Wow!

This is so inspiring...today someone left a comment on this post saying that they had knit my dreadlock hat pattern. Unfortunately they didn't leave an e-mail or blog link, so I hope they read this: thank you so much for letting me know! I was so excited and wished I could see photos and bummed that there was no way to find this person on the net...then I saw a little link below the comment and found what appears to be yet another instance of this pattern in action! I'm so psyched!

http://community.livejournal.com/52_crafts/23905.html

Thanks to both knitters - this is a great feeling!

The End

...of the year, that is. Not the blog, though it probably seems that way. And not knitting! I have been busy.

Since I last posted, I've gotten a car (yay!), painted my toenails, turned 22, eaten probably 2 heads of garlic (on Christmas night alone), blocked and sewed up four of nine squares of the mitered square blanket, and even started attaching pieces of the Gee's Bend Blanket (photos of said attachment are being saved for hopefully not too much later).






The diagram above is for exactly where I want each miter to end up. I had the miters laid out on my floor for a week, rearranging them until they were just what I wanted, but I had to a) pick them up off the floor and b) wash and block them, so I knew I would never remember without writing it down. It's been so helpful in putting these together!



As of this moment, the bottom two squares in the above photo are joined by a long strip of orange, and they look amazing. I've rediscovered my love of mattress stitching (vertically) with these projects. It's so incredibly neat and tames edges more than it would seem possible.



In the spirit of never finishing anything, I also started a clapotis in knitpicks sock yarn (I don't know if they make this anymore, the colorway is called "mesa"). I needed an airplane/train project over Thanksgiving, and none of my other projects would do (can you BELIEVE it?!)

I had a very nice Christmas in San Francisco with my dad and brother, and I hope you all had a nice holiday season as well. I went into shut-down mode because that's what I've done every year of my LIFE so far, having at least two weeks off school, but now that I had ONE DAY off for Christmas (plus two vacation days that I decided to burn) it wasn't very convenient. I got sick, and had to take off the rest of the week, and am now way far behind where I wanted to be on my vacation/sick hours accrued. Oh well.

Happy new year everyone!

PH0TO5, omg

I found some batteries! Yay! (Could have just bought some instead of searching in boxes for the ones i *knew* i had? no!)

Unfortunately, I did not find them until after daylight savings time had ended, thus all my photos until about next April are going to be crappy night shots. Sorry!




Here's the mitered square blanket I've been working on since the AIDS Walk. Originally it was going to be three large squares by four, with six outlined in turquoise and three each of yellow and grey in a grid pattern. then, i realized that there wouldn't be a good way to place the yellow and grey squares so that none were exactly diagonal from another of the same color (does that make sense?), plus I realized that this blanket would need a border, and I was basically working with scraps from the lace log cabin blanket and my frogged Kyoto, so I didn't have that much yarn. Now it's just going to be nine squares, two each of yellow and grey and five of turquoise.

I love this project because I've barely been paying any attention to it - just knitting a square every two days on the BART as I ride to and from work, and all of a sudden I'm two thirds there!

My boyfriend is out of town all week (and these two weekends) for a neuroscience conference, and DST has ended, stranding me inside, basically, because I'm wary of walking around at night by myself, so I've been knitting like mad. This weekend I spent most of my time at various coffee shops working away alternately on the blanket and a lace shawl I've been working on/designing. Bad picture alert.




I was really excited about this, but now that I'm binding off I'm getting less and less jazzed. Basically, I went for an edging that's not going to enhance the thing at all, and I'm too sick of this project to try to frog back and do anything else. Plus, I kept running out of yarn and even though it's cheap-o mass produced crochet cotton, the dye lots are varying enough that I am sort of thinking of dip-dyeing this once all is said and done to hide the differences (we'll see about that). Frankly, as my first official FO of the year, as long as it's better on me than Kyoto was (I'm over it, I promise!), I'll take it.

I plan to block that tomorrow or Thursday night, depending on how it goes. I have all kinds of projects I want to work on, but I really need to clear the air of abandoned and long-running projects right now. A pre-New Year's purge is in the making. And maybe my blue shawl will turn out OK enough to write up the pattern. Or not. I keep thinking to myself that this has been a really bad "knitting year" and I want to get rid of that feeling before going into next year. I don't like trying to start with a clean slate when the dirty one's still hanging around somewhere.

Sorry about the rant the other day, there are just certain issues I really can't get past for anyone (and many that, admittedly, I don't make the effort to address in my own practices). I seethe with rage about reproductive rights, but eat restaurant chicken that probably came from some crappy factory farm. We do what we can - and we all do it differently.

Red Kettle Season

It's about that time when the ubiquitous Salvation Army brings out their red kettles...and this year, like in years past, I won't be putting a dime toward their cause.

I hate to do this on a knitting blog, because it's not about knitting, but I feel like this needs to be said: openly bigoted organizations do not get my help. And actually, it does have something to do with knitting, because I was looking up Goodwill-type places in my neighborhood to shop for used sweaters for recycling yarn, and there's a SA store that I refuse to shop at. And you should to, if the following things upset you!

Salvation Army statement on marriage: "The Salvation Army affirms the New Testament standard of marriage, which is the loving union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others."

Salvation Army statement on homosexuality (why they NEED one is beyond me): "The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life."

Articles on Salvation Army's refusal to offer benefits to same-sex partners and anti-gay policies:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_199806/ai_n8784073
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=4162
http://lifesite.net/ldn/2004/may/04052707.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/08/MNG09EK6N81.DTL&type=printable

Off the soapbox.

Yikes!

A month and a half of no blogging! How do I stand it?

Thanks to all who are keeping me on bloglines. I'm knitting regularly - I just don't have much time to blog lately and can't seem to make any. I'm keeping up with most of the ones I read and sometimes log in to ravelry (hotcoalsonly). I also am rarely home to take photos when there's any decent natural light!

I can't promise when I'll be back to blogging regularly, but when I do I'll have a pattern up, probably for purchase, which I'm VERY excited about (not in terms of making ANY money off it...just having it out there!)

Right now I'm on hold with southwest airlines, trying to change my flight so I don't have to fly through the Los Angeles fires and 70mph winds tomorrow morning. Scary! I hope if anyone out there is from the affected areas or has family and friends there, that everyone is safe and that their homes are not in danger.

Take care, everyone!