Prickly

I used a lot of pins to block this.  There.  I said it.  The truth is that I don't even like pinning things:  I used to be mocked openly when I was a ballet seamstress for never using enough of them.  They are fiddly, hard to hold onto, and dang POINTY on one end.  But the trouble is, if you say to someone who has OCD "Here are a few lace holes that really could stand to be opened up, and by the way, here are 3000 pins", then what you will get is this:

And This:

Voodoo Doll Knitting.  The Forest of Pin-itude. Pin-a-palooza.  Pin-tastic.

And heaven knows, it's not that I have too much time on my hands (evidence to the contrary).  I was so bored with pins after the hour and a half it took me to poke one in every single stupid yarnover that I think I may have entered a fugue state.  But I couldn't stop and leave some lace holes nicely blocked open and some untouched.  That's like playing God with lace - who am I to decide which holes are block-worthy and which are not?  So in the end the only fair thing (and the only thing that would allow me to sleep last night) was to block open every single hole in the lace.  And every single picot on every single edge.  Phillip smirked at my pain and asked if I'd read any Clive Barker lately. 

I do like the way this is shaping up, skin perforations aside.  You may remember from a previous post that this is a new project for Spring/Summer.  I'm using the incomparable Blackwater Abbey 2-ply worsted in Old Purple this time.  Big Fun, in spite of what Phillip is now referring to as "Your Pin Problem".  How do porcupines make love?  Carefully.

Room With a View

Today I'm ruminating on the nature of workspace.  I have been torturing Phillip for a while now, and he has agreed to let me remodel the unfinished space in our garage for a Proper Atelier.  He has also agreed to let me figure out how to pay for it, too.  Dude is so magnanimous.  Above is the third or fourth incarnation of my plan - like everything, it's a work in progress.  I'm asking a lot of one little room:  writing/office, sewing/cutting/blocking, spinning/skeining/winding, reading/relaxing/hiding from my family.  I have elected not to include a sink, because I have not yet gotten into dyeing, which I hope is not something I regret soon.  Can't have everything, right? 

So, what have I forgotten?  Tell me what's in your dream studio...
 

Monday In Cleveland

Yesterday I was in Cleveland, OH, where I taped a guest segment for Interweave's Knitting Daily TV show.  Series 300 will begin airing on PBS in July, and my episode is called "Fun With Color".   More details as I have them.  The taping went fine, but I learned that Liz Gipson's theory is totally true:  TV cameras remove all of your personality and replace it with pounds of ugly fat.  Aside from that, I managed not to crash into anything on the set (at least while the cameras were running) and may have formed a coherent sentence or two, though the jury's still out on that one.

The best part of my trip was making new friends:

Here are two of  the Knitting Daily TV hosts, Shay Pendray and Eunny Jang, with me in the middle.  These ladies have The Chops, my friends:  Eunny taped six segments back to back, solo, all before lunch.  Shay conducted different guest spots throughout the day, gently steering her awkward and nervous subjects through the process so that it was over before they knew what hit them.  Just the way we like it.

I also befriended:
 

Spinderella Herself:  The lovely and (preternaturally) talented Abbey Franquemont, whose fourth grade hat I was gushing on about only last November.  Abby's new book is due for release at the same time as mine, so we had many notes to compare.  Getting to spend the day with this lady was absolutely the crowning blow to my resolve not to become a spinner:  It's so over now:  I'm gonna spin.  We also hatched a Cunning Plan, which will ultimately result in BIG FUN for knitters in the fall...Watch This Space!

In all, the experience was humbling, enlightening, inspiring, and exhausting.  By way of recovery I am taking the day off to hang with Phillip and the smallies, mount an assault on Mount Washmore, and other normal stuff.  Who knows:  might even knit...