Confusion
getting old isn’t for sissies. that’s .. .wait, what was I saying?
When I was a very little girl, I read a lot of serial novels about girls doing exciting things. Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. Loved her. The Boxcar Children, always fun to see what they were up to. And like many little girls I loved Nancy Drew. Nancy and her chums Bess and George, and her boyfriend Ned – ever so much more interesting than dumb Barbie and her boyfriend Ken, and her cousin Scooter. Oh, you didn’t know she had a cousin named Scooter? Yeah, isn’t that dumb? But Nancy, the titian-haired girl detective, always falling into mysteries. I envied her that. I wondered why she couldn’t seem to turn a corner without getting involved in the mysterious, while that NEVER happened to me. Ever. I thought maybe it was because her father Carson was a lawyer. He always had these cases that were tricky, and like all lawyer fathers do, he’d ask his daughter for advice or help. Dang. Why didn’t my dad become a lawyer.
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- i LOVED this book!
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- this one kept me up one night
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- and this one – remember it well!
Well, for anyone else who has had that same woeful experience as a child, let me tell you that your chance will come. My life is now constantly full of mysteries. “Where did this paper tape come from, I have two rolls in the medicine cabinet! I didn’t buy them?” “No, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before.” OR “Didn’t we just have a whole bag of chips? What happened to them, I didn’t eat them.” “Neither did I, I have no idea what happened to them. I remember buying them.” And the mystery that keeps repeating itself: “Where are my glasses? I just had them.” And its cousin, “Where are my keys, have you seen them?” And the always popular “Now why did I come into this room?”
Paging Nancy Drew.
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if only all problems were this small. 
Well, knitting friends, I’ve gone back and forth, like this:
I’m pretty sick of stockinette and want to start a new project.
Don’t do that- you’ll never finish these sweaters!
But I really want to cast-on with the Cascade Eco Duo.
If you just focus and spend your time with the sweaters, they’ll be done and you know you are going to love them.
I know, but….
Forget it. Just stick with your sweaters. Stick with it.
Yeah. Just when I think I’ve decided something, the other voice starts making a lot of sense. So there I sat with the last point, sticking with my sweaters.
And then I decided, screw it. I’m casting on. Laura mentioned a hat with snowflakes, and I think that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll knit the background with the luscious hazelnut Cascade Eco Duo, and the snowflakes with the vanilla Eco Duo. As Laura said, the snowflakes should really pop against that beautiful brown.
And then, if I have enough yarn left, I think I’ll knit these mitts – I’ll use the vanilla as the background, since I’ll have much more of it left, and the owls with the brown, assuming I have some left.
Also, one kind of embarrassing confession: when the current batch of his homemade pickles is gone, we (which really means I) will have eaten 30 pounds of pickles this summer. Yikes. When you put it that way, I am a piggie!
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i don’t know what to do. really. please help me solve my knitting problem. AND DON’T LAUGH.
Colossus of Rhodes
I guess I fall on the process side of the process/product divide (here’s an aside for any reader who isn’t a knitter: we are process knitters if it’s really the process we enjoy [and some of us are even pre-process knitters], otherwise we’re just after the end result). Of course I also adore the products, and love having my handmade work as part of my daily life. I guess I’m like the Colossus of Rhodes, straddling the harbor – one foot firmly planted in the process, the other firmly adoring the product.
ANYWAY. Geez, I get off track so easily. When I started composing the post in my head, I thought I’d open with the first lines of The Odyssey, about asking the muse to sing. I must be in some Classics/Ancient Greek head today.
ANYWAY. Good grief. OK, to my point. I am languishing in stockinette wasteland. (oh yeah – this is why I brought up process knitting. I do love the process, but I’m going really bored with stockinette! sorry for rambling…) I’m nearly finished with Peasy‘s 2nd sleeve, and have been randomly working body rows when the round-and-round-and-round of the sleeve starts to be too hypnotic. Yay! An alternating purl row! Variety! (sidebar note: I once had a knitting blog called I Hate the Purl Row but decided that was a little too harsh.)
ANYWAY. So if I’m tired of Peasy, I can work on …… my Mondo Cable cardigan. Also at the sleeves, and also all stockinette. OK, so that’s wearing a little thin and boring? How about my subway knitting……oh yeah. Stockinette hat, knit in the round.
So one project is sock yarn, and not all that soft and lovely a sock yarn either. One project is madelinetosh merino, o so soft and lovely. And the other is Rowan Felted Tweed – scratchy and rustic. I can focus on the yarns to experience some variety, but I think I’m coming down with a case of startitis. I suspect I’ve been infected by
don't you want to rub them against your cheek? 70% baby alpaca, 30% merino
Cascade Eco Duo. Two skeins – hazelnut and vanilla. Only 197 yards each, aran weight. Oh y’all….they’re so soft it’s like lying down in a field of puppies. Or bunnies. And having fairies kiss your cheeks, while dusting your nose with marshmallows.
SEE?! See how they’ve hypnotized me! The problem is that I need to make something with them, and now….but do I use them both, in some stripey scheme? Or make something precious with one of them – there’s the 198 Yards of Heaven shawl (dang, I have 197 ). But I don’t want to just pick something, anything, just because it’ll work with the yarn.
aaaaaargh!!!!!!!! The paralysis of a perfect yarn. All advice and recommendations welcomed.
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britney spears is providing ‘mental support’ to mel gibson? really??
I was comparing smartphones on CNet, and some ad on the page led me to the LA News Monitor, or so the masthead says. I draw your attention to 2 items I added a red mark to:
First, the big red check. REALLY? Webs just happens to be advertising here? Or is it some evil background web marketing deal, where my IP address/ computer “knows” that I visit Webs now and then (OK, a lot), so their ad was inserted just for me? (If it was really smart, it’d know that I don’t need no stinking ad.)
But this is the part that left me shaking my head, and going back to the masthead repeatedly to be sure it wasn’t The Onion. See the 2 lines I highlighted in red? “Britney Spears is providing mental support to Mel Gibson”????????
Hello, pot? This is the kettle calling. Or, if you prefer, I could say something about the blind leading the blind. I still think it’s some kind of prank by The Onion. Granted, I quit keeping up with Britney’s and Mel’s doings many many years ago, but still. This can’t be real, right?
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dancing in the dark.
My sweet older daughter Katie got married in June 2008 (easiest anniversary ever to remember: 06/07/08). Hers was a much more traditional wedding than Marnie’s, complete with puffy white dress, groomsmen in tuxedos, rosebud corsages, and all that happy jazz. She hired a professional photographer, who caught this very enigmatic shot that I rediscovered yesterday while wandering through her online photo album:
me dancing with my son
Several things to note, before turning attention to the odd glance:
1- That’s my daughter Katie, dancing with her husband Trey, in the right side of the photo
2 – That’s Marnie visible in the back, in the green maid-of-honor dress
3 – Yes, that’s right, I’m wearing the same dress at Katie’s wedding as I wore at Marnie’s. First, both girls crazily decided to have OUTDOOR weddings in the HOT SUMMER, so something extremely cool was called for. And second, I bought it specifically to wear to Katie’s wedding, and when Marnie’s came up I decided to call it my “dress I wear to my daughters’ weddings.” I’ll have to keep it safely aside to wear in the future when my youngest girl gets married, which will probably be several years, since she’s a sophomore in college.
It’s a very long story with my beloved son – lots of very long stories with him, to be more accurate – so I know everything that lives behind that glance, behind my close hold on him. I store the photo here so I don’t forget about it again.
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So I’ve been out all day, wandering in the soggy rain — which left me soggy, pants wet to my knees, feet pruney from being in wet sandals all day, sandals that held water and also turned my feet black from the leather(?) uppers. Yes, I’m a real charmer right now.
Since I had a couple of hours to kill between appointments AND since I knew it was going to be so rainy, I didn’t want to take Peasy with me. A smaller, less complicated project was in order, so I took my 2nd Wowie Zowie sock. And I just solved a mystery associated with the first sock.
The yarn in the 2nd ball is dramatically lighter-weight, much less stiff, than the yarn in the 1st ball! The ball bands indicated that they were identical in every way, down to the dye lot. Exactly identical. Every way. But when I was knitting that first sock, the yarn just felt so thick and tough, and the sock was like heavy cardboard. It did soften up a lot after I blocked it, but it’s still substantially heavier than the 2nd ball of yarn.
Perhaps that’s why I ran out of yarn so quickly! Perhaps it was just mismarked, and it’s whatever weight is heavier than 4-ply fingering. I don’t know – but I do know that the yarns are not the same.
I feel redeemed, somehow! I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong, before. The 2nd sock has a very different hand, much softer, more pliable. The colors are so strong, any differences won’t be very visible because they’re drowned out by ALL! THAT! COLOR!
Off to knit for a couple of hours, happy me!
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why can’t i do this math?!
I just feel the need to say this – this subject must be threatening to my identity or something – but I’m very good at statistics. I can do a discriminant function analysis, structural equation modeling, whatever. But knitting math just makes my head hurt. Since I’ve written about this before, and you left such generous comments, I do know that I’m not alone; for some of us, the whole enterprise is just counterintuitive. I knit a swatch and have too many stitches per inch….do I use a smaller needle or a larger one? Even though I have already been through this, I still don’t know.
So after redoing my Peasy swatch in the wrong direction, I redid it last night in the right direction. The pattern gauge is 22 st and 30 rows = 4 inches. Going up a needle size, I get 21.5 st and 30 rows = 4 inches. Pretty dang good!
My problem is that I can’t figure out what that 1/2 a stitch difference is going to mean. In the gracious spirit of Amy Herzog’s Fit to Flatter series, last night I decided to just suck it up and take my real measurements, disregarding what the actual numbers were and just looking carefully at the relationships between them. Then I compared them to the Peasy pattern to see what size I really need to knit. Well, I’m exactly on the large. Exactly.
So does this 1/2 stitch difference mean the sweater will be ever-so-slightly larger or ever-so-slightly smaller? If it’s larger, that’s wonderful! I sit here and try to puzzle my through it and just get a headache.
note to self: you can do structural equation modeling! you are not stupid!
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i’ve never HAD time to kill! i don’t know what to do with it.
greek yogurt with greek honey - luscious
It’s so strange, going from having too little (time) to having an abundance. From having too much (stress) to having almost none. I don’t quite know what to do with myself.
I know what I want to do with myself! I want to arrange a life of balance, that’s the big picture. I want to do yoga regularly, to strengthen my very bad back; I want to walk regularly, to be outdoors and to benefit my heart; I want to lose a bit of weight and eat well; I want to write; I want to line up enough work so I don’t feel frantic about it; I want to make things; I want to stay connected to people; I want to keep my house clean and neat. Balance.
If I’m not careful, though, I piddle away time without doing anything at all. I sit with my laptop, just checking this site one more time and oh yeah let me look at that one and oh wait I need to respond to this and after I look at that I’m shutting it down and getting busy and then it’s time for dinner. That’s what happened yesterday.
I tend toward Prussian organization, which then collapses and I’m back to wasting. In other words, I get way too anal about it, like this: On Mondays from 8:30 to 8:45 do this. From 8:45 to 9:45 do that. Tuesdays and Thursday from 7:15 to 8:45 do that. Every Wednesday afternoon from 3:00 to 4:15 do that. Rigid, strict, entirely structured. And all it takes, when you’re set up like that, is one fail and then the whole thing can wash down the drain. (Of course it needn’t, but if you’re a person with these tendencies, that’s what happens.)
So I think instead, well, how about if I just say “3 mornings a week I’ll spend an hour doing yoga” etc. But what I do in reality is this: well, right now I’ll just finish my coffee and poking around the internet, then I’ll get up and straighten up the living room – I’ll do yoga tomorrow.
Maybe, instead, I need to deconstruct the beginning – do what alcoholics have to do when they’re trying to learn how to stay clean. Break up the routine that supports the addiction. Right now, I get up and make a little pot of coffee — 2 mugs’ worth — and then I slowly drink my coffee and feel justified in poking around the internet. Just while I drink my coffee, you know? That’s all. Then I’ll get busy. But I take a long time with it! I may take 2 hours drinking those 2 mugs of coffee. A little sip, poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. It’s really really hard to break up that very slow start to my day. Every night I think, as I drift off to sleep, “in the morning, don’t open the computer, just take your coffee to the table and write by hand for 20 minutes. Just do that.” But then I don’t, because I’m tired. Or whatever.
My life has been entirely structured, forever. Babies’ nursing schedules, naptimes, picking up kids from school/snack/homework/dinner/baths/tucking in. My own college and grad school schedules. Work work work work work work, always at jobs that are intense and draining and never the kind that nourishes me in any way.
So now, here I am, for the first time in my 51 years of life, with time. I can’t squander it. Do you have any advice for me? How do you manage your time?
help me swatchers, help help me swatchers
There are some things we all know we should do – flossing our teeth at least twice a day, weight-bearing exercise as we age – and swatching, if we knit. I confess that I have never swatched, and I know I should but I don’t quite get it.
I understand the need to make a swatch if I’m making a garment that needs to fit in a particular way. Scarves don’t have to be swatched, I get that. Sweaters do. Yep, I get it. I know how to change needles to get stitch gauge but I don’t know what to do if my row gauge is off, even if the stitch gauge is right. Basically I just kind of do a bit of ostrich-dealing, pretend I don’t know anything about row gauge, and sally forth. It hasn’t been a problem, since I’ve frogged every sweater I started.
This time, though, I want to really make a sweater. Finish it, block it, take it to the end and end up with something I love to wear. So I know I need to learn more about swatching. When I’ve got spilkes, or when I’m not going to get to use a new yarn for a while and I’m just dying to do more than touch it, I’ll cast on 20-30 stitches and just knit a few rows in stockinette, to try to get it out of my system. Hardly swatching, but still, it’s a little fun.
I couldn't leave that Rowan Felted Tweed alone....
But there’s another thing about swatching I really don’t understand. I’ll read people’s posts describing swatching all the new yarn they get. Or they’ll say things like “my binders full of swatches were taking over the library!” and I just don’t know what that means. Even if I pretend I know what it’s like to design a sweater, I can imagine making very specific swatches to figure out the yarn and needle combination to get drape; the yarn and needle combination for different weights of yarn if I want to provide alternatives; and the gauge issues for pattern knitting. I get that. Is there some other use for swatching that I just don’t understand? Swatchers? (and I’m serious: how do you change needle sizes to hit row gauge, when the stitch gauge is right?!)
i gave notice at work, and guess what happened….
So. On Monday I gave notice at my job, and I didn’t know what to expect. I knew they would be surprised – and they were – but beyond that I just didn’t know. I was prepared for everything except what happened.
They cried. They really did. My boss cried when I told her, and came into my office the next day, sat down, and did it again. Colleagues said the most incredible things, things that were hard to take in. Inside, I imagine myself as just slinking around the perimeter, and not registering with people. I imagined that I’d just quietly slip out the door and no one would even know I left for a while. But that’s not what happened, and it has blown me back off my feet. It’s hard to take in, hearing people tell me what they think of me, what I mean to them. (Remember when you were about 12 years old, and you’d get mad at your mom for something and imagine that you died, and everyone was at your funeral, and they were all so sad, they’d all be so sorry then? This has been something like that, but without the death part!)
They immediately started listing freelance work they want me to do, so they can keep me around and also to help me, which is kind. My authors have wailed, and sent me the most amazing letters that I will absolutely cherish.
I think this is true for most people, and we just don’t realize it. We make an impression, we have an impact on people, people in our lives feel all kinds of things that they don’t ever say, because they think they don’t need to, or they’re shy, or they’ll just tell you tomorrow. I think you’re a very lucky person if something happens while you’re alive and you get the chance to hear it – especially if it’s all at once. So maybe the other side of that is that we should actually tell people these good things we feel about them.
One thing nearly every person said in their little lists referred to my sense of humor. Well, I am a dramatic person, I do have a quick and dry sense of humor, and my reactions can be large and hilarious. For example (you can see that I like you, I’m willing to be ugly in front of you), someone snapped this shot at a birthday party they gave me. I was responding to something someone said. Oh the humiliation….
silly, dramatic me
So anyway, I’ve been silent because I’ve been silenced by all this. Plus I’ve been insanely busy. I did finish the wedding dress and today I bought beautiful little Italian mother-of-pearl buttons from Tender Buttons, which is such a cool store. Only in New York, man. We have a button district, yes we do. In the morning I’ll take it to the cleaners for a good pressing, then get it off to my girl, the bride-to-be.
I promise knitting content will return soon. I’m dying to return to knitting…
i sell my photos, therefore i am a photographer.
Hi. My name is Lori and I am a photographer. I sell photographs on a stock photo site – fotolia. This is a link to the gallery of my photographs.
I haven’t uploaded any new photos in a couple of years; the ones that are in my current gallery were taken before I knew very much about taking pictures. I’d delete some of them now. There’s nothing spectacular about them, but what’s so confusing to me is that 91 people have paid for this image:
It’s a fine picture of red leaves, but (1) photos of red leaves are a dime a dozen and extremely easy to find, (2) for free. I don’t know why 91 people paid for this.
I use stockphoto sites when I’m trying to find images to use on jackets of the books I am publishing, so maybe it’s just people like me, people doing their work and needing a quick and simple resource.
Anyway, I guess this makes me a photographer. After my excessive rumination below, I guess this nagging issue is taken care of.
why can’t i just say “i’m a photographer”?!
When do you shift from saying “I do X” to “I am a X“ From, for example, I knit, to I am a knitter. I design, I am a designer. I like to write, I am a writer. There is an important psychological shift that has pretty fascinating implications for health-related concerns – I have diabetes –> I am a diabetic.
This morning I was reading through a ravelry forum about photography. One woman said something like “I am a photographer blah blah” and she gave a link to her work. I really love photography; I have favorite photographers, books about the philosophy of photography and how-to books; I have a folder of photos of favorite photographs. And I enjoy taking photographs. So I clicked the link to see her work and it was really not good at all. Very poor lighting, trite, poor quality of the images themselves, etc. And she is a
me and my camera
photographer. My photographs aren’t anything special, but they are considerably better than hers.
So my point is not to boast about my photographs, because I’m not doing that, but rather to think about the identity issue. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to make those kinds of claims – it’s not as if it matters! I could walk around saying “I’m a writer,” “I’m a photographer,” “I’m a baker,” etc., and it would not make one bit of difference to the world or to anyone. But I can’t do it. I like to write, I like to take pictures, I like to make bread. I see other people making the claim, and I’m always in a bit of awe at their self-confidence.
I can imagine possible reasons for my hesitation: it feels like bragging; it feels like I’m saying “I am a professional X” when I’m not, and if anyone looked at 
my ‘work’ that’s exactly what they’d think, that I’m full of myself, or lying in some way. I think another aspect relates to my thoughts about writing and photography; books have always been extremely important to me, and I hold writers in very high esteem. They have a kind of exalted place in the world, to my mind. Photographers less so, but good photographers can transform people, understandings, even policy. To say “I am a writer” just feels impossible. Salman Rushdie is a writer. Cormac McCarthy is a writer. Victor Hugo is a writer. Jose Saramago is a writer. I am not Rushdie, or any of those.
I also think that saying “I am a” invites people to ask if they’ve seen/read your work. It implies public or professional acceptance and reward. At a party: “I’m a writer.” “Really, have I read anything of yours?” “No, I just like to write.” Clunk.
But that’s not what people mean when they casually claim these identities (I think). The ravelry woman is a photographer because she takes pictures. Maybe I just need to get over myself and quit over-thinking everything. I do have a tendency to do that. In psychology, there is a construct called “need for cognition,” the meaning of which is pretty obvious. People vary along a continuum in their need for cognition, and I’m way way way at the top of the scale. 99th percentile, I’d guess.
paralyzed by gorgeousness.
This is what happens when you have yarn that’s just so perfect, you have to pick a pattern that does justice to it and shows it to its best effect. I am paralyzed. I have a bunch of madelinetosh in my stash, and want to make something really beautiful. I’m thinking of the Daybreak shawl, which has been made 43 times with madtosh sock. (Sorry for the ravelry links, if you’re not on rav. If not, why?!)
So I have 3 skeins of tosh merino light, in filigree, and my new skein of eyre light in jodhpur, but I don’t know how well they’d go together. Since I have 3 of the filigree and one of the jodhpur, I’m thinking the green would be the main color. What do you think, seriously?
do you see a daybreak shawl in these yarns together?
I just can’t decide. I really ought to swatch them together. That’s the only way to answer this. Still, if the combo strikes you in some way – great or awful – please say so! I’m just as interested in the bad as the good.
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