Construction

People, I am knitting a mother-loving sweater. I am really doing it! After a little break over the weekend, I felt well rested enough this morning to tackle picking up the stitches for the sleeves. For whatever reason it seemed daunting, I had dreams of sweaters gone badly, but after a few start stops, I am immersed in the miracle of short row shaping. Magick yo. Short rows add depth, making a crescent shape for the cap of the sleeve. There is something amazing about beginning to understand WHY a pattern calls for these techniques. Learning. It's cool.

WIP Wednesday vs Fantasy Knitting Life

Oh my, there is just so much I want to knit. My queue on Rav is over 20 projects, my favorites and library well over 100, but alas, so little time...

For now, I have made awesome progress on Talise, I've split for the armholes, and am working on the back yoke. I did find a bit of errata, but did the mathz and think I have it right.

My Mom's shawl has been a journey... To be polite. I started with Dream in Color's Wisp, and the Haruni pattern. I felt the yarn was too thin and not really showing off the lace. So I frogged, and found some gorgeous alpaca dk. Which has such a glowing halo the lace was lost. Gah! Mom LOVES the Wisp, so I went pattern searching, and think I'm going to make her an Omelet. That goes on needles this weekend.

Lastly is a little portable project, from Never Not Knitting's new collection Botanical Knits. I love each piece in this book, and the photography is worth the cost alone. Just beautiful. I'm working on the twin leaf loop, but, in a theme it seems, I'm not loving the yarn I pulled out if stash for it. I do like the pattern, and this will go into gift stash, but I hate not loving my projects.

I am being lazy and will link tomorrow. Edited to add... IT'S TOMORROW - I linked!

Fair-Isle, a life allegory

Isabella took her first step on her first birthday. She took a single step, fell down, and proceeded to continue just creeping along the furniture for another three weeks, unwilling to let go and risk falling, failing, again.

I am exactly that creature. I refuse to be bad at things. I either do things well, or not at all. If I identify something that I might fail at, I work to practice the component skills, until I can be sure another attempt will be successful. This analysis paralysis, this need for perfection, or excellence at the least can be limiting, but at last I am finding a willingness to try new things again, to risk failure a second time.

As evidenced by stranded knitting. I had always left colorwork to my infinitely talented mother, to scared to try. I knit many things, but none in more than one color. Or big stripes than were a simple change from one color to the next. Five years into my knitting life, pregnant with Bridger, I found an adorable blanket pattern, a baby and mommy elephant, complete with blankets on the elephants that carried four colors. I finished the intarsia portion, with minimal trouble, but failed miserably at the two tiny stranded blankets. That blanket is still in its bag, unfinished. I keep jokingly say that I'll finish it for one of his kids. So for the past five years, I have knit more items, lace, cables, but not color.

Until now. I discovered the Never Not Knitting podcast, and in listening to the archives, followed another knitter's journey into new techniques. She referenced a pattern for a beret, a perfect pattern for knitters new to stranded colorwork. I looked it up, thought it was cute, and propelled by the gauntlet that Mom threw down last month, I decided to look in the stash for appropriate yarn, and cast on. I looked up videos, and got a few clutch tips from the ladies in my knitting group, and actually did it. I did it! And I love it.

Fear can be so limiting. But I have learned that fear is a constant companion in my life, so I will use it as the force to make me leave what is safe, and familiar, and easy for me. It's not brave if I'm not scared, and the rewards of leaving my safe place have proved worthwhile. Maybe I can show my daughter it's ok to fail in the pursuit of learning. Fail, get up, fail better next time.

What I've been up to

Oh hai blog. It's been a couple of months, and here you are. I'd really like to make posting here more than the occasional mental purge from the soapbox. Don't worry, I will stand on my soapbox from time to time, but I'd love to have more of a record of the day to day, particularly as I prepare to move on to the rest of my life.

Oh yes, I said prepare. Eighteen months post separation, I'm still not divorced. It's been frustrating and souls sucking, but I keep walking. It will end.

Medic school - done! State Practical exam - taken! On to clinicals, hopefully starting in march.

Work - so much of getting divorced has been waiting for things to happen to me. This past week I decided to make something happen FOR me. I gave notice at 2 of my part time jobs, and upgraded to full time at the Ambulance Company. I will start my new schedule in march, and have benefits in April. This is huge. I am so happy with this decision.

Life - it moves on. The kids keep me crazy happy content scared whole all the time. The Squish, code for my partner of the past 18 months or so, is still defining all that a partner should be. The ponies have settled into their home and provide me with contentment and an empty bank account each day. I knit a lot lately - stress relief I guess. It's ski season, and I sometimes wish I could just have a weekend to catch up at home, but I know nothing else. So we go.

Here are some photos of the past while...

December photo project #1

This is one of the few things I will gift knit this year... Grand plans, life interruptions, but next year, next year I start the gifts in January.

I love this cowl. Beautiful squishy yarn, evergreen Christmas tree hue, but summer leaves climbing. Juxtaposition.

Wear my love

I am knitting furiously for my little man. He has been asking for fingerless mitts for quite sometime, anxiously wanting a pair like mine and his big sissy's. I want to finish them, give him another piece of my intention, whispered prayers, my heart wrapped around those little fingers. I want to give them pieces of me to keep them warm and safe. To serve as tangible reminders of what my love is.

WiP Wednesday

Disclaimer: I have many, many works in progress in my stash cabinet. They don't count. Really. When I reorganize, Ravel, and move my stash into the living room, I intend to find each abandoned project and *finish them*. Really.

For now though, my "home" project is this lovely hoodie from KnitPicks. The yarn is soft, and smooshy - I think it's the country tweed, DK weight.

I love the detail in the cuff and waist, adds a little interest to an otherwise plain easy knit. Can. Not. Wait. To. Wear. This. Because it's for me!

And the "to go" project, baby cable ribbed socks for Bridger. I'm using the recipe from the Terrific Toe-Up Socks book, but winging the numbers. Already I think I needed the toe to start with 2 more stitches, so it could be broader. It's a little nipplesque at the moment.

Thankfully I have to make two, so I can experiment. Oh, and baby cables? Genius. So easy. My mom uses them as a design detail a lot, but I never knew how to do it. Thank you YouTube. Stupid-easy. Score!

Maybe, just maybe, I'll make next week's WiP Wednesday a 'coming out of the closet', and get all those unfinished lovelies out. Because the only way to solve a problem is to get a good look at it first, right?

Finished Object Friday!

*drumroll please* 

Aren't they PRETTY!!!???!!!

Squee, Swoon, all I want to do now is knit a lot of socks...

My very first pair of socks!! *SQUEE!* I used a faux cable pattern from "Terrific Toe-Up Socks" (I love the instructions in that book, but the title makes me think of nails on chalkboard.) I used Alpaca Socks, from Classic Elite (I think?) - it so so soft and squishy. Love. Love. Love.

The only thing I don't LOVE about toe up construction is the ninja star of death (pictured below) that is the first 20 or so rows. It's making me think about figuring out this magic loop thing. But hey, knitting socks was on my to-do list for this year, and the year is not even half done! What's one more scary thing to conquer...

ninjadeathstar *shudder*

So I was tired and punchy last night, and as they were drying it occurred to me that they look like a mustache sitting on the sill...

She Loves Them, which makes me so freaking happy.

Returning

How things have changed in six months, and my, how they are still the same.

Divorce is a long, ugly, painful process. I am still getting divorced. It is a soul-sucking process. Some days I wake up and marvel that there is still any light in my being. But then I think that fire is a purifying element. I am walking through hell, and will emerge stronger, distilled, free. Even this, as awful as it is, is better than what I was living in for years.

But I don't want this space to only be tears and woe. I am multifaceted, and there is much joy and beauty in my daily life. So I will still post about food and knitting and yoga and school (I am finally back in school - my life on my terms!!) and kids and politics and triumphantly crow from this soapbox.

So pull up a chair, let's brew a pot of tea and chat. Welcome back.

Knitting in a Wii World

I think at this point if you don't have a Wii, you know someone who does. With your Wii you can do virtually anything. I like to throw myself off big mountains in the Wii Skii, but not really. So many of us 'talk' to each other on Facebook or Twitter, but it's not real conversation. This blog, the blogosphere, communities, that are real, but they aren't, too. In this world of things that are, but not really, I cling to my illusions of being something real, doing things that are real, embodied in my yarn.

I am a yarn crack whore. Total addict. It's BAD... I just love yarn. I'm certainly partial to wool, but any natural fiber will do. I rarely make it out of a yarn store with empty hands. I have a whole stretch of cabinets to hold the stash, and countless works-in-progress. That's been something I'm working on, a growing edge if you will, actually finishing a project before I cheat on it with some new, softer, knubblier ball of yarn. With my knitter's ADD I've learned to keep to small projects, that give quicker satisfaction, like hats, mittens, or baby gear. Although I swear I'll finish Bridger's baby blanket before he goes to college. Or at least by the time his first child is born.

But beyond the yarn fetish, the physical and spiritual act of knitting is a healing salve for my high-idle self. It forces me to sit, become the process, and enter a quiet space. The actions ofthe needles are quite like the sat-nam in meditation, just the simple quiet focus of breath, or yarn.

As with cooking I find knitting for others to be a nurturing act. I can literally wrap the intended recipient in my love, carried in each stitch.

But even more than any of this I cling to the realness of my yarn. With a strand I can make something of nothing. Knitting is truly alchemy. A series of loops, with a single knot at the beginning. And broken down even further, there is only one stitch - as knits and purls are simply the reverse of each other. A knit garment is a fraud, a shape-shifter. Yet with that ethereal nothingness a myriad of things can be created, things I can feel, touch, breathe into, wear.

Sometimes I question my version of this world. I know that I can look at an object, and call it blue, and someone else may do the same, but does it look the same to them? Is everything I believe to be true experienced by others? Big questions... so overwhelming. So I sit down with my yarn, and make a tangible hold on the world.

Bridger modeling my very first original design: