(More) You know you knit too much...

...when you spill pasta sauce on your best white shirt and your first thought is 'Thank goodness it didn't hit my knitting', while your knitting is in your lap at the time.

Really.

'Thank goodness.'

Don't bother to deny it.

You know it's true.

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Resonance

Go here for some knitting philosopy which resonated strongly with me this morning and bumped my intended blog post* off the table.

Thanks TECHknitter.


*(It'll be back later.)

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Just between you and me...

Terms and Conditions apply*

Knitting may seriously improve your health.

Warning: prolonged exposure to yarn and knitting friends may induce a deep sense of worth and wellbeing. Not to mention an addiction to squishy fiber softness.

* Enjoy knitting sensibly.

You have been warned. I'm just sayin'.

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No Good Will Come Of It

Well I just knew no good would come of it. This business of tidying up and sorting out. No good at all.

My dpns? Vanished.

Pattern book for my next project? Missing.

That ball of yarn I promised to give to a friend? Disappeared.

That skein of yarn for holiday knitting that I need NOW? Nowhere to be found.

Far better to have everything out in plain sight where I can fall over it when I need it. Far better.

Sigh.


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Yarn Harlot

S'funny. Sometimes you think you know how a thing will go.



Recently, Jellyknits lent me this book, Free Range Knitter, by Stephanie Pearl-McFee, a.k.a. The Yarn Harlot. (Thanks J!)

I've been reading Stephanie's blog for 4 years or so now, and I've read some of her earlier books, so I thought I knew what I'd be getting. Humorous writing, even hilarious writing, on knitting slants that are either new to me or freshly expressed.

And so it proved to be. Funny, witty, apt - pretty much as expected.

Talented, insightful, well written and entertaining - I wasn't a bit surprised.

Let's be clear. That's not faint praise folks. That's genuine, sincere, heartfelt praise. It was a joy and a pleasure to read and it made me happy. My only quibble (given that my leisure time is all of 15 minutes a day) is that it's not possible to knit and read it at the same time, with the hardback spine an' small pages an' all. It's only fair that the publishers consider the possibilities of a future audio book for knitting fans who can actually knit at the same time. But I digress. (Not for the 1st time.)

Fair enough.

And then I came upon an essay entitled Knitting Self Esteem which COMPLETELY blew my mind. It deals with the bombardment of negative messages that we receive about ourselves from the world around us (which doesn't value knitting at all as a worthwhile activity), and worse, actually from ourselves - and its core point is that our knitting is both a shield and a proof against those messages.

'Knitting doesn't think you need to lose ten pounds, knitting doesn't think you're getting older. Knitting doesn't give a cr*p if you get fired or divorced. The only thing that matters in knitting is knitting.'

Stephanie Pearl-McFee, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

'I am a good knitter, if a terrible everything else, and this is a great sock.'

Seriously. You can't know how much.

Thank you.
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And what did I knit while we were away?

Well, for starters I brought along this felted flower kit I got YEARS ago from Tina at Knitwhits.

I've had it for a very long time but never bothered to make it because:

a) I'm not a flower-brooch-wearing-kinda-woman

and

b) it just looked too darn fiddly.

However, my recent love affair with felting Lamb's Pride made this an ideal travel project, so into the suitcase it went.

I'm quite delighted with how it turned out.

To paraphrase an old joke in our family,

What's this?



I dunnno....but here' comes another one!

These are two of the larger red petals. Pretty cunning the way you knit 2 petals in one piece.

Even tho' the instructions are extremely clear and simple, I still managed to screw them up.

See the roundy ends of the petals? I read the instructions to 'cast-off' 2 stitches at the end of every row when finishing the petals....and of course decided (without thinking in any way clearly about it) that it would be the same thing to Knit 2 together instead, which I felt was quicker, and surely would make no difference to the finished product.

Ah hah! Not so Ms Smartypants.

See the slightly pointier petal at the bottom right (of the pic above)? That's how it's supPOSEd to be.

And there WAS a difference in how the petals felted. Just goes to show. Every stitch has it's part to play in the scheme of things. (Kinda philosophical that, eh? You get it all here folks.)

(Note to self: just follow the instructions and see what happens before taking the lazy shortcuts. OK?)

And of course, the leaves.

Love love LOVE the way the slipped knit stitch creates that ridge down the spine of the garter stitch leaf. So cool. I couldn't wait to see how this felted.

But you'll have to...*

*(Yeah, that might seem mean to you, but how else am I going to create some dramatic tension? Huh? Tell me that! It's a knitting blog for goodness sakes!)
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It's you.

As in many other places, knitting and other fibre arts have been making an appearance recently in the Irish media, from snippets to full blown articles to the fashion pages. I've often been asked (well several times anyway) why I think knitting is going through a revival. Is it a response to global consumerism? To the tyrrany of technology? To the pressures of modern times?

It's all those things I suppose. And much much more.

It's the almost meditative rhythm of the process, the colour and texture of the yarn, the soothing click clack of the needles, the beauty of the finished object.

It's the kick you get out of making something useful and/or lovely from scratch with just your own effort, 2 pointy sticks and some fibre. It's the pleasure you get from wearing something unique that you made yourself.

It's an antidote to the relentless demands of phones, computers, work, technology and the commute. It's the yarn, the fabric, the fibre, the texture, the drape, the colours and the lace. And lots more besides.

It's the folks at your LYS where you can show your latest project and receive advice, encouragement, congratulations or comiseration depending on how it's going.

It's the knitters you've met and those you haven't yet. It's the generous, the funny, the unique. It's Dolores, it's your first blog, and your most recent. It's the knitting community and the fellow-fibre-fanatics-feeling.

It's the people, people.

It's the knitters.

It's you.