The Winter That Just Won't Stop*

Ah, such a lovely March morning when you wake up and find FROST on the INSIDE of your windows! Weather Dude, enough already! I’m soooo over this whole winter thing.

But to make the most out of a chilly situation, more months to make winter gear, right?

Thanks for all your comments on my first project in the Great Hat Quest of ’07. I think Lone Knitter called it. The P-hat doesn’t necessarily look all that naughty, but once I got that image in my head there was no going back. I’ve tried to put it on around the house every now and then (and yes, my apartment is cold enough to warrant indoor hat wearing, see “frost inside” above), but I just can’t shake my initial call on this one. I’ve even tried adding some flower brooches like all the cool hats are wearing these days, but to my tainted eyes it just looks like a boy part with bling. So frog it is…

And to really make this quest epic, hat #2 isn’t looking so hot either. In the spirit of Knitting from the Stash and expanding my color choices in Project Spectrum (even though this hat isn’t anywhere near the current PS colors), I chose a skein of Noro Kureyon that really isn’t me and jumped in for the Fake Isle hat from Magknits. I used some leftover Plymouth Galway worsted wool that coordinated with the most dominant shades in the skein, alternating the lime green and magenta based on the Kureyon.

Some of the online reports said it turned out too shallow so I generally went with the numbers of rows for the larger size although I cast on for the smaller size. Not only is it too long, but too big around. This is entirely a knitter’s dilemma and not the pattern. I think I should have to take some sort of test before I sit down with anything remotely requiring thought or skill, just to be sure I haven’t run out of focus, energy and mental fortitude. I really think I’m only safe for garter stitch right now.

I considered a few remedies (felting, overdyeing) while I was knitting and not feeling the love, but now that I’ve finished the world’s ugliest hat, I know that it’s time to frog.

I’ve heard it said that we learn more from our failures than our successes and with this one, I’d have to agree. I learned that I do enjoy fair isle knitting, but I think I want to go at it in a smaller gauge and with smaller floats. I also learned that if you aren’t loving the colors when you start, you aren’t going to love them any more when you finish. Finally, and the thing I think I needed to learn right now, pay attention when your head says you want simple knitting. I loved every minute of the Clapotis (which I need to blog) because it was pretty mindless stockinette, and, well, yarn with silk content is yummmmy. I didn’t think this was too difficult, but the slightest bit of challenge made me sloppy and the finished product reflects this attitude.

Another one of those random sayings which seems apt: If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. I usually use that one to chastise myself into working harder to do it “right,” but recently I’ve been thinking about turning it around. Perhaps if something isn’t worth doing “right,” it isn’t worth doing?

Anyway, I think a nice, simple London Beanie is going to be my next attempt for a head covering. I’m balking on starting it though in hopes that it will stay warm enough to warrant hat-less outings.

* To be truthful, it’s bright and sunny here today and we might just might hit 40 degrees. I started writing this a few days ago and just had to share the interior frost picture to get some sympathy from the folks at home in the sunny Midwest.

The Windy City Blew My Troubles Away

Stress management has never really been my thing. There are certain things which are well within my capabilities, but keeping it calm just isn’t in the column of good things. The past few weeks have been pretty high stress around these parts. I started sending work emails with more profanity than “real” words and took that as a sign to take a computer sabbatical for fear of my potty mouth running amuck, spilling yucky into the world with wild abandon. So I kept my head down and worked like a good little drone until I could celebrate with a girls’ reunion weekend in Chicago that was just what the doctor ordered.

Unfortunately, it was too darn cold to slow down and take pictures as we hiked about the stores on the Magnificent Mile so my weekend vacay doesn’t have much blog fodder. Well, besides the lovely gift from Delta Airlines.

They knew that as a crafter, I always need more little bags to store supplies so they lovingly decided to lose my luggage at midnight… after a delay… and a very, very confusing journey through a set of mazes on the tarmac of JFK which left a group of passengers stranded outside with no way into the terminal. I knew it was going to be a rough trip when I get to the airport and can’t find a parking spot, even in the ‘always empty’ lots and then when I check in, the ticket agent tells me about various delays and problems, warning me that I may not make my connection. “I can’t check you in, ma’am, unless I warn you sufficiently that you may get stranded in New York tonight. Do you feel lucky?” Um, I don’t want airline people asking me if I feel lucky. When did trying to leave town become riskier than playing the slots? Anyway, oddly enough, in this rather high stress situation, I was fairly calm, mostly because I was too exhausted to get worked up about missing undies. Granted, I was a little grumpy the next day, but at the time, it was so miserable it was funny.

Of course it helped that I was planning to spend my weekend shopping anyway so I just had a legitimate reason for looking for new clothes. The new deodorant at CVS wasn’t really part of the plan, but at least now I’ve got a spare. I’ve heard that everyone has to have lost luggage once so I’m hoping this gives me some sort of immunity for future travel.

I have managed to knit some of my stress away though so I can show off some FOs now that the potty mouth is (mostly) under control and I can return to blogging.

What better to combat ugly stress than some baby items, right?

Pattern: Quickie Baby Sweater tres, booties and Umbilical Cord hat from Stitch ‘n Bitch

Yarn: Plymouth Encore and mystery acrylic

Needles: 10.5 for the sweater, 6 for the booties and hat

Recipient: MY NEW NEPHEW!!!! WOO HOO!!!

Notes: This is the third go-around for this sweater pattern and it’s still a goodie. I did the boy version of the yoke pattern once I figured out how to actually read. I'm not sure I'm thrilled with the booties. I don't particularly like the seam on the bottom but the flat top does give a good space to add the decorative button. Do babies even wear booties anyway? I'm not really up on what's hot for the diaper set. I'm sure this sweater pattern will make another appearance so I'll have to remember to try some different footwear.

Not much else to say, but yay for baby knits!

The P0rn Hat

Warning: Not really a G-rated post! I think my mom gave my blog address to our family’s minister, so Pastor Linda, if you’re reading this, you may want skip this entry. I swear I’m a perfectly innocent girl with no knowledge of boy parts, promise!

Thank goodness the Buffalo weather has chosen to cooperate with my quest for the perfect hat. Last week we had a lovely day of balmy temps running around 5 below so I got to take the latest creation out for a test run.

Let’s just say that true to any good adventure quest, the first attempt was, um, a little less than stellar.

I rooted around in the stash and found a skein of Victorian Pink Lamb’s Pride bulky, perfect for the Hot Head hat from Stitch ‘n Bitch. (For once I made the pattern as specified so no modifications to blame for the failure.) Easy, fast knit, and, despite being a smidge weary of the pink craze, I came up with plans to add some flowers and doo-dads to make a matching set out of the hat and a store-bought brown scarf.

And then I wore the darn thing…

I was first disappointed that it was too short to fold up as in the picture, but minor problem and one easily fixed by adding more rows to the bottom or even ripping back before the decreases and adding rows. I had some initial concerns that the hat was going to poof up to a point at the top and give me the conehead look, but of course, being an impatient person, I wanted to debut my debacle as soon as it was off the needles.

In the morning, I came in a little late and had to park in the far, far campus lot (which is so far I might as well have a spot in Iowa and hoof it to Buffalo, but not complaining…). No problemo, I’m super girl with mohair in her hat and I’ve dealt with frozen lattes before. (See last post.) Bring it on, Buffalo, bring it on. The morning air was a bit brisk and the large gauge allowed some air seepage, but nothing too terrible.

The evening hike, on the other hand, was grueling. I’d had a very busy, stressful day which didn’t leave me time to actually eat anything besides a wimpy little protein shake so I started my trek hungry, tired and wiped out. That state may have something to do with the following mental breakdown, but I’m giving the hat most of the blame here.

Leslie’s Mental Monologue

Holy $%#^@ it’s cold out here. Must. Fight. Wind. One foot in front of the other. Only 267 more miles to go.

This is why it’s so hard to lose weight in Buffalo. The body is programmed to store fat layers for warmth. Good thing I’ve only shed three pounds or I’d really be freezing out here.

Hmm, let’s check out my hat as I walk past the reflective library windows.

AAAACCCKKK!!! I’m not a conehead, I’m a pen1s. Pink poofs in all the wrong places. That’s sooooo wrong. Must. Remove. Pen1sheadhat.

Woah, too cold to go commando.

Hey, I’m cool. I’m hip. I can pull off the pen1s look… at least until I get to my car.

Oh, man, I know that undergrad there is laughing at me. I can hear her now, “OMG* I just saw a dorky grad student wearing a pen1s hat. I would never be caught dead in a hat like that. That’s why I’m strutting across campus wearing a freakin’ miniskirt and UGG boots with bare legs. I’m waaaaay too hip for Sienna Miller leggings or a Pen1s Hat. Frostbite be damned!”

I never liked undergrads anyway.

So is it more of a naked pen1s or a condom head? Knitwear which resembles (or cozies) prophylactics is just wrong on many, many levels.

I wonder if there will be knitalongs for the latest issue of the AntiCraft. Shoot, I could enter this sucker and be the first to finish.

I bet this pattern is featured in that book, “Not Tonight Dear, I’m Knitting.” Who needs a boy when you’ve got a pen1s hat?

Okay, um, that’s not funny. I need a date, not more knitting.

No chance I’m going to get a date wearing this hat though.

I’m going to freeze before I get to my car. No, can’t do that. I can hear the news report now. “Girl Freezes in Fraternity Hazing Scandal! Forced to Walk through Arctic Tundra Dressed as Giant Pen1s! Story at 11.”

Victorian Pink yarn… humph. This stuff should come with a warning: “Resembles flesh when knit in suggestive shapes. Cast on with caution.”

And what makes this pink so Victorian anyway? The contemporary vision of the nineteenth century aesthetic is so problematic. T.S. Eliot and BBC movies have really created a fairyland of chintz, haven’t they? All angels and tacky lace and pink innocence when really, most of the lower classes during the Victorian era probably hadn’t a stitch of pink in their presence. It’s a darn good thing I’m researching this. I should send my dissertation to the Brown Sheep yarn company when I’m done so their yarn namer can address this problem.

Okay, now I’m a total dork wearing a Victorian Pink pen1s hat. I think the cold is making me lose touch with reality.

Don’t look in those reflective windows there. You don’t want to see what you look like.

Oh thank the heavens there’s my car. Ditch this hat now. I must be more careful with my future knitting.

Pulled down tight it isn't quite so pornographic, but trust me, with a pink scarf and the right poof, wrooooong.

Needless to say, the Pink Pen1s Hat will be frogged and the Victorian Pink yarn repurposed into something which in no way resembles anatomically correct fleshy bits.

* OMG = Oh my god in txt** speak because undergrads really do carry on as if all of life was a giant IM** session.

** txt = text; IM = instant messaging. What can I say, I spend a lot of time with undergrads. Their ways infect you unwittingly.

Brrr...

Two not very nice things happened this morning.

1. On my twenty minute hike to the office across the snowy, windy terrain of campus, my latte dribbled down the side of my coffee cup… and froze.

Seriously… ice crystals in the latte. Not nice.

2. In the middle of that twenty minute hike, I honestly had to stop walking and plant both my feet so the wind whipping around the buildings wouldn’t toss me on my tush. Now, I’m not a dainty little flower to be tossed about at the slightest gale. This was major wind.

Seriously… doing battle with the wind. Not nice.

I’m sure there’s some badge of honor to be earned by battling the elements when the elements are 15 below zero, but honestly, I could live without it. These are the days where the true Buffalonians show their colors with pride and the rest of us, well, we whimper and think about balmy days a wee bit south.

Sometimes I worry that I’m becoming too much of a local when I actually get the Yarn Harlot’s jokes about the differences between “warm” snow and “cold” snow.

I get really worried when I nod my head in agreement and think about telling her all the gory details of how the “cold” snow freezes into three foot drifts that you can walk on since they’re solid. Sure, “warm” snow may be prettier for posing knitwear, but “cold” snow is so solid you don’t have to worry about stepping into it and having it come over the top of your boots and making your feet wet.

Or maybe it’s just that my feet are so cold they can’t tell if they’re wet or dry…

Anyway, my ears do know that these store-bought hats aren’t cutting it so I’m on a knitting mission… to find the perfect hat… or hats, because really, just like purses, a Buffalo girl’s gotta have a hat wardrobe.

I’ve got one all ready to put to the test tomorrow. Will mohair matter? Will bulky knitting let in too much air in the space between the stitches? Will the pink be visible enough in case I do break through one of those snow drifts and end up under ice until spring?

Awaiting Little Green Men

Just call my apartment Area 51. The UFOs are a-buzzing and replicating themselves as fast as Tribbles.*

In desparation, I brought in expert UFO managers Scully and Mulder for a consultation. They said the case was severe but they thought a two-pronged attack might tame the beasts.


1. Project Spectrum 2.0 to the rescue. Notice all the blue up there? So for the next two months, I'm going to focus my attack on the blue, grey and white projects in the basket(s). Trust me, there are many, many more blue, grey and white things waiting. Lolly kicked it off with my favorite colors so this should be an easy task to focus on this combo.


2. February Finishing: Since the Yarn Diet of '07 is working** I'm going to try to step it up a notch and not cast on any new projects until 1 March. We'll just ignore the fact that I cast on for a new hat last night and I'm itching for new socks on the needles. Before the month is out, I'm going to post something rare and mysterious around here: Finished Projects! I'm going to update my sidebar list of things on the needles as I find them and try for naked needles by March.



Projects Pictured: Amy Butler Sew-Along CD Organizer (the January project which still isn't finished!!); Baby hat for a nephew who came early and is going to be cold without some knitted love from his aunt; Clapotis that needs blocking; booties for baby feet; afghan for the Lone Knitter's charity collection; Fair Isle felted bag that's been waiting for a lining for, um, months and months




* I'm not much of a Star Trek fan but for some reason the little furrballs stuck in my head. I don't really remember watching the show, but I've heard that my dad used to be a huge fan, so huge in fact that the family story is that he left his own wedding reception in a hurry to get to the hotel… to watch Spock and Co. I really don’t want any more details about my parents’ honeymoon, but it's nice to get some evidence that Tivo has improved our lives at least in the romance department!


** I still haven't caved and bought yarn or new fabric, but whoa boy did I have my first challenge last week. The Knitting Guild brought in a speaker and the speaker brought in Koigu. Without even thinking, I was petting the yarn, looking for a colorway that I had to have. Thank goodness she focused on golds and greens, two colors that I'm not naturally drawn to. I was able to step back and talk myself down from the ledge before I pulled out the credit card. It's been a month since my Kaffe Fassett splurge and I think the cold is wearing down on my resolve. It's going to be a long, long time until those fall fiber festivals roll around!

All The Weirdness That's Fit To Blog

So once again I needed to disappear from the Inner-Nets and email. Thank you all for continuing to read despite my complete inability to return the commenting favor. I’ve been reading but when I go to type, I’m frozen trying to get out sentences about all the cute projects I’ve been seeing out there. I know this is decidedly lame, but to anyone who has commented and not heard back from me, I’m sorry for being oh-so-terribly rude.

Anyway, I’m trying again to get back in the swing o’ things. Marisa tagged me for the 6 Weird Things meme and I’ve been eeking out this list over days. I’ve been able to keep it to six, although I’m sure my mother would be happy to leave a list of all my quirks in the commens.

1. Funny that one of Marisa’s weirdnesses is a monkey issue. Personally, I can’t handle bananas. I gag at the taste, the smell, even the sight of them. I’ve actually had to have students eat their treats in the hallway because I can’t stand to watch someone eat a banana. And let’s not bring up the time I was on a long antique-hunting road trip in a cramped van when one of the ladies decided she needed a banana. At the time I was too shy and polite to ask her not to eat it so I sat in the back and suffered. Then I had to sit for miles with the stinking peel in the garbage. I’ve changed my ways and much more forceful about the anti-banana policy.

2. I have weird thumbs. They are short, flat and smooshed at the end, like little frog sucker feet rather than human digits. They’re an inheritance from my grandfather and I’ve had people tell me they are a birth defect which is a sign of either mental retardation or mental giftedness. All I know is that hitch-hiking won’t be an option for me because they bend so far backwards, passing drivers won’t see my plea for a ride.

3. This may not be weird for the rural readers, but most of my city slicker friends find it quite odd that I went to elementary school with fewer than ten kids in each grade. I think there were six of us and only one boy. Two grades were generally combined in a single classroom so the teacher would bounce between giving a science lesson to third graders and history to fourth graders. I was a shy, dorky little kid who didn’t really get along with the others so the set-up gave me lots of time to get lost in books. Even the teachers let me do my own thing for the most part, probably why I’m a bit of a bookworm, loner now

4. I have absolutely zero tolerance for the distraction of television or the radio. If there’s a TV on in a restaurant, I have to watch it. Friends know that when we go out, I have to be positioned so that I can’t see a screen if they want me to participate in the conversation. I once was on a date with a total hottie who deserved to stared at appreciatively, but I was unable to adjust my bar stool accordingly. He even had to ask me, “Do you really like watching wrestling?” My eloquent reply, “Uh, no. Do you?” Hottie: “No, I don’t particularly enjoy it but you’re staring so intently, I thought you were a big fan.” Oops. (Thank goodness my appreciation of half nelsons did not interfere with getting a second date… although I think that whole dork thing mentioned above interfered with getting a third date!)

5. I also have this thing where I have to walk in step to the radio. Too many years of marching band, I think. And let’s not even get into aerobics teachers who can’t do routines to the beat. I seriously have to leave the class. It’s just better for everyone involved when I can sweat in time.

6. Although I am a complete packrat, I get a great deal of pleasure from throwing things away. When I get to the end of the shampoo bottle, I feel as if I’ve accomplished terrific and wonderful things. You’ve got to find your moments of pride where you can, right?

I think I’ve seen most of you play on this one so I’m not sure there’s anyone to tag. I’ll do some investigating in your archives and tag those who’ve yet to share their psychosis!

Ice and Roses

When the weather outside is like this:

You should fill your inside with fabric like this:

(Flowers for the Amy Butler CD and Desk Organizer Projects)

And Then the Coffee Pot Died…

One of those weeks… one of those weeks that hovered somewhere between blah and bad, never really tipping the scales in either direction, just hovering and being funky.

I really don’t have a darned thing to complain about really, but this week I got hit with several “hard” facts of life. Losing weight and getting into shape are hard. Writing a dissertation is hard. Keeping on top of bill paying and dish washing and email writing is hard. Trying to get to the office on time when your coffee pot dies is hard.

At least knitting isn’t hard, or at least the knitting I’m currently doing isn’t hard.

Nor was it hard to dig out my extra coffee pot and get back into the caffeine-happy world.

Writing, however, seems painfully hard at the moment so I’ve crept into my little hermit crab shell* and will return tomorrow, ready to face the world, hopefully with comments on all your blogs, pictures of my growing Clapotis and a baby sweater, and shoot, maybe even a good mood.

*I’ve never been one for astrology but I’ve got to say, sometimes it creeps me out when the profiles of Cancerians hits pretty close to home.

This is What Luxury Looks Like

Lest you think I was planning on becoming entirely Puritanical, I should confess that luxury still has a firm hold at Chez Leslie. On my travels east after the holiday vacation, I stopped at a cheap, roadside hotel and went in search of Chinese. Really, just after some sesame chicken, I swear. But hey, when you search for an eggroll and the universe gives you a fantastic quilt store, what are you to do?

Why, SHOP, of course!

Since I've developed a bit of a Kaffe Fassett fascination of late, I had to end my last days of fabric gluttony with a splurge on some fantastic florals. I've got some big, bright plans for these beauties. And the knitting? Yes, there may need to be some brights on my needles as well!

Luxury

1. a material object, service, etc., conducive to sumptuous living, usually a delicacy, elegance, or refinement of living rather than a necessity. 2. free or habitual indulgence in or enjoyment of comforts and pleasures in addition to those necessary for a reasonable standard of well-being. 3. a means of ministering to such indulgence or enjoyment. 4. a pleasure out of the ordinary allowed to oneself. 5. a foolish or worthless form of self-indulgence.

Over a year ago, I decided that it was high time I saw THE TREE, you know, the Rockefeller Center tree that graces every picture of New York in December. (And of course, this year it was better known as the site of those pics demonstrating the marital freedom celebration the world was waiting for… Britney being all healthy and glowy and wearing a stupid dressage hat …. if only we’d known then that her ‘freedom’ photos would include skivvy-free photos too, but I digress.)

So I saw the tree, shopped all over the city and bought yarn. Nice yarn. Expensive yarn. Clapotis yarn.

The Lorna’s Laces Lion and Lamb is most likely the most expensive, luxurious yarn to ever grace my needles. And it’s a darn good thing that I’ve experienced silk at the beginning of my yarn diet, when my resolve is somewhat still in existence, because oh mama, is this a whole new knitting experience.

As part of my resolution to read outside of the dissertation, I recently picked up Juliet Schor’s The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need. Somewhat paradoxically, I purchased this tome on overspending and luxury at a store closing sale and it set me back a whopping buck. I’d really recommend this to anyone interested in the consumption patterns of contemporary America and, probably more relevant to all those whose resolutions were of the financial nature, on how to get out of the patterns of competition and over-consumption which threaten all of us.

She writes about how “keeping up with the Joneses” has changed from the 1950s to the late 90s (the book is a bit dated, but I don’t think things have changed in the last five years). Particularly, she argues that our focus groups have expanded so that we watch people at work or on television shows in order to establish the ‘norm’ for our consumption practices. Because every sitcom shows a supposedly middle class family with a flat screen TV, we believe this is average. She cites statistics on how much viewing affects our perception of reality and our spending habits. “The more people watch television, the more they think American households have tennis courts, private planes, convertibles, car telephones, maids, and swimming pools. Heavy watchers also overestimate the portion of the population who are millionaires, have had cosmetic surgery, and belong to a private gym” (80). Car phones as the height of technology? Um, yeah… like I said, a bit dated.

But that distorted perception comes at a real cost. “Social theories of consumption hold that the inflated sense of consumer norms promulgated by the media raises people’s aspirations and leads them to buy more… Television also affects norms by giving us real information about how other people live and what they have. It allows us to be voyeurs, opening the door to the ‘private world’ inside the homes and lives of others” (81).

Isn’t this what blogging does as well? Crafting blogs seem to especially serve as sites for voyeurism, allowing us to peek into the creativity going on behind closed doors. On the one hand, we feel that we’re getting a complete picture of someone’s studio or knitting bag, but really, we’ve all commented on how blogging is somewhat artificial in that we stage photo sessions and cut out the dirty dishes and piles of laundry.

But to get back to where I started…luxury. As I was reading this, I was thinking about the standards of our knitting community and our sense of the common use of ‘luxury’ yarns. We apologize when we knit with $2 a skein Wool-Ease, justifying that it’s for a child and will need to be machine washed by a frazzled new mom. We don’t blink an eye at $20-$25 for yarn for a pair of socks. We even collect sock yarn, rationalizing that we’ll use it eventually and it’s only a skein or two to tuck away into our stuffed cabinets and boxes. I find it fascinating how we as a community have normalized $20 socks.

I’m not criticizing at all. I’m right at the forefront of justifying my yarn purchases. I just find it very interesting, and yes, personally alarming, how fast my perception has changed. When I first took a sock knitting class, I was appalled at having to spend around $15 for my supplies (something Regia, I believe). Now, it seems like I’m getting a bargain when I buy Koigu solids at $18 for two skeins. No longer do $20 socks seem to be a luxury, just as Schor discusses how the prevalence of advertisements for luxury products make their purchase seem average. We might call it the Starbucks-ing of America, when $4 coffee is “average” rather than a splurge. She talks about seeing ads for luxury pens every day in the newspaper. Before long, those ads are no longer shocking and we begin to believe it is normal, acceptable and even desirable that a pen costs $100 or more.

Of course, taking into account the amount of time we spend knitting a pair of socks, it makes sense to purchase yarn that feels nice and is enjoyable to work with. When we buy yarn, we are making an investment in how we will spend our time. I also do believe there is a quality difference in supplies. I can tell a huge difference between the $8 - $10 a yard quilt shop fabric and the $3 - $4 a yard fabric from JoAnn’s. (Although some of the new JoAnn’s materials are quite nice, which is yet another reason to avoid the quilting section for a long, long time!) My finished products are nicer when I invest in quality supplies. (I also seem to work more carefully when I'm using "quality" i.e. "expensive" products, but that's for another post.)

But what is the line between quality and luxury?

I suppose that line must be determined by the individual project and the individual knitter/quilter. Schor addresses this in the book and it’s something I want to think more about, but I want to go back to the idea of community influence.

She writes about a young chef who played a weekly game of squash in a league with an older, wealthier crowd. The young man enjoyed the company and never experienced explicit pressure to be part of their economic circle. Yet, just by being around them and unconsciously observing their more expensive clothing, cars and consumption patterns, he was feeling great stress at home and at work, constantly feeling inadequate and inferior. Before he joined the weekly game, he was content in his work and found the salary to be comfortable. The guy had to quit the league and take up a different sport in order to alleviate his symptoms of depression and stress. Schor argues that if we truly want to change our spending practices (and she discusses some pretty severe lifestyle changes, not just cutting corners here and there), we must change our focus groups and surround ourselves with people of like economic minds, even if that means changing hobbies, neighborhoods, schools for our children, jobs and even friends.

I certainly don’t think that anyone should quit knit-blogger or anything, but I wonder how we function as a group that unconsciously pressures members to spend at a level which may be beyond our means. I’d probably have to confess that I spend beyond my means on yarn and fabric. I don’t really think I’m trying to keep up with others. In fact, I’d be the first to admit that financially I can’t afford to spend as much as I would like and that really, I’m not that invested in making projects which require top dollar investment.

But how much am I unconscious about my own perceptions of a “normal” stash? How much do I participate in a luxury economy without realizing that I’ve left the realm of my financial equals? How much do I unconsciously change my sense of the world (and my yarn budget) as I surf through the blogs and look at all that glorious yarn?

Have I lost sight of what luxury really is?

Now It's Official

I can actually call myself a knit-blogger.



I have joined the Cult o' the Clapotis.

Big Betty

There’s something not quite right about following posts about restraint and shopping avoidance with a project called the “Betty Shopper.” Sorta like starting a diet the day before you have to bake someone else a birthday cake. Sure, you can say you’re measuring sugar for someone else, it’s a rare and special occasion, you promise not to taste the frosting before you put it on, but we know better. We all know better…

Anyway, I started cutting this one out awhile ago and thought I better whip it up while I had access to my mom’s fancy new super dooper strength sewing machine.

Pattern: Betty Shopper by Amy Butler, large size

Materials: Vintage curtains found at a rummage sale; decorator weight fabric for lining; grommets; Pellon Peltex 71 F Single-Sided fusible; fusible fleece interfacing/lining

Dates: November 2006 – 1 January 2007

Notes: I think the fabric really makes this project. The curtains are marked “Inspired by Little Lady Toiletries” and must have been sold to match sets of powders and perfumes for little girls. I’ve looked around a bit and have found few items on ebay so I don’t know how popular the brand was. I wrote before that I’m not entirely sold on the cuteness of these little ladies and I wish I would have centered the pattern on the curtains differently so the ballerina would be in the center rather than the gardener girl. Oh well, live and learn. I do have just enough leftover to make some small zippered bags so I’ll be sure to get the cute girls on those.

The fabric is quite soft, nearly a flannel, so I decided to use fusible fleece for my interfacing. This gives it body while keeping the soft appearance and really helped to minimize the stretching that I noticed while cutting and ironing the fabric alone. I fused the fleece on my two outer panels and the handles at the point it calls for basting and found that to work quite well. I really like the added padding in the handles, even if it was a challenge getting them through the grommets with the added bulk.

The pattern has you really do a ton of basting, a step I’m often prone to skip, but it does help quite a bit in keeping all the layers together. And are there layers…. I honestly don’t know that my el cheapo sewing machine would’ve been able to put this sucker together, or if it did, I can only imagine the puckering, pulling and cursing that would’ve occurred. Word to the wise, test out how your machine handles multiple layers of fabric and the thick interfacing before you set out. Oh, and speaking of strength, we had to rope my father into installing the grommets. Be sure to eat your wheaties before whipping out the hammer.

The pattern warns you that the large is rather large. I think if I made it again, I’d start with the small bag. The bag is designed so that the top tapers in, keeping your purchases secure and making the handles more comfortable, but also limiting how you can pack it. I used the bag to haul holiday loot and was surprised at how little it seemed to hold. Granted, I was trying to pack it full of clothing and bulky items so I think that’s to blame. I’d say it really would be a perfect bag for a day of shopping where you planned to purchase small things, like, say, um… fat quarters and yarn, or maybe the groceries for that cake you’re baking for a “friend.” I used it on our last day of running to all the fabric and craft stores we could find and it was very easy to tuck away all my purchases, too easy to store away and forget all about, in fact. My only complaint in using it was that it was so stiff at the bottom that I was a bit clumsy. I sorta felt like I was trying to walk around with a sword and scabbard or something so you may want to practice in wide open spaces before hauling her out to a crowded market.

The bag has two pockets on the inside, but they seem to work more like dividers. Since the bag is so large, they can’t really stay perfectly flat against the sides to keep items like cell phones or keys from getting lost. Perfect excuse to make coordinating bags, but be sure to plan for that if you take this one on.

Like all the Amy Butler patterns I’ve used, it’s printed on heavy paper and you do have to do one bit of piecing the paper together. I’m planning to copy the pattern pieces onto other paper soon as I’m worried about all the pin holes even in making this just once. You have to cut many, many pieces out of the main panel so it gets quite a bit of wear. My mom has used something called PatternEase (sp?) for this before so I’ll give that a try if I make this one again. And speaking of all the pieces, pay attention when you cut. You do the main panels in the outer fabric, lining and interfacing and the pockets in both fabric and the Peltex/Timtex all from the same pattern piece but some with certain areas folded under. I cut my Peltex first on the pockets and then ended up cutting my fabric panels too small.

I also made a change and used some of my outer fabric for parts of the lining so I’m sure my quantities are off what the pattern calls for. I’ve read that her patterns are both too generous and too skimpy on their fabric requirements so you may want to plan extra, especially if you’re going to make smaller bags to keep your cell phone and lipstick contained in the cavernous inside!

I substituted the Pellon Peltex 71F for the Timtex the pattern calls for, primarily out of my tendency toward cheapness. The Peltex can be found at JoAnn’s and with a 40% off coupon, is considerably less than the Timtex. I’m planning to do the CD organizer project from the In Stitches book and may try out the Timtex just for comparison. This stuff was a little different to work with so do follow the directions for trimming your seams and again, baste, baste, baste. I actually used a regular stitch set to the longest stitch length for my basting and didn’t remove any of my basting stitches after I was finished. I didn’t find that they showed anywhere and I felt any extra stitching would help hold it all together. The Peltex I have is fusible but I didn’t use it that way. The pattern calls for you to stitch it all together so closely, I don’t know that fusing would help or make it difficult to turn all the corners and do the shaping called for.

Overall, this is a great pattern and I know I’ll make it again. I think it would make a great sewing or knitting bag, or even a nice bag to take the library, if you were ever inclined to go and do some actual work rather than sitting at the sewing machine all day. Not that I’d ever do something of the sort…

The Stash-Busting Challenge

Wendy’s doing it. AfricanKelli’s doing it. LoneKnitter’s doing it.

And now the family is doing it.

My sincerest apologies go out to all yarn and fabric shops from New York to Kansas, but we really must end our love affair, or at least take a temporary break in our fling. And yes, our family crack dealers really do extend the length of at least half the nation without even counting internet pushers. Shoot, I may be guilty of finding yarn shops while on vacation in Vermont, at a conference in North Carolina and in the middle of Thanksgiving vacation in Illinois. (At least I managed to wait until after the leftovers were put away before getting my fix.) We’ll just try to ignore that I drove to another freakin’ country with the sole purpose of buying yarn last fall. You should’ve seen the look on the face of the customs dude, but anyway, moving on…

The Girls (otherwise known as my mother, aunt and cousin) have asked for my stash-busting rules of 2007 so we can all be martyrs, er, I mean “resisters” together. Here’s my plan:

1. Purchase no new yarn, fabric, patterns or tools. Scrapbooking items may only be purchased if I intend to use them within 24 hours for a specific page that I’m working on. (Scrapbooking is a new hobby for the year. We’ll see how it goes and how much it affects my attempts to keep the hobby budget in line.)

2. I may purchase yarn, fabric or tools to complete a project that is already started. “Already started” status is only granted to projects which are well underway or at least 75% purchased. In other words, I can’t say I’ve “already started” something just because I have the pattern in a magazine or one piece of fabric that needs 12 other yards to match.

3. I’m allowed a certain number of “pass days,” specified at the outset. I’m going for five for the year.
a. Paducah, KY Quilt Show and Sale
b. East Aurora Fiber Festival
c. Kitchener-Waterloo Fiber Festival
d. Rhinebeck Fiber Festival
e. Freebie

4. I am allowed to receive gifts of fabric and yarn but only on actual holidays when I would be receiving surprises anyway. No, I cannot put in a request for a yard of Alexander Henry fabric for National Burrito Day. Fabric in the Easter basket, on the other hand…

5. I may purchase supplies to make a specific gift if and only if I’ve checked the stash and there is absolutely nothing that would work for the intended project and I absolutely must make this one specific gift right now. Seriously consider giving the person car wash gift certificates instead so I can spend my valuable time sewing or knitting something from the stash. Wouldn’t I rather work on that quilt than knit the mailman a hat anyway?

6. Avoid the clearance aisles at JoAnn’s and the sale baskets at the yarn shop. No sale is good enough unless it’s offering up supplies for free. After all, doesn’t every clearance item need to be paired with a gajillion other items in order to make a project? And aren’t those gajillion other items never on sale? Better than all of that, just avoid JoAnn’s and the yarn shop altogether!

I’m not sure if this is too strict or too relaxed. There are certainly lots of loopholes, but I want to make this a project that I can keep up for the entire year. I want to take on this challenge not as a punishment, but as a means of getting out from stash overload. Seriously, the stash is out of control. If I’m feeling really brave, maybe I’ll share pictures of all my various hiding places but I’m not sure my wonky camera battery will hold out long enough to capture the ridiculousness of it all. You’re laughing, girls, but I know how many fat quarters you own. (Over Christmas we did a little organizing and counting on the fat quarter stashes of my mom and aunt and yet again I got proof that while these women are pretty cool, I’m not so sure they should be role models. We had to get out a calculator and notebook to take inventory. Not pretty.)

Whew, now that my shopping is all ruled and regulated, I’ll get back to business tomorrow… showing off purchases that I shouldn’t have made and a giant shopping bag that’s perfect for filling with future purchases I shouldn’t make.

Restraint and Joy

Back to reality… Last night I returned from my holiday visit with my family and this morning started a whole new routine. I began the day with a painful hour with a personal trainer and spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking and cleaning on my fabric and yarn stashes. Ironically, this day of restraint was somewhat refreshing after two weeks of pure gluttony. Now don’t get me wrong, I sure enjoyed that gluttony and all its sugar cookies and shopping trips, but it’s time to get back to business.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions. I’m terribly excited to get going on all my new schemes but suffer from the pandemic of Broken Resolutionitis. The goals are too high, the rules too strict. I once had a professor tell us to make “Goals” rather than “Resolutions.” Goals take into account the struggle that comes with reform and that there will be slip-ups along the way to change.

And that’s the key… change. 2006 was a good year overall, but I really hope that 2007 can be better.

So with that in mind, these are the 2007 Goals:

Improve my Health
1. Go to a personal trainer once a week and exercise on my own during the week.
2. Bring athletic activities such as biking, swimming and hiking into my regular routine.
3. Devote time to regular meal planning and cooking.

Improve my Intellect
1. Work on my dissertation at least one hour a day.
2. Increase my professional activity with conference attendance and submissions to journals.
3. Read twelve non-dissertation books.

Improve my Domestic Life
1. Avoid yarn and fabric purchases and minimize other expenses as much as possible.
2. Throw away or donate one item to charity every day.
3. Complete one cleaning or organizing task a day, i.e. clean out a drawer or cabinet or tackle mopping, bathroom duties, etc. or take on a scrapbook page or go through a set of files.

Improve my Overall Life
Search for happiness in every day, opening my eyes to new opportunities for joy wherever possible.

That last one is the big goal of the year: to increase joy. All the areas of restraint are in the service of freeing myself to have more time and money for the things that I really want to pursue. While it may not seem like cutting back on expenses or cookies will lead to joy, I really believe that in the long run it will. I know some of these goals will be difficult, but maybe by the end of the year I'll be able to knit up my stash of sock yarn while dictacting my dissertation as I run on the treadmill.

And now time for more Tylenol to free myself from the pain of an hour of lunges and bicep curls.

Bring on 2007!

Dial-Up Dilemma

Blogging to resume Friday, 5 Jan with resolutions, holiday crafting reports and plans for the new year. Dial-up at the folks' is killing me so I've spent all my free time shopping rather than writing. Yarn diet must start now!

If anyone is still checking in on my all-too-silent blog here, hope 2007 is off to a great start! I'll be back to the internet world soon.

Candy Cane Craziness

Greetings, all,

I've escaped to the North Pole for a brief little tryst with a hot little elf...

...or maybe I've just been struck mute with all the holiday happenings.

Will return soon with pictures of knee socks... if the stupid things ever end. Good grief the yarn just never seems to run out! (You know it's bad when a knitter is praying for the skein to just stop and run dry...)

Happy holidays to all and to all a good night... of sewing, knitting, friends and merriment!

Discovery

Professor Wolfgang Smartypants is thrilled to announce the discovery of Giftias Kellicus, a new species found in the Chez Leslie ecosystem.

Through intense study and deliberation, Professor Smartypants has surmised that the new species migrated an unimaginable distance, originating in the productive and inspiring land of AfricanKelli. This land is generally known for its baked goods and sewn creations so the emergence of such a highly evolved species as Giftias Kellicus comes with little surprise to the scientific community.

Professor Smartypants notes the species’ unique coloring which is suggestive of the holiday season, but in a trendy, stylized manner so as to extend wear beyond the limitations of poinsettia-friendly dates specified in the life cycle of holiday gear. “Even more exciting,” the good doctor proclaims, “is the assumption that species is reversible and the green interior could be displayed year-round, even in the harshest of fashion-criticizing climates.”

Giftias Kellicus is derived from the well-known Amy Butler phylum and the Swing bag genus. Professor Smartypants indicates that current interest in this genus paired with the new arrival could lead to an outbreak of additional members of the genus but believes that this could only enhance the Chez Leslie ecosystem. “While most traditional ecosystems are bound by space resources, Chez Leslie seems to hold infinite room for the purse kingdom. This really is a welcoming environment for purses, bags, totes and the like.”

Seen here in its native habitat, Giftias Kellicus is surrounded by like-minded species, Starbucks Cupicus, Victorian Novelicus and Stash Yarnicus. The four species seem to form a symbiotic relationship wherein Giftias Kellicus serves as host to the Victorian Novelicus and Stash Yarnicus while Starbucks Cupicus provides sustenance via regular spillage. Although the arrival of Giftias Kellicus is a new development in the Chez Leslie ecosystem, all studies indicate a long and exciting life of adventure await the species.

That Special Shade of Blue

Around this time of year, beloved girls far and wide start to look high and low for a box big or small in that oh so special shade of blue.





The rest of us go to our local Knitting Guild holiday bazaar and buy ourselves a bit of blue. If there won't be Tiffany on my fingers, there will Koigu on my toes.

Deck the Halls

How can you help but be full of holiday spirit when surrounded by glittering aluminum?

I decided to go with a pink, silver and gold theme this year so my halls aren't quite as bedecked as with the blue and silver scheme of old (well, the past three years), but I'll probably be thankful for that in January when it's time to put it all away. Things have been too busy lately to go all out anyway, but a little vintage sparkle helps to make those nights at the computer a little cheerier.

I love my "tacky tree" as my father describes these vintage jewels. I found it at an antique store in Missouri when I took a day off from working on my master's degree to go junk hunting with the girls of the family. It's a little Charlie Brown pathetic in that the center post has some chips, it's missing several limbs and the limbs that are here are rather, um, crumpled. Nonetheless, I love its bling and this was before these trees became so popular so I got a real bargain on it. My mother and aunt looked at it and said, "Oh, um, sure, yeah, you should get that" while they were clearly thinking, "Good grief that thing is disgusting. She was clearly raised by wolves with no taste. We must get her out of the library more often and really, maybe we should get her new glasses while we're at it. At least she lives far away so we can just pretend we don't know her."

They both had silver "tacky trees" of their own the following year.

My mom even found the rotating color lamp which is now a fire hazard, but a pretty cool fire hazard.

These sunburst ornaments are some of my favorites, if only because they just make you go "huh?" Sun faces on Christmas ornaments when there's a foot of snow outside? I found them at a local thrift store and I can only imagine that they once belonged to a little Italian or Polish grandma with orange Aqua Net hair, the kind of little old lady who goes to Florida for the winter. She and Ralph tool around Buffalo in the summer in a big Caddy, decorating the front lawn with flamingos and gnomes and talking about the big shuffleboard tournament in Palm Springs. They probably shipped these home to the kiddies, stuck in Buffalo for the winter. I imagine little Ethel wrote out a note that annoyed her daughter to no end so she dumped the sun-themed ornaments into a box with the stale fruitcake and the bedazzled sweatsuit with matching floral muu-muu and sent the lot to the junk, where of course I bought them and brought them home to my own kitschy abode. I get to think of dear, crazy Ethel every year when I hang them up. I bet Ethel would be happy to come visit and help, provided I gave her a big cup of rum with a dash of egg nog.

Hope your days are sparkly and your hearths bedecked with tacky or tasteful!

Now if I could only find one of Ethel's flamingos to use as a tree topper...

P.S. If anyone else is into junk hunts, I mean, vintage treasure searches, check out the Vintage Swaps. I'm going to give it a try for a round in January. The theme is "beauty" and I definitely think that means I need to get cracking on making a bag or two out of those trampy toiletry curtains.

Knit Unto Others

Thanks for all your encouragement on my holiday gluttony. Boots are ordered and looks like I'll be sweating up a storm with my year of training. To make up for this splurge, I'll definitely need to go on another yarn and fabric diet while I'm focusing on healthier eating in the new year!

But before this turns into a completely selfish blog, though I'd share a pair of mittens that I completed for Lynne's mitten collection for local children.

Pattern: Mittens (with mods)

Yarn: stash acrylic... it's much, much brighter than any camera could capture. We're talking yellow that will flash out loudly even when buried under six feet of snow bright.

Needles: Sz. 6 bamboo dpns

Recipient: From Hearts to Hands... (charity collection for Buffalo children)

Mods: I made the toddler size (CO 24) but decided to do these in the round rather than seamed. Changed ribbing to garter stitch. Ignored the length specified and knit until they looked proportional, if mittens can be proportional.

I'm going to guess my yarn fudging caused problems here or maybe I was really off on gauge, but I tried the larger size from this pattern and ended up with grown-up mittens... or mitten. I may finish that one off for charity later or more likely, I'll get greedy and keep it myself. These are definitely NOT toddler sized but they at least should fit children.

The buttons are a tiny little plane and helicopter since they needed a little somethin' somethin'.

Quick and easy project that I wish I'd started sooner so I could've sent more hand-knit mittens. I haven't done too many of these small projects lately. Kinda fun to actually see the end of something! I definitely see a hat or two in my very near future...

Would You Still Love Me If I Wore Ugg Boots?

Amongst the pithy life decisions that need to be made in the coming weeks, I'm contemplating a serious purchase.

Ugg-esque boots

This contemplation is troubling on several fronts, the greatest of which may just be my fall from fashion icon status were I to wear said boots in public.

(Please know that I nearly choked writing that last sentence. Would a real fashion icon be sitting here posting to the blogosphere sporting a bleach-stained sweatshirt from college whose kelly green clashes severely with her lime green Crocs and forest green socks? I know, I have a wardrobe to make Oprah jealous. There are reason I only take pictures of my knitting.)

But here are the points in favor of this fanciful purchase:

1. I actually live in a climate that warrants warm footwear.

2. Increased travels to the gym in winter demand snow-proof footwear that is easy-on, easy-off, even after excessive lunges which severely limit the function of my lower body and the mental capacity for such difficult operations such as shoe laces.

3. They aren't reeeeally Uggs, just ugg-esque.

4. I have entirely skipped the trend thus far. (See: "fashion icon" above... Granted, this may only be evidence that I'm a loser who catches trends two years after they are passe, but who's keeping track of these things? Sienna Miller still wears her Uggs after all...)

5. I promise to never, ever wear them with gauchos.

6. The most convincing reason of all...I am not a Hollywood starlet and therefore will not under any circumstances be wearing the ugg-esque footwear with a mini-cocktail dress on the red carpet.

But maybe with my stylin' new kicks, I'll become a Hollywood starlet and invite you all to the swanky premiere of my new film... After all, LiLo is holed away in rehab for a good long while and someone has to nab that Oscar.

By the way, did you know there was a trademark scandel around the infamous fashion no-no's? And it's worse than wearing Target knock-offs.

Indecision

I had my first session with a personal trainer this morning.

I spent the rest of the day on the couch reading and contemplating button choices for the CPH.

I'm considering a year-long plan.

I'm considering brown buttons.

Closing in on the Hood

It feels so homey to say that I've got a sweater blocking in the other room. Why can't it smell as nice as saying 'I've got bread rising in the other room'?

I reeeeally want to finish this one before our next Guild meeting on the 13th and I've only got a hood, a button band and seaming standing in my way. Speaking of the button band, I'm having a hard time figuring out how I want to finish this one. I may try to set up a poll on possible closures. I'm thinking buttons since I have quite a few zippered cardigan sweaters, but the strange color of the yarn isn't really helping here. If we ever get a sunny day, I'll try to get accurately colored pics and seek the wisdom of the Internets for this one.

Movie Review

Since many of us knit while watching movies, thought I’d try to throw in a movie review or two if I stumble upon something interesting. Friday night’s sleeve cap was produced while watching Lumumba, a movie about Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo for a very brief and contentious time in 1960. I’m getting better about knitting to subtitles, but this one was a challenge. I didn’t feel that I had enough background knowledge to entirely follow everything so I had to watch pretty closely to make sure I didn’t miss important references. It was also a pretty tense film which I think may show in my tension here and there. The film starts with the murders of the leaders so even if your knowledge of African history is pretty slim, you aren’t wondering what’s going to happen. Granted, this just means that you sit through two hours of impending doom, but I guess I’d rather know the ship was going to sink rather than hoping for the movie-ending lifeboat to swoop in at the end.

Overall, I’d give this one a thumbs up for capturing the difficult work of nation-building in a post-colonial context. It has all the elements of a Hollywood political thriller with the added bonus of being real. Maybe not a good knitting movie, but one to add to your list if you enjoy intrigue and political history.

Excuse the political diatribe here, but I couldn’t help but watch and think of the civil strife in Iraq. People wonder how a country can descend into civil war after a tyrant is removed. I’ve gotten pretty steamed up lately about people criticizing Iraqi civilians for the strife and discord. After all, this is the time when things are supposed to be hunky dory and perfect and peaceful and optimistic. This film really showed how in a time of revolution and even following said revolution, massive internal conflict is inevitable. I don’t know what is right for Iraq, but I know it’s wrong to expect a nation to peacefully emerge immediately once out of a time of chaotic rule or to categorize people as inept or foolish for having the same difficulties that have occurred time and time again.

Aldous Huxley wrote, “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” So much to learn, so much work to do in this great and confusing world of ours.

Be Done

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” - Emerson

I’ve been a little bit disappointed with myself lately. Last Thanksgiving I ran my first 5K, was dating a hot doctor and was preparing for my first upper-level undergraduate course. This year I was knitting knee socks.

I suppose my year-end reflection period is kicking in a month early. I’m starting to feel that knitting is getting in the way of living. Or perhaps it's better to state that I'm using knitting as an excuse for not living. The problem is not giving up a Friday night out on the town to settle in with knitting and Netflix. It’s the random weeknight that I choose to spend knitting rather than going to the gym. Or more accurately, it's the night I skip the gym and plan to have a night of knitting but end up foofing around the apartment and doing absolutely nothing, crafty or otherwise. It’s the hours I spend absent-mindedly reading blogs rather than engaging with life, on-line or off. It’s planning projects, or just day-dreaming about them, rather than planning healthy meals.

Granted, last year's doc was a dud, my 5K crawl would’ve made many of you real athletes cringe with shame, and I’m not sure my students learned a darn thing, but as last year came to an end, I was excited and happy. I had things to be proud of and things to look forward to. I know that to a degree that’s still true. Things are moving on my dissertation and I've had several successes professionally lately. I just don’t feel the thrill that I felt a year ago and I’m trying to address why and most importantly, how to get it back.

I suppose I'm writing this only because blogging felt a little 'off' last week when I was in Missouri. I was obsessing about all those things I should've done, said or written, emails never sent, workouts never completed, friends never called. And to no surprise, obsessing over what wasn't done left me zero motivation to do anything about any of it.

Today at the office we cleaned for an upcoming move and in a matter of hours we filled a small dumpster with student papers from 1987, edited drafts of newsletters published in 1998, and disks full of materials prepared on obsolete versions of WordPerfect. There was a spirit of glee as we pitched, even from the most notorious of hoarders (ahem, that would be yours truly).

I keep this Emerson quote on my nightstand as a reminder to stop my obsession and guilt but as I start the last month of the year, I feel like I need to be reminded of this a little more strongly. Here's to ending the year on a high note.

Turkey Surprise

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend. I planned a secret trip to the Midwest with the intention of surprising everyone at the big feast. Everything was going swimmingly, or as swimmingly as any family plan goes with my crazy clan, until I got the call on Tuesday night, while I’m packing of course, “Your mom just cancelled Thanksgiving.” Um, what?

Seems strep throat hit hard and landed my mom on the couch rather than by the stove. At that point it was going to be too expensive to change plans so I loaded onto my early morning flight, worried that my cousin and I may be put in charge of the feast. For safe measure, I wrote down the turkey hotline number running on CNN in the airport restaurant. I don’t think we were the only ones concerned about the fiasco potential in letting the younger generation be in charge of the festivities. Just when my grandparents were about to call in help from the pizza delivery boy, we pulled it together and ended up putting out three turkeys, a ham, two kinds of dressing, five pies and enough side dishes to fill two tables. Yeah, three turkeys… don’t ask. I think we had too many surprises planned for one holiday.

Of course, just to keep it interesting, as soon as my mom recovers, we get a call that my brother is in the hospital with a severe case of the flu. I suppose my immune system deserves a raise since I was able to escape the various plagues without so much as a cough.

With a large part of the group feeling a bit under the weather and another large contingent assigned to a weekend of moving my aunt and uncle into their new abode, I had some time to snuggle into a comfy recliner and work on my Socktoberfest socks. Knee socks here I come. Or that's the plan at least. I'm sure there will be some more surprises along the way...

To Make or To Save

Last summer I found these great vintage curtains at a rummage sale and added them to the stash with the intention of someday turning them into something great. I'm not sure if the Amy Butler Betty Shopper bag will be great or not, but I'm excited to use goodies from the stash.

The marks in the selvage say that these were curtains "Inspired by Little Lady Toiletries." So far I haven't been able to find any info about these products, but I'm guessing it was either a doll or toy set or possibly even real bath products marketed for young girls.

To be honest, the faces on the little ladies are a bit more little tramp than anything so I'm guessing these goodies were meant to teach all the future tarts of the world how to go from bath to ballet with only seven applications of blue eye shadow. And let's not go into what that may say about me turning the curtains into a very large bag. I just promise that I won't fill it full of powders, pomades and perfumes.

Hope you are all having a great Thanksgiving with the little ladies in your life!

Unraveling

Friday night I sat down to finish the second sleeve of my hoodie with a movie and a bit of soy nog.* Turns out, I’d already seen the movie, but if Matt Damon is in it, who cares, right? So there I was knitting away with my rerun and liquid soybeans, just ready to cast off when I thought I’d be all kinds of crazy and count my stitches. Imagine my surprise when I had eight more than I should. Oops. And I wasn’t even knitting under the influence this time!

Seems I kinda just skipped over several of those details… like binding off two stitches at the beginning of the row four times. Guess I shouldn’t assume that just because I’d already knit one sleeve the right way, I’d be able to master a second sleeve. Should I just fudge it at the end? Maybe it wouldn’t matter. It’ll all block out even, right?

Yeah, been there and tried it and you know what? Cheaters never win… especially in knitting.

So yesterday morning, I ripped. Besides the health benefits of choosing soy nog over my usual knitting night cap, I have to say that it’s a good thing I was alcohol-free Friday night and therefore rational enough to know that ripping should be done in the daylight with coffee.

Later tonight, I will begin again, carefully reading the instructions this time.

While ripping is perhaps not the most enjoyable aspect of knitting, I do like the do-over factor. *Poof* It’s like the goof never happened, well, aside from the fact that at one point I had a finished sleeve and now I have a sleeve that needs a few hours of work. Essentially though, I get to rewind back to Friday evening, before the goof, before the movie made me forget how to read directions.

Sometimes I wish more of life had a do-over factor. This week sorta flew by too fast for me to catch the slip-ups or even read the directions. I started several blog entries and never finished them before they were made obsolete by the need for a new blog entry for a new day. Then it became a week’s worth of entries and I thought I should do something, well, pretty darn neat. But, er, em… I just don’t have pretty darn neat in me right now. I had a good week of observing an expensive and complicated experiment which has absolutely nothing to do with my own research, attending an amazing Broadway-type show, and enjoying several outings with the girls. But for some reason, that’s all I’m going to say about it for now.

Maybe I’m feeling quiet since I’m in reading mode for my dissertation, the weeks where you soak in all you can and become a sponge lurking about the library in search of some little detail that you don’t have yet. Maybe I’m feeling quiet because my knitting and crafting have been on the non-existent to dull side lately. Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s 4 p.m. and dark here. Whatever it is, here’s to wiping the slate clean and starting over on attempting to blog and craft and keep up with the world.

* See, told you I was getting into this eating healthier thing. I’ll certainly be splurging on “real” egg nog when I’m home for the holidays, but for now, VitaSoy’s Holly Nog will do.

Keepin' Track

This is lame, but I really do want to try for a post a day and unfortunately tonight's blogging time was lost in my new obsession.

www.myfooddiary.com

Although counting calories isn't nearly as much fun as counting stitches, I think it may mean that I can justify a crack dealer scale for dividing sock yarn more precisely, er, I mean, measuring my din-din more precisely.

Projects

I had a rainy weekend at home to focus on work and crafting. Fortunately for my dissertation, I really got into the reading. I really was dorky beyond belief and loving every minute of it.

Unfortunately for my blog, my crafting was mostly at the stage of work. You know the stage in any project (or most projects at least) where the thrill is gone and you just have to slog on through to get to the good parts again?

If I ever have a cut a 4 inch denim square again, it will be too soon. Hopefully my collection of hundreds of these little buggers will get me through a few quilt tops. It's a great way to recycle jeans and the end product is a great cuddle blanket, but one too many dates with a rotary cutter gets on a girl's nerves. At least there were no quilting injuries this time...

I did find a chance to start a donation for a mitten collection for Buffalo children. I'm hoping to put together a few pairs in the coming weeks, even if I do end up buying them at T@rget on the night before they're due! This one may be an oops since it ended up more grown-up size than kid size, but maybe there's some cold, mitten-less mutant six-year-old with extra large hands and darnit she'll need some lovin'. Yeah, or maybe I'll just bury this one under the store-bought goods and hope no one associates the freak donation with the single girl who clearly has no clue about the wee ones among us. I'll post pattern and yarn notes when it's finished. I grabbed whatever was on top of the stash and can't decide if this is yarn that should be blasted with vehemence or used for all future child-friendly projects, even if those projects won't fit any child under the age of 25.

Finally, I finished another square of the Lizard Ridge afghan, but we're not really playing nice right now. I want to post something a little more, um, diplomatic to the group knitalong to get advice, but there was much swearing and a bit of teeth gnashing over how this skein knotted up on itself as I was knitting. You knit from the inside and outside of the skein at the same time, and I swear those two pieces of yarn were magnets for each other. It was like they were felting together in mid-air. When I was working the first square, I mis-read the directions and ended up cutting my yarn after each section so there wasn't a long piece to tangle. Zip zap, that square just came together as fast as I could knit it. Since I'm 80% sure I'm going to put a backing on the afghan, I can do a messy job of weaving in the umpteen hundred ends, right? Anyone have any Noro tips for knitting on both ends at the same time? You gotta keep 'em separated! (Hope I can keep my ends separated so I don't have be separated from this gorgeous project!)

On a good note, I'm on my second sleeve of the Central Park Hoodie. Hopefully I'll have blocking shots in the next few days. Bring on the fun parts of my projects!