Mad Hatter

Dontcha just love it when you get totally crazy over a ball of yarn?  This little gem followed me home from the yarn shop when I was visiting relatives.  I am always so much more vulnerable to yarn lust when I am away from home - I think I'm afraid I'll run out and be stranded with no projects.  Never mind I never leave home without a separate suitcase of yarn.  Not Kidding.  So I succumbed to the charms of this particular skein at Thanksgiving.  I was so excited to start swatching that I recklessly tore off the band and promptly lost it.  Then reason briefly reigned for a while and I got back to work on the thing whose turn it really was at the time.  Flash forward to now, and I can't for the life of me remember what kind of Noro this is. 

I am so excited to tell you: I have been chosen to teach a class at the spring Knit and Crochet Show, sponsored by our friends at TKGA.  It's in Portland, Oregon, my home town, which makes it even more terrific.  My class is going to be about designing in stranded colorwork, and we'll be making hats based on our own charted motifs.  When I realized I needed to start getting ready for this, I immediately thought of my dreamy Noro whatever-it-is that I have been meaning to hat-ify in the Ruth Sorenson style.

I have never made anything in the Ruth Sorenson style, but that is not going to stop me trying.  I'm going out of town for the weekend to a figure skating competition, which just begs for something small and portable to take along.  This should just about do it.  And it fits so nicely into the Knitting Suitcase - barely takes up any room at all.

Dala Horse

Here it is:  The completed Dala Horse.  I have made some loud sweaters in my life, but this has to be in the top ten for loudest.  Total Riot.  Here's the back:
 

Just in case there weren't enough different motifs on it I threw in a monogram, too.  I maybe need to look into the concept of moderation.  But not today.  I love those horsies.

I also finished retooling the manuscript, which only took a week longer than scheduled.  I have a whole new shock of gray hair from it.  The difficulty of creating words is only surpassed by the difficulty of re-creating them.  I have a whole new respect for movie directors.  It's tough to watch something you struggled to create hit the cutting room floor.

So today I am luxuriating in the possibilities for what to work on next.  I could get started on a swell matching set of father and son vests I have planned.  I have not been told whether or not they are getting published yet, though, so jumping the gun could jinx me, if Murphy's Law has any say in it.  There are a number of UFOs I'm neglecting, for all the reasons everybody neglects UFOs, namely that they kinda suck.  If anybody knows a way to more kindly reassess a UFO, I'd love to hear it.  I feel bad for having fallen out of love with them.  Just not bad enough to pick them up again.  I have a swell new pile of Peace Fleece sitting here, which has been whispering to me that it's destined for the last cozy sweater of this winter.  By that I mean that my optimism for Spring is eventually going to take hold and lead me away from heavy cables and their brethren.  If I want to do any hard core snuggling under a heap of the warm stuff, now, rather than August, would be the time.  Send me your votes, will ya?  Cotton vests or Woolly cables.  Your advice is deeply appreciated.
 

Surgical Strike

I know this may be a disturbing image for some - heck, I get a little twitchy myself, looking at it.  I thought it was interesting, though, how only by doing this (cutting open the patient), can you get to see this:

The Fascinating Sweater Guts.  I know - I probably need get out more.  But it is cool no?  See how the inside is a perfect reverse of the outside?  It causes me to pause and reflect on the nature of surgeries, both physical and intellectual.

I am in the process of re-writing my book, which is very like surgery, in that it has a lot of blood and guts, and makes me long for painkillers.  Each word and sentence and turn of phrase has to be taken apart, examined for possible problems, and then stitched back into place.  I want the result to be beauty-enhancing reconstruction.  I deeply fear a Frankenstein outcome. 

I am intellectually balanced on the scalpel's edge between the way I would like to write my writing and the number of pages there are to put it in.  This means that I have to reduce the number of words without changing their meaning.  That's not so hard, but I am finding that the edited version of things always sound like somebody else's writing.  And of course, putting everything under the microscope this way creates a serious loss of perspective, so maybe I'm worrying about nothing?

One of the problems with introspection is it's awfully hard to know when you're done...