Look at this!

So freakin' awesome.

I don't aspire to make these, but my love for sushi makes me post the picture. Click on it to go to its source webmag.

charity?

claude needs some more clothes.
everything he had was in a small plastic shopping bag.

"claude" is a little boy who has come to the u.s. from africa for a surgery. he is an orphan. he has never been in such a cold place before.

on reading those sentences i wanted to shower him with gifts of warm clothing. i have nothing that's his size.

so i gave claude a scarf.

because i gave it away before i remembered to take a picture, there is no photo of the scarf for posting here. instead, there is a short awkward story.

i remember walking into that LYS for the first time. it was small and very cramped, but of course, i liked it. and there, on the very first display stand, i saw it. it was, um, equinox stripe from nashua yarn, in "storm." it was wound so that on the outside of the skein was a beautiful light blue, striped with grey. very soft. i didn't buy it right away, but i obsessed about that yarn until i did. i purchased two skeins of it on my third visit to the store. i didn't know how much it would cost, and it ended up being rather pricey (for me).

i churned out a ribbed scarf in no time at all. the yarn is super bulky weight, after all. the scarf ended up being a lot darker than i had expected. i didn't know it was a self-striping yarn, and i didn't know how much of it would be charcoal grey or dark blue. only a tiny section in the middle of the scarf showed the light colors i had obsessed about. i decided to make the scarf a giveaway, but because the yarn had been so expensive, i thought, "i'll give this one to a family member instead of donating it to church."

i kept feeling a little bit guilty about that. my materialism continues to disappoint me. do poor people not deserve nice things?

evidently i am not naturally charitable. i am glad that the two sentences in that e-mail prompted me to do the right thing.

claude needs some more clothes.
everything he had was in a small plastic shopping bag.

My friend's wife

Somehow, she manages to make even a poncho look sort of elegant and dispel my anti-poncho sentiments.

lookit

now we're talkin'.

i made a camobunny.

oh yeah i made a kitty too.

bunny pattern from heartstrings fiber arts.
kitty pattern from knitty.com.

lookit

i made a bunny.

disturbing knits

it is disturbing.

i don’t know what to say.

(pause)

...

(recover)

“hello, i see that you’re knitting. what are you making?”

bored with scarves, i was looking for something different to knit. a hat, or another bunny or something. now i found bunnies and i found hats. but you know what else i found along the way? all sorts of weird s***, that’s what. pardon my language, but that's what it is.

knit breast prostheses. okay, if you’ve had a mastectomy, maybe that’s not so weird. actually that makes sense. okay. but knit condom pouches ("for when you're on-the-go"), vibrator cosies, and "willy-warmers"? useful or weird? can’t decide. oh, wait, actually yes i can: weird. knit (and crocheted, being very careful about typos now) male and female external genitalia? whatever. weird.

what took the cake was the knit uterus and fallopian tubes.

why? why, why, why?

please don’t answer.

that’s what i get for looking for patterns on the internet, i guess.

people are bizarre.

now a prude i may be, but it’s not the subject matter that bothers me. i am a physician, after all. it’s the fact that someone thought to design and knit all these things. i mean, what the heck? i’m much more comfortable with the real things than these weirdo knit versions.

wait, that came out sounding all wrong.

nevermind. there’s no fixing any of this.

“hello, i see that you’re knitting. what are you making?”

LOL

to me, LOL stands for "little old lady."

that's what i think of whenever i consider my newest hobby. i am kind of regretting having chosen this hobby. well, regretting is not the right word-- it's too strong. i am, um, wondering about the wisdom and utility of that choice.

i started knitting less than a year ago because, well, at first because i wanted a light blue scarf and couldn't find one in the stores because freakin' everything was pink last year (not that pink isn't lovely, but it was just, you know, a pepto bismol explosion last winter) so i decided to make one for myself. i ditched that project when i found out my brother and sister-in-law were expecting, and made that blanket i posted a picture of a while back. (i also ditched it because i snapped one of my needles in half while working with it, likely a sign of the ridiculous amount of tension i tend to carry in my body.) what better reason to learn how to do something than for the sake of a family member? or a baby? or a baby family member?

anyway, since then i think i may have gone overboard in my usual way of going overboard with things. a respectable quantity of money and time have been invested, and i've got a few projects— some failures, some successes— under my belt. the successes include mostly long straight things, like that blanket, and scarves, one of which i now use myself, one of which i donated to the cold africans at church, and one of which i am saving to give someone as a gift. the failures? a meant-to-be-felted bag that i made out of yarn that doesn't felt (duh). well i guess that's the only failure and i guess i could salvage it with some seamstress-type work. the other not-quite-success is the same bag in a yarn that does felt, but i ran out of yarn and i really don't need enough to warrant buying another skein. i'll graft something in, i suppose.

"why do you like to do that?" camodad asked me, unable to completely hide his tone of nauseated anxiety. "i don't know," i answered. but i do know what he was thinking. he's thinking his eldest daughter is never gonna catch a man if she is seen doing something that only LOL's and pregnant women do. and no, it does not help my reputation as a closet badass. in fact, it strengthens my reputation as a poser. maybe i should take up motorcycle repair or archery, or trap shooting, or woodworking.

furthermore, i cannot argue strongly by saying that i will be making useful things as i am moving to a place where it is warm all year 'round, and no one needs hats, scarves, or sweaters. (except newborns. i guess i could do the knitting for newborns thing.) and i refuse to start making tea cosies, tissue box covers or toilet plunger covers. (shudder) not while i'm in my twenties, at least. or thirties. or forties or fifties.

so why do i keep doing it? because i like it. i've always liked making things and crafty-type activities. i like having a finished product i can be proud of, especially if it's something useful. it's repetitive and (sometimes) mindless, which can be therapeutic. it's something i can do while watching tv, and that makes me feel like i'm not wasting that time. and the yarns are soft and their colors are preeetty.

despite its recent increase in popularity (don't believe it? ask 5 women you know when they started knitting, and at least one of them will say within the past two years), knitting will always be uncool. to most americans' untrained eyes, it will always be an activity for older women, sitting by the fire, rocking in a rocking chair while the cats play with balls of yarn. but i don't care. like i said, i like it.

so, does anybody need a scarf?

Blankity-blanket

because we said we'd post pictures of our projects.

details:
color detail
stitch detail
steve wearing blanket

Hey, look!

I too have a blog about knitting. Brand spankin' new. And it's got the cheesiest template, complete with frosty, misty, wistful colors. Awww.

Why ANOTHER blog? Because sometimes there are things I want to write about that I don't want to bore non-knitters with. Because I want to share pictures of my works-in-progress sometimes. Just because, okay?

I'm going to copy my knit related posts here. When I get around to it.

Hey, it's a start.