My daughter pulled herself up to standing for the first time today.
Slick as a whistle, she crawled over to the couch, grabbed the edge of the cushion, and pulled up to her feet.
What was she reaching for?
My knitting, of course.
I vowed to post daily until my birthday, May 11. I'm nearly there. "But, Dana," you exclaim, "You didn't post yesterday."
Well, technically you're correct. But I wrote this current post IN MY HEAD yesterday while shuttling children, chasing cats, running around lakes, and avoiding my daughter's bedroom whilst she was sleeping because the poor morsel has a horrible cold and sounds like Big Bird sleeping and needed me not to be clickety clacking in the background while she tosses in her snuffly mucus-filled crib.
So I'll post this one this morning, another one--with pictures, I promise--this afternoon, and I'll be caught up to my own goal.
I love how life works, that whole six-degrees-0f-separation thing. I am a pattern finder, a weaver together, a looker-for-the-meaning-in-the-chaos kind of person. Maybe that's why I like knitting and quilting--because they bring order and beauty from seeming waste? So I'm always pleasantly surprised when life brings me one of those "Small world!" kind of jewels. Like when we met a guy from my husband's home town when we were living in Texas. Like when I found out that our school's police officer had my dad as his junior high wrestling coach. Like when one of my colleagues turned out to be my college ex-boyfriend's best friend from high school. (OK, that one was a little uncomfortable.)
On Sunday we were grocery shopping, the four of us, when I heard a familiar voice say, "Dana?"
It was my friend Janet, once my best friend from about eighth through tenth grade. Although our friendship waned in the final years of high school, we ended up going to the same college and would see each other just often enough to sort of reconnect, but not really. Our lives, our choices, were different, and we could never get past the "This is who you USED to be" in order to see the "This is who you ARE." But this time there was a different vibe. As we stood in the produce section and quickly updated each other on lives and loves, there was just something different--two women, two friends, both happy with their lives and ready to reconnect. And as we exchanged e-mail addresses, I saw her username: knitbot.
"Are you knitting?" I asked. Yes, was the answer, and spinning, too. (and blogging, too, I just found out, but not sure if I'm ready to share knitsmith-wordpurl with anyone I know in real life yet.)
A knitter now. That explains it.
So I'm hoping for a get-together, a couple bottles of beer and a knitting project or two to share, and maybe, just maybe, the rekindling of an old bond?
The swatching has commenced!
I absolutely adore these fiddly little cable swatches. I started the red one, on right, last week before my box from Knit Picks arrived with the lilac Andean Treasure yarn I'll actually be using for the sweater. I wanted to refresh my cabling skills (skillz?).
The Knit Picks box arrived in Friday's mail...just in time for my sister, who had lugged her Lagoon yarn all the way from Spokane, to have left two hours earlier. So it'll be swatching on separate sides of the Cascades.
I've never knit with alpaca before. What a change from the springy Cascade 220 I used for the red swatch; what a change to be cabling on size 3 needles! (I used 7s and then 8s for the 220, hence the strange parallelogram shape of the swatch.) The alpaca is silken, heathered, and hairy, like a box full of Tribbles. Because it's less--I don't know the right word; maybe defined?--I was worried about the cable's stitch definition at first, but now that I've knit a couple of repeats I like the way the alpaca halo blurs the edges while keeping the pattern intact. (It also, conveniently, hides any wonky-ish stitches.)
I am in awe of the genius of Kate Gilbert, who designed this reversible cable panel for "A Cardigan for Arwen" in the winter 2006 Interweave Knits. Wow. The color in this last photo is really horrendous (the yarn is a lovely deep red, almost garnet red, not the garish stoplight orange it appears here), but it shows the depth and intricacy of the pattern:
I think I'm about ready to cast on for the sweater! New skills commencing...
My sister and I are going to start knitting "A Cardigan for Merry" by annypurls.
She chose Lagoon for her daughter G, I chose Lilac for Baby E. These colors...I can, and probably will, go into the symbolic significance at great length (BUT not tonight; I need more wine).
The pattern calls for 3mm needles. US 2s are 2.75; US 3s are 3.25. I guess I could probably get Addis right at 3mm or any other non-American-sized needle, but I'm feeling wild. How much difference can .25 mm possibly make?
(I add the last sentence to my file of famous last words, which include: "I'll never wear bell-bottoms," "I wish Jon would ask me to the prom," and "How much trouble can an infant be, really? I'm sure I'll have lots of time to take classes.")
I've decided to go with the 3s, for kicks and giggles...also because with a child's sweater I'd rather err on the side of too large than too small.
Swatching of the LOVELY cable pattern has commenced; photos to follow!
Swatching sure FEELS like a waste of time--can I get an Amen?
That said, I know IN THEORY that it is an absolutely essential part of making handmade, not homemade, knits. "Use your head to save your feet," as my grandpa would say, or in this case, to save your hands. "Take time to save time," as Melissa Leapman says, IN ALL CAPS, in Cables Untangled.
So I'm choosing to act the part of the virtuous, organized, paced knitter, and am demonstrating for you here the SWATCH I INTENTIONALLY KNITTED for the Swallowtail Shawl.
It CERTAINLY IS NOT a SHAWL I STARTED and then MESSED UP and COULDN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIX and so BOUND OFF and CALLED IT A SWATCH TO SAVE FACE. Nosirree Bob.
I learned two things--and that's what this is all about, right, learning? Having fun?
First: I like lace. I really really like it.
Second: Threading a lifeline is a good idea.
If Baby E is allowed to play with Barbies (for one) and is interested in Barbies (for two), Barbie is sure going to have one heck of a purty shawl.
The color is very red. This is my absolute favorite color in all the world, though I don't own many true red clothing items. I'm already imagining wearing it with a 3/4-length-sleeved black ballet tee. Drool.
As a rule, I object to gratuitous cute kid pictures. My children are people, dammit, not sweatshop workers toiling to provide fodder for my blog, to be digested and spit out by the voracious knitblog community!
(For the record, I disapprove of gratuitous cat pictures, too.)
That said, I just HAD to show you how cute my daughter and niece look in their Easter dresses. That's baby E on the left, niece G on the right. G just turned 10 months, E will be 10 months on the 19th.
(And, oh, that guy in the middle's pretty cute, too...just no handknits.)
Beyond the kiddo ogling, there was Scrabble. There were trail walks. There were trips to the mall. There were glasses of wine and bowls of gelato. There was sushi. A lovely visit!
It's the little things.
Like...not having enough stitches at the end of a row of lace knitting.
Like...not having any idea how you lost a stitch and then realizing you're not even sure which row you're on.
Like...not having threaded a lifeline.
Like...not having a problem with frogging, since you've only done 3 or 4 repeats. (It's a swatch! am I right?)
Like...not having batteries in the camera.
The little things.
