Knitting: March 2009 Archives

Hello, lovelies. When last we left our heroine in a huddled sad heap on the floor, things were looking bleak indeed. They're still looking bleak, but her mood has improved ever so slightly.

Put it down to a few uninterrupted days on the bike(s), or to a bit of judicious flirting, or to whatever you'd like.

I've been taking advantage of the still-pretty-fracking-chilly weather to keep knitting a few late-March items for self and friends. Ordinarily among spring's many gifts (hayfever, the nagging feeling that one ought always to be outdoors doing something fabulous, and that since one isn't, one is wasting one's life) is a sudden and total loss of interest in the knitterly arts.

I felt the first fingers of that beginning to take hold a couple of weeks ago, but then it got cold again (not that it ever really pushed fully into warm, mind you; there were just hints and vague promises), and so I kept knitting. And now I have a pretty pair of mittens that didn't photograph at all well in the incandescent lighting, but you may take my word on it - they are sweet.

And I am knitting another pair for a friend who massacred his first pair by the simple expedient of wearing them on the bike in a rainstorm. I am thinking that however pretty that Koigu stuff is, fabled in song and story, it doesn't hold up very well. I mean, one rainstorm, c'mon.

So the replacements will be in less-gorgeous but hopefully sturdier yarn that's already been road-tested by yours truly.

There's a whole thread on Rav about knitting for the bike, and I wonder if I ought to post some real-world feedback from my various knit-recipients. Enh. Too complicated.

I was telling my dad, finally, after 10 days of utter silence, about the various bad newses to which I have been subject lately, and he commented that any one of them would be enough to make a sane person's head spin.

Which would explain the impression of her I've been doing lately. I dunno. It seemed like I should just be able to handle it all.

Of course, that is how it always seems, with me. It's like a disease. I expect that nothing will ever break my back, and then what happens is that my body takes that challenge literally, and I end up with my back out for months and months.

Yes, the poking with needles seems to be doing something. I mean, something in addition to giving me strange bruises in even stranger places. It seems, thankfully, to be easing up my mobility a bit, and if I'd just stop doing laundry and twisting myself into unfortunate contortions in my sleep, the pain might even abate a bit.

Me: I hurt my back in my sleep.
He: Alone?

Sigh.

Unexpectedly laid up on the couch again. I hope I hope I hope (times 100) that it won't be for more than a day. Though I doubt it.

The ways of bad backs are mysterious and unpleasant. Made an appointment to get stuck with needles. At this point I will try (almost) anything.

I've been in a mitten-knitting frame of mind this winter, partly because a lot of people asked for them and partly because my one pair started to unravel and I needed to make myself some replacements. There is something cool about that, namely:

a) I've been knitting long enough to have a pair of mittens I made begin to unravel (they lasted several years, too - made 'em out of some leftover Mountain Colors Weavers Wool I'd bought for a gift project).

b) When I need a new knitted object, I can just -er- knit one. There's a measure of self-sufficiency and instant gratification there that's lacking in most of the rest of life. For the rest of life, you need to call upon fairy godcreatures and such. Which brings me to the following:

Top Three Wishes of Tonight

1. My back to stop hurting so I can go get my bicycle.
2. A delightful lover to appear out of nowhere and present himself for my continuing amusement. I have one in mind but perhaps it is pushing my luck to attempt such a specific request?
3. Something chocolate.

PS. Later addition: Damn. My laptop has just died a weird and jiggly death. Can I add a new or, better yet, cheaply repaired laptop to the list?

We've moved into that sketchy early-spring phase wherein the heat is on when you don't want it on and not on when you do, and so I have been pulling out some of the heavy knits that I normally can't wear in the overheated indoor climate of a NYC winter. (You expats know whereof I speak; steam heat + little control = windows open in winter)

Apparently Kitwich has been waiting to get her paws on them all winter.

Woke up feeling inexplicably decent this morning (I use that term loosely, as always). Could be that I've now had two days of 7 or 8 hours' sleep in a row. Could be that I needed to turn that air purifier off so the room would be quieter and not have a funny smell while I slept.

Could be that my body senses that this interminable winter is nearing its end. Could be that I saw you know who yesterday and that just made me feel better, even though I got nothing tangible in the way of -er- nooky out of it. Some people's presence is just like sunshine, I guess.

This is my favorite finished object in a while. It's lush and warm, and the color is just on the edge of being no color at all. I feel a little (just a little) like Grace Kelly when I put it on, though I seriously doubt it looks that way to anyone else.

I've knitted so many things this winter, but they're all little biddy ones - neckwarmers and mittens and hats upon hats - mostly for other people. It seems weird that I haven't finished a single sweater for myself this year. Usually I knit one or two a season. I've got some on the needles: Ysolda's Snow White, and my own little V-neck in sport-weight handpainted yarn that's a lovely dark blue-green.

I dunno. It's been strangely satisfying to only knit items that can be finished in a few hours. There's so much variety involved in jumping from one project to the next - a different set of colors, yarn that feels different in the hands, a different problem to be solved.

I'm not much of a multitasker - not sure if I've ever said that before, here - but I do like being able to move from one thing to the next because it's completed and I'm ready for something new.

I'm not sure whether that makes me a process knitter or a product knitter. I think there may be a third way: perhaps I'm a project knitter.

I like the feeling of moving through each part of the whole: yarn choice, rolling into a ball, starting (though I honestly hate casting-on; it always feels so tenuous), increasing and decreasing, winnowing down to the end, binding off. Soaking in eucalyptus bath, putting on or giving away. Hoping it fits.

PS. It occurs to me that this scarf suits the way March feels to me; not quite spring, not quite winter.