the digital age

1. Two days before I heard that the new Knitty was up, I sketched out a sweater that had been knocking around my mind for a few days. Guess what? It's the Samus pattern on the new knitty! I don't say this to mean "I'm so creative!" or "Someone stole my idea!" but really more "hmm maybe I won't have to write the pattern myself after all." My pattern, however, appears to be named "A Lack of Safety Culture [LSC]" which is a phrase I heard on NPR that day that stuck with me for some reason, so I wrote it on the top of the Post-It with the sketch on it. LSC, in my mind, is not bright orange like Samus, but is grey, specifically is the grey tweed yarn my parents brought me from Ireland. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with that yarn! Maybe a really straightforward Samus-y sweater is what it needs to be. I don't have enough yardage for a sweater's worth of complicated cables, even though that's what I'd like to do. It would work well for Rogue if I had a few extra balls for the hood. So anyway, I'm probably going to end up making a Lack of Safety Culture and everyone will say "Oh I love your Samus!!" and I will groan. [Now that I look at it, I realise that mine is raglan-sleeved, so maybe I could submit it as an original pattern after all! Raglans fit me better anyway.) I have been thinking about the cable pattern used because I worked in an afghan years back (the project for which I learned to knit in the first place) and have loved it so much ever since.

2. I love the LiveJournal Knitting community. It's like an accidental group blog for people who can't commit to blogging on their own. A lot of the posts seem more personal than what would belong on a group forum dedicated to a specific subject. (As in, I don't care if your husband helped you wind a hank of yarn, and I don't care if that means he must love you. Put that in your personal journal and leave the rest of us alone.) Most of the LJers I know subscribe to the community and read it regularly. For me it just clutters up my visual field, and reading just a single page of posts makes my eyes bleed. The advanced knitting community is less populated but not always much better. All you need to do to join the advanced community is sign up: "advanced" covers a lot of ground in this case. I find myself skipping those posts anyway so it's a wonder I even bother. But, if you feel like you want to hit your head against your computer monitor but don't have a really good reason to do so (yet) then go to the knitting community. You'll wonder how people so dull are allowed to hold pointy sticks without direct supervision.

3. Non-digitally-speaking, I've made crazy headway on the linen lace shawl... as in, I'm almost to the end of Ball Uno, which means very nearly halfway done. The issue is, of course, the fact that as the rows get longer with each RS go-around, it seems I'm making less and less progress. Having orchestrated the pattern before, I realise that the first ball is misleading, and the second ball is all about sticking to it and seeing it through. Working it again is giving me all sorts of flashbacks to Linen Shawl One, and all the wackiness in my life at that time. At this point I am looking forward to more lace projects, and I'm thinking of revising my Knitting WIPhilosophy: one sock project AND one lace project at all times, and then the whatever-whatevers I'm working on besides. (Still haven't made those chair cushions for the kitchen yet...)

4. Digitally speaking, I still haven't heard about my Secret Pal 6, but most folks apparently haven't. To be honest, I'm sort of already shopping around for the Spoilee, so I want to find out who it is SOON so I can gather the proper articles! Why am I such a kook for sending out presents like this? I think my gifting nature is kind of anti-holiday and more just-because. Like, can I give my mom the Retro Redux socks as soon as I finish them, or do I really have to wait to put them in her Christmas Stocking??