KnitCrush

And Another One

That's my completed Multnomah, photos courtesy of Wee Jack of the Broken Leg (for the second time, thankyoueversomuch). I'm going to try my darnedest to NOT go into the details of The Broken Leg here, because the circumstances are ugly and just plain WRONG and I'm still very, very angry about it--not with Wee Jack, but with the person(s) responsible. Angry doesn't really begin to cover it.

ANYWAY... because of the broken leg and the circumstances surrounding it, I haven't been sleeping well at all. The up-side to Insomnia is bleary-eyed knitting time, which lead to finishing Multnomah. That's two balls of Jojoland Melody Superwash Sock Yarn, color MS14, on US size 4 circs. Toward the end of the feather & fan section I briefly considered flinging it against the wall rather than knit one more repeat, but I resisted that tantalizing temptation and pushed on through, bound it off, and pinned it out to block. I haven't stuck that many pins into my living room carpet in a long time!

Finishing feels good. Wearing feels even better. I am very, very much a Process Knitter, so I don't completely finish things right away very often. I am in deep, crazy love with the Shawlette, because it provides me the warm coziness of a scarf without all of the bulk from wrapping it 'round & 'round. So in love, in fact, that there are two more on the needles.

One is in this lovely, sproingy Cherry Tree Hill semi-solid sock yarn. In true self-persecutorial nature, I decided this yarn would look fabulous in a feather & fan shawlette pattern (see comments above regarding the near wall-banging of the feather & fan Multnomah edging). Silly, I know, afer I just finished what felt like the neverending f&f. This is, I think, the fourth attempt at a project with this yarn, and I'm hoping this one sticks.

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And this... oh, this one. (Gleefully insert lustful giggle here.) It took every ounce of discipline I had to make myself put this stuff away last night and try to sleep rather than stay up all night knitting with it. That's the massive, snuggly, wooly-silk goodness called Mushishi--451 yards in one hank, baby.  Unfortunately, my ball winder simply can't accommodate that much yardage, so I had to break it into 2-1/2 balls. Yes, it's becoming a shawl(ette), too. I'm just going to knit until I run out & make up the pattern as I go along. Worsted weight on US size 9 needles, simply flying along.

Yep, That's Right.

I finished something. Really. No, I know, the shock of it all is, well, shocking. I haven't finished anything for ages, not knitting-wise, at least. I pulled this poor thing out of one of the project bags last night and decided that it didn't need a lace edging after all. I like the colors, and they are enough. A wee simple garter stitch shawl/scarf, knit in sock yarn on size US 7 needles, and just big enough to wear with the point in front, tucked in to my jacket, and wrapped around my neck. I'm tickled!

Blocking it has reminded me of my need for blocking wires. The blocking is atrocious, plain and simple. But it's wearable, and I'm extremely happy. The yarn bloomed beautifully, and the garter stitch makes it feel especially sprunchy-soft.
(Details: Jojoland Melody Superwash, 1 ball. US size 7 circular KnitPicks Options needles. Lots of garter stitch.)

A Bit Concerned

Do any knitters out there have as many UFOs sitting around as I do? It's shameful, really, the number of projects I have lurking about half-finished. Some of them I simply lost interest in or decided the yarn & pattern aren't harmonizing to my liking. Some of them require that I follow a chart, and I haven't had the attention span or time for that lately. Others, however, have me a bit concerned.

I have several socks started that I seem physically unable to complete. I have tried; one evening I tried one sock, put it down & tried another, then put that one away & tried to start Matt's socks. It isn't a lack of interest or dislike of the yarns; the issue is becoming more worrisome. It's my hands.

My hands won't manipulate the tiny needles & thin yarn. The two socks I've repeatedly tried to work on are on US size 1 double-points. One is a 3x2 rib, and the other is plain vanilla stockinette. Even with fierce concentration, my hands won't do it, for either sock. I even tried moving the plain vanilla onto a long circular needle to Magic Loop it instead, thinking that maybe I was just tired & therefore struggling with the dpns a bit. Magic Loop didn't fix the issue either. I tried casting on Matt's socks both on dpns and the long circular needle, and I could barely make my hands get the join started, followed by a slowly tortuous single round.

What's going on with me? I grabbed some worsted weight wool & a pair of size 8s yesterday to start a plain garter-with-lace-edge shawlette, and that seems to be going fine. But just now I again put those three socks away in sheer frustration because my hands won't go.

Maybe I'm just tired.

Oh, My. Just So Much.

Well. I haven't been around these parts for ages. Eons. Too Long.

What happened to me? Again... well. It's not so much what happened to me, it's what's been going on with everyone around me. I'm pretty much just along for the ride.

The kids went back to school, obviously (two months ago, but it doesn't seem like that long). School schedules, Open Houses, homework, you know the drill. Matt has begun college, which is a massive change for all of us, but in a positive way. I went from part- to full-time at work, a hugely welcome change that creates some chaos on the homefront but makes the checkbook feel good. You know, it makes me feel good, too. I feel like I've found A Place.

And then, one by one, people in this house started getting sick. Slowly but surely, over the last three weeks, we've been dropping like flies. Just as soon as one person is almost better, another one is ill. We've all become great handwashers, I have that to say for it.

I haven't been knitting a whole ton (full-time hours=fewer knitting hours). I'm almost done with Multnomah. OK, I'm almost done with the first one. I started a second one today. Shush, don't judge me. I couldn't help it.

I also made a wee pit stop last week at the LYS and found some beautiful sock yarn. So, another triangular shawl. Again, I couldn't help it. This one is just a wing-it type of deal, making it up as I go along. It's Cascade Heritage Handpaints, Color 9931, on US 5 circs.

Really, that's about it. I'm resisting the urge to hit the LYS again today (so not necessary). I do, however, get to go see Miss Jesica for a haircut tomorrow. Wee!

35

And here it is. This day that I've been quietly dreading, way back in the recesses of my consciousness. It's my birthday, I feel quite old, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

I'm 35 today, and for some reason it feels like the crest of the hill. I realize that I'll probably feel this way, only moreso, at 40, & I'll probably think that feeling this way over 35 was silly when I look back at it, but this is how I feel right now, so there you go.

It's been a rather odd ride. I haven't been "through it all," by a long shot, but I've been through a lot that I never thought I would go through. Did you do that, too-- have plans for your life that went all wonky, much to your surprise, even though you were there?

I've done things about which I am not proud. I've also done things that leave me with a deep feeling of satisfaction & accomplishment.

I've hurt someone's heart (I've learned that whether it was intentional or not really has no bearing on the situation). I've had my heart hurt as well.

I've made decisions that altered the course of my life that didn't seem like huge decisions at the time they were made. I've had decisions made for me that made me feel small & unimportant, and I took those situations and grew a backbone.

I've tried several new things. At some of them, I failed to a despairing degree. At others, I failed to a hilarious degree. And, at a few, I've excelled.

I've learned how much I enjoy Alone Time, a real epiphany for me. I also found my home-away-from-home, far from my actual home, in a place I'd never heard of let alone ever thought of visiting. Some days I miss Orkney to a startling extent.

I made a family, tried my damndest to hold that family together, and finally let go of the idea of that family for the sake of my boys. In the end, I was the only one clinging to it, & it truly was no longer a family, just a shadow of What Could've Been. Now we've made a new family, which I never thought would happen.

I am blessed to be surrounded by loving family & friends, and I hope that I can be but a fraction of the loving support & kindness that they have all been to me.

Maybe 35 isn't so bad. I've been looking at it as "my life's half-over," an Eeyore-like mood that just isn't like me. Maybe as long as you love on those around you as much as you possibly can, you've done the best possible thing you can do with your existence.

(There. From Eeyore to Pollyanna. Much better.)

The Concept of @

For years, I was a huge Franklin Covey fan. I lived out of my planner. I mapped out all sorts of goals, projects, to-do lists, and color-coded my calendar. My planner was my surrogate brain.

Getting my BlackBerry has opened my eyes to a whole new world of organization & planning. While browsing around one of the App Stores, I came across Evernote, & promptly fell in love. I love being able to get to any info I've saved in Evernote from anywhere. I adore the concept of being able to take a picture and save it straight to Evernote. I have an especially huge crush on Evernote's image recognition software, which allows you to search all of your notes by keywords, including text in images. Now that, my friends, is freaking smart.

Finding Evernote led me to, of course, the Evernote Podcast. In Episode #2, the Evernote Guys talked about GTD ("Getting Things Done"). Be still my beating heart. This is like Franklin Covey on steroids. "Stress-Free Productivity"...  that phrase alone is priceless to a woman with six children who works and is trying to get a design business going. Oh, and who would, by the way, like to have a Life. Here's another great one: "Our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax." Ahhh. I'm so in love.

Getting Things Done by David Allen gives you a beautifully simple way to streamline your organization process without losing anything in the cracks. When done correctly, there are no cracks. I can't expound on it as much as I'd like to because I'm not done with the book yet; however, there's a wealth of information available at the GTD website and on individual blogs of others who organize their lives this way.

This all leads me to the concept of @. GTD works with how your brain is wired. When you see something that inspires you, get an idea out of the blue, or suddenly remember something that you need to get done, it weighs down your thought process just a little bit. All of those little bits add up to a lot of weight on our very human brains. Just the first step in GTD alone, Collecting, takes all of that mass off of your brain, allowing you to use your mind in a much more productive manner.

Additionally, our minds love a sense of Place. Many people who create with their hands (say, knitting a blanket), will remember what movie they watched or what road trip they were on while they knit said blanket. Organizing with respect to Context eases the brain strain of remembering every last random thing. This blog post covers this idea very well. As humans, most of us remember things in Context. Keeping lists in order of Context rather than in one randomly-filled Task list keeps your mind less cluttered. For example, I have an @Store list (my lists are all in Evernote, of course). Anything I randomly think of that I have to grab while I'm at the grocery store gets thrown into the @Store note in my Collect Notebook in Evernote. That way, if I happen to make a last-minute pit stop at the store (especially if it's late at night, after work, when I don't have a ready-made shopping list with me), I won't forget anything. I can open Evernote on the BlackBerry, search for @Store, and pull up the list of items we need. Fewer trips to purchase random, forgotten items makes a very happy Mom.

I haven't finished the GTD book yet, but I have loved it so far. It was time for a change for me; having a single, seemingly exponentially-growing Task checklist on my BlackBerry made me feel like I couldn't keep up. Organizing by Context  and throwing every random Thing into the Collect notebook (which I recently moved off of my BlackBerry & into Evernote instead), assures that I won't miss much or become overwhelmed. How can you NOT love that?

Mish-Mash & Meaning

How do designers do it? How do they actually get patterns designed, charted, written, and knit? I have a plethora of designs ready to go. I get an idea, get all crazy-excited, chart it all out (even on-the-go--hello, BlackBerry!), and then hunt for stash yarn with which to knit. In that initial excitement, I really do believe that "I'll just get this one started," then I'll go back to the one that's half-knit. I harbor this fear that, if I don't at least get a swatch knit right away for a new idea, I'll forget some important detail & have to trash the whole thing. This is why there are many, many, many unfinished design projects just lying about the house, looking forlorn.

I did start something this weekend that is not my own design, because there have been so many ideas flying around up there that I needed a little mental vacation. I realize this doesn't get any of the design work done. Shush. It's minimal-thought, short-row, garter stitch, cotton lovliness, and the only thinking I have to do is follow someone else's pattern--brilliant! Shawl That Jazz is exactly what I needed. Again, colors make me so silly-happy. (This is the second attempt, because you all know that I must cast everything on twice. The first attempt was in a worsted wool, and I hadn't adjusted the pattern numbers for the increase in yarn weight. I realized this about four rows in to the pattern and promptly pulled the needles out. Jenna & I stretched the resulting piece of knitting almost all the way across the living room. Ahem.)

Oh, want a cool BlackBerry tip? I think I read about this at Crackberry, but didn't realize its full potential until I started playing around with it. If you go into Options-->AutoText, you will see a whopping list of words that the BB will automatically fix if you mistype them. You can leave apostrophes out of contractions and BB will put them in for you (for the most part). You can also add to this list. For example, I have one email template saved on the laptop that answers all of the general questions regarding our fall registration for AYSO. Whenever I get an email asking some of those questions, I send that template email as a response; that way, I don't have to type the same email over & over again.

If you push the Menu button while you're in AutoText, and select New, you can add whatever little shortcut you want to the menu. Type what you want the shortcut to be, scroll down, then type in as much text as you need. Now, every time I type "fall09" in response to an email, it automatically inserts that whole form letter for me. Awesome.

I also had some thoughts on the last RadioLab Short, but I think I'll save those for now. Darwin & Richard Dawkins, and the purpose of flowers.

Peek-A-Boo!

I see you! This is what results from trying to sneak a picture of My-Only-Hunter-In-The-Whole-World. He catches me every time, no matter how sneaky I think I'm being. He's like a neen-ja. (I love the funky green of his eyes; they've been ever-so-slowly changing from blue to green for years now.)

While I was trying to sneak a picture of him, I was working with this. It's luscious Misti Alpaca Handpaint Lace. At the time, it wasn't too humid outside to work with it; in the intervening days, it has alternately been great to work with or too-sticky-in-the-humidity to work with. I have fiddled with this yarn from almost a year, never happy with the stitch patterns I cyphered out for it. Now, I've come up with something dandy. (Yes, I said "dandy." Why? Because the colors of this yarn remind me of fields of wheat, of the Plains, and of Little House on the Prairie. And "dandy" fits that, I think.)

The deal-breaker (thank you, Liz Lemmon) with this yarn? The needles. Matt gave me the Knit Picks Options set of needles for Christmas a few years ago, and I also have several sets of Addi Turbo circs. I had started this on some Addi Turbos, but they were just a smidge too blunt--and I do mean "smidge." There is only the most miniscule difference in the pointiness of the Addis versus the Options in this small needle size, but it has made a massive difference. The double-decreases aren't sliding away from the tips of the Options like they did the tips of the Addis, which was really irritating me. See that? Addi Turbos on the top/left, Options on the bottom/right. Squint, really hard, and you can maybe see the microscopic difference in pointiness that kept me from chucking the whole thing into the garbage bin.

Stocha-what?

Stochasticity. My new favorite word.

Do you listen to RadioLab? If not, go now, I'll still be here when you get back.

Did you look? Cool, isn't it? I've been listening to the RadioLab Podcast for, I don't know, maybe a year or so now, and I have loved every single one of them. Some tiny fact or observation from each episode makes me think, really hard, about something I've never noticed, or known, before.

This current episode was entitled "Stochasticity," which is even more fun to say than "prodigious" and "troglodyte," if you ask me. It kind of slides off your tongue. It means "randomness," which was the subject of this last episode.

While I found the story of the girls & the balloon whimsical, and the story of the woman with the gambling addiction crushingly sad, something about the story about the E.coli left me simply amazed.

Genes produce proteins, which in turn make up the things that make us Go. Protein production is The Fundamental Process within any living organism. Until recently, we had no concept of how genes produced proteins; we assumed that it was a smooth, highly-polished process. It must be an almost perfect process, right? I mean, it's been taking place for, well, forever, and look at what it has yielded! Every creature, every Thing we could define as "living," houses this process within itself, is sustained by this process. EveryThing.The complexity and diversity of life on this planet is absolutely astounding, and we have always made this assumption that the most basic function that occurs within all living things must be nearly perfectly streamlined in order for anything to survive, let alone even to live in the first place. 

Genes everywhere have been snickering behind our backs, because we couldn't have been more wrong.

As it turns out, protein production is a halting, herky-jerky process that barely manages to successfully get the job done. At the most basic level of our being, we are all a disorganized, haphazard mess. So is your spouse, your child, and your great-aunt Harriet.

And yet here I sit, a functioning being, with a heart that beats, lungs that breathe, and a boggling plethora of biochemical processes that continue to chug away within this amazing machine that, at its tiniest, simplest level, is just short of a trainwreck.

How you choose to wrap your head around such information is completely up to you. The shock of learning that this body that you desperately need to properly function is based on some half-assed process may consume you and leave you paranoid. You may hear this news and brush it off with a slight "uh, whatever," because it doesn't really interest you.

Personally, I take solace in it.

If all of existence is dependent on a process this screwed up and undependable, well, then, isn't anything fixable? We all make mistakes, and sometimes they are huge. But if the very thing that makes us Go is a noisy mess, and yet it still manages to produce the mind-blowing complexity and diversity of life on this planet, then anything can work if we just muck through.

(Besides, now you have a great excuse for when you've failed to follow through on something, regardless of the reason: "Hey, get off my back. My proteins don't even get made correctly half the time, so you shouldn't be surprised.")

Finding the Time

It can be so difficult, sometimes, to find the time to get things done. Not the ordinary things, like cooking, cleaning, and running errands--those things get done because they have to be done. It's the knitting things, My things, that get pushed aside. Please don't misunderstand me--I don't have a huge issue with this; I fully grasp the fact that we have a lot of kids and opposite work schedules, and that's all fine. But when the ideas start to pile up in my head and I can't get to all of them, it makes me feel a bit unproductive.Ideas for patterns float around in my spacious brain all the time, but I don't think I'll ever have the time to get them all knit up.

I have charted out many lace shawls and stoles(I absolutely love doing the charts--flying that geek flag proudly!), but I don't think the knitting will ever get done. I work on things here & there in little stolen moments that don't seem to amount to a whole lot, especially in laceweight.

Take this sweet little bit of lace. It's Misti International Handpaint Laceweight (forgive me, I don't remember the color--I want to call it Foxglove for some reason, though). This poor yarn has tried to be several different things, but not one pattern fit it just right. I thought maybe a scarf instead of a wrap, because maybe I can feel more productive with fewer repeats per sitting. That bit there is the result of some scattered minutes of knitting yesterday.

And then these things happen, which irritate me to no end but are seemingly unavoidable. That, friends, is the result of casting on 256 stitches to knit a stole sideways so that the subtle striping runs the length of the stole. Over several days, I got about 5 long rows done. I left it at the side of my desk while I made supper the other night; when I had finished cleaning up, I found my poor, abused tiny-beginning-of-a-stole with about 30 stitches dropped off of the needles. A few of the boys had been using my laptop and had lain all over the desk, undoing all of those stitches. I tried to salvage it, I did, but it was too far gone. Oh, well.

(If only I could find a job just charting the lace. Then I would be so very happy.)