PS(K)A: The Dark Arts

With a bit of liquid courage firmly in hand, I tackled the surgery on my moebius strip which was meant to be a sweater.

First, I basted the stitches with a bit of white thread...


Then I crocheted up one side and down the other.



Here's the finished lines of crochet. This took about 30 minutes.



My first cut. If it hadn't been for the beer, I don't know that I'd have survived this...



...but soon I got into the swing of things, and here she is with the whole cut done. At the top of the steek, before starting to crochet down the second side of the seam, one must chain a few stitches in between - that's the purple bit which is holding it together.


Flip the offending section around, "and awaaaaaaaaaaay we go!"

I found these instructions in Meg Swansen's Knitting, but you can see them at Schoolhouse Press' web page. Thank you, Mrs. Meg!!!

Coolest.GWP.Ever

GWP, for those of you not into unecessary TLAs, is Gift With Purchase. That's right boys and girls,
Southwest Trading Company is giving away free knitting needles with the purchase of 6 or more skeins of Karaoke (which, BTW, is totally scrumptious). I love this deal.

Like shooting (sheep?) in a barrel

Seriously. Go play this one.
Hee.

Happiness is...

Cute pups...


New yarn ...


A lovely wedding gift from Far Away Friends...


Some more new yarn...


A newly shorn husband to annoy with one's digital camera...


And did I mention new yarn?

Happiness is not, however, discovering that one has - yet AGAIN - created a moebius strip while knitting in the round:




We will see whether, in my few days off, I am brave enough to surgically correct this ...

Closely Knit

The change of seasons is slowly approaching here in Minnesota.
Night is slowly becoming dominant again - sunset happens closer to seven o'clock than to nine, as it did just a few weeks ago. And those nights are sharply cooler of late: temps in the 60s and low 70s are appearing with regularity.

I'm feeling nostalgic for the summer, though I'm not entirely sure why. I haven't had a lazy, easy summer since I was 17, just before I began college. My school started late, so all of my friends were gone and I was a bit at loose ends. Everyday that I had to wait was an agony: I longed to get out: out of town, out of childhood, out of the life which no longer suited me.
I was desperate, anxiously searching for the woman I would become.

Some fifteen years later, I look back on that period with amusement, and a good deal of longing. Often, I wish for exactly the sort of loosely structured days that I had then. I would fill them with listening to music and learning to create art and making my own stock and clarifying consomme and making proper crepes and learning to chop efficiently and baking from scratch and creating perfect order in my home and and and...
and of course, knitting. Always, always, knitting.

I spent much of that lazy summer knitting. I read everything I could get my hands on about knitting, and spent every dime I made at my first yarn shop. I loved that place and spent every second I could in there. It's where I learned to tell fibers apart by feel (and very nearly just by looking), where I bought yarn for my first sweater (made with a hot pink & black nubbly yarn -- oh, the 80s -- that nearly killed me in the knitting) and where I discovered the yarns that are my favorites to this day. I still visit whenever I can. Even now, having experienced all sorts of shops and knitting expos, this place still has a hold on my heart. All these years later, it is the same experience: my heart lifts as I enter the door, my eyes are dazzled by the gorgeous array of colors, and my hands start to itch in anticpation of touching all the gorgeous yarns they offer.

There is no shortage of lovely yarn and shops in my adopted hometown, and even if there were, catalogs and the Internet could easily satisfy my yarn needs. So i've no logical need to return again and again. But I do. Like a homing pigeon that needs to return to its nest, I keep coming back.
I go back because it connects me with the girl I once was. A girl, nervous and uncertain about her future, but desperately rushing forward to claim it. Who took with her into that future an incredible curiosity and a need to create -- both of which have followed me throughout the seasons of my life.

As this new season creeps in, subtly charging the air with anticipation and reminding me of my summer of desire, I feel a need to honor that summer. To make space in my life for creativity. To make room for the woman to once again be a girl, willing be a student, to not know the answers, but ready to find them.

Top Secret

Can someone tell me why the universe will not let me be bad?

I was feeling a little down in the dumps, so I decided to engage in a bit of yarny retail therapy.
Couldn't find a single thing I wanted, though I found some lovely things for my Secret Pal, which I will send off shortly.

Then I decided, after finishing the corset, to start on my Christmas gift knitting. (Yeah, I know. I'm uptight and freakish. Tell me something new already.) So I spent a bit of time sussing out neat patterns for my loved ones, and making a list of the neat patterns and relatives and trying to match them up, when I came upon Jenna's beautiful pattern, which is exactly the right thing to add to said list.

Can't post about this, since the potential recipient(s) of said gifties are likely to be exposed to the blog, but do know that one or more of these gifts involves merino. Like supremely soft, delicious to the touch, not too sweaty to cart around merino in colors I absolutely love.

Sigh. I've been a little selfish with the knitting of late, and this is the one time of year I will willingly change that.

Pholph's Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 58. What is your score? Get it here.

Thanks to Enchanting Juno for this link...