Building the stash

After my early sucesses with KnitPicks and Kate Gilbert’s Shining Star hat, I made a few impulse online yarn purchases.  Friends and family started giving me gifts of yarn in one and two ball increments.  Hopefully soon I will be one of the cool kids with a Ravelry account so I can share my whole stash in detail . . . but generally I think I’ve been fairly conservative with my yarn accumulation, with a few splurges here and there.

It’s been months since I purchased yarn — I think the last round of yarn I ordered was used to make Sheldon and Norberta.  Partly it’s because I’ve been busy, and partly it’s because I’ve been trying to be more conservative in the acquisition of “clutter.”  I have plenty of yarn on hand if I want to experiment with something, or if I need to crank out a small, quick gift.  I also don’t spend very much time visiting yarn stores, partly because I rarely feel comfortable when I visit them, and partly because I don’t have too many friends that are willing to schlep to yarn stores with me.

Last December, a few friends got me a gift certificate to Yarn Market, and in lieu of actual yarn shopping I’ve been visiting the site and pondering my choices for months now.  I’ve been really wanting to make a second Clapotis, and I’ve been eyeballing the various colorways of Lorna’s Laces Lion & Lamb Multi available on the site.  Inspired partly by my trip to Tahoe, partly by January One’s photo of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in the Tahoe colorway after her Tahoe trip, and partly by the fact that my toe-up socks are almost done and I want another TV knitting project at the ready, I took the plunge.  Yesterday I purchased two skeins of Lion & Lamb Multi in Tahoe.  An added bonus: one of my pet peeves is orphan gift certificates . . . when you know you’re never going to use that $1.49 left over and basically just give it to the store . . . so I was thrilled that the total cost was just slightly more than the gift certificate covered.  Now I will be eagerly awaiting a yarn delivery — a surefire way to make the workday just a little bit less painful.

Speaking of my toe-up socks, I wanted to say a special thank-you to Anneliese
from the Westwood Stitch and Bitch, who demonstrated for me the two-at-once technique on one circular needle, using Magic Loop (explained beautifully here by Purlwise) instead of the way I’d been doing it, on two circular needles in the Cat Bordhi style.  Sadly for me, I’ve been using needles that are far too long, which has often resulted in a tangle of cables.  Now instead of a tangled mess (trust me, it took a long time to get this picture staged):

I have this neat and tidy arrangement of yarn, and no straggly cables (plus, yay, the socks are almost done!):

Here is a close-up of the socks on a single needle using the Magic Loop technique:

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Turning the tide

In the past few weeks I’ve been agonizing over the seemingly endless Frost Flowers & Leaves shawl that I’m working for my sister glamorous. In fact, I think the ladies of Stitch ‘n Bitch are starting to know me by the shawl. Last night I checked out the Westwood SnB meeting at Borders books — what the gathering lacks in ambiance, it makes up for in company. My giant jellyfish of lace and its accompanying 1lb cone of Zephyr make quite an impression I guess. I have to admit, I do get some pleasure out of knitting something more challenging in front of other knitters. I am just competitive that way. But I guess it’s the same as another SnBer Bridget’s competitive sock-knitting bug . . . I am more competitive with myself than with anyone else, and I’d be knitting the lace whether or not anyone was watching. There are lots of reasons I knit, but the most important is that I love it.

What I really want to celebrate though is that I think I’ve finally broken the back of the beast. I agonized about modifications to the shawl in order to make a finished size that would meet glamorous’ exacting specifications, and after much debate, I finally settled on five repeats of chart two instead of the suggested seven repeats. Once I got this big decision under my belt, I suddenly picked up speed and momentum on the actual knitting. I finished the third repeat of chart two last weekend, and this week I’ve managed to do at least a round each night. Just ten more rows to go on repeat four!

Of course, browsing through photos from the Yahoo! Frost Flowers & Leaves group, I came across several wonderful photos of finished shawls and noticed that the length of chart three might be out of proportion if I don’t do as many rounds of chart two. Now I’m thinking perhaps I should do six repeats of chart two and one less repeat of chart three.

This knitting stuff is great because it gives me something to obsess about. Worried about my life? Where is my relationship going? Is my career heading in a positive direction? Am I part of the problem or part of the solution? Ha. Ha. Forget all that crap, HOW MANY REPEATS OF CHART TWO SHOULD I DO?!?

The SnB at Borders last night also gave me a chance to browse the knitting-books section, and since I had a Borders gift card burning a hole in my pocket and several upcoming babies to knit for, I picked up the Louisa Harding Interweave Press book Natural Knits for Babies and Moms. I love the cute little hats and sweaters in this book! Time to break into my stash of Swish . . .

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Early Knitting Adventures, Part 3: Discovering Knit Picks

And now, back to the early days of my knitting . . . when I left off, I’d finished a scarf and hat for mom and half of a garter stitch mystery scarf, all out of homespun, and I’d worked a fun-fur scarf for adorable.  Baby, if you’re reading this, don’t worry, I’m not offended if you think it’s heinous — I do too.  As my Dad would say, “What’s a girl to do?”  I wanted to knit, I was itching to knit, but I didn’t know where to go to find yarn or patterns that didn’t make me feel all hive-y.

A major part of the appeal of knitting over counted cross-stitch was the idea that when finished, a crafty project from my own two fingers would be something that I’d want to give to a person I cared about, something they would even be glad to receive.  I wasn’t digging the Michael’s yarn, but I loved their prices.  I didn’t recognize any of the yarn brand names out there, I didn’t know anything about fiber, and I didn’t have the cash to lay down a hundred (or even ten!) dollars for a tiny ball of quiv-angor-ashmere-ino that looked oh, so appealing on the first yarn-store website I encountered.

Well, Dad raised a resourceful girl, so I set out determined to Google my way to knitting knowledge.  As it turned out, this was a fairly decent strategy.  I quickly found The Knitter’s Review forums, which held a wealth of helpful how-to advice.  Most important for me, there is a forum on favorite yarn.  Lots of pricey “dream yarns” were mentioned, but knitters kept coming back to KnitPicks as a good quality, reasonably priced yarn in great colors.  I checked out the website and after a few visits I purchased yarn and color cards.  That first yarn delivery was incredibly exciting.  I got two balls of Andean Silk in Bluebell, and several shades of Wool of the Andes for felting. 

Around the same time I discovered Kate Gilbert’s patterns and purchased her Shining Star hat instructions.  I ran out to Michaels, got myself a set of size 6 double-pointed needles.  The only aluminum DPNs they had at Michaels were size 3 and size 6, so I just guessed . . . and hilarity ensued.  Knowing nothing about gauge or swatching and having a near-terminal fear of measurements, geometry and numbers, I blithely cast on the required number of stitches and started working the hat from the top down, with glamorous in mind.  Here’s where the story takes a point-and-laugh-at-the-new-knitter turn.

I worked my little fingers to the bone — it was winter and I wanted to give the hat to glamorous for her birthday in January.  I worked and worked at that hat, for what seemed like an eternity but in reality was a few days and nights parked on the couch while The Baron watched movies and fiddled with his playstation.  Finally, it was done, I cast off (yes, far too tightly, but no matter) and triumphantly held the hat heavenward.  Wanting to better inspect my handiwork, I asked The Baron to model it for me.  Now, I love this man, but he is a big guy, with a size eleventy shoe and a sizeable inseam and what he himself had described as a big O’ melonhead.  He put that hat on, and it hung hood-like on him, a very beautiful burlap sack.  He looked like a little kid dressing up in grown-up clothes.  It was not pretty.  I was crushed.

The entire thing was ripped out and re-wound into a neat center-pull ball.  Luckily it wasn’t too kinky since it had only been a finished object for about an hour before it became a ball of yarn again.  But did I learn my lesson?  Did I?  No.  I went right back to Michael’s, bought that set of size 3 needles, and knit that hat all over again.  This time it fit The Baron pretty decently, but glamorous says it’s still too large for her.  A few months ago, when she was getting ready to go to Sundance for the film festival, I modified the hat for her, ripping out some of the length of the hat and adding some simple ribbing in an attempt to make it fit better.  It’s not my favorite finished piece, but I loved working the Andean Silk yarn so much I soon made a second hat for Mom out of the Hollyberry color.  Between the discovery of KnitPicks, finding Kate Gilbert’s designs (which I continue to love when they turn up in magazines) and learning the hard way about gauge, that winter marked the real beginning of my knitting adventure.

These are photos of the finished hat:

Want to see my gallery of amazing finished projects?

Take me back to the Early Knitting Adventures page!

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Cwurse you, Werdpress Speelcheck!

I’ve just discovered that my spelling is not, as the WordPress spellchecker seems to indicate, perfect.  Instead, the stupid spellcheck button isn’t working!

Now the world will know the truth . . . I can’t spell for shit . . .

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Is it wrong?

Summer means stretching weekends from Thursday to Monday — following this principle, last night The Baron and I finished off the weekend by going with some friends to a laser light show called Laserium: The Dark Side of Zeppelin — a part of the LA Film Festival.  It was two laser shows back-to-back . . . a bunch of Zeppelin songs and then the whole Dark Side of the Moon album, all staged with incredible colorful bursts of laser light both projected on a sheer screen and shot out in beams over the heads of the audience. 

I loved it.  Especially the shifting light-glazes, the almost liquid fields of light overlapping each other with lighter and darker densities of color — those were my favorite, and The Baron’s too.  On the cheesier side: a red gallows for “Gallows Pole” and a yellow galloping horse.  Very 70’s.  Another big highlight of the evening was when The Baron got antsy, went to get a soda, and brought me back a Häagen-Dazs bar.  Is it any wonder I adore this man?  And what does it say about me that ice cream and dark chocolate coating get me so excited?

The audience was cool too, reminding me how much fun a live event in front of an energetic crowd can be.  Highlights included the guy in his 50’s with what looked like the new wife and his daughter, a girl about 10 years old.  Dad and his plus-one were rocking out, singing and head-banging and doing some fantastic air-drums.  The poor kid was freaked out by the loud music, the lights, and (most likely) the trauma of seeing her dad act like a skater punk.  There was also a group of guys, I’d say mid-30’s, who spent most of the night drinking several bottles of wine (“dude, I got extra bottles ’cause the line was long and no way I’m waiting in line again!”) and asking the people around them for a lighter.  Apparently the fact that no one smokes in LA anymore is a reason to be bummed.  Once the dudes achieved sufficient lubrication, they were all about the cheering and broke into a near-riot every time the music swelled and the lasers blared.  It was exactly the right tone for the evening.

But here’s my question: early on, the “laserist” running the light-show worked with undulating bands, like hourglasses stacked on top of each other and shot through with horizontal ribs of repeating color patterns.  Really beautiful, rich color combinations, many of them totally unexpected: yellows, purples, blues, deeply saturated color and light pastels.  So is it wrong that all I could think about was knitted socks?  Self-striping sock yarn?  If I ever do take up dyeing, I’ll think back on last night as inspiration and cook up some “laserium” socks.

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Monday morning goodies

Last Friday was an exceptionally painful slow workday, so I spent some time poking around the knitting district of webville and trying to come out of my shy-shell.  I found a few goodies I wanted to share, including these two beautiful lace pieces to add to my want-to-knit list:

Pink Lemon Twist’s Hanami Stole (scroll down to the bottom of the page), which I think might be absolutely perfect for Mom.  I’ve got lots of Zephyr at my finger-tips, and I’m eager to find another lace project once Frost Flowers and Leaves is done.

Jane Elliot’s Starry Night Shawl is one of the more creative pieces I’ve seen in a long while — reminiscent of Norah Gaughan’s patterns from Knitting Nature — and I’m eager to get it on my needles!

I was also reminded of the incredible collision of art and science that is the eco-friendly artistry of Helle at Gooseflesh, who is working an entire undersea-reef with yarn made from old plastic bags.  I especially love this one.  Her creations inspire me to think beyond the simple scarf-shawl-sweater confines of traditional knitting.

Over the weekend I got lots of quality outdoor knitting-and-relaxing time in. While I was relaxing in a lounge chair on Saturday afternoon, still soggy from the pool, Mrs. J called. We had (as always!) a great conversation, and she wanted me to check my e-mail for this photo of the shawl I made for her as a wedding gift. I worked the shawl in Rowan Kidsilk Haze and it was my first experience with Mohair — I loved the yarn except for the one time I had to rip back, at which point I almost had to toss the whole ball because I got so frustrated by the heinous tangle that ensued. I made peace with the mohair eventually, but I’m not sure I’d rush to work with it again. It was fun to reconnect with a project I hadn’t seen in a while, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed — I remembered the piece being more intricate and delicate than it looks in this photo. Perhaps it’s because I’m so focused on the Frost Flowers & Leaves shawl these days, but the simple YO flowers look a little bit plain.

Speaking of the FF&L, I managed to get myself through the third repeat of chart two and even get a few rows into the fourth repeat.  Thank goodness I put in a lifeline, since I accidentally worked an extra YO in the final round of the third repeat.  As I was working the first round of the fourth repeat, I had to spend over an hour ripping back to the lifeline and checking each stitch.  Starting a new repeat of chart two is really challenging, since there’s no way to read the rows below the one you’re knitting, but with the lifeline I was able to check my work with confidence and I eventually found the wayward YO.  Yet another reason I love the KnitPicks Options — the little hole in the cable that allows for easy lifeline-installation!

Speaking of KnitPicks, stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of my Early Knitting Adventures: In the third installment I explore my burgeoning yarn snobbery and the discovery of my favorite internet yarn shop.

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A few things to celebrate

Life is good — there is lots to celebrate.

Let’s start with the most pressing thing: I am celebrating that today is Friday.  This was one of those evil, interminable weeks, not because it was so busy but because it was sooooooooo slow.  Every day, from my half of a shared cubicle, I look out at a teeny tiny corner of sky and a lot of office buildings shimmering under the sun.  People pass by and say “Wow, what a beautiful day!” and it actually makes me grateful that the commute is 45 minutes, since I can roll the window down to look out at the world and let my wet hair air-dry.  This weekend I plan to take myself outside, even if it’s just to the lush jungle of The Baron’s yard, and really enjoy the summer.

Which brings me to celebrating yesterday’s summer solstice.  It’s official folks, summer is here.  A recent New York transplant to our office was describing how back East, some kids get sent to camp for the whole summer, and people empty out of the city because the weather is so icky and humid.  Well, we may have smog and traffic congestion and all kinds of other troubles, but as my Dad would say, “Hey, it could be colder.”  Yes, the weather here is extraordinary, and there’s no need to flee anything but the office.  Which I will do.  Shortly.

Something else that’s been on my mind: I got a library card this week, and if that’s not something to celebrate, then I don’t know what is.  Libraries are one of my most favorite types of places.  I love the old-book smell, and the nooks and crannies, and the stacks.  Ah, the stacks!  Shakespeare had his own aisle, and it was hidden in the basement, in the back, where no matter the weather outside it was cool and dark.  I loved just being down there, the smell, the light, the safety and the rightness of it all.  Everything in its place, ordered, so that even the air felt heavier and rich with the ancientness with every word on each page.  In college, even when I wasn’t reading or studying, I loved being in the library.  Just writing this I am smiling thinking of some of my most favorite napping spots — a cozy leather couch in the reading room, a well-loved overstuffed chair at the end of a set of study desks, next to a window that threw a warm sunlight across my sleepy self, a secret couch under a flight of stairs.  I can only wish that the local public libraries were as wonderful.  But even so, they are an invaluable resource and I feel lucky to have ready access to a decent library system.  If nothing else, the library is a great source for knitting books!

I am celebratory and excited about being healthy, wealthy and wise.  Healthy, because at the moment there is nothing wrong with me.  The Frankenfinger is healing nicely, and all of my extremities and internal organs seem to be working to code.  It’s no small thing to celebrate good health.  Plus, working eyes and fingers means a weekend full of knitting (watch out Frost Flowers & Leaves shawl — I’m coming for you!)  Wealthy, well, I have a nice place to sleep, plenty to eat, and a good supply of yarn.  Wise I am working on.  Luckily, I’m surrounded by insightful people who push me and give me great advice.  You know who you are, you rascals!

And then, there’s this:

Happy Friday — don’t forget to celebrate!

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Isn’t Friday here yet? No? Well hurry up already!

Now, I’m sure all you out there in webville just can’t wait to learn more about my transformation into a yarn snob and knitter extraordinaire after my sad experiences with Homespun, but part three of my ongoing chronicle of Early Knitting Adventures will just have to wait.

I know it’s only Thursday morning, but I am way too excited about all the fun happenings around town this weekend.

• Tonight, instead of heading to Stitch N Bitch WeHo, The Baronand I are going to LACMA for a late-night breeze through the museum.  The event tonight is free and there’s also free admission all weekend — very cool. 

• On Saturday evening, we’re meeting some friends for a play, The Beastly Bombing, a political satire finishing it’s run in LA next before heading to New York in the fall.  Incidentally, the play’s author is a pretty brilliant guy with a very dastardly moustache . . . that should be all any potential play-goers need to know! 

• And finally, on Monday night, we’re going to the Ford Amphitheater for the LA Film Festival’s presentation of Dark Side of Zeppelin:

When Griffith Observatory reopened last year, the new management left out one vital element — Laserium. The original laser light show, Laserium made its Observatory premiere in 1973 and, over the years, has blown countless minds with its hypnotic, blazingly colorful combinations of music and pure light. For one night only, the Hollywood Hills will glow once again as two classic Laserium shows — featuring the epic music of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon — play back-to-back at the Ford in a heavy metal psychedelic sensory spectacular that’s not to be missed.

I never made it to the Observatory for the Laserium show before it closed for renovation — in fact, I don’t think I’ve been there at all since I’ve lived in LA.  Blinking-and-flashy lights are one of The Baron’sfavorite things, and he’s organized many Laserium trips in the past.  In fact, for his birthday this year, I got him a set of underwater lightshow globes that are cool but, as luck would have it, are my most favorite pool toy.  (Does this happen to anyone else?  You get someone a cool present and then you end up using/playing with it way WAY more than they do?)   I like to splash around in the pool with the lights and the pool skimmer . . . he calls it “jellyfish farming” because I guess that’s what it looks like to him.  I’m easy to entertain.  (Oh, a shiny object!  Wow, colored lights!  It doesn’t take much, and I’m blissfully happy for hours . . .)

Finally, for any knitterly readers out there, I am making smashing progress on my socks.  They actually look like socks now and even fit me quite well.  I am hoping to be able to show off the finished product in the next week or so, but for now I am resisting a braggy, picture-filled post about simple short-row-heel-and-toe, 2×2 rib leg socks-in-progress.  I’ll wait to brag until they are actually done.

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Early Knitting Adventures, Part 2: Learning from the master

The continuing tale of my introduction to knitting . . .

After I finished set aside the counted cross-stitch cat sampler (see Part 1), I had to find something else to do with my hands.  It was the Fall of 2005 and I was working just around the corner from a Michael’s, so I headed over and picked myself out a small, simple-looking panel of a poinsettia.  My mom always loved poinsettias at the holidays, and I clearly remember her taking us to the fancy-pants San Francisco florist Podesta Baldocchi at Christmas-time and picking out a few plants.  I started working the poinsettia panel hoping I’d be able to send it to her as a holiday gift, and I brought it with me when The Baron took me home to meet his family for the first time that October.

Saying that The Baron’s mom is crafty would be, well, a gargantuan understatement.  (This is a close-up of the quilt she made for The Baron.)  She is the master.  The woman quilts, embroiders, paints and knits in addition to a myriad of other crafty business.  The basement of the family home is literally filled with shelves and shelves of fabric and tons of craft supplies.  It’s nicer and better-stocked than many of the craft stores I’ve been to.  Of course, me being me, I really really wanted her approval.  I brought the almost-finished poinsettia with me on the trip and when she and The Baron’s sister-in-law admired it, a trip to a local needlework and yarn store was suggested.  The three of us headed off to Needleworks, which is frankly one of the most wonderful yarn stores I’ve ever been to.  If you’re ever in the area, it’s worth a stop.  They have several rooms full of yarn as well as an section dedicated to spinning and a room for needlepoint.  The SIL and I both decided we’d try knitting — she bought yarn and needles, and I bought my first knitting reference, “The Knitter’s Handbook” which I cannot recommend highly enough.  We took our booty home and The Baron’s mom showed us how to cast on, knit and purl.  I took lots of pictures, and I’m sure she thought I was nuts, but I paid careful attention and followed along in my book. 

When I got back to LA, I took another trip to Michael’s for provisions.  I got some aluminum Bates needles, size 9, and one ball of grey Lion Brand Homespun.  I cast on 25 stitches and started working away on a garter-stitch scarf.

Ahh . . . the homespun garter-stitch scarf.  I loved that I was actually knitting.  I loved the first few cuddles I had with the yarn.  But a grey garter-stitch scarf is not exactly the height of fashion, and I soon got bored, wanting to try new stitch combinations and different patterns.  When I’d knitted up a whole ball of the homespun and had a scarf that didn’t seem quite long enough, I headed back to Michael’s.  This time I bought a size 9 circular needle, stitch holders and a bunch of Homespun in a bunch of colors.  It was on sale, and I was excited about my new hobby.  I hurried home from work, got the grey scarf onto a stitch holder (where, as you can see, it still remains . . . hello my first unfinished object!) and cast on about 16 stitches in a light heathery green color for a scarf with 2×2 ribbing.  By this point I was really getting the hang of things, and after a few inches of scarf I found a hat pattern online and I whipped out the DPNs and got started.  The hat went quickly, and I learned to K2tog, but it got tricky at the top.  Somehow I got that hat done, but I don’t think it’s going to win any prizes.  Within a week or two I’d finished the scarf and sent the set off to my mom, who still insists she loves it. 

Next I tackled fun fur — I picked out a few balls of something fussy at Michael’s and bought some size 11 bamboo needles, and got to work on a fuzzy burgundy scarf for adorable.  (This is where the story turns ugly, so watch out people!)  As I worked with it, the homespun started to pull apart, sometimes splitting, and generally feeling cheap and plastic-y.  Which of course it is.  This is how I became a fiber snob — I just didn’t like the polyester feel of the yarn. 

Stay tuned for the next installment, when I discover natural fibers and try my first “real” knitting project.

Take me back to the Early Knitting Adventures page!

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Early Knitting Adventures, Part 1: Not much knitting

Since I’m not going to be able to make it to any Stitch n Bitch meetings this week, and I doubt I’ll be able to match last weekend’s super-duper exciting knitting progress, I thought I’d share a bit of my knitting history.  Just how did I come to be knitting in the first place?  To say nothing of blogging about it . . .

My road to knitting was neither too long nor too winding.  When I was in elementary school I took a needlework class after school, where we learned needlepoint and cross-stitch.  My two closest friends were in the class with me — it was an early kind of Stitch n Bitch and I loved it.  I did needlepoint: a background circle of navy with a unicorn in the center, covered with roses.  I never finished it — I think it only ever got about a third done, but I loved it.  When I looked for other patterns though, I realized it would be hard to make really cool or pretty things — the choices were pretty much limited to wall-hanging or cushion cover or holiday ornament. 

So being a resourceful kind of kid, I decided to take up crochet in order to make something useful that I would love.  I know I did a few little projects — I clearly remember working scalloped edging — but soon I’d embarked on a massive project: A crocheted blanket entirely comprised of double-crochet rows.  It involved heathered pink Red Heart — more dusty rose than carnation.  I was a fourth-grader with no guidance at all, no one to suggest that maybe a blanket was a little bit much, no one to point out that if I wanted a blanket and not just a very long scarf, I’d probably need more than two balls of yarn. I worked diligently on that blanket, and I got two feet completed before it was set aside.  Sadly, it was set aside under my bed, in a plastic bag with an orange in it.  Months later, when my beleaguered mother located the whole mess (by smell – sorry Mom!), it went in the trash, along with my crafty young dreams.

It wasn’t until years later that I considered going back to crafting.  After I finally finished graduate school and had no possible remaining excuses for hiding out at my parents’ house, I went out into the world and got a job.  A stressful job, a job that required things I did not have like thick skin (shockingly, not the same as blisters, which I also got) and a tolerance for less-than-bright co-workers demanding that I do things in the most inefficient way possible.  I was over-educated, and trust me, Shakespeare does not prepare you for the mailroom.  It was hard.  I was sad.  I felt my life draining away with each bleaching flash of the monstrous, industrial copy-machine I manned all day.  I was living with glamorous and roomiekins at the time, and they worried and fussed over me.  They were so worried, in fact, that one day when I came home with a counted cross-stitch kit they didn’t say anything disparaging.  Thanks ladies.  I know you know how badly I needed an outlet back then. 

The thing is, I don’t think they expected it to stick.  I blew through that first project, a small panel of Zoe, Elmo’s friend from Sesame Street, all dressed up in grown-up clothes.  Who knows why I picked it — it was small and colorful and looked easy I suppose.  When it was done, I didn’t know what to do with it.  I was determined that my next project would have a purpose, a recipient in mind.  Roomiekins loved cats but couldn’t have one because glamorous is allergic.  So I took myself to the needlework store and picked out a counted cross stitch kit that was all about cats.  In fact, you could even call it a cat sampler.  Really, the kit was a masterpiece of cat kitsch.  There were cats playing with yarn, cats in a basket, cats chasing goldfish, cats riding bikes, and in the center, the pièce de résistance, a large family of cats picnicking in formalwear under an arbor.  And what really got me: They’d taken the time to put on bowties, but they were not wearing any shoes. I’m not sure how on earth I could have chosen this hideous monstrosity to dedicate so much time to, but I think it speaks loudly to my general sense of malaise and discontent.  It was the summer of 2004, and I worked the cats until my fingertips got so sore I began wrapping them in medical tape so I could keep going.

I was determined to finish the cat project, and I wanted to have it framed or made into a pillow in time to give it to roomiekins for a special occasion.  There was just one problem.  The design incorporated the title “Cat Collection” and the motto “God gave us cats to love and keep us humble.”  Neither of us liked that slogan, and I wanted to think of something else witty to stitch into the space.  That was about two years ago.  I’m still thinking.  In the interim, she got a post-graduate degree, got engaged, got a cat, and then broke up with her fiancee.  So here’s how it looks today, a blank slate waiting for a slogan:

Hopefully inspiration will strike soon — any suggestions welcome!

Take me back to the Early Knitting Adventures page!

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