Friday, February 25, 2005

I'm being abducted by aliens

Blogger and I are not getting on very well today. This'll make the third time I've tried to write about this.

Okay, the whole premise of today's entry is about my apparent inability to actually finish any damn thing. (Including, it would seem, writing about it.) I was going to tell you all about how in 2002 and 2003 I started really knitting and racked up several gazillion half finished things. Then I got bored and wandered off.

I started quilting again, and very quickly amassed another kilo-gazillion of UFOs or UnFinished Objects. I did finish some things, but not nearly so many as I started. Anyway, I'd decided I'd had enough, declared Tuesdays to be UFO day (no working on new projects) and started to make some headway. I worked on Rowan's castle quilt



Rowan's Castle Quilt (1 block of 20) Posted by Hello

I worked on Morgan's grandmother's fan quilt. I finished a baby quilt for Rhiannon's father's new baby. . . . .

And then I started knitting again.

I love knitting. I do. I love quilting as well. They both satisfy my creative urges, and I truly believe in my heart of hearts that if I keep at it I can be good. You know, not just "that doesn't suck" but actually good.

Now, to be fair to me, I picked up and finished a shawl I'd started over a year ago. It turned out pretty well, and Rhi wants me to knit her one. So, currently I'm working on a Slytherin scarf, a DNA cable scarf in heathery grey, and a shawl for Rhiannon's birthday. Lest I accidentally finish one of those, I'm also contemplating making myself a halter top based on the pattern found here. I watched geek TV and made swatches last night.

Sometimes I really get on my nerves.

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Faroese Style Homespun Shawl

Somehow that sounds like it ought to be oxymoronic. You'd think that "Faroese" and "Homespun" wouldn't hang out together in the same sentence. "Prairie" goes with "Homespun", ya know?

Oh well, I didn't name the pattern I just knitted it. Blame the magazine Cast On (Spring 2004, pg. 44) and "The Lion Brand Design Team" —whoever they may be.

Unfortunately, I'm kinda camera impaired at the mooment, but I can assure you its lovely green. I'm a little disappointed in it, but I'm given to understand that lace looks like poop until you've blocked it, so I'm not consigning it to utter ickdom yet.

ETA: The husband says he likes it, the daughter says she wants it, and I finished it in 5 days. Go me! Woot!

Friday, February 18, 2005

A Very Woolly Discipline

Hermione Granger, whom we all know is the cleverest witch of her age, has little use for divination. Possibly it was Professor Trelawney's vague mutterings (which were often interupted with sharp interjections promising doom, doom, DOOM!), or perhaps it is simply too imprecise for Hermione's highly logical mind. Arithmancy is clearly a more intellectual, more advanced, more tidy discipline.

What, I hear you asking*, does that have to do with knitting? Why, gentle reader, nothing of course! Or at least not much. The idea for the name of this blog came from the phrase Hermione used to dismiss Divination as a magical art, a "woolly discipline". If I have one besetting sin, it is my love of language, puns and playing on words. Knitting, too, is a woolly discipline.

Now that I've played with the idea for a while, I'm finding myself fantasizing about using knitting as a form of divination. Are mistakes made, that must be ripped out, portentious? How does one read the twists and turns of an aran cable pattern? What does "yo k2tog" tell us about the future?

Yeah, okay..... now I'm just being silly.


* actually I made that up—I don't really believe that anyone is reading this.

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