Catching Up

Greetings, Gentle Readers!  I've missed you, and I thank you sincerely for your good wishes while I took a break to rest my eyes.  Happy Belated Independence Day to you all.

I've been making hats.  Lots of hats.  Crazy hats, pretty hats, scary hats.  I'm feeling a little bit like Bartholomew Cubbins.

And the good news is that I've reached the halfway point on my book!  And my publisher likes it so well they've asked me to make another one, this time on slippers.  Yay!

Lindsay attended band camp.  Campbell and I are building a picnic table together.  Phillip is teaching summer school and acting in a play (his first in about 15 years).  It's a good summer.  We're busy, we're hot, and mostly, we're together.

I had a crazy idea (the kind that usually come to me when there is no possibility of acting on them) that I should really adapt this rabbit into a sweater.  What do you think?  I would totally wear that:

Oh, and my eyes are slowly improving, thank you for asking.  I'm no longer wearing dark glasses indoors, and all it took was getting a shot in my eyeball.  Gross, but worth it.  More or less.  What's new with you?

Some Kind of Fluke

Today I'm knitting a hat which is supposed to resemble a sea creature.  I have a swell drawing of the thing I'm trying to make.  I learned when doing the drawings that just because I can imagine something doesn't mean I can draw it.  Turns out that just because I can draw something doesn't mean I can knit it, either.  Go figure.

Another lesson I'm getting:  Sea creatures are not sweaters.  I had no idea I was stuck in a rut, but it seems to have happened.  I keep wanting to knit the same shapes I always do for garments:  Bell-shaped sleeve cap, cylindrical body tube, rounded neck hole, etc.  None of those pieces (which my body seems to want to knit no matter what my head is telling it) are going to yield a hat that looks like a critter.  I have to turn off the autopilot and think.  This must be really good for me, because it's kinda hard.

I've been looking at photos (thanks, Internet!) to try and immerse myself in the architecture of creatures.  It's helping, a bit, but my real problem is figuring out where increases and decreases go to make natural-looking animal shapes.  It's not intuitive.  And getting it wrong means lots of frogging.  This must be really good for me, because it's kinda hard.

Also, nature loves symmetry, so I have to do lots of things in matched pairs.  Which is fine, except it means that I have to write down each step with extremely painstaking precision in order to repeat (and possibly reverse) it for the other side of whatever thing I making.  And if it's wrong, I tear out that page and start all over again.  There is almost as much paper on the floor as there is yarn, which is saying something.

But don't worry; I'm doing my best to figure it all out so you don't have to.  By which I mean, when you pick up my new book and decide to knit a hat that looks like a sea creature, I want it to be as fun and easy for you as possible, with all the tricks already sorted out.  This must be really good for me, because it's kinda hard.

It's getting Weird(er) in Here

My publisher chose three of my zaniest hat designs as contenders for the cover of the new book.  Because the cover shoot happens before the rest of the project photos, I'm working on the three cover contestants first.  Of course, I can't tell you anything about them yet, but I couldn't resist giving you this sneak peek.  HA HA - get it?  "Peek"?  It's like they follow me, wherever I go...

When I was a child, my mom worked as a theatrical costume designer.  Which meant that I could never tell what strangeness would be overtaking our dining room (where all the magic happened) next.

One time I brought some friends home after school.  We found the dining room table completely covered by nothing less than a two-man fur camel suit.  Unable to resist, a couple of us climbed inside, only to discover that Mom had rigged the mouth of the camel to open and close with a lever mechanism she hid in its long neck.  The camel could actually sing along with the rest of the chorus, on stage.  It had sparkly white teeth and long eyelashes, too.  My friends told everybody at school that I had the coolest mom in the world, and they were right.

So it brought me no end of joy when my Smallies came home from school to discover the weirdness I've been making in our living room.  They argued over who would get to try it on first, and begged me to be allowed to wear it to school.  Then they invited the neighbor kids in to see it.

I'm so happy my apple fell close to Mom's tree.  I hope my kids grow up to embrace the weird, too.  So far, I like their odds.