HOliday

Back again…

First, and most importantly, thank you all for your kind words re: my knitting and (more importantly) the mid-winter blues. I know there’s lots of ‘debate’ out there about the line between knitting and the personal, and I appreciate all your support. It’s nice being home and tomorrow, I head to Boston for my annual new-years-meet-up with my five best gal-pals from college. I think that will do wonders to refresh my spirit. The last few weeks have caused me to think, quite a bit, and for now I’ll say that the new year promises some substantial changes. More on that as things settle themselves.

In the meantime, my holiday knitting is still slowly finding its way to recipients.

I knit this scarf for my brother (who, to my amazement, patiently posed for pictures on Christmas night).

Pattern: My own (sand stitch with a slip-stitch border — it looks so tidy!)
Yarn: Knit picks Merino Style in “Nutmeg” (or, as Theresa says, whatever they’re calling beige these days)
Needles: Lantern Moon, US 8 straights

And speaking of holiday knits, when we were babies, my mom knit these (monster) stockings for us. Santa still struggles to fill them every year (lots of underwear, oranges, and toothpaste over the years!).

More knitting to come as gifts are given… I hope you all had wonderful holidays and, if you don’t hear from me before then, a wonderful New Year!

Radio Silence

Sorry for the long absence. Thanks all for your suggestions on the posting problem. I haven’t remedied it, although I think I’m gonna follow Meg’s example and switch over to haloscan for my comments. I’m starting to think the new year might bring a blogger-free blog… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

LOOK! I knit something!

One Endpaper Mitt, at long last (sorry about the flashiness of this photo… nighttime pics suck).

The outside looks depressingly amateurish, pre-blocking. But the inside? I love the inside.

I also love the way you can see where I switched which color I held in my left hand (I knit continental).

Other things to love? Tubular cast on. HUGE pain in the ass to do, but damn, it looks good. And so stretchy.

In life, there are things that make me wonder — like those mushrooms that will kill you if you cook them for 30 minutes, but won’t if you cook them for 45. Or those fish that are part poisonous and part edible. After these mushrooms and fish killed one person, who decided to try again, but cook it longer? And coconuts. Who was the first person who tried to get into a coconut to see if there was something worth eating in there? I feel the same way about the tubular bind off. What sick mind thought that trying that combination of weaving and stitching might turn into a good bind off? It mystifies me. But I love it, despite its finicky-ness. It looks pretty.

So, moral of the story — the first mit is… well… a bit of an ugly duckling. But I learned a bit. And maybe blocking will help. And perhaps, just perhaps, the second will be lovelier.

I also frogged the fingerless mitts from the last post and reknit them. They were gifted today, along with the “hippie hat” I knit over the summer, and were well received. I forgot my camera, but Julie promised me a photoshoot after the holidays.

On a more personal note, thanks for your patience with the sporadic blogging and e-mail-returning. I’ve been having a rough go of it this winter and my enthusiasm for knitting (and, right now, everything else) is waning (the lack of knitting mojo isn’t helping). I’m facing the reality of another dark winter alone here. I didn’t mind so much last year — I was distracted by a heartwrenching breakup, a need for serious life re-evaluation, and a new place. But this year… I guess this year, it’s getting to me. And dissertation writing is a hard thing to do when your closest support network is an hour’s drive away. I’ve got some decisions to make, and I’m finding it a bit rough at the moment. I usually love this time of year and the mid-winter blues don’t normally set in until the end of January. Apparently, my blues are a bit precocious this year. I’m trying to knit through it and am teasing myself with a sweater’s worth of malabrigo that I bought a few months ago and will turn into a cozy sweater for me (once I’ve finished my gift knitting). Going home for Christmas (tomorrow) should help too.

I close with a photo from the hike I took last week. I’ve got to enjoy this 60 degree weather while it lasts!

Blogger Question

I’ve got a question for those of you out there still using Blogger. I switched this weekend to Beta-Blogger. I’ve been having a few problems with it. The biggest and most annoying is the comments — I have comments forwarded to my e-mail so that I can respond to you lovely people. For some reason, now that I’ve switched over, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get e-mails ATTATCHED to comments… they always come up as no-comment@blogger.com, even if you’re signed into a blogger account. I like being able to reply to people’s comments… it makes me feel in touch. Does anyone know how to fix this (other than finally getting off my butt and switching from blogger… just can’t do that right now)?

Thanks! Knitting to come. And hopefully a pattern for the blue socks.

Searching for Mojo…

It’s not that I haven’t been knitting, or even having some FOs. It’s just that I’m not excited about the quality of my knitting. My mojo? It’s gone. For example, my Koigu Monkey socks. Gauge off, recently frogged. Or these:

Fingerless gloves for a friend. I ran out of yarn. Again. I just don’t have the strength to frog two things in one day.

You’d think an FO would make me feel better.

Pattern: My own (losely based on Minty’s Anastasia socks)
Yarn: Knitpicks Gloss in “dusk”
Needles: Inox US 1.5 (2.5 mm) dpns

Thoughts: Well… I love the idea of these socks. I’m not loving the Gloss so much right now. It shows every. single. mistake. Really. It makes me feel like I can’t knit to save my life. (see the uneveness below? Yeah. That’s on the TOP of one foot. After blocking. Ugh).

But the pattern? I knit the first of these on the flight to Hawaii. Despite a minor setback, I finished the second several days ago. I love that the mirror each other. I love the continuation of the eyelet spiral onto the heel flap (this was Jenfee’s suggestion… she’s smart). I think they’re sexy (well, sexy as far as handknit socks go).

Here’s to hoping my mojo comes back soon. I’ve got a week to get a lot of Christmas knitting done. Not to mention that thing they call a dissertation…

p.s.

you asked for it — for those of you who can handle it/want to learn, I posted a slide show from the hog killing (with descriptive titles) on my flickr page. You can check it out here.

Frustration and Beauty

Frustration: a sock that is too big.

No matter how I try to talk myself out of it, I’m acknowledging that this sock is just too big — I took gauge again and again and again, and I was spot on. And now that I’ve turned the heel and tried it on, it’s too big and suddenly I’m getting 7 st/in instead of 8. Grrrr… I can’t believe I have to rip it out, but I do. sigh.

Beauty: Koigu. This is my first Koigu experience. I may never knit with another sock yarn again. It’s so silky. It flows through my fingers. And the colors? There’s no sunlight today to do the subtle variation, the flecks of color, justice.

Frustration: At times like this, when I go on large shopping adventures and suddenly become a consumer for the sake of perfect gift giving, I am always reminded of the people who don’t have this luxury. This has particularly been an issue the last two holiday seasons, as I live in a very economically depressed region. Reading the Yarn Harlot today (and I know most of us do, so pardon me if I’m being redundant), I was further reminded how even the most disadvantaged Americans (and Canadians) are often so much better off than those who live elsewhere… it’s sobering.

Beauty: Yet another lovely thing that comes from Canada (like Koigu, that is), Harlot has put out a challenge to the knitting community — her goal? To double the amount donated to Doctors Without Borders by the knitting community. She expresses this goal in ways infinitely more articulate than my own. If you’ve not been over there to read her blog entry for today, you should. And then donate. I did. I’ll be buying no yarn in the month of January (goodness knows, I’ve got enough) and donated what I spend the average month. It’s just a good thing to do.

Wow. I can’t believe it’s been a week since I last…

Wow. I can’t believe it’s been a week since I last posted. Where did the time go? Plenty of knitting has been happening over here which will be revealed soon enough. In the meantime, I’ll distract you with a small FO and some pretty pictures.

Pattern: My own, if you want to call it a pattern
Yarn: Knitpicks Andean Treasure in “Sunset”
Needles: Bryspun US 5 dpns

Thoughts: Andean Treasure. Yum.

The reason I’ve been MIA for a while is that last weekend, my friends Julie, Shawn and Mia killed the two hogs they’ve been raising for the last six or seven months. For the veggies out there, I’m sorry for the brutality of that sentence, but this is a way of life down here. I went out to Kentucky early on Friday to help out and stayed the whole weekend. I took a TON of pictures… it was a really incredible experience and one that I was infinitely glad to have been a part of. I have so much respect for the way of life here, and feel that now that I’ve participated in this process, I can eat meat (or at least pork) with a sense of responsibility. I want to put a slideshow up on Flickr with descriptions for people who are interested in how it works, but I’m still trying to find a way to do that without grossing out people who don’t want to be grossed out. Some of the photos are, admittedly, pretty hard to look at. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this:

This is the sun, finally coming over the mountains (around 9:30 or 10 a.m.) on Saturday morning, filtering through the trees and the smoke from the fire under the water barrels (you need A LOT of hot water). It was really cold Saturday morning. When we got up at 6 to start the fires, it was 5 degrees. By the time the sun hit, it was only around 25. But it was a beautiful morning (handknit socks came in very handy… I wore two pairs!).

Darning Help

Last Christmas, I made my mom a pair of socks. You might remember them:

Evidently, they were a big hit, because they were worn. A lot.

I took them back from mom when I was home for Thanksgiving in the hopes that I could repair them, but I have no idea how to go about doing this. Any advice? These were knit with a regular heel flap, and although the flap itself is in great shape (as are the toes and the rest of the sole), the bottom of the heel is a complete disaster. I have plenty of yarn leftover from both socks… Is there a way to repair this? I’ve never really understood how darning worked, but I wonder if that is a remedy for this situation or if the holes are just too big. Can I snip the old yarn where I turned the heel (keeping the heel flap and somehow preserving those stitches) and knit a new heel? Help!

Hurrah!

Sorry to post twice in one day, but my friend Jennifer (in the middle there) has, after much harrassing, poking and prodding, finally started her own knitting blog today. Y’all should go check it out.

And for those of you who remember the picture of the cutest lamb ever, that photo was taken by my friend Greg, on the left. This photo is, obviously, from Hawaii. One of the best parts of the trip was hanging out with the two of them. They’re two of my best friends and we all live so far apart these days (Greg’s still in Chile, Jenfee just moved back to Philly, and I’m still here in the mountains). Have I mentioned recently how much I love the internet?

Stranded

If you recall, earlier this fall, I declared 2007 the year of color-work. I got a head start this fall with the Huron socks and yesterday, better late than never, I joined Stranded. Over at Stranded, they ask:

Is this your first colorwork project? If it isn’t, what was your first, and has it survived the test of time?

I’ve worked in color before. In fact, my very first sweater, completed in late winter of 2005, was a fairisle sweater (I’m nothing if not ambitious). I’m proud to say that my first sweater is not only wearable, it’s actually quite a nice sweater. Don’t get me wrong, there are things I’d change (like have more than one inch of ribbing at the bottom, add an inch or so to the sleeves — I have monkey long arms! — and knit another decrease or two in the yoke so the collar is closer). But all in all, it’s a great sweater. In fact, I’m wearing it today (please notice the snow in this picture — it’s our first this year and I’m pretty excited about it!)

What are your projects for this knitalong?

Well, I’ve already started Eunny’s Endpaper Mitts.

I also plan on making these (I’ve bought the pattern and I’ve got a box of Knitpicks Palette on the way!).

You may recall, I was once tempted by the Telemark Ski sweater, but now that I’ve seen other pictures of it, I’m not sure. I also have a love/hate relationship with Telemark (is anyone happy with how that’s wearing? It seems so harsh).

I’m also pretty sure there’s at least another pair of fairisle socks in my future… We’ll see.