On the having of standards

I did a quick perusal of my August and September entries and it appears that in two months I’ve completed two socks, frogged one other, stopped knitting another sock after part-frogging it several times, finished a hat that was already 2/3 complete and started on another hat - a hat that I’ve already started, frogged and re-started three times. I do a lot of frogging.

I think I’d like to spend less time ripping shit out and more time finishing things.

In the meantime, I’ve decided I should rename my blog. From now on librarian-in-training should be accessed via i-rip-shit-out.blogspot.com.

I wonder if this penchant for starting, mangling, then not finishing projects means:
1) I need to improve my knitting skills, or…
2) I need to lower my standards

Doubtful? Work with me for a minute.

Option 1: It’s possible I’m just a really crappy knitter. I’d be ok with that. It’s also possible that I would be a much better knitter if I could just get over my aversion to gauge swatching. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that won’t change any time soon.

So thankfully there’s also Option 2: it could be that my standards are too high. If I could just abandon concepts like “fit” and “drape,” I would be much more successful in my “finishing projects” goal.

For example, I'm a systems analyst By Day. This means I help design, test and implement internal systems for a consulting company. A few days ago, my knitterly coworker and I were testing a bug fix on one of our systems and chatting idly while waiting for several (agonizingly slow) pages to load.

Suddenly, she looked up at me and said “IF I HAD TO USE THIS SYSTEM EVERY DAY, I WOULD DIE.”

And I said, “That’s exactly the kind of user experience we were looking for.” Mind you, this (agonizingly slow) system was considered a successful implementation! That’s the kind of standards I’m talkin’ ‘bout.

There are several other workaround options: I could try to befriend way more people, preferably people that come in way more sizes. To hell with this “normal size” group of friends I have. I want people with shockingly humongous heads and miniscule feet! Barrel chests with stubby little arms! Scrawny legs, broad heels and strangely square toes.

My new tag line can be....Misshapen? Freakish? Disproportionate? Have I got knitwear for you!

Also, my friends totally need to get with the breeding program. If baby knits turn out too big, they will always fit the recipient eventually. Selfish friends.

Seriously though, I need to fucking back off a little bit on the frogging thing. I need to remind myself that I took up knitting for fun. I need to remember that I’ve been knitting all of a year, and it’s ok if I’m not turning out sock after sock in between gorgeous lace shawls and saucily redesigned sweaters nearly every day.

I work. I’m in grad school. And I have the attention span of a hyperactive blowfly. On crack. I will most likely never be that kind of knitter.

And that's perfectly fine with me. Standards be damned.

Sock History

Lollygirl suggested that Socktoberfest types share their sock history, so here goes...

I started making socks this summer. I blame, er, credit, the Yarn Harlot’s Knitting Rules and her utterly charming chapter on the allure of sock knitting. Plus knitting socks makes me feel like a super-genius.

I originally taught myself using the Harlot’s Rules and the free pattern on a (hideous) ball of Lion Brand Magic Stripes yarn. Over the summer I also took a sock knitting class at A Good Yarn, wherein I discovered I already knew how to knit socks, but was reassured to hear that my “mistakes” (ladders, holes at the gusset) were totally normal and could be fixed with practice and some yanking.

I had already made two other socks (not a pair) before making the first full pair for my sock knitting class. Considering that I made them out of DK-weight alpaca at the end of August, they’ve had minimal wear and have consequently held up brilliantly.

That first pair is chock-full of mistakes, but I pretty much adore them just the way they are.

In terms of construction, I might try a short-row heel next or toe-up, but so far it’s been plain old top-down, heel flapping on DPNs for me. There's something pleasingly tidy and old-fashioned about that method.

I do have Cat Bordhi’s Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles, though I haven’t tried it out yet. Oddly, I’m always willing to buy yarn that might not pan out, but I just can’t make myself invest in several Addis for a sock-knitting method I might not like. And I don’t do enough knitting with fingering weight yarn to justify teeny tiny Addis for anything else.

As for yarn, I’ve tried Opal, Lorna’s, Sunshine Yarns and Lion Magic Stripe, as well as the DK-weight alpaca. Mostly, I’m just a big slut for cute colors and stripes. The yarn itself matters less to me.

Just the one pair so far, so I guess I'm a sock novice. I’ve started and frogged three or four others, and I’m currently in a fight with my most recent sock (I love him so, but I'm afraid we're not meant to be together).

So I suppose in the spirit of Socktoberfest, I should be knitting something sockish, instead of just talking about it…

Off to the knitting!

Smitten

I'm so completely in love with this new yarn. And not just because it has the cutest label I've ever seen (happy sheep! knitting!)...



No, I also love it because it's so pants-crappingly beautiful.



[Updated November 10, 2006 to replace the photo I deleted from my Flickr account]

My photo in no way does it justice. In real life, this yarn is the most wonderful combination of green-blue glass and smoky silver and stormy seas, with forest floors and old moss and bursts of Martha Stewart blue and apple green thrown in. I get excited every time I pick it up, just to see what color might come up next.

It's so beautiful that I think I achieved knitting nirvana. I twisted the stitches - not once, but TWICE - while joining for the first round in the hat. And I absolutely didn't care. I really thought "Yay, more knitting!" as I ripped it out. And every time I come across a gigantic hunk of organic matter (twig? hoof? poop? nail clippings?) mashed inside the yarn, I calmly pluck it out and keep knitting.

In fact, I give full credit to this yarn for the cute Australian that started chatting me up on the T yesterday while I was knitting with it. When I told the boyfriend all about it, he responded with withering (yet strangely sexy) sarcasm, "Yeah, I'm sure he was really interested in your knitting."

This is the boyfriend that texted me today that he was watching TV in my apartment but would also "guard yarn in case of intruders." I do love him.

In library news, my class visited the Thomas Crane library in Quincy yesterday, and I feel ever so much better about everything. The library was beautiful and lively and light-filled, not to mention well-funded. They have up-to-date technology everywhere and real live birds in the children's room and the center of their library is a three-story atrium with a cafe and performance space. It's the kind of place where the patrons complain that the staff is too loud and that they lack librarian-ish decorum.

It reminded me that there absolutely are libraries I would be thrilled to work in. Thank f-ing God.

Too many crayons

My boss has twin boys that just started kindergarten. When she was back-to-school shopping, she mentioned that the kindergarten gave very specific instructions regarding the number of crayons to purchase. Something like 12 or 18, not the monster-size box (with 68 crayons and an awesome built-in crayon sharpener) I remember so fondly from my elementary school days.

Apparently, if young children have too many crayons, it takes them forever to decide which crayon to use. Hear that - too many colors equals paralyzing indecision.

Ah, you may say, "but you're not a five year old."

Or "you're a grown-up, you should totally be able to cope with having lots of yarn."

But oh how wrong you would be. No. Idea. What. To. Knit. Next.

Knitting math

Finding more brown yarn
+ procrastination
= a finished hat!

This hat has been languishing in my Unfinished Object basket since last spring. I actually finished it (the first time) in March, then ripped out the top third after re-reading the part of the pattern that said, in all caps:

BEGIN DECREASING EVERY OTHER ROW

I believe I decided the pattern was "not the boss of me" and decreased every row instead. This turned out badly and I was irritated, so the hat remained unfinished. Until now.....


I keep sneaking into the bathroom to admire it while it's blocking. Now I know it's nothing particularly spectacular, but I do so love a finished object. Finishing makes me feel like the kind of knitter that doesn't just sluttishly start project after project, abandoning them as soon as they have a problem. The kind of knitter that won't be seduced by any soft, gorgeously colored yarn that saunters by.

The kind of knitter, in short, that finishes what she started.

Maybe I'll pick up something else from the UFO basket today.

Maybe I'll virtuously finish EVERY SINGLE F-ING THING IN THE DAMN BASKET....

Or maybe I'm still high from all that yarn I bought yesterday.

Yarngasm

My (awesome) friend Meredith is what we call an "enabler." Awhile ago, she casually mentioned one of her local yarn shops was going out of business and everything was on sale. And that I should probably take the commuter rail up to meet her there. That outing was a supreme success - I totally rounded out my DPN collection and got ten skeins of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool for under $60.

But this weekend Meredith outdid herself. She had a friend that was looking to get rid of some yarn. Did I by chance want to help? Oh, and as long as I was in the area, did I want to swing by the cutest little yarn shop that just opened in Beverly Farms?

This is what the stash-busting jaunt got me. There's actually more but when you pile it all together, it's a little shocking.



And because the phrase "too much yarn to carry on the train" simply didn't occur to me, we went to Yarns in the Farms immediately afterwards. This is the outside of their shop. Go there immediately and give them lots and lots of money.



I could barely stand to leave. It's tiny and adorable and the owners are wonderful and they have the coolest sample projects and the most exquisite yarns. At one point I might have accidentally slipped and fallen and written a check for this:



I was so excited (and by excited I mean "high") from all the yarn that I only cursed a teeny tiny bit when my rebound project, the project that was meant to restore my mojo post-sock, wound up like this:



Yes, I'm out of the brown yarn, thanks for asking.

Breaking up is hard to do

The sock and I broke up last week. I just didn't feel like he was giving as much to the relationship as I was. What with his yarn that tangled horribly when I was winding it, and the DPN I snapped while trying him on, and all the frogging and reknitting, I knew we just weren't meant to be together.

But as so often happens after a breakup, I got a little lonely over the weekend. I thought maybe the sock and I had spent enough time apart that we could just be friends.

So I invited him over, we had a glass or two of wine, and wouldn't you know it...one thing led to another, and soon I had finished his heel flap, picked up his stitches and started in on his gusset decreases.


I even tried a new method for picking up the stitches, courtesy of Grumperina. Much fiddlier than the usual way, but no unsightly holes.

Apparently I enjoyed this new method so much that I picked up 27 stitches on a 21-row heel flap.

I've been in serious denial about the problems this might cause, but I finally have to face reality: it's puckering like a bastard and no amount of blocking will fix it.


I see our night together changed nothing for the sock. I was just a convenient one-knit stand.

I feel so cheap.