A Little Yarn On The Side

As you may remember, the Double Dog Dare Challenge is to get down to 10 WIPS (which is sort of amazing when you think about it.  I mean, there are people who could get all the way down to NO WIPS, but to even get close to single digits is a challenge for me), and so far one has been frogged and three have been finished.  Theo is guarding the last one as it dries, just to make sure it's safe.   That puts me at 14 WIPS left--4 more.  OR, if I get really motivated, 5 more and I could have less than 10 WIPS, which would, of course, be amazing, astounding, and possibly a first for me.  A braver person would aspire to NO WIPS, but let's not get crazy here. And on the sewing front, I have started the October Project of the Month! It's just a simple flannel baby blanket, and now that the blocks are together, I think I might add one more row as it's a bit smaller than I think would be useful.  I mean, sure, babies are small but they grow at an astonishing rate...

"It was dreadful," says knitter, Toni Sutton, when asked about her recent foray into the WIP Wilderness.  "It had been a long and brutal battle already.  There were bodies everywhere. "The sweater was there in the distance--lurking.  I could see the results of my last failed effort--that woolly Victorian collar: "It was ghastly.  I mean, a sweater collar that can actually pick up satellite television?  Can you imagine the horror?" When asked, Ms. Sutton admits to some pretty unorthodox methods. "Several knitters had tried the traditional methods--smaller needles, changing the neckline--but the results still weren't good.  Keeping the pattern remotely intact just wasn't enough to control this WIP.  It was time for some alterations.  I took the cable down to a lopsided 5-stitch pattern, then switched one of the stitches to a purl on the third row from the end.  Very unusual, but nothing else would work." Still, even with all ...

Tomorrow is Finishing Friday.  It's me, that darned ribbed yoke sweater, and some audio books.  Someone is going to come out victorious.......

For some reason, when Hagrid pulled out knitting in the first Harry Potter book, it made me absurdly happy.  I don't know what he was knitting, or if he ever finished it, but it was just this little glimpse of a shared interest and it made me happy.  So, I'm thinking that maybe more of our literature could use a little knitting--you know, to make it more accessible....which of course led me to......  Romeo and Juliet :  The besotted Juliet knits her beloved a gorgeous sweater in an all-over cable pattern, which invokes the dreaded Boyfriend Sweater curse and Romeo immediately dumps her, and they both live on to marry others and live to ripe, old age. Gone With The Wind: When Rhett leaves Scarlett after not giving a damn, Scarlett remembers she still has her beloved Tara, which she converts into an alpaca farm and she makes a fortune selling Damn Yankee Yarn, which will later inspire a musical of a similar name. Wizard of Oz:  Dorothy doesn't end up with th...

The slip-stitching of the binding is going pretty slowly (though compared to the THREE AND A HALF YEARS that the rest has taken, it's pretty zippy), but at least Calisto is getting some use out of it as a yoga mat.

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...