No Knit Wit

This thing is not a sea creature, nor is it hyperbolic knitting. It's a ruffled silk and wool collar, which I made eons ago, and have never worn. Every time I encounter it in the bottom of a bin of yarn, I think, "I should wear that someday". Then it somehow goes back into the bin and never gets worn. Hm.

Since I have run out of knitting-related witticisms, I'm going to talk about one of my peeves, overused words and expressions.

1. "Devastated". I've been hearing this one a lot the past few days, since there have been a lot of tornadoes and other forms of severe weather. It's not that I doubt that the results are devastating, it's just that I expect people to be more lyrical in the midst of their, um ... devastation. How about "It wrecked our house and everything we own", "What will we do now?" or simply "Life sucks"?

2. "Icon", as in "James Brown was an icon for the African-American community". When Persons on the Street were interviewed on TV after James Brown died, about 90 percent of them said they were affected (or "devastated") because he had been such an "icon". But what does that mean, people?  Icons are symbols. So what was he a symbol of? Tell me or I will smite you.

3. "Snowmageddon" and "Snowpocalypse". These were funny the first time I heard them, but by the second day of the first snowstorm of 2010, they were about as hilarious as "Workin' hard, or hardly workin'?" I shall smite both your cheeks with a metal snow shovel if I ever hear these again.

4. "Awesome" (pronounced in Minnesota as 'ossum'). Do my new shoes really inspire awe? My haircut?  My recipe for baked beans? If so, you have a low awe threshold. And what happens when you encounter, say, the Second Coming (that is, the Apocalypse without the Snow) if you're already awed by baked beans?

5."Incredible". 'Incredible' means, literally, not believeable. "We went to this incredible new restaurant". Really? You didn't believe you were there, or you didn't believe it existed? If you didn't believe it existed, was your meal filling? Shall I smite you with this incredible wombat?

6. "Supposably". People. This is not a word. And still it gets overused.

Thanks. It's been awesome.

Of Great Blue Herons and Fish Skeletons

How can a fish skeleton be inspirational?

I saw this one on my morning dog walk, and immediately thought of knitted lace patterns I might design. Lewis immediately thought, "Yum!" Cruel mistress that I am, I didn't let him eat it.

Last year at this time, there were a lot of good-sized carp heads strewn about in the grass near the local pond where we walk. I never did figure out whether they were discarded by humans, raccoons, foxes, or something else, but every time we went out for a walk, I ended up with "fish heads, fish heads / jolly jolly fish heads / fish heads, fish heads, floating in my soup" circling in my brain.  (Or is is "roly-poly" fish heads?)

While we were walking, a Great Blue Heron swooped down about 20 feet from us, and let me take about 20 pictures before it flew further away. The photos I got were not stellar, but for what it's worth, I share one here.

Two days ago, a Peregrine Falcon swooped down into a yard as I was driving down Cretin Avenue in St. Paul, a busy two-lane urban street. The falcon missed whatever it was going after, but I got the best close-up look I've ever had of a Peregrine. And yesterday, I spotted a red-tailed hawk atop a freeway light pole. Our local pale hawk (identity as yet unknown, but probably a light-colored red-tail) has been frequenting its favorite utility pole at Lamplighter Park across the street, and I have had some spectacular close-up views as I walk under the pole.

I've yet to see any osprey, cormorants, goldfinches, or Eastern Bluebirds, but I trust with the warm weather I will see them soon. We've had a couple of good rains, which have brought the worms out onto the sidewalks, so the robins are feasting.

Welcome Spring, FINALLY, and Happy Easter!

An FO, plus My Precious Sock

Pictures, finally. Not good ones. The dreary Minnesota weather didn't cooperate for outdoor photos, so I had to put up with crummy lighting and unattractive backgrounds. If the sun comes out tomorrow, I'll do a retake.


The Maude Vest has been finished, blocked, and worn. I came, I knit, I conquered. When I told my coworker J., she replied, “have you cast on for the next one yet?” Dang, she knows me too well.


It’s a good thing I finished the vest yesterday, since today the knitting voodoo is upon me. Picked up the gusset stitches on my sock before I turned the heel; rookie mistake. Went to turn the heel, and ended up with a non-centered heel twice before remembering, (i.e., looking at the pattern) how to do it. While undoing my mistakes, dropped several stitches. After finally getting everything picked up again, put one of the gusset decreases in the wrong place.It’s great that I have a job where I can knit during my downtime.It wasn’t too busy today at work, but I believe I completed only two rounds on my sock. 


I feel like there’s some little fiend dogging me, someone who looks like Rumplestiltskin or Dobby, or worse, Gollum.Excuse me. I have to go buy a garlic wreath, some asafoetida (you can look it up) and a few wooden stakes for good measure.

One down, only ??? to go

I cast off the Maude vest this morning, and put it in the "spa bath" (cool water and Soak wool wash) this morning. If I'm not too lazy this afternoon I should be able to block it. I was hoping to wear it to work tomorrow, since Katie warned me I had to have it done -- under what authority, I'm not sure -- but I'll have to see if it's dry in time. I may be wearing it with un-woven-in ends.

And I WILL post a picture when it is finished. See? I'm turning over a new leaf. Let's hope there aren't maggots under it. (The leaf, that is.)

Next up is a sweater I had hoped to finish by last Christmas. Well, Easter and Christmas are both about Christ, right? So if I get it done by Easter, I'll call it a success. It's a kimono by Plymouth, knit in Encore, and it was dead easy to knit, although I kept knitting the pieces longer than necessary and having to rip because the Idiot Knitting lulled me into a trance. I hope it will be a cold, cold summer so the friend I'm making it for can enjoy it. Maybe I'll have to take her camping in the Arctic.

All I have left on the kimono is picking up about one-hunderd-and-eighty-four-billion stitches up the front, around the neck, and down the other front, and knitting a wide garter stitch shawl collar. Then the dreaded sleeve and side seams. I might have to fortify myself with a few beverages for the seaming. It's not that I can't do it, it's just ... well, you know. Seaming. Feh.

After the kimono, I will finish the socks I promised to another friend years ago in exchange for a favor. I think I might have to make two pair, the second pair being overdue interest.

My resolution -- OK, yes, I'm making a damn resolution -- is to accompany each of these tiny triumphs with photos of the FOs (hey, I like the sound of that, 'photos of the FOs'). And then my blog can be all pretty.

[Off topic]: I wish I'd had my camera yesterday morning, when I went out to walk the dog in the SNOW and there was a lone goose standing out in the white field, looking as if it was having the same bewildered and murderous thought I was about the weather.

Stay tuned.

F-ing Os

I’m thinking hard about F-ing some Os. No, that’s not code for naughty-speak.

If you’re a knitter, you probably know about UFOs (Un-Finished Objects). And if you’re me, you have several -- well, several dozen ... ish -- UFOs lurking in Rubbermaid bins and boxes and project bags and baskets and in any other sort of container large enough to hold projects-in-progress.

So, I’m thinking of F-ing some of those Os.

I’m dangerously close to finishing my current project, the Maude Vest from the Simply Shetland 2 book. I have an inch or so left to knit, then I may finish the armholes with crochet or I-cord edging, and then I need to block it. 

Usually when I reach this stage in a project, it feels done to me, and I can’t help casting on for something new and exciting. I’m sort of like Donald Trump in this way, only I go after newer, fresher projects instead of newer, younger wives.

And I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions, so I don’t ever resolve to F more Os for that reason. And I don’t believe in either Hell or the Knitting Police, so I can’t be guilted into finishing anything I don’t F-ing want to. (OK, that WAS naughty-speak).

So why this sudden burst of potential industriousness?

For one thing, I think my coworker E. is a bad (good?) influence on me. She is one of those dismaying people who casts on a project on Tuesday night -- at work, I might add -- and by Friday morning she comes in with a completed acre of fully blocked Orenburg Lace or a Dubbelmossa Fair Isle hat or some such thing. And not only that, she keeps up with her blog and puts plenty of photos on it as well. I admit to feeling a little competitive.

For another, I’ve had occasion to go into my stash recently and in the process I unearthed a few things that would take about 1 hour each to complete. For example, the Sonoma Wrap from Simply Shetland 2, which involved 72 inches of various lovely stripes in Woven Stitch. I completed the knitting in record time, but so far the edging has taken me about three years. Well, applied I-cord can’t be rushed.

And then there are the socks I promised a friend several years ago. All I have left is the foot of the second sock. Two evenings of work, max, and I could get that sock monkey off my back.

And ... and ...

But maybe I could just look at that beautiful new silk and wool handpainted yarn I bought on Saturday? You won’t tell, right? I swear I won’t cast on ...

High Speed Chase

The Knitting Police are after me again.

The Knitting Police enforce the Knitting Laws, the most important of which apparently is:

Finish What You Start.

I’m an anarchist from way back, maybe because I came of age during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it was almost illegal to follow rules. If you say anything to me which contains the word “should”, I have an immediate, visceral reaction which makes me do the opposite of what I “should”.

I shouldn’t have “too much” yarn, whatever that means. (How can you have too much yarn? That’s like having too much air, or too much time.) I have a wide-ranging collection of yarns, both vintage and modern, much of which is parked in the overflow parking, a.k.a. my not-so-mini-storage unit.

I shouldn’t start a project when I have other, unfinished projects. Need I say more?

I should complete knitted gifts before the gift-giving-occasion (GGO), or at least within 6 months after said GGO. Or at the very least while it still fits the recipient. Ahem.

Guilty as charged, Your Honor.

I’m trying to do better, though. Last fall, I decided to knit and felt some clogs for a charity sale. I finished the knitting and felting a full week before the deadline.

This Christmas, I decided a week before the holiday to knit and felt three pairs of clogs, and knit two neck gaiters. And I would have finished them all in time, if the last pair of clogs hadn’t gone mysteriously kitty-wampus on me, causing me to re-knit the last clog on Christmas morning. At least I was able to present the gift in a lovely gift bag, even though the needles were still in it.

Next I offered to knit a kimono for a friend, a dead-easy collection of acres of stockinette-and-garter rectangles. Pure idiot-knitting as long as you have, say, 8 hours a day to sit and watch TV with your hands on auto-knit. I’m almost done with it, and I have barely knit a stitch on anything else while I’ve been working on it.

I was thinking the other day that it’s time to knit one of the – um – several projects I’ve bought yarn for recently, and was getting excited at the prospect, when I realized I have yarn to knit 3 sweaters for the baby my close friend is having next month.

So don’t tell the Knitting Police I’m not going to sew together my own kimono from last year, or finish the applied I-cord on the wrap I knit the year before that, or seam the Alice Starmore gansey I knit the year before that, or …

Uh-oh, flashing lights in my rearview mirror. I’m outta here.

Too Cool for Stitch Markers

When I teach knitting, I tell my students to read the entire pattern before they begin. I tell them to check online for any corrections to their pattern, magazine, or book. I tell them about the importance of keeping track of stitch counts with markers, and keeping track of rows, with a row counter or paper and pencil.

I’m the teacher, and I know best.

I’m so smart, in fact, that I don’t need to do any of those things, especially if the pattern appears to be easy. Why would I need to read an easy pattern all the way through? Why would such an easy pattern have any corrections when it’s obvious how it is worked? Why would I need to count stitches or rows on, say, an easy triangle shawl?

Recently, armed with an attitude of fearlessness and the confidence of a fool, I began a large triangular shawl from a popular book. I could see from the pictures that it was garter stitch in the center triangle, and an easy lace pattern around the lower edges. So I set about knitting every row, increasing on every row as the pattern told me. I counted my stitches every so often, and while the triangle was still small, I was right on the stitch counts.

About halfway through the center garter triangle, I was off by one stitch on one side of the center rib. No problem; who’s going to notice a little k2tog amidst all that garter, especially since I was working in a nice, fuzzy alpaca yarn?

On the next row, I was off one stitch on the other side. Hmmm.

I thought it might be a good idea, at this stage (having knit up, oh, about 6 balls of yarn) to read through the directions.

It was late. I was annoyed. I ripped out two rows and re-knit them, with the same result as before.

I glanced at the instructions. I had done exactly what they said. I must have made a mistake. Rip. Re-knit. Same result.

At this point I should have: a) Put it down and gone to bed; b) Realized I needed to study the directions in greater depth, especially at a time when I was more rested; or c) Checked for corrections.

Instead I got out a pad and pencil and calculator, and went over the numbers again and again. I could not make the numbers in the pattern match the number of stitches I had, no matter how I calculated. After making myself itchy and hot with frustration, I went to bed fuming. I dreamed my recurring dream in which my underwear is four sizes too small.

The next day, I brought the project to work, and told my coworker how much trouble I was having. As soon as I started talking to another human being, I realized that the trouble was that the pattern said to increase stitches in pairs, yet I was supposed to end up with an odd number of stitches. Reaching back, back – way back -- to 2nd grade arithmetic, I remembered that when you start with 2, and add 2 each time, you do not end up with an odd number. Not ever. Hmmmm.

Checking online when I got home, I saw there were several corrections to the pattern. Ah. I made the necessary corrections and returned to happy knitting – ah, how happy we fools can be at times! -- still not using stitch markers or a row counter. This worked well until my rows started to get over 300 stitches long. I counted all the stitches every few rows with great irritation. You would think, since I have been knitting for 40-plus years, it would have occurred to me to use markers. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.

Then, at some point, I noticed my right-side marker was on the wrong side. That gave me pause for a moment, but I decided that, since it was garter stitch, nobody could really tell the right side from the wrong side. What I didn’t think about was that given the sequence of increases, I would never be able to achieve the right number of stitches on the right row on the right side this way.

It was when I got to the point where I was supposed to have 399 stitches, and I was on right side which was supposed to be the wrong side, and I only had 397 stitches, and I had fudged stitches several times (and the edge of the shawl was getting ever wonkier) that I realized I could never get to the correct number of stitches on the correct side following the current scheme. I’d have to fudge a couple of highly visible additional stitches before beginning my lace pattern.

Garter stitch is, thank goodness, easy to rip out. Even in fuzzy alpaca.

The alpaca is really nice yarn.

And I still really like the shawl design. That is, according to the picture, since mine is now a pile of little yarn cannonballs.

And I will probably re-knit the shawl, this time using markers every ten stitches, and counting every row as I go. I will be Good and Follow the Rules and my shawl will come out to be a precise triangle with no lurking unauthorized k2togs or m1s, no veering edges. It will be military-esque in its precision.

But not today. Today I am working on a much more relaxing project, a lace shawl in fingering weight yarn with 4 different lace motifs.

More relaxing? Sure. Because with a complex lace project, I KNOW I can’t proceed without markers, counters, lifelines, a parachute, Depends, and Dial-a-Prayer.

Go figure.