knitting makes me brave(r)

I have been AWOL but not at all forgetting about blogging. In fact, I've been out field-tripping at LYS's in two different states!

Last week, I went to Oceanside, California, for a work trip. The brave(r) part is this: I have a lifelong fear of getting lost. Knowing I was going to be in an unfamiliar locale, navigating on my own in a rental car (not a common occurence in my only moderately work-traveled life), had me nervous about getting lost but very determined.

Fear makes me mad--I recognize it as a sign of "big growth ahead," so I get very focused on conquering it. But something was different this time: MapQuest (thank you, internet gods! for this brilliant invention), and yarn. I knew there were several yarn stores in the area, and that made me really want to go exploring. That made the idea of conquering my fear of getting lost even more interesting and compelling.

It was an amazing trip--whenever I step up to meet fear, my life expands beautifully. The training I was attending was brilliant and life-changing. I stayed by the ocean in a charming little hotel, had cappucinos each evening, spent an endless evening in Barnes & Noble just browsing whatever came to my attention, ate delicious Armenian food, and slept in a giant big fluffy bed. And went to three LYS: Noble Knits, Common Threads, and The Black Sheep. Surprisingly, I walked away with only a moderate stashing:

Sometimes the journey is more important than the product. I went focused on finding something for a knit project, and the only thing that really spoke to me was this quirky, youthful, bohemian crochet scarf. Though I bought the hook to begin the project, I instead got immersed in Wicked and spent almost no time working crochet or the two pairs of socks on the sticks I brought. Go figure.

I had one day at home, and then I was off again, for another work trip to Portland, Oregon. I had enough time after the drive to explore three yarn shops in a very efficient, cruise-the-stacks-in-15-minutes fashion. Here's what I walked away with (aren't packages like this enticing?)

Some of it was stash from Knitting Bee in Beaverton:

I was on the hunt for Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock, and they didn't have any. Though I love this Mountain Colors colorway, I have no idea why I bought it (translation: no project in mind). It has mohair in it, which generally makes me itch a little bit.

They did have a Fair Isle felted bag class that I wish I'd registered for (or at least bought the patterns), and another pattern book that I can't remember now--some Scandinavian name. I bought the Mission Falls book because I really liked the pattern ideas, but not one of them comes in my size. Knitting Bee looks like a great shop, but I don't think it's destined to become one of my favorites.

Yarn Garden up next. I only had 15-20 minutes for this browse. I didn't buy anything, though I found it impressive, and would love to go and spend time knitting away in their sipperie.

On a whim, I called knit/purl at 5 p.m. to find (hallelujah!) they were open until 6. I dashed over and spent the next 40 minutes debating, while their staff rearranged the Koigu/Lorna's Laces wall. Lesson: when you find yarn you like, don't walk away. When I was there in February, they had gobs of Socks that Rock, a whole wall full of delicious merino color. Now they had it pushed away in a small cubby--either because they were running low or because they're deliberately making more room for Koigu/Lorna's Laces. I grieved, then bought a hank of STR in the colorway closest to Pebble Beach that I could find. I also decided I needed to make their twirly mohair ruffly scarf in deep true-red. Things I walked away from (which I may or may not regret): the giant yardaged hank of natural tan alpaca for a scarf for Paul (newly moving to Cleveland), and the kit for Color on Color from Scarf Style. I just really like knit/purl--they have all the good stuff, their shop is modern and inviting, their staff is knowledgable and nice, and they get that the details (like the beautiful pearl-blue logo stickers they use to seal the packages and on their bags) matter.

The last yarn shop trip was another new and great little Portland shop, Lint. I'd been noodling the idea of making a felted bag, and they showed me the one Leigh Radford (a Portland resident and one of their teachers) had in IWK Spring 2006 issue. Their shop sample was in a great pink/brown combo, so--with the help of my colleagues who'd come along--I snapped up some Lamb's Pride, Manos, and Classic Elite Montera, ready to make the tote. I'm wishing that I'd chosen ice blue, green, and salmon to go on the brown background instead of the pinks, but the shop sample was gorgeous.

Now when will I have time to knit all this lusciousness?

Stashing is fun. I'm not allowed to go to yarn shops for a good, long time.

playing catch-up

I have been a bad knitblogger. No knit pictures in a couple of weeks, so here's an update on Koigu lacy scallops: one heel turned and, for the moment, off the (same) sticks. Sigh. I am such a tortoise.

And, while I have not been stashing, I haven't been entirely sin-free in the knitbuying department. Here's my enrollment package from the Crafter's Choice book club. Not entirely knitting books (I have one more coming, but I'm not sure whether to order the dyeing book or Mason-Dixon Knitting), but the surely if I'm making 30-minute meals, I'll have more time for knitting?

I'm not yet facing the fact that I don't have enough years left to knit all the stitches for which I have patterns.

[ed, note: when you are blogging with one hand because your lazy puppy is snoozing in the other arm, he still looks snootily at you if the typing key noise disturbs him. Ingrate.]

We've been having weird March weather. I recently woke up to this:

All the better for sitting and knitting.

I encountered a hilarious blog today: dachshunds galore!!! These little critters seem to have some traits in common: blankie tangling (now that I type that, it sounds kinda dirty), circus-doggie, draping themselves languidly across humans.

have you been sorted?

this was kind of fun.

be sorted @ nimbo.net

It is amazing where you'll find yourself in the blogworld. This morning, all in advance of doing my morning pages, I've been to Wil Wheaton's clown sweater blog post, redlipstick, and Malcolm Gladwell's blog, the New York fashion show slideshows looking at french fry dresses. All from links in knitbloggers' posts. And because it was so random, I didn't even note URL's for links. It's like six degrees of separation. . .But I can tell you, I almost always start at zeneedle. It's a psychological thing--I love to see the Utah mountains in her posts. It always feels like home.

One place it didn't feel like home was in last night's premiere of Big Love, HBO's new series about a modern Utah polygamist family. The characters were saying all the right words, "prophet," "Relief Society," "mission," "time and all eternity," but they just didn't sound right. I think it might be the regional accent that's missing: they just don't sound like Utahns. Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin don't have that flat, willing wife drawl.

I watched on A&E a couple of weeks ago a show about polygamist cults (yes, as distinct from the main cult), and some of the men just looked like sex-fiend mountain men, but one of them definitely had the cadence, tone, timbre of official Mormondom down. It has just been since I was an adult that I've recognized that all the Mormon apostles have the same speech patterns and tones, and been smart enough to wonder, hmm, I wonder who their speech coach is. Because they don't come out of their farm team pulpits sounding like that. But as far as the show goes, I'll suspend disbelief because of the views of the mountains and the desert. I liked the comment on the show's bulletin board: "It seems to me that postmodern Hollywood types trying to do a program that accurately portrays Mormonism would be like an illiterate blind man trying to read Proust." Amen. It certainly would've been more interesting, instead of portraying the wives as one-dimensional sex fiends, to explore the much more (likely and) complicated and complex issue of faith and religious power as a duck blind for sex fiendishness.

As strange as polygamy is, it is the true legacy of the origins of the modern Mormon church. I think the true crime is that modern Mormonism sanitizes its history to earn legitimacy. Isn't it convenient that, as soon as it was clear Utah wouldn't become a state while polygamy was sanctioned by the church, um God revealed "oops, I was just kidding"? It was a freakin' administrative decision--why couldn't they just call it that? Well, I suppose because they had to convince those that they'd convinced in the first place by telling them it was a divine revelation, and not just Joseph Smith being an adolescent wanker.

good luck, friends!

Today's non-knitting post is in tribute to our friends who shall be known as the "triple L's." They flew off to a recruiting trip for graduate school today, and I had to document it photographically. Here's to following your dreams, pals!

Action airport shot of Lee, looking slightly unhinged (just the way we like him best):

blogging as therapy

"Continuing in our series of posts about the benefits of blogging..."

I don't know if it's a series, but I do lately seem drawn to metablogging, exploring the questions of blogging in the last few posts. Yesterday I was having a hard day. I needed to go for a walk but was resisting. Then, driving home from the grocery store, I saw this:

In the spring, we have days when this mountain just glows.

I thought, I want to blog that, and that was enough to get my shoes on, Harvey in his harness, the mp3 player going with The Year of Magical Thinking, and out the door. Once at the viewpoint, I discovered no memory card in the camera, so back home to get one. A good walk, thanks to blogging.

I read in someone else's blog recently that knowing she had subscribers to her blog often made her get up and do things she wouldn't otherwise. Apparently, it works the same for me just having a blog, and having pretend readers.

tinking

Somehow when I went to do my latest pattern row on the koigu lacy scallops socks, I had the wrong number of stitches on one of the quarters. Eek! Never tinked before on the magic loop, and I didn't want to tink the whole round, just the one top of the one sock. I knew how it was supposed to work--that I'd end up with a long loop of free yarn for every row (basically as if the whole row were one long dropped stitch), and by jove, it did exactly that. I had to go back to the last pattern row, then reknit. Blessedly, my gauge was spot on, so the long loops were just enough yarn to reknit those sections. Thanks be praised to the knitting gods.

Harvey has been getting up earlier and earlier, and because I'm such a light sleeper, I can only battle him for so long before getting up myself. I am feeling incredibly sleep-deprived. The good part is that I've been doing my Artist's Way morning pages, and working on other projects, but I'm just stretched a little thin. H woke up at 4:30 yesterday, and I couldn't go back to sleep. So I tried this out:

Our friend gave us his old stovetop espresso maker, and I've been wanting to try it out with the espresso blend that my friend's friend roasted. I wasn't sure how it would work on the flat-surface stove (which I didn't realize was so stained and ugly until I saw the picture--ick!), but in a few minutes, there was this:

And then shortly thereafter, this (a reasonable approximation of a latte, though the milk was just heated, not steamed):

And here's the little rotten that started it all (most of our pictures of Harvey are in blankies on the bed, because that's where he usually is--this one happens to be in a pile of clean, fresh-from-the-dryer laundry):

right to blog?

Over at Annie Modesitt's blog, there has been a tempest in the teacup of the blogiverse. From what I can tell coming late to the party, there were some unflattering comments on another blog (one devoted to trashing knitwear that the anonybloggers deem inadvisable), and Annie's kinda riled up about it.

(I can say this without fear of flamers because I write an unread blog. So if by chance you stubbed your toe on a knitting webring and somehow fell across this little blog, and you live to knit Annie Modesitt designs, don't throw a hissy fit. Read on.)

Now, I generally don't like Annie Modesitt's designs. (Stop yer hissy fitting--can't we all just get along?) Too busy for me, though I acknowledge their technical knitterly elegance. And when the same bloggers trashed the IWK cabled shrug I've been longing to knit, I must admit, it smarted a bit to have my taste questioned in blogography. That said, when I stumbled onto, then lurked on her blog and read all the stuff, I thought: you go, Annie girl.

See, I have been reading The Artist's Way again, and re-reading my morning pages from the first twelve week TAW (to be honest, I stretched it out to a good 20 weeks because I just wasn't doing it right). Annie is doing her art. She is taking risks and following her vision and showing up to do the work so, by god, that makes her an artist. According to Julia Cameron, those who are doing the art are tremendously threatening to blocked artists. Vitriol is the whiff of the blocked artists.

Partly it's just fun to be snarky in anonymity. I was thinking today how paralyzed I might be if I actually knew anyone read this blog. My nice girl would get triggered, and I suspect very shortly I'd stop being interested in blogging at all. Right now it's just a place to put up pictures of something I'm passionate (but very slow) about, and to play with language a little bit--the grown-up version of those little books I was always making as a kid. You start getting readers, and then you have to start mentioning them in your blog and linking to their blogs and hosting knitalongs and running contests. And then pretty soon you have no time to knit. I'm glad there are bloggers out there that do all those things, because I really like reading their blogs.

But where the bloggers crossed the line, Ms. Modesitt says, is that they attacked her kids. Well, she put her kids in the knitwear, and then in the photos. Not exactly sheltering them. As the saying goes, though, I'll protect to the death her right to work this all out on her blog.

Ahh, blogging. The ability to have both high-school-style girlfriends--and girlfights--virtually.

b is bloggered

No knitting news today, so instead, pictures of my beloved (who probably doesn't mind that I blogged the dog before I blogged him):

We've been married nine years, together thirteen. We have friends getting married soon, and so I've been thinking about marriages.

Ours sustains me, challenges me, infuriates me, grows me, and gives me a place to rest. He has taught me to be kinder to myself. I learned from his optimism that hope in the face of contrary evidence is a wise, not a foolish, thing. He's fast and smart and funny. He's stubborn and persnickety. Someone said to me once, "It's obvious that he adores you." I have worked hard since then to make sure it was obvious--to him especially--that I adore him.