A Little Yarn On The Side

As most of you have probably noticed, America is in a bit of a turmoil right now.  If I were feeling like a rabble-rouser, I'm mention that this is generally what happens when a Democrat is president because the Republicans are sore losers & if they can't fry a man for lack of military service (which becomes a nonissue once there's a Republican president who has no military background) or whether or not he smoked pot in his life (and wouldn't it explain a lot if we discovered that Bush smoked pot WHILE in office?), then they go after him for us being in a war that his predecessor started.  BUT, I'm feeling all warm & fuzzy and bipartisan tonight, so I won't.  I will say that we are having some issues here in the good old USA, and if no one else is going to try to do anything about it, I will.  So, here it is, Toni's PLAN FOR PEACE:  * Starting tomorrow, for one month everyone in the country is to take up knitting.  They may discuss knitting, ask k...

*  Every group has its sadists.  In the knitting world, we call them "designers." *  There is no cat so old or so lazy that it won't unravel your lace knitting as soon as your back is turned. *  Knitting probably isn't the answer to every problem, no matter how much I think it must be. *  It's wrong to think badly of friends who choose to live in warm climates where knitted woolly items are completely useless. *  Next time I'm feeling just a little too cocky about my knitting, I will pull out that darned ribbed yoke pullover again. *  Learning to laugh about knitting is probably much healthier than shoving a problem sweater into the blender.....and less damaging to appliances. *  Being allergic to animals is probably actually a good thing.  It's the only thing keeping me from trying to keep an alpaca in the back yard. *  If you want your obsession with knitting to seem "normal," convert others. *  I will never be abl...

So remember when I had all those pictures of unfinished quilts? Yeah, I didn't exactly show you all of them.  This is a quilt I started as a gift for one of my bridesmaids.  As you might remember, Andy and I just celebrated our third wedding anniversary, so this one is nicely aged.  As am I, frankly.  Anyway, it needed one more row of quilting through the center, then it was time for.....  the binding.  Now, there are a lot of ways to do edging.  There's the one continuous strip--which looks nice and is clever, but I ended up with a seriously squished corner.  Then there's the cleverly-cut-enough-material-to-fold-over-for-the-binding method, which as it turns out requires a bit better concept of straight lines than I seem to have.  Then there's the cut 2 longer strips, two shorter strips, and sew them on one at a time approach, which is my normal choice.  I however, opted to forgo all of these and strike out on my own, creating a ...

Carol Burnett said "Comedy is tragedy plus time." One of these days, that ribbed yoke pullover is going to be REALLY funny......

...and it has reinforced my decision to cancel my subscription. Not that I'm criticizing them--I've been subscribing for a very long time and they have provided me with some pretty amazing sweaters.  It's just that since knitting has become "trendy" the patterns have become "trendy," and if I am going to spend a year or two (you never know here at WIP Central) working on a sweater, I want it to still be in style by the time I finish it. Provided that I ever do, of course.  So, I flipped through the magazine, noticed there isn't a single thing I will ever knit, and put it in the bookshelf in the sewing room.  Why not just throw it out?  I was raised by packrats.  It's true. My parents moved into their house when I was 4, and until last summer when their basement was flooded, there were still boxes that hadn't been unpacked since they moved it 30+ years before.  They kept everything .  Somewhere down there, my Ballerina Barbie whose face wa...

Not that the ribbed yoke sweater has exactly won , but it hasn't exactly lost either.  We have, for the moment, declared a truce and are ignoring each other's existence. However, I did have some crafting time this weekend and thought I might spend it with the Kimono Shawl but someone beat me to it.  And let's face it, I am never that cute while knitting, so I let Theo have it for the day and went digging in the WIP bin.  I started this sometime last year, and the body just needed a few inches on the body, which I finished with NO frogging, swearing, or re-editing of a pattern (which made a refreshing change) and I have started a sleeve!  It's a simple pattern and will make great portable knitting, so it is the current favorite project, but it's going to take a little while to finish, and I was in need of some instant gratification, so I finished a few more towels (Obviously, I'm loving this design), and cut out and embroidered some felt gift ba...

--and I am taking the coward's way out. Sort of. I was all set to do battle with the ribbed yoke pullover, but we are having some friends over for dinner tonight, and I didn't think receiving another ass-whooping by a bunch of superwash would put me in the best frame of mind for entertaining, so I have chosen a safer route today. Sewing a few seams on the pullover and a couple pattern repeats on the kimono shawl which recently celebrated it's second birthday without yet being finished. Of course, it isn't actually the oldest WIP--there's a shawl on size 0 needles that just turned 5, but that is a bit more understandable. I mean, size zero needles? I'll be finishing that one the day I file for Social Security...provided my eye sight is still good and knitting hasn't finally snapped whatever will be left of my brain after the ribbed yoke pullover....