Packed…
Levon is supervising me as I stuff envelopes and pack boxes. He's a very helpful fellow! And I was running out of room in the dining room, so I got the first batch of books headed on their way. More will to out Monday and Tuesday (I like to space them out a bit so the mailman doesn't start planning to do me in). The first ones will start arriving early next week, and they should all be in the mail before Thanksgiving!
I get the best mail
I've been busily working along on Curls 3. I've got a giant bucket full of finished pieces just waiting to be blocked and photographed (once the snow is melted and the leg gets a tiny bit better...taking photos is surprisingly physical, and doing it on a slightly wobbly leg is harder than I would have expected). And once they're done, it's off for edits and then to the printer. But before that happens, I can totally show them off a bit, even in their unblocked state. That's made with Miss Babs Sojurn in their German Waterways color. And it is [...]
Block All The Things…yes even your swatches
Remember the gray speckled swatch on the needle from the other day? The one with the Daintree yarn from Skein? Well it came off the needles and looked fine...but like most knitting (all...not most...all), it was a bit rumpled and untidy. That's just the nature of knitting. It needed to be blocked. All I did was squeeze it under water a few times then lay it flat beside the sink to dry. No pins, no wires, no tension, no real effort. Just soak it and lay it flat to dry. And look what a difference that made. I hear from people [...]
No I didn’t forget
So somehow over the space of a little less than 12 weeks this summer I found a house, bought a house, sold a house, launched a book, and moved across the country. I don't particularly recommend that timeline (let's just say I picked a book launch schedule long before I knew we were moving), but it turns out, it is more or less possible (if you don't mind not getting much sleep for a while in the middle there). However, it didn't leave me with much time for swatching. Luckily, I'm all settled in now (unpacked, and even most of [...]
I have an unhealthy relationship with blocking…
More pieces for Curls 3 have started to come in, and I love each and every one. I cannot wait to get them properly blocked and show off their full glory. But until then, you'll have to be content with a little peek at them fresh off the needles. That's out of Knit Circus' Magnificent DK. And that's out of Spun Right Round's Squish DK. Oh wait, it's reversible, so let's see both sides. Now of course you'll get to see them as they get blocked. But sometimes you can just tell ahead of time that things are just going [...]
So many swatches
You're probably getting sick of seeing these, but they're really all I'm knitting these days, so you'll just have to make do. I promise I'll get something else on the needles as soon as a few more of these are safely off in the hands of knitters! But for now, it's all Curls 3 swatches all the time. At least they're pretty though, right? Because really, there's nothing at all wrong with that! It's one of Indigo Dragonfly’s Tornadoz sets on Chameleon Sock in the color Cahoots. And, just for the record, this is another example of 'see how much [...]
Incoming
So, I know you though my mailbox was already just about the happiest place it could be (what with all the delightful Curls 3 yarn coming in). But no...no it gets better. The actual pieces themselves have started coming in too! Take a look at this. That's the Cheshire Cat base from Wonderland Yarns / Frabjous Fibers. The gray bits are Goat’s Beard, and the colorful bits are the Yellow to Fuchsia color morph. And up there is what it looks like before you block it... And that's what it looks like after. See why I'm always (always always always) [...]
So when I say I knit a lot of swatches
Yeah...so about that swatching thing...I really do mean it. And right now, I'm hard at work on Curls 3 swatches. That's one little doodle with one of the lovely Varigradients from Seven Sisters Arts. The yarn is perfect, the stitch is fun, but I'm not 100% sure I'm sold on the combination. So I try again...and this has lots of promise. And again, this is absolutely normal. It's totally not a sign that anything is wrong. It's just that swatching is sort of the knitter's equivalent of sketching...and you sometimes need to do more than one to find just the [...]
They get to decide
When I was in college I took a history of religions class. On the very first day, the professor declared (repeatedly and emphatically) that we would absolutely positively not under any circumstances be offering our own opinions on whether one group or another were 'really' any particular religion. The official class position was "if they said they were, then as far as the class is concerned, they were. They get to decide." It seemed reasonable to me then. It has proven to be a pretty good way to handle a whole host of other identity issues in the intervening years. [...]
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