green.girl knitting: commentary
29 february 2008 extra
just in the nick of time; thank goodness for the leap year business, else i'd have but one entry this month, and a pictureless one at that. let us remedy the situation...
i am determined to get things off the in progress list. the two miniblankets for sophie's american girls had been finished, except for an edging, for months. not that i hadn't tried various edgings, only to rip them out in fits of frustration that they just weren't what i was envisioning. there were at least three crocheted variants, an attached icord variant, a shot at not edging at all, just some severe blocking [don't bother with this one when you are knitting with leftover acrylic someone gifted you] -- none made me happy. so i decided maybe it just wanted something plain and simple and thus the garter stitch border was born and was actually even finished on one of the blankets earlier this month. it doesn't make my heart sing, exactly, but it doesn't make me weep either, and therefore it shall do. now to the second one, and the decision about whether to back them or leave them as is. and then the new problem arising out of the appearance of a third doll, the european cousin that sophie was gifted for her birthday. must not leave out the cousin, but i don't have enough yarn to make a blanket that matches the other two, so it shall have to be improvised.
this is a gratuitous dessert shot, from our recent brunch at salty's on alki. apple praline cake. quite possibly my mostest favourite cake ever eaten in a restaurant. i really should have taken a better picture but this one is good enough to evoke all the tastiness in my memorybanks.
this scarf would never ever have been finished if i had kept to the pattern. the giant cables every twelve rows or whatever it was were just depressing me. i looked at it periodically and would just sigh, and turn away. then i got the bright idea that i didn't actually have to cable throughout the whole scarf! so i just transitioned to plain ribbing with a random cable thrown in whenever i felt like it. brilliant maneuver! it is just awaiting a soak and a block and it will be done. it is a little shorter than i had hoped but i used up all the yarn that was left in the house, so it shall be deemed a success.
the valentine i made for jim. it makes me happy to look at it. and think it.
onward and upward! the wooly mammoth shrug had been languishing in the back seat of the car. took it along when i thought i'd be waiting somewhere, and promptly forgot all about it. i rescued it the other day and started again on the second sleeve, which is now only nine rows away from equaling the first sleeve in length. i'll need to be making the decision about how the sleeves shall be joined to make the shrug: make a little body and then raglan the lot to the neck? a strip across the back? the strip with stitches picked up round the lot of the edges to make a collar and a little bit of body? options, options, options...
and finally, something new. i bought this yarn more than a year ago with an eye toward making jim a smallish afghan/lap rug. i've doodled a number of patterns, both on paper and in excel and finally just picked up the needles and started knitting. the yarn, mr joe blanket, has some elastic in it, so i decided mitered squares would give it the stability it would need.
i am pretty sure this is the final configuration, but one never knows, i've already changed it once since i started the knitting.
02 february 2008 st brigid
it is once again time for the silent poetry reading, so below you will find the only poem i've ever written, i believe, that has anything to do with knitting.
there has been some knitting, but there has been no picture taking so there is nothing else to see here. imagine another pair of purple fingerless mitts, remarkably similar to the purple mitts i knit last month. they were for my friend's mother who suffers terribly in the cold and was so taken by the first pair, i promised her a pair for her own. also, imagine a blue hat, 2x2 rib, with a blue flower attached, remarkably similar to the purple hat from last month that also suffered from a lack of good picture, only smaller. sophie had a playdate and as i was warned the playmate had a present for sophie, i felt sophie should have a present for the playmate.
and so it was.
3-6
hundreds and hundreds of sweaters
lining the walls of a covered market
it was mexico or guatemala
or somewhere colorful like that
and on each sweater was a design
a word or a phrase or a picture
the shopkeeper whispered
they hold a secret
but i couldn't unravel it
until riding the bus to the airport
i realized they had told the story of my life.
my life was on sale in a mexican market.
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