I Solemnly Swear That I Am Up To No Good

We spent the weekend at the beach, as is our custom at this time of year.  Right before school starts, all our best friends, their children and their dogs converge at Devil's Lake.  The lake is just inland from the mighty Pacific Ocean, where big fun was had by all:

Smallies in their native habitat: Wet and Sandy.

Phillip got a Karate lesson.  He should be out of traction by spring.

Paisley made a new friend.

And I knitted this

This is the way the Frog Prince begins.  I made three panels (two side fronts and a back) with steeks in between them, knitted in a tube.  Here you can see the two fronts, with their steek between.  Tonight I will cut them apart and block them, and then the real mischief begins.  The cunning plan is to join them at the shoulders, then pick up and knit the sides of the body and the sleeves sideways.  It's gonna be wicked cool.  I know because I'm still at the point in the project where nothing has been jacked up yet (that I have noticed), and the plan is self-concocting flawlessly in my head.  This is in many ways the best part of designing - I only have to think stuff up and make it be knitted.  It's communicating coherently to others how they can do it too that gives me trouble. 

Which brings me to a question I have for you, dear blog:  Would you rather not hear/see any of the Frog Prince process until it's all finished and available for you to make your own?  Or would it be useful/amusing to see the process step by step as I create the pattern? Kindly weigh in, dear readers, via comments.

I really wailed on the knitting this weekend, and I even managed to relax with my friends and family.  I brought along the copy of my book and tortured my poor indulgent friends into looking at it.  These are the very same suspects who were forced to watch me knit at every social event for a year so that the book could be written in the first place.  It was nice to be able to hold and point to the physical manifestation of all that.  None of these people are knitters, so a willingness to flip through the pages is more than I had a right to expect.  Lucky for me they are loving and supportive, so it doesn't matter to them whether I write about knitting, or Kung Fu, or cellular mitosis.

And I may also have made a sock, but I plan to deny it.

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

I have known for quite some time that this day would arrive.  I didn't know which day it would be, just that sometime, it was coming.

534 days ago I sold an idea to a clever and talented bunch of people.  And today is the day it became reality.

Here it is, standing on my very own desk, with real pages and everything.

I didn't realize until I held it in my (shaking) hands that I secretly suspected it would arrive with all blank pages, or someone else's writing inside, or a title page that said "April Fools!" or something.  Not rational, I know, but the power of doubt is substantial.  Fortunately, so are the powers of optimism and tenacity.  While repeating to myself the mantra that I really could do it, I have also been pinching myself to believe that my book was really happening.  For 534 days.  

I have been wondering if, when it finally arrived, I would have the intestinal fortitude to read it again.  I surprised myself by actually wanting to.  And read it I did, cheered on by the smallies, who chose it for their bedtime story.  Higher praise, I could not ask.

Hope you like it, too.
 

Not Really My Fault

Let me be perfectly clear:  I tried not to. 

I tried not to buy sock yarn.  I tried not to first covet, and later procure, the finest sock needles.  I labored to avoid sock books, sock blockers, sock project bags, and free sock patterns.  For a while there, I even attempted to hide from sock knitters.  Neither my children, angling for anklets, nor big brother, begging me for kilt hose could sway me.

You see, I thought that there was no need for me to be interested in sock-knitting.  I don't need to design socks, because it looks really hard, and gobs of clever people are already doing it, much better than I could.  I don't need to fuss with all those little DPNs (I'm guaranteed to lose at least one).  I cannot afford the luxury of self-indulgent personal knitting when I have professional knitting projects backed up around the block, and deadlines for them all.  Nope.  There was absolutely no need for me to branch out into the hosiery realm.  I was a monolith of resolve, even in a storm of temptation.  That's how I know that what happened was Not Really My Fault.

I found myself at the Sock Summit (couldn't help it - they threw the party right in my own backyard), and my ironclad will went like cotton candy in a car wash.

Carson started it.  He had these gorgeous handspun socks on that he made from Targhee, and it took everything I had not to get down on the floor to gawk his ankles. 

Then we went to the marketplace, which was ground zero for all things socksy.  My resolve started to rattle loose when I saw the yarn, but I held on to the thought that I have lots of yarn of my own at home (cause that was bound to work).  But none of my yarn is sock yarn.  My yarn is good; great even, but it's for other things, having been procured in specific amounts for specific projects.  One new little skein could make me a whole pair of socks, and there would be no need to disturb the stash.  One little skein could never hurt.

And that's when I saw the Scottish Terrier Sock Blockers.  If there were one thing I could have told you I really don't need, I would have to have been STSB.  But there they were, and Carson bought the Poodle ones.  That was it.  The twang of my self-control slipping from its cogs could be heard around the block.  I clutched the STSB to my heaving chest, breaking the cold sweat of a junkie as I wrote the check.

Everything after that is a blur.  I vaguely remember screeching to a halt in front of the sock needle display.  They were all there - all the sizes, and you could try them out...

And then there was the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth, which Tina and her ilk had cleverly baited with all my favorite colors.  I staggered through, drunk on wool fumes, with only one thought:

"If I knit them really fast, it doesn't count."

Honest, I can quit any time I want.