The weekend in London (Ontario) teaching and speaking at Cotton-by-Post was absolutely a pleasure.  Suzanne and Garnet, the charming proprietors turned out to be just that, and the arrangements they made were terrific.  My students were bright, interesting and rather charming their own selves, and I had the pleasure of seeing some old friends on Friday,  a wonderful surprise.  I had trouble with my projector at the last minute, but then a simple solution presented itself nicely, and I got a picture of a pregnant lady using my knitting belt which amuses me to no end. 

(Thanks for playing along Debbie.  I actually think your bump was super helpful as well as good looking.) 

The photo above is remarkable, in that it is the ONLY photo I took in the whole three days.  I have absolutely no explanation for this, except that maybe in my head I knew Joe had taken my regular camera to LA, and that this meant that I had no camera, except that I did.  Clearly.   In any case, the weekend was so awesome that I now believe it sucked up all the awesome that was allotted to me for the rest of the week, because said awesome has been in short supply since.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing significantly big has gone wrong, just absolutely everything small.  We’re out of milk for tea, and cat food, and there’s only enough laundry detergent for one load, and the store was out of it, so we’re going to have to decide what we want clean the most.  The lights are burned out in the kitchen and changing the bulb didn’t help so it must be the wiring, and I clean on Sundays and I’ve been away two Sundays in a row so everything is a little sticky.  The file sharing stuff that I use to share stuff decided it doesn’t share files anymore and simply denied us "permission".  I opened my photo software and it seized up like me after an aerobics class, and after a debilitating 24 hours of the spinning rainbow beachball of doom, we’re admitting defeat and Joe’s taking my pretty much brand new computer in to get ram or rammed, or something, which can’t quite be right, but since I’ve been thinking about ramming it with a freakin’ sledgehammer for a while I guess it makes sense.

Yesterday was spinning day, and I worked really hard at it all day, and at the end of the day there was like… maybe 20 metres spun, which is abysmal, but then I realized I didn’t sit have time to at the wheel a lot, which is probably part of the problem, but I was busy doing the lame computer stuff and missing busses.  (Two.)  Also, something smells funny at the top of the stairs and I can’t figure out what it is, but apparently nobody else can even smell it. 
Also, I am about 8 repeats behind on the blanket, and I’m freaking out a little.

In short, Joe’s leaving here with my computer in about 10 seconds, and about 30 minutes later I’ll be alone in the house, and I think it would be best if I just had a little quiet time.  Maybe a little knitting. Maybe a little spinning.  Maybe wash the kitchen floor – something that feels like forward movement, so that I stop wanting things rammed. 
Or something.

On this day in 2004, I wrote the first entry here.  My darling friend Ken made it for me, and it goes without saying that it was one of the most incredible gifts I’ve ever received.  Today marks my 8th Blogiversary – eight years of having this in my life, and eight years of our family considering all of you, collectively "The Blog".  We’ve never talked like The Blog is the part I write.  We talk about it like its you.  We say things like "What does The Blog think?" or "The Blog isn’t going to like this" or "I can’t wait to tell The Blog".  The Blog is you,  and I wanted to take a minute to tell you that this experience has changed my life, taught me things and changed me in ways that I would never have predicted. I have some things I’d like to thank you for, my dear little blog.

For making me a better writer.  I know not all writers agree, but for me, the nature of my relationship with The Blog has been a pretty big pile of awesome.  I feel like eight years of immediate feedback has changed the way I think and helped me learn to write what I mean to say.  Eight years of seeing immediately when I’m being understood by The Blog and when I’ve failed miserably has (I think) helped me to land where I want to be more of the time.  Thank you.

For supporting my career. Very early on, when I had my first book deal and was just starting this blog – but no book had been published, I was agonizing about what might happen if I wrote a book and it had abysmal sales.  I lay awake at night thinking about how terrible it would be, how embarrassing, how humiliating it would be to fail at this. What if, I mused to someone, what if I wrote a book and NOBODY bought it?  They said to me that at least they would buy it, and my other friends too.  "Your friends are pretty likely to buy your book" she said.   I sat there hoping I had enough friends.  Turns out I had no idea. I was about to have The Blog.  Thank you.

For teaching me a lot about technology.  When I started doing this, I had no idea what I was doing. With anything.  I’m not saying that I’m a total computer whiz now, but I can write basic HTML, solve minor tech issues, have a minimum understanding of what a server does, can use a digital camera pretty well, can use a whole lot of different software, and stay pretty current with all of it out of necessity.  A few days ago I taught someone how to export a jpeg in a way that helped them serve their Blog, and I don’t think I would have ever thought of myself as someone who had anything like that to offer. Thank you.

For bringing some of the best people I’ve ever met into my everyday life. Every so often The Blog has given birth to someone who has gone on to have a life outside The Blog and in my kitchen, inbox, or on the other end of the phone. Thank you.

For teaching me that not all knitters are nice, and that The Blog is diverse.  Just like there is a certain percentage of every population that is mentally ill in a way that is dangerous to themselves and others, the same can be true of The Blog. Just like there are some people who would hurt me in my real world, there are people in our virtual world who would do the same – and virtual people are real people capable of manifesting in real ways.  I know – that seems like a bizarre thing to be grateful for, but I don’t think I really understood.  I’ve learned to be careful and thoughtful, but not afraid… and I am safer now, and so is my family. Thank you.

For giving me a social safety net almost everywhere I go. The Blog has given me directions, food, beer, help, company and advice when I’ve been on the road, and that has made a difference so many times.  I’m so grateful for what it has meant to have all of you with me virtually, and sometimes literally. Once The Blog turned out to be a doctor once helped me when I was sick and far from home.  Once The Blog was a pharmacist, another time, a lawyer. Once The Blog showed up with a car and rescued me from a situation that was possibly dangerous and definitely scary, and The Blog once scooped me out of the wrong airport in an antiquated Honda, and got me to the right airport after I got my states mixed up and wasn’t going to make it home in time for something important. Once The Blog knew without being told, that I was having one of the worst days of my life, and mystically knew to send me an email that said exactly the right thing.  Once The Blog sent me thousands of messages of comfort when my friend died.  The Blog wished us well after our wedding day. The Blog is powerful, and real and I cannot tell you how many times you have helped me in a thousand big and little ways. From knowing the best vegetarian restaurant in Austin to having a phone number for a knitter/dentist in Australia,  having The Blog everywhere is amazing.  Thank you.

Finally, for giving me a world much bigger and wider than my own could ever  be without you, and your multitude of perspectives and thoughts.  Dear Blog, you mean the world to me.

Thank you for the last eight years. I love you.

In a rare turn of events, yesterday Joe and I were both packing.  Actually, now that I think about it, it wasn’t that unusual for both of us to be packing. What was unusual was that we were packing and going different places.  There was a brief tussle over our limited luggage options which I won using a powerful combination of wit, logic, charm, quick thinking and the time honoured technique of taking off my shirt.  In the end, Joe took one large suitcase, and I took the wee rollerboard for my clothes, and an assortment of other bags and stuff so that I could separate out the supplies for each of the classes this weekend, which I think is very tidy and efficient. 

Standing by the door now is all that I will need for this weekend.  There’s a large bag with all my samples for the class on Sunday, and another large bag with the books that I want to show my students and have them use as reference. I have another bag with notions, post-its and dental floss (one of the classes is a lace class. Dental floss is unexpectedly handy) and my outlines.  I have another bag with about 20 skeins of sample yarn, my knitting belt, my needles and the needles I bring in case a student needs them.  I have a bag with my computer projector and cables so I can show slides, a bag of markers and one of those big conference pads so I can draw pictures. I have my laptop, for the aforementioned slide show, and a copy of my talk tonight printed out and put in a bag with all the handouts. 

Beside that mountain of knitting related stuff, there is the tiny suitcase, which contains my toiletries, three shirts, a sweater, backup pants, socks, underpants and jammies, and I have my purse, which is really my personal knitting bag and has my wallet, a sock in progress, and the baby blanket.

When assessed with a critical eye (and by that I mean "were one to glance in its general direction with one’s eyes open for two seconds") it would be clear that my personal stuff, what I need to with me to function for three days,  is teensy.  It’s absolutely the fact that I’m doing knitter stuff this weekend that has the cargo load catapulted into the stratosphere.  Every knitter I know has a knitting related luggage requirement, and every knitting teacher I know has an insane knitting related luggage requirement.  (We won’t even get into the spinners.  It gets nuts.)
What is piled by the door is just the textile artist equivalent of what a carpenter would need if they were going to have a shelf building workshop.  Wouldn’t there be a pile of wood, three saws, a few books, tools?  The amount of stuff that is going with me (considering that were I not a knitting teacher, my personal needs would fit in one tiny bag) is clearly, absolutely, the product of my profession. 

This, this is what I was trying to say when a male acquaintance stopped by, looked at the mountain of needles, yarn, books, handouts and computer stuff and said  "Wow, It’s really true about women and their packing."

Then suddenly I was trying to say "Dude, it’s not a woman thing.  It’s a working knitter thing, and If I was a male knitting teacher,  this pile would be the same.  You should see what Franklin travels with, and Carson has bags of yarn and a human spine when he leaves to teach. This has nothing at all to do with being a woman.  I don’t have these bags full of makeup and ballgowns… it’s work stuff. See that little bag? That’s my not working stuff. It’s three pairs of panties and some shampoo. There is not a single pair of shoes.  Deciding that I have a lot of stuff because I’m a woman is like saying that you have a lot of free time because you’re a guy, instead of noting that your partner does all the childcare and housework."  I was trying to say all that, but as usual, I couldn’t figure out what to say  in the moment.  I never figure out any response until either 3am or shortly after the offender has left.  I was standing there, mumbling something about "knitting" and "work" and then he said "Well, have fun at your knitting girls weekend" and left, and I couldn’t say anything because my head was exploding.

Here I am, leaving for a speaking engagement and two days of teaching, and all my preparations just got drilled down to the following.

a) Women pack a lot of stuff when they go anywhere
b) Knitting isn’t a job for those who teach it – it’s a girls weekend!

Clearly, my friends, we have much work left to do, but it wasn’t done by me today.  I find it hard to manage misogyny before coffee.

As I agreed with myself yesterday when we had that little talk, I am temporarily closing the mitten factory.  This jag lasted a good long time, and resulted in ten mittens, but only two pairs. 

I couldn’t stop putting them together, working them with little stained glass windows…

and without. 

I had everyone in the family picking their favourite combinations, and the other morning, when Sam designed three colour combinations in five minutes and then asked me if this yarn came in any other colours… I was reassured that it wasn’t just me that found it fun.  (The white one with lime green, fuchsia and turquoise is hers.)

I posed them all over, I took a million pictures of them – and I wrote up the pattern. I’ve called these mittens Cloisoneé, after that decorative metalwork art that puts coloured enamel or gems into little compartments, because that’s what these have looked like to me from the beginning. 

I think they are very good little mittens. They come in three sizes, and the pattern is written for both versions (with little windows, and without.) They take only about 100m of worsted weight for the main colour, and each section of the cuff (there are five) takes less than 8m for the pair.  (I used Cascade 220, but any worsted that makes a fabric you like at 21 stitches to 10cm would work.)

The whole fancy looking cuff is done with one colour at a time, and there’s a photo tutorial for how to do the knit below stitch that get’s you those cool little scallops.

There’s more details here on Ravelry, and you can buy the pattern if you like.  I hope you love them as much as I do, but please be warned.  They’re a little addictive, and it is very hard to make pairs.

PS.  I’m about to say something that accidentally got some people in England very excited  last time I did it, so this time I’m heading it off at the pass.  I’m about to mention London, and the London I’m talking about is in Ontario, Canada.  Not England. 

This weekend I’ll be in London ONTARIO to teach and speak.  While the classes are full, there’s still room in the Friday night talk if you’d like to come.  You can ask after it at Cotton-by-Post if you like. It’s a very good talk about knitting and your brain, and also explains some interesting other things you’ve wondered about.
 

Apologies for the down time there, I meant to write yesterday, but it turned out that I spent the day miserable with a cold, and I couldn’t have given less of a crap that I had a blog. (Try not to take that personally. I didn’t care about much.)  I felt truly craptastic all day, and so I rested and drank buckets of tea (may have slipped a little rum into the last one) and when I did anything at all, I knit on the current baby blanket. 

When I began this project, I charted out a simple garter stitch lace for the centre of the blanket, and set myself a one-repeat-per-day minimum. This, I thought, was a noble and mighty goal that would get this done well before the baby was anywhere near thinking about arriving. When I had breezed through the centre, I would whip off the border, and dash of the edging. Simple.

I was wrong.  One repeat per day is a paltry little dent in the blanket.  One repeat laughs in the face of ever finishing. One repeat matters to this blanket the way that casually mentioning to a teenager that their room is a mess matters, which is to say not very much at all.

I realized as I lay there yesterday gazing hopelessly at the blanket,  that I am going to have to do at least two repeats per day, maybe three, and I guess I have the cold to thank for giving me the time to sit quietly and have that heartless truth revealed to me.  I’m sadly closing the mitten factory, and focusing on the blanket. (I think the mitten pattern will be ready tomorrow, by the way. I’m just agonizing over details.) It’s going to kill me to tidy up the pile of bright yarns and mittens, but I’m determined to be big about it – and I really am happy with the blankie.

I’ll try and get my two (three) repeats of blanket done tonight, but any time I find today is already reserved.  Today is Tuesday, and that means it’s for spinning.  I’ve got some beautiful BFL roving from Red Oak Farm calling me.

(Sorry, no link for that. I got it at Rhinebeck a few years ago, and a quick google didn’t reveal a url that made sense.)  I have no idea yet what I’ll spin it into.  I’m going to sit at the wheel and let it reveal its destiny. 
Surely it knows what it wants.
Hey! Maybe it wants to be mittens!

Yesterday slipped by me, almost entirely. I had coffee, I worked in the morning, I went to yoga, but with those notable exceptions, I slacked off with remarkable aplomb. (As a matter of fact, the only reason I went to yoga at the end of the day was so that I didn’t have to deal with the total guilt of my slothful afternoon.) I’ve been accused by many people over the years, of not really being very good at relaxing.  When we were first together, Joe used to tell me to relax.  We’d sit down in the evening, and he’d stretch out with a movie or a book and just lie there.  Now, that might sound relaxing, but just the thought of it gave me the screaming heebie-jeebies.  I’d pull out my knitting, or my spinning wheel – and put that together with the movie or the book, and Joe would look at me with my work and say "Baby, why can’t you just relax?" and I’d say I was, and he maintained that I had no idea what relaxing was, and that maybe I just didn’t know how to do it. 

This difference means that while I relaxed yesterday afternoon, I had my wheel, I had my knitting, and during what I think of as an afternoon off, an afternoon of complete sloth, I left a broad swath of fibre in my wake.  

Those beautiful singles from the other day got plied, and I’m thrilled and delighted with how it turned out. The singles matched up almost perfectly.

On the way into and out of the main stretches of colour, there’s a little beautiful mingling, and I’m quite taken with the whole thing. The roving was 60% merino, 20% yak, and 20% silk, and each of those lends a different quality to the skein.   The silk gives it a subtle shine and beautiful drape, the yak contributes a little halo and wonderful softness, and the merino brings its characteristic smooshy bounce.  I believed I was spinning this as a gift, but last night I thought of knitting it lengthwise into a scarf, making the most of those stripes. (I’ve not yet decided to keep it.  I’m toying with giving it away but insisting it be knit into a lengthwise scarf, but I’m wondering if that might not be a tiny bit pushy.)

When that was plied and washed and drying, I did my mandatory daily repeat on the baby blanket (details forthcoming) and then had another mitten spasm. 

I’m still a little obsessed with thinking up ways to knit these, they’re so fast and so fun and…

and now that our snow has finally arrived – I see no reason to really stop.  My mitten basket will be properly full when I’m done.  Warm hands for everyone. (Yes, by the way, there will be a pattern, and soon, and thank you for asking for it.)

I’ve almost finished a sock, and I nailed a few rows on the vest and… I think I’m starting to understand why what I think of as a relaxing afternoon doing nothing might be confusing to some. While it has taken me a long time to puzzle it out,  I think now that for a lot of people "relax" means "do nothing" and for me, it means "do what you like." The end result is that people are forever telling me to relax, and I’m forever saying that I already am, and then they’re forever sighing and shaking their heads a little sadly, because I just "don’t know how to relax" and am clearly destined to a lifetime of relentless, exhausting activity.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on this, and I believe now that this is another knitter/maker thing, that people who are makers  have an active relaxation that doesn’t look relaxing to non-knitters – but I suppose it could really be that I only think I’m relaxed but I’m not, so I’m asking around.  Have you been told that you don’t know how to relax?  Has someone told you that you should relax, when you already are relaxing? Do the non-knitter/makers in your life think that relaxing means doing nothing?  Have you heard – while you were already relaxing, that you should work on learning how to do it better?  Do you think you really don’t know how – or do you think they just don’t recognize it the way you do it, because it has no resonance for them? 

I’ll just relax here while you think about it.  I’m doing another mitten.

Spinning.

Technically, those singles are done, and have rested overnight, and now I’m plying a delicious yarn – but it’s still spinning, and I’m so enchanted with it that I’ve given myself a nasty case of Spinner’s Limp from all the treadling, but I still don’t want to stop.

I tore the roving in half lengthwise, and spun each of those in the same direction, so if all goes well (like it sort of hasn’t before) they should match up as I ply, and  I should have a self-striping merino/yak/silk heavy laceweight when I’m done. So far, so good, but usually what happens is that the singles start out matching up, and gradually come unmatched as I move through the bobbins, but hope springs eternal over here, and the suspense is killing me.

Will it work? Will it not?  Only more treadling will tell. 

This morning I sat quietly in the living room with my cup of coffee (my second, if you must know) I looked around at the damage done to my house by this latest round of startitis, and tried to figure out how to put it all back together. Startitis is an insidious disease, because it doesn’t just wreak havoc on your mind and time, but on your surroundings as well.  Out of nowhere came a storm last week, a wave that I saw coming.  The same way that a wave comes at you in the ocean, that’s how this one came, and just like in the ocean, trying to stand there in defiance of it failed miserably.  It was just bigger and stronger than I was, and it knocked me down, dragged me along the bottom of the sea, holding me under with the sound it makes – a scream that sounds like KNIT IT ALL.  I resisted, and that only made things worse.  It would have been over sooner if I’d given up and body surfed that thing into shore. If I’d have given up and just knit, it might not have gotten ugly.  I might have avoided the secondary infection I contracted that said YOU DON’T HAVE ENOUGH YARN MAKE SOME NOW.  I ended up with six new things cast on, and one lot of spinning on the wheel – but that’s not the mess of it.  The mess is the yarn pulled out of storage, examined, swatched and abandoned, along with whatever innocent bystanders I knocked to the floor in my haste. 

The stash room looks like someone sent a troupe of berserk monkeys with wool issues into it – and don’t get me started on what might, or might not have happened to the stash cupboard in my office when some lunatic decided to get out the carder, unpacked it and then abandoned the whole enterprise to root through the sock yarn bags like a boar after truffles.

There is a fleece in the kitchen that I dragged up here to start washing, sometime after midnight on Friday.  (Luckily, I succumbed to fatigue before I got started on that. I was able to see the folly of it after a good night’s sleep.)  I can’t even begin to tell you about the knitting books spilling over the living room floor, and on the dining room table… oh, and I’m stepping over a little mountain of them I piled by my desk. 

There are post-it’s with cryptic knitting plans written on them – one says "g5/1 co92, not stretch anti bobble."  I think that means that the gauge should be 5 stitches to the inch, you would cast on 92, and that I shouldn’t … Hell.  I don’t know.  I just hope that "not stretch anti bobble" doesn’t turn out to be a really important instruction that is totally obvious in two weeks.

Today is for sorting all this out, putting it all back where it should be, and trying to figure out how I might prioritize all of these new projects.  Out of the cowl, mittens, two pairs of socks, vest and baby blanket, what next?  Luckily, today is Tuesday, and with the new year came a renewed commitment to Tuesdays Are For Spinning, so instead of kicking a path through the wool to the wheel, I think I’ll tidy my way there. 

(PS On the wheel is BMFA Merino/Yak/Silk in Oaks Bottom. I’d link, but I think both the fibre and the colourway are out of rotation.)

(PPS.  I think I’ll work on the baby blanket after that, so don’t bother nagging.)

The rampant case of Startitis is beginning to abate, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it is being refined.  One of the two cowls I started didn’t make the cut, a hat was recognized this morning to be a poor idea,  a few swatches are drying, waiting to see if their destiny will manifest.  (One will for sure.  The other has emotional problems I might not want to spend time working through.) My favourite sweater developed a nasty hole over Christmas (I repaired it) and now has another, making me wonder if it isn’t just past its prime, and that triggered an effort to replace it that is now going back into the yarn closet to get a grip on itself.  (I’m resistant to change so it took a few hours for me to remember I could wear another sweater instead of knitting another sweater.) The urge to cast on countless pairs of socks hasn’t quit though, and this morning I went looking for my favourite needles, and couldn’t find them for ages.  Eventually I realized that they were still in a pair of socks from the book tour, back in October.  I hadn’t thought to look for them there because in my head I had finished them.  All that remained was the cast off at the cuff of one sock, and so minutes later, surfacing in a sea of just started things, was a finished thing.

Pattern: Netherfield.  Yarn: Serendipitous Ewe fingering weight, in Silver Shadows.  They’re comfy, and cozy and have an interesting instep – and it’s always those little things that win me over. 

I knit the pattern mostly as written, with the exception of swapping out the toe, because as written, I felt that it resembled a nipple.  (Those of you who know me will know that I am actually quite pro-nipple, so I have no idea why that bothered me so much, but there you have it.)  I looked at a bunch of finished pairs, and nobody’s socks look like they have a nipple-toe once they’re on – so maybe I should have hung in there, but I didn’t. 

I’m wearing them now, and having a little celebration.  It’s a nice way to end Christmas.  I took down the tree, finished a pair of socks,  got back my favourite needles, and now I can take a deep breath and enjoy the feeling of a finished knitted thing –

Which is a pretty good idea, because if I keep feeling the way I’m feeling, it’s going to be a while before I experience it again.

It started to hit me a few days ago.  As the fervor that is Christmas started to die down, and we started to get a little quieter around here, nature filled that vacuum with a crazy feeling.  It began as an urge to poke around the stash a little, a vague sense that I had some really good stuff I might want to look at and cast on.  (I did.)  
The next day it presented itself as a compulsion to wind up about 10 balls of yarn and surf the internet looking at patterns for a while (and cast a few things on, again) – and last night, as I started thinking about heading to knit night, it finally blossomed, full blown, into a crazed case of Startitis, as I started putting three projects (for one evening) into my bag, and then – realizing that didn’t even start to scratch the itch – considered that I was taking a serious risk going to a yarn shop. I tucked another project in, just to look at, thinking that might help, and went.  I managed to (just) buy magazines – and wait until I got back home to cast on. (Again.)  This morning I started something else. (Again.)

I was going to write more about that, but it all started feeling pretty familiar, and then I remembered .  I think this might be a time of year thing.
January of 2011.

I’m at 10 projects and counting.  What is it about January?