January 23, 2008

Four years of screwing up knitting

I was working this morning, writing, knitting, writing, knitting (taking short breaks to think about how much cleaner my house would be if I ever substituted "cleaning" for "knitting", then having a little chuckle to myself about how unlikely that is) and then I had a very nice phone call with a friend I don't talk to very often (and thinking about how much cleaner my house would be if I ever substituted "cleaning" for that sort of thing too.) and right thereafter I came to landmark place on the Vintage sock. Once the inlaid toe business was out of the way, this sock has flown. I knit the plain bit, then started the embossed bunch of grapes pattern, and was absolutely delighted to discover that this part was entirely, well. Delightful.

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The chart makes it a walk in the park, and there's a pretty cool "make 4" to start the bottom of each grape and an equally charming "decrease 4" that rounds off the tops of them,

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and the whole thing was a pleasure. Now that I have knit it, I can smirk without fear of retribution about how easy and fun it is. (I refrained from blogging yesterday about how I was knitting it without difficulty. Considering my track record with this sock I think the thing would have been unable to resist the urge to spontaneously combust or burst into a million wee snips of yarn just to rub my face in it.) I knit half the grapes, knit the "inverted wine glass heel" (again, a pleasure. Not a single misplaced stitch.)

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and today I decided, that with the worst of it behind me I could blog about how truly beautiful it is, and how I'm having such a good time that I have almost forgotten that I still have about a billion leaves left to knit and a whole second sock...

Halfvintsock2301

and with that I remembered that I have a deadline on these bad boys, and I went to the calendar to check and see how much time I have left. (Five days, but lets not dwell on that. It's not the point.) While I was running my finger down the calendar and trying to sort out what day today might be (I have a loose relationship with the passage of time) I saw that my blogiversary was coming up. Then I sorted out what day it was and realized that TODAY is my blogiversary.

I've missed it in previous years, not being someone who's big on dates in general (which is really good, since I never know the date) but having discovered it by accident today, I wanted to take a minute to mention it, and to convey to you my most sincere and heartfelt gratitude.

Thank you.

I had no idea what this blog might become when I started. No idea. Ken gave it to me as a Christmas present (probably thinking that it would be really great for me to have some sort of outlet for my knitting angst that didn't involve his phone ringing) and it turns out to have been so much more than a way to find other people who worry about buttonholes at three in the morning. (Although, that's really great too.) I feel like I really found a community with knitting in general, and this blog in specific, and as someone who has never really fit in very well, I can't tell you how much that has meant to me. I've always struggled with the fact that I'm rather undeniably a dork (Don't bother arguing. I direct you to locking myself out a hotel room, dropping a shoe out of a window, and an encounter with a turnstile as proof....this isn't low self-esteem. It's self knowledge.) and while that hasn't changed...I appreciate with my whole dorky self that I'm welcome here in the big blog world. It's like finally sitting with the cool kids in high school... and my gratefulness knows no bounds.

Time flies when you're screwing up knitting.

Posted by Stephanie at January 23, 2008 1:51 PM