11 Days of Star Trek!

In preparation for the new Star Trek movie, Orion and I are celebrating the 11 days of Star Trek, and watching a movie a day until we go to the first showing in our area on the 7th. Many of these I have not yet seen. Last night I saw Star Trek: The Motion[less] Picture for the first time. I'm pretty sure that our enthusiasm for this whole business means that we must be forever labelled incredible geeks and shunned from all decent society. But then again, I'm pretty sure that was concluded long before now.

On to Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan!

(In knitting-related knews, I got an invitation to the Hello Yarn fiber club today.  Hurray!)

They are the outsiders

I was reading a post by the estimable Wendy Bernard this morning over at her blog at www.knitandtonic.net. She's more eloquent than I, but said something to the effect that it's no wonder that non-knitters don't get what we do, since they only see the works-in-progress.


This gave me a moment's pause, I have to say. Since awareness of knitting in the outside world is so rare that we hold Knit In Public days just so that people actually see people knitting and know that not all knitters are grandmothers (though all the more power to the ladies who are), it hadn't occurred to me that we might be being judged by our unfinished works. It's an appealing thought.


The pessimist that I am, I had always assumed that it was due to the glaring problem that so many of the handknits do not flatter the wearer. I still won't buy several (unnamed) knitting magazines because so many of the sweater patterns they offer are cropped boxes with tea-length sleeves. They make the model look short and fat, what are they going to do to someone who isn't 5'10" and 130 lbs? You can see the evidence at many a knit night, unfortunately.


Do I need to mention color choices? No? Good.


Shall I point out some knitting weirdness?


To be fair to the knitters, the problem is compounded by the fact that there are also a lot of designs and garment types that are extremely popular in the the knitting subculture but are not so popular with the broader community. I have seen not one single non-knitter wearing a cowl (at least not since I moved out of certain goth circles), but knitters are whipping them up like there's no tomorrow. And I don't know many twenty-five-year-old non-knitters who wear lace shawls. Or adults wearing mittens. Yet these are often beautiful garments impeccably made.


I know that this isn't helpful, but we might all just have to accept that we are part of a subculture and embrace it. Along with the gamers, the golfers, the trekkies, the car enthusiasts, the football fans, and the followers of haute couture, we have to recognize that we have different opinions of what is valuable/interesting/good than outsiders do. We have different costumes, we have different rituals, we have different vocabulary, we have different ideas about what is acceptable. Outsiders will always think we are weird because of this, often for no better reason than that they are outside our group. I sure think that Chicago Bears fans are weird for going out in 10 degree weather wearing little more than body paint, but that's because I don't understand why they do it. And why don't I understand? Because I'm not a crazy football fan. All the other crazy football fans understand. So when my sister dons her blue wig and face paint to head off to a Seahawks game, I'm sure she's got the same sort of thinking going on.


I think Wendy may be a little outside this particular problem. Have you seen her new book? I got it for Christmas and I love it to death. She makes some of the cutest, most wearable designs. No fair.

So this is the new year

Orion got me a spinning wheel for Christmas, and I've made my first yarn.





Every new spinner and their mother have waxed poetic about the beauty of their wheel, their sense of connection with generations of fiber craftsmen and women before them, the joys of creating yarn on their own. I don't really have anything to add there. I second their emotion.





All us knitters have gotten sick of hearing about how knitting is the new yoga. I've always thought that was a bunch of crap. I think a serious case could be made, however, for spinning as a new form of meditation.





I'm seriously needing that meditation right now. For no good reason that I see, I can't seem to find a happy. I feel like I'm living an indie album. What's up with that?

I guess I'd been knitting a lot of socks

Life always seems to get in the way of knitting. I guess that's why I like knitting so many stockinette socks. That, and I have a penchant for hand-dyed yarns, which are best displayed by very plain stitch patterns. But I can make stockinette while reading, watching tv, or working. *Nothing* gets in the way of my stockinette socks.

Except driving, but I don't think I should try to change that.

There were a lot of socks in that last post. There are a few more here. Sorries!

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Autumn Socks

For the Mystic Light shawl, I swatched with a yarn I had picked up while out of town. I liked how it was looking, but didn't really have enough yarn for a shawl. I called my favorite yarn store to see if they had my yarn. I was looking for Classic Elite Alpaca Sox. "You can't make socks with alpaca yarn." At the time, I didn't even *want* to make socks with alpaca, but I got a diatribe about how you *can't* make socks with alpaca. Needless to say, they did not carry my yarn.

I went on a Milwaukee yarn crawl with Orion a little while later. Misti Alpaca makes a beautiful hand-dyed worsted weight yarn, so soft and vibrant. I wanted it, loved touching it, but couldn't imagine what I would make with it. It was somewhat expensive, and I don't generally like multicolor yarns. Just for socks, but this was a worsted weight alpaca yarn. Orion pointed out that I didn't have house slippers like I'd made him. Alpaca slippers it is. You *can* make socks with alpaca yarn, you just can't expect them to hold up to hard use. These socks are a comforting luxury to come home to.

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The Tragedy

These were socks I cast on a while back. I brought them to the yarn harlot event in case I finished the project I was working on before the event was over. I handed them over to Anna so that she would have something to work on. I brought them with me on the trip home to Seattle last weekend. These are socks with history.

They were made with yarn with history as well. I used this yarn to make a heart sachet for Carrie's 3-year bag. I didn't remember that until I ran out of yarn, about 3 inches from the end of the second sock. Ouch.

I've picked up some yarn in a coordinating color for toes, heels, and cuffs, for when I go to remake these. I just don't know if I'll have the heart to start on that any time soon.

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Sorries to Sher

This is a poncho I'm making for my Aunt Sher, both as an apology for an insensitive conversation on my part, and because I want to make her happy. I think the purple color is happy and very Sher. I'm also hoping that the poncho will be easier for her to put on than her sweatshirt, but still comfy. I obviously haven't gotten very far with it, though.

Every time I work with cotton, though, I swear never to do it again. And then I do. I wish it didn't hurt my hands so much.

Take your knitting to work day

Work has been weird this week.

On Sunday night, one of the urinals on my floor overflowed, then continued to run water until half the third floor was flooded. Then it continued to flood the second and first floor as well. It's been pretty wet. We've gotten some hard-core equipment in to deal with the problem.

Those red things stacked to the left are all of the fans that were in the offices and hallways. There were also dehumidifiers everywhere. My office was apparently hard hit, because it was one of the last to get the "dry" signoff, and it got its own fan and dehumidifiers. I wish I'd gotten a picture of that. They did have to tear out the baseboards in much of the offices. The following picture is typical:

We hope to have our offices back by next Friday.

Fortunately, I work in a place which can take such things in stride.

So I decided to go to work and take a bunch of pictures of sock.

Now you have a glut of socks. Stop complainin.

Mystic Lights KAL

I've been working on the Mystic Light KAL. It's on clue 3 now, but these are the first pictures I've taken of mine. I think mine looks a lot different than everyone else's. I'm guessing that it's largely because I used a different double decrease than was called for and the yarn I used gives a lot less definition than most the others used.

Mystic Light shawl after clue 3

Close-up of Mystic Light shawl after clue 3

The pictures aren't the greatest, since Kitty kept attacking the shawl while I was trying to pin it out. She was trying to eat the shawl. Then she tried to use it as a scratching post. I had to lock her in the bathroom just so that I could get this. She has been a big brat lately. I didn't want to leave her in there long, so I just pinned it out as fast as I could on the floor and stuck a couple pieces of paper under it to show the lace better. High quality, high class, no? But Kitty thanks you for forgiving me. ;-)

I've still been knitting

I know that I haven't written in forever. It really is inexcusable, I know. I also know that this is a bunch of whining, but I don't know that I felt that anyone was reading, so I just kind of let it go. Since then I have been informed that there were at least a couple people interested in the knitting of Cindy, but I kept not writing. What can I say - I'm challenged. ;-)

What I really wanted out of having a blog was to be able to connect with all of my knitting friends, so that they could see the things I'm working on and we could discuss. I don't know if a blog is the right forum for that, but it was all that I could think of. Would it make more sense to have this as a group space, where several people could post? I really want to be able to use this space to build a community. That's the whole reason I wanted a blog in the first place.

All of my friends are far away. I wanted a place I could go to find them, even though they are all over the country. I miss everyone.

If you all can forgive me, I think I'm going to try again. Maybe this time I can get this going. If you have any ideas on how to get people more involved, I would love to hear them.

And I'm sorry for getting all melodramatic and pouty on you. ;-)