Unspoken Thoughts

Evidence is clear I'm not a prolific blogger. I get to hear the sound of my own voice too much as it is, so I think about posts but edit them down to nothing. I think of Bernard Shaw, who quipped to a chatty socialite, "My dear woman, do you have no unspoken thoughts?"

Do not get me wrong. I LOVE READING and VIEWING the knitting blogs and their kindred blogs, just as I've always loved reading and perusing knitting and quilting books. I ADORE the sounds of so many interesting voices. The creativity, the simplicity, the chaos, the life stories, the struggles, and the wisdom - LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.

I've been an uninteresting read, though. I've had lots of small d - drama to contend with, and I've not had much I thought was worth sharing. Better the unspoken thought. Even if I've been knitting, it's been none too glamorous - a cat bed, a dish cloth, a scarf - and I've just been too focused elsewhere to be bothered about pictures. And the drama - small d - has been part of a very, very busy winter. Fortunately, perspective is learned from many sources. Knittyheads and knitbloggers have given me untold calm.

So for the inspiring-on-many-levels knitbloggers and knittyheads, I give you an early Valentine's Day thought, then, published and spoken:

Thanks. LOVE YOUR WORK. Thanks for sharing your words, work, and wisdom.

What?

Did I post these? What pattern? IK's Rib & Cable Mitts. What yarn? Mountain Colors Bearfoot - Juniper, maybe. What for? Gift. Given. Happy campers, both.
What's this? A mess. Oh the knitting? Looks messy, too, doesn't it. I'm having quick fun. The baby loop is from Be Sweet. The yarn barf is actually lovely soft handdyed "artsy" handspun picked up at Knit One in Chicago. I saw something at Nina's in Chicago that helped me figure out what artsy fartsy thing I was going to do with it. Hence the Be Sweet.

I have to go. What? Did you think I had a lot of time to talk?

Knitting in the Middle

Greetings from the Middle. It's the middle of January. My odometer rolls over this month and am feeling very much mid-life-ish. Hard to believe either is here already - isn't that how things go, though?

More later. There's been knitting. I'm either running out of the primary yarn for the Eclipse sweater or it'll be near. I'll know shortly. Two sleeves and a front and a back ALL on the needles. I'm within a day or two of joining and starting the yoke. I'm looking forward to that. Part of the anticipation is that I'm hoping to NOT run out of the body yarn UNTIL I'm in the yoke. There any change in tone in the primary yarn will be completely hidden.

Yes, the search for a hopeful color match may be on the horizon. That's never a fun thing. Haven't bothered to figure out a knitting plan for the year. I'm always impressed and interested in reading other's knitting goals. I'm just looking forward to knitting some more. I'm in the middle of a couple things that would be good to finish while we're still in the middle of winter.

It's the middle. Happy Middles!

Back at the ranch . . .

Back home from holiday travels, I find I am tired of having too much stuff and too little time. I shall be tending to that, I think. Right now I'm off to the post office and to see some family. I have goodies to deliver from the folks on the other end of the holiday travels.

Seriously, though. I need to go through things and clear some out. This needn't cut out the knitting time, I think, but I should spend some of the knitting time moving other things out.

I was given a wee little serving dish as a holiday gift, and I was alarmed to face the fact that I haven't been entertaining at home. Thankfully I had the presence of mind not to confess this aloud. And I'll concede that some of this is the natural result of urban life and a bit of job imbalance. There's something to be said, though, about the spectre of the Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. Things must change before I find myself really living that pattern!

There's probably more to do with the fact that several friends are incredibly allergic to the feline factor. Ne'ertheless, clean and clear, I say!
Happy New Year, if I'm not back before the switch to 2007!

Holiday Knitting

Not the Grinch, nor Scrooge, this knitter managed to do just enough holiday knitting to make herself content and to have a few things to send out. Mind, some are being sent out now, and the nautilus hat was a skein of yarn. (Worked out the specs on that one with my mother.)

A good day for easy knitting

So on my way to finishing up paperwork, I found that someone had plagiarized whole papers: one chunk of this set of paragraphs, one slice of that set of paragraphs. One brief paragraph could be original, but that's one paragraph in a couple papers.

Ugh. I'm going home to make up some fuzzy feet for my friend's daughters. I have the shoe sizes. I have the foot measurement chart. I will make tea. I will knit huge feet.

More knitting, less paperwork

That's what I want for Christmas....
Sneakily, though, I've been doing knitting when I should be doing paperwork. I have a little stack of knitting growing in the to-be-finished pile - a little seaming, a little grafting, a little end weaving.

However, less blogging, more paperwork....

Pictures are accumulating in the camera, such as they are. No photobucket until Paper Mountain is complete this week.

Holiday Treats

Made these mitts (Knitty's Fetching)a bit earlier and finally finished the neckwarmer to go with it. This will be a gift for someone who worked with me on a project earlier this fall. Have to send it out shortly. Altogether, the set used nearly two skeins of Rowan's Tapestry. I'd had too much leftover from the one skein after doing the mitts, and picking up a second skein wasn't actually enough for a hearty scarf after all. Hence the slit for passing through the scarf end. Added on the ruffle as a means of giving the ends more body. Keeps it from being too matchy-matchy a set.

a shadowy year in the neighborhood of the Great Towering Textiles

2006: Month by Month

[via the daily purl ]

Instructions -- Copy the first sentence that you posted in each month of 2006.

January

Since there was very little traffic in to see my cheerful holiday kitsche, I give evidence that I decorated.

February

My mother will be sharing these words aloud this week with children.

March

I've been absent from the blog.

April

I've had a lovely hour's romp through blogs with flashed stash.

May

I'm late, I'm late, no time to say hello, goodbye, I'm late I'm late I'm late ...

June

So Thursday, when I kept myself away from all things work, I cheated on my socks.

July

Summer brings an odd assortment of knitting whims and a lot less computer time.

August

Such adventures since I've been gone.

September

There are Fetching mitts (Rowan tapestry is interesting....) in this long weekend of knitting, and 6 or more inches of colorwork knitting on the Equinox whatsit on the Interweave Knits Fall 06 cover.

October

During the heat of the summer, I do rather yearn for fall.

November

I do, at long last, have some postable knitting pictures.

December

Need a lot of push to tackle the tasks ahead.

December Drive

Need a lot of push to tackle the tasks ahead. There's work to finish with very clear, hard deadlines just ahead. There have already been several events to attend. Need a lot of get up and go, need to push on through. However, no matter what speed I go, it starts to seem as if there's no time for anything. Yesterday I managed to sweep and do a bit of mopping. I have an embarrassment of laundry to do. I did some knitting but have more I'd like to do.

And that's the kicker: more I'd like to do. I continue to try to convince myself that I don't need to do it all. My baking is holding the line: I chopped up dried fruit and gave it a good sousing of Asbach Uralt. Nothing but good brandy in my fruitcake. I'm going to wait until the paper work is done this week to think about what December knitting I can do vs. the knitting I foolishly think I'd like to do. Foolishly, I say, because what I'd like to do becomes crazed, as the drive toward other finish lines looms. I forget that I wanted to do them and think I must.

So I'm holding a drive for clarity and moderation. I've a bowl full of drunken fruit. I have a tiny bag of current knitting. I have a bag of papers to grade. Right now that's all I need, so the rest will have to be clear space. The desk at home is clear. The desk here I'll clear before I go home. My floors have been cleared of the 3rd cat. (Amazing how much there was to sweep yesterday! Appalling. But I digress.) Just need to keep on clearing those decks.

Here's to a successful drive.

A Hat for Alex

The yarn is leftover from a sweater I made for my niece 13 years ago.
Finished this hat on the Thanksgiving weekend road trip.
Trillian42 on Knittyboard has posted about her hat project here. I used the pattern she had linked to her blog post.

Also finished a hat for the same niece for her 13th birthday. No picture. I left the hat wrapped up for her birthday. All I have left are yarn crumbs.

Boucle that's bugging me

While I should be working on other things, some boucle keeps nudging at me for some reason. There are four bits.

One's a 200 yd hank of Wool in the Woods that I bought last year-plus as a congratulations to me for surviving something workish. It's very soft. Will look good with winter coats.

Two are two different hanks, each 330ish yards of a CTH end of a year closeout sale that I won't do again, as I have indulged enough.

Interestingly enough all three hanks, above, have an interesting color conversation together. Reds / purples figure into each of them, though each is clearly different (dark purple in one, some green and maroon in another, etc.)

I've been swatching a little bit with the W-i-t-Woods, so today I rolled up one of the other hanks so I could see what would happen if I alternated all three. They're all surprisingly comfortable and not scratchy, so it's rather too bad they couldn't have made an eye-poppingly bold big old sweater. (Never mind the math that I'd need to get less than 900 yards to BECOME a sweater.) The actual yarn weight is subtly different side by side. And there's a clearly visible difference in how they're spun.

Had shifted to using large needles, and suddenly the difference in the actual yarn weight seemed major. Next experiment? I'm back to thinking about what to do with them. Any recent personal bests out there with soft, bumpy boucles?

Oh, there's a bunch of Debbie Bliss Astrakhan that I bought some time ago at a store that was closing. Looking for a sweater, but that's really hanging to the back of the queue. Really, I shouldn't speak of it.

PS. This sounds all name-droppy. Sorry about that. I'm just trying to be specific, since I have no pictures of my puzzlings. If I can get pictures up next week, I will.

Finish one thing, and move on to the next.

Truly that's the way this fall has gone. I finished one project, and bang we're onto another. That's just work. Knitting has been littler, but there have been plenty of little projects.

This hat is actually one of the later knitting bits - part of the next big project, actually. A student shaved her head for a role - quite a bold thing for her to do - and so I decided I needed to make her a hat. She needed a little extra TLC, I thought, for taking on such a major endeavor and making such a personal commitment.




The hat was done pattern free. The yarn is Misti Alpaca's but it's not alpaca. This is the pima cotton and silk blend. Boring color, but it was what was on hand when I went shopping. Soft, soft, soft. The recipient is allergic to wool, but I just wasn't excited about making an acrylic hat in this particular case. It needed to feel like a treat.

Fetching Tapestry

While away from blogging, I knit a pair of mitts. Fetching, from Knitty. The yarn is Rowan's Tapestry, a soy/wool blend. Must admit that this was late summer already. Was thinking about making them for ssarahevt, my knittyboard secret pal, but I decided I wasn't content with them. I sent her a ball of the same yarn, in her preferred colorway, actually, so she might enjoy the knitting process. These are from the same ball. Isn't it interesting how the color changes have worked up? The yarn is rather like Noro - the color changes are spun in.

Started another sock

I was working on two sets of socks. Naturally as soon as I finished one, I started another sock. I had some early fall commuting time to kill and walked to Loopy yarns. This is Ravenswood, aptly named for a neighborhood through which the Brown line runs. Didn't they call the Brown line the Ravenswood line? Why of COURSE they did.

Some socks finished

Trekking Aunt Socks. Went for pebble rib on the Anne Norling pattern I go to when I don't want to think about fancy socks. I used the pebble rib once before on a sproingier worsted. I think the Trekking isn't as suited. Must send these off to my aunt.

Oh, and I officially have enough for another pair if not more. Did I mention before that I somehow thought I HAD to start from the same spot on matching balls of yarn. I will die of boredom knitting another set of socks from this yarn if I do it too soon.

A hat

I knit a hat as a thank you.
The pattern is Marnie Maclean's Nautilus hat, the second on her page. (I'd link if I were in the mood. I'm not in the mood.) The lovely Lorna's Lace worsted is Black Purl.
The wool came from a lovely little swap on the knittyboard. I think I fancied that I'd make myself a hat. There's some leftover. It may be part of something for me. In the meanwhile, it made a deserving student designer very happy. Purple is one of her colors.

Is this thing on?

I do, at long last, have some postable knitting pictures. I've been knitting, after all, even little bits. Finished socks, zipped out some mitts and a few other things. Have to go home now, though, so I can do a rare thing and eat a meal AT home. I'm going home - or maybe to the coffeeshop where the knitters are tonight. Either way it's a night OFF. Tomorrow, maybe some blog ON.

Where's the knitting indeed?

A week without knitting? Sheesh.
I'm ready for some serious knitting.

Yearning for fall

During the heat of the summer, I do rather yearn for fall. I have always considered myself to be an oily, sweaty person, so the summer is rather a time for giving up hope of feeling in the least bit dainty.

Here we are in October, and my work life has raced me through a month of the best of fall. I've missed the late summer tomatoes. In fact, today was the first in a month that I was able to hit the farmer's market. I have a few tomatoes to tide me over, but the splendor of today's market was clearly the apples. Bought some to eat. Bought some plums for baking.

Now I just yearn to knit more than the couple of socks I keep inching at on the train....