem to spend my life waiting for children at different things I try to keep a smallish knitting project tucked into my purse usually a sock which will beg the "how long" question. So I cast on a sock and kept a record of how long it took me to knit one sock (not the ones in the picture as at the moment I have only 1 sock done of the pair I was timing I'll take a picture of them later) I found out many things while I was timing my knitting. One is that it's tedious to time yourself when you're doing an activity that is supposed to relax you, another thing is it's hard to set aside time when you know you're not going to have a lot of interruptions. But all of that aside it took me six and a half hours to knit one women's size 7 sock. Naturally this is not necessarily accurate since each project takes on its own personality and one sock could take 10 hours to knit, but for purposes of having something to tell people when they ask I can now tell them it takes about 7 hours of. knitting. time.