Wild Sock!

Close, but not the same...these two skeins of Lisa Souza Sock! were dyed on the same day, by the same dyer. They're a different as night and...some other night. The skein on the left is lighter, and contains more vibrant teals and purples. The skein on the right is uniformly darker, except for the white patch that the dye missed. When I shook them out to hang them over the chair, I found that both skeins have this white patch. It's a little more pronounced on the darker skein, because the rest of the colors blend together so much more thoroughly.

One of these skeins is taking a trip to the post office, being traded for the Rowan Cotton Rope book so that I can find something to do with my other Stitches impulse buy -- too many skeins of aran/bulky black cotton. There's no wrong choice here. Really, neither skein has problems that a little grape Kool Aid wouldn't fix. I leave it to my swappie to decide.

:-)

Secret Pal Package! Wheeee!

Just when I needed something good to land on my doorstep, this package arrived. Unbelievably cool stuff, wrapped up in polka dot ribbons!

Buddy the Cat tried to lay claim to all of it, but we've talked it through and now I think he understands that it's all mine. (You'll have to sleep some time, the Woman. Mark my words. It's only a matter of hours until at least one of those things is in my mouth. - BtC.)

Here are the details:

- Circular point protectors
- Sock-shaped point protectors - so cute! I've never seen these before.
- Sweater-shaped DPN holders - even cuter!
- Coiled needle holders
- Stitch marker rings
- A variety bag of aluminum cable needles - way cool, since I only have the grooved wooden ones, and they're kind of awkward to use
- Self-coiling tape measure
- A cool little knitting gauge
- Barrel shaped counter - made for fitting onto a straight needle. No more trying to tie the other kind to my needles with waste yarn!
- A gorgeous set of glass needles with pale green ends. You can't see the ends in this picture, but trust me, they're beautiful
- Two balls of Berroco Medley in 'Louvre'. The colors in the balls are lovely, aquas and fuschias and greens - like jewels half-buried in sand. I can't wait to make something out of them
- A needle case with a built-in accessory case
- Calendar of knitting thoughts
- Four handcrafted stitch markers

This was so much fun to open, and it's all so cool...I'm really overwhelmed. Thank you, S.P.!

Gloomy Day

I'm unwell. I started feeling a little off last night, just a little cough but still, not quite right. By this morning, after a night of relentless, dry coughing, I'd developed a vigorous cold. It's the kind of cold where I can move about the house, but not really get anything done. I have all day to be knitting, but the last thing in the world I want to do is knit.

It's raining outside. The dog's going stir crazy. Buddy the Cat's upstairs on my bed, avoiding me because I've let the dog into the house on what would traditionally be a 'Buddy Day'. We used to have 'Buddy Day' when I'd take time off from work. I'd put Lucy outside in the morning, and I'd sneak around the house pretending not to be here so she wouldn't know that I'd stayed home and that Buddy had monopolized my time. Now, before anyone gets any ideas, I should point out that I only did this on nice, sunny days. She'd never get left out there in the rain or the fog. It's a pretty yard. It's no hardship for her at all. I love my sweet, simple dog. STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT! We remodeled the kitchen last year, and now there's a glass door out to the patio. There's no hiding from Lucy anymore. Thus, no more 'Buddy Day'. And Buddy hates me for it.

So, catless, free of any beauty products, unwell, and a little rumpled and cranky, I decided that this would be the very best time to take pictures of the Graphite hat. I finished it a few days ago, but I can't get Accountant Boy to model it. "I'm wearing a dress shirt. It won't look right." "I haven't shaved." "I've just shaved. I don't look outdoorsy enough." "Honey, it's midnight and I have to go to sleep." Fine. I'll do it myself.

It's very much like the blue hat I made for my dad. In fact, knowing how my mind works, the length and the direction of decreases are probably the same for both hats. I really like the decreases in the ribbing, because I've managed to keep the top of the hat from swirling like a nautilus shell. I like that effect in womens hats and when it's intentional, but not in this kind of cap. You can't really see the details in this yarn, but it's pretty cool. I should write down how I did it. Maybe next time I make one, I'll remember to take notes and publish a pattern.

Hey, I said I wouldn't use liquor bottles for BABY hat modeling. I never said anything about us grown-ups. Thanks for the help, giant bottle of Grey Goose! (Grey Goose -- "Honk-honk!")

And finally for today, my yarn came in from my swap with Lumay from the knittyboard. It's gorgeous. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. It's hand-spun, hand-dyed chunky wool, and if I had to guess at the yardage, I'd guess about 300 yards. I'm going to measure it with my handy dandy fishing line meter. Suggestions?

Self-Portrait of a Lady

Sometimes, in the course of making art, there is room for collaboration. Other times, the statement is a more personal, more private thing, a seed of an idea that cannot germinate in a communal garden. I feel this way about my own photographed image. Other people can, and have, taken pictures of me that I enjoyed. Almost none of them show me as I see myself. When I took up photography as a hobby, I did so because it was the medium in which I could document what I saw, as I saw it through my own eye, without the burden of trying to make my hand translate the image onto a piece of paper or a lump of clay. I loved photography from the start, and for the most part it loved me right back.

Our only issue, photography and I, is with how I appear in photographs taken by other people. My eyes glow red in the light of the flash, one side of my mouth turns up in a funny way, my chin disappears. I am ordinary, even goofy. I am betrayed by the other side of the lens. Is that really how I look? Am I really that awkward, that plain? Why do pictures of me never look like the image I see in the mirror? Is the mirror-image the lie that I tell myself, and the photograph the glaring, awful truth?

In a word, no. In a narcissistic but positive turn, I've discovered that my image can be captured as I'd like to see it, as I see myself, but only by my favorite living photographer. Me.

This is Svetlana, a triangular garter-stitch shawl knit in Crystal Palace 'Splash'. I knit her on size 17 needles, and used a little more than a ball and a quarter of 'Splash'. Svetlana was originally much bigger, but after her inadvertant unravelling, frogging and re-knit, she's now just large enough to wear around the shoulders, and only when fastened at the front with a pin, or in this case a faux pearl bracelet. I wanted her to be a little more elegant, a little less pelt-like.

I took the above picture myself, using a makeshift stand consisting of a laundry drying rack and a spiral-bound notebook. I'd flip the picture on the right upright if I had more time and more motivation, but you get the idea. It was tall enough for my purposes, and relatively stable. The funny thing about all of this is that I was explaining my contraption to my husband, and he said, "We have three tripods in the closet. Of COURSE they fit this camera. It was the old camera that didn't have a tripod mount." He looked a little sick when I showed him this picture. I think he was picturing his very expensive camera sliding off of the rig I'd invented and cracking into a hundred pieces on the hearth.

And sometimes it's not bad to look a little goofy in a picture, as long as the goofiness is on your own terms. Of all of the shots I took that day, this one is my favorite. Lucy caught me with her tongue about three milliseconds after the shutter click.

Tweedle-dee-Tweedy

My older brother is a huge fan of Butterfinger Pie. You take six full size Butterfinger candy bars (or a 13oz bag of the small ones), smash the candy up with a hammer, mix it with a package of cream cheese, a tub of Cool Whip, and throw the whole melange into a graham cracker crust. Chill until firm, then serve. The pie is...well...he really likes it. It makes my teeth hurt, but I like making it for him and he likes eating it, so it works out O.K. My favorite part of the process is the candy smashing. I love intentionally pulverizing things with a hammer, and this is the most productive and legal outlet for my urge. I mention this now not to frighten anyone, but because smashed Butterfingers look an awful lot like Debbie Bliss Aran Tweed in 'Espresso'.

This is the Triangle Edge Cardigan from the Debbie Bliss Tweed collection. The yarn was an impulse buy from Elann, and this was the featured pattern on the yarn page. I knew I had to have it. I showed the Elann newsletter to co-workers, hoping to be talked out of buying the materials, but everyone said, "I can TOTALLY see you wearing that!" You know, nobody ever says "I can see you wearing that, but not totally. Really more like 30%." It wouldn't have made a difference if I'd heard something like "Good God, that'll look like automotive upholstery, and you'll look like the bucket seat of a '77 Pinto when you wear it! It's hideous!" I had a strong feeling about this one. I still would have made it.

What makes this project different is that I started working on it almost as soon as I got the yarn into the house. Usually, I get yarn and a pattern book, and I spend a lot of time going over the patterns, and the yarn gets shuffled around the house, until eventually I get tired of looking at it and throw it into a bin in the yarn cave. Last autumn, I decided to turn over a new leaf. No more "better buy fifteen balls of that, because I might want to knit something big with it, although I have no current plans for it" purchases. No more "if I don't buy it now, I might not be able to find it later" hauls. This was my first "I'm knitting this thing, and I'm knitting it in this yarn, and I'm doing it now" projects.

I changed the pattern, but only slightly. I made the medium-sized body, but I made the armholes shorter and the arms in the small size. I don't like the arms of my sweaters to be too roomy, and I like a pretty close fit at the shoulder. Other than that, I followed the pattern to the letter. It fits like my favorite blazer, which is remarkable given that I didn't think to measure said blazer before starting on this cardigan. It's a tiny bit wide at the waist, but that'll be easy to fix later if it really bothers me.

I wouldn'd do anything differently if I made it again. In the beginning, I'd considered knitting the sleeves in the round and the body in one piece up to the arms, but the seaming was actually fun once I got the hang of it. It's a lot more fun to seam when you know that you won't be able to see the screw-ups. There's no way to tell where I might have flubbed among all of those dark, tweedy stitches.

I don't know why it took so long, maybe because it got a little tedious toward the end, or maybe because I knit more slowly than usual. I really didn't want to screw it up. The further along I went without making a mistake, the more I worried about it. I started on Thanksgiving weekend, and I cast off the last bit of the sewn-on edging last night.

Buddy the Cat's happy that it's done. He usually tries to curl up on top of my knitting, or at least right next to me as I'm working, but he stayed away when I was working on this sweater. He didn't like the feel of it, I guess. (It was not soft and luxurious. I'd rather curl up in the bucket seat of a '77 Pinto. Why do you never knit cashmere, the Woman? - BtC)

I'm going to wear it tomorrow, and try to get pictures of it in the daylight. Wheeeee!!! Done!!!