Thursday, September 20, 2007

Can We Talk?

Hi Knitters,
Does it get any better than pumpkin spice yarntini on a gorgeous fall day? I think not. I am so in love with this yarn an now even worse, I am so in love with this pattern. Have you seen this pattern, is everyone already knitting this and I am out of the loop? This fantastically simple pattern is easy-peasy and beautiful. It is called Kaibashira by Chrissy Gardiner. What is interesting is she is using that same type of technique that I just demonstrated for the felted flower video where you are passing stitches over and off the left-hand needle. Only she uses it for the cuff edging, too good, too good. Loooovin' this idea and I will revisit this in some other form someday.
I must warn you about this, you are going to be seeing lots of yarntini Kaibashira socks in progress and hopefully completed. Get your seatbelts or sockbelts on. You know what's funny is that the sock above is riddled with mistakes (don't be looking now) and every time I see a new mistake I've made it only makes me laugh. I have no urge to correct my errors. I think it is fun for me not to worry so much about every single stitch.
By the way, I have absolutely no business knitting socks right now. You would not believe all of the other things I should be doing. It is called stress-induced procrastination in the worst way. Note to self: I have to put all yarntini things aside immediately, no question. I have a feeling it ain't gonna happen.
Okay, here's my next thing to talk about. I mentioned that I got my invitation to ravelry. It is an amazing site for all things yarn. The resources that are at your fingertips...it is astonishing. But here is my thing, it overwhelms me. I hate to admit this. I clearly haven't had time to sort through and figure things out, but yikes. Really, I basically have nothing on there but an "about me" page and some books in the library. The lay-out of the site is so handy for an organized soul. For example, on your personal notebook you have a place to organize and catalog your needles. This kills me. Do you see the massive pile of needles above? That's not even all of them.
This makes me laugh. I know where everything is in this pile from dpns, to addi turbos to knitpicks options. There is no problem here and this totally works for me. Can you believe that statement? The vintage black lunchbox was my dad's and I have been using that for the past 10 years to cram miscellaneous needles in and I enjoy it. The needles at one time were organized from smallest to largest but sadly that isn't true anymore. That doesn't even bother me. Oh no, it's a slippery slope.
This huge binder is filled with addi turbos in these handy pockets I got from here. (As if you are going to follow my lead on this topic.) These work great but when you are like me you start shoving multiple pairs in each pocket and things become a little blurry. I have probably a dozen or so pairs from this binder in use right now and I leave the empty addi pockets on top of the binder while I am knitting with them. How's that for some keen organizational skills? Anyway, it would literally take hours and hours to go through and catalog all of my needles and it is probably not going to happen. I don't see any need for it although it may appear to others a mess, for me it works.
I admire people who can organize and use ravelry to its fullest. It is a remarkable tool for knitters. I still need to figure out how I am going to use ravelry. To each her own! I'll keep you posted.
One more thing, I have a funny (at least to me) story for you. Yesterday I went on youtube to check on the tutorials I have been posting. My son posts them through youtube and so people can view them without going through the blog. So I hadn't had a chance to check out the newest clip yet on there and I see that the marley topper video has an honor. It was #17 on the most linked videos for that day in the DIY/How To category. I thought, oh, that's cool and I click over to the top 100 list in DIY. I thought it was so funny and weird to see what was on the list surrounding my kitchen table knitting tutorial. For many of the videos I couldn't even figure out what the topic was but quite a few in that top 20 list seemed to include guns. Yes, that's what I said, guns, Itty-Bitty and a whole lotta guns. I don't know if it was just that day or what because there are thousands of knitting and craft videos on youtube. I guess gun repair was a hot topic a couple of days ago (and knitting?).
As my mom would always say, "What a world."
best, susie