Twenty Minutes

I hate the end of class. I never feel done.

History Repeating

So I got my books from the "Hurt Books" sale at Interweave today and spent a little bit of time pursuing the pages of "A History of Hand Knitting", by R. Rutt. Looking down on page 161, I see,

"The end of hand-knitted stockings

Socks and stockings were the most frequently hand-knitted garments from the beginning of popular knitting until the 1950's. Today they can hardly be seen, and only the old can turn a heel without referring to book.........Today's knitter expects more pleasure from the craft." (pg.161-circa 1987)

I r o n y as defined by the craft of sock knitting. I dare say, the "old", i.e. the twenty years young crowd, may not be too pleased with that statement, eh? Or, at least they'd be forced to admit they had to check the internet for a reminder. I just love that. All kidding aside though, I do believe this is going to be an excellent read.

Done....Enough

I think my class may be coming to close soon. Sometime in early August, at least. Still trying to decide if I'll take it again. I'd like to think I will.

Still knitting, but nothing worth showing at this point. Got stalled on my Anais pullover; waiting for another skein to show up in my mailbox. Other than that, it's all Ipod socks and fighting second sockitis. A bright spot though....that Ravelry is quite an accomplishment. You can queue up a lifetime of knitting projects that you never thought you wanted to knit before, in ten minutes flat. The only foreseeable problem is the inclination to not to talk about knitting here, however silly that may sound. Because it does connect with so many knitting blogs you may never have happened on otherwise. Maybe it's time to expand my bloggable horizons again.


In other once-enthusiastic-but-almost-forgotten news, I finally (ahem...a year later) got my Proteus painting "functionally" finished. I basically stared it day after day, standing on end, next to my drafting table for all these months and I let all the expectations of what I thought it ought to look like finished slip away. I just needed to paint the sketchy-ness away. Once I put it my table to polish off the edges, "until I got a chance to REALLY finish it", it took all of twenty minutes to make it hangable. And seriously now, who am I kidding? It's surface will likely never meet with another paintbrush again. But who cares. I love looking at it, hanging above my bed, all bright and cheery and semi-unfinished. It's basically everything I needed it to be. The end.

Exhaustion

Was tired walking in. Was tired walking out. And it shows.

If I Were A Better Knitter...

I'd always to take my time. I'd never ever switch needles mid-project. I'd carefully write out my modifications. And I'd give more thought to the stretch allowances of each and every type of stitch.

But I'm not that better knitter self. I am an impatient, self-indulgent, needle-switching, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants knitter who can barely pause to contemplate gauge and right-measurement. It just happens that way and the damage is always done in the doing and never in the planning. I never plan. I just "do".

However, I am a fixer and figure-er when I finally get to that part of the "doing". And in this case, I figure I'll be doing quite a bit of fixing.

I started the "Intricate Stag bag*" out of pure fascination with the chart. Not being a big fan of deer particularly, it just seemed the right chart at the right time. Also seemed a good way to burn through some my mostly unused Palette stash. (mistake #1, I think)

I love the colors I had to work with, especially I was looking to side-step the whole John Deere phenomena that abounds in these parts. But I was short a ball of dark grey and had to accommodate by using it light grey for parts. (not a mistake, I'm pretty sure)

Where the fixin' is gonna happen is in my on-the-fly miscalculations of the amount of stockinette I'd need to do in the back. I just got lazy. And bored. So I rushed the point at which I placed the mini-chart in the back and I under shot the remaining stockinette to be done. That also leads to the general un-stretchibility of stockinette, by the way.

Then, I switched needles for the last garter rows. (mistake# 3, a biggie) Garter stitched on bamboo straight needles is far more stretchy than garter stitched on the same-sized aluminum circulars. Most people know this, no doubt. Not me.

So it sits a-blocking right now. Imperfect and still kinda pretty. In phase two of how-to-better-yourself-through-poor-crafting, well....I tell you what I've done once I've done it. See, lesson one is already taking root....being thoughtful about how to proceed is one way pretending** you know what in the hoo-hah you're doing.

* For the pattern, your gonna have to sign up for Knitting Daily....it's fine....just do it.

** My fail-safe is throw the whole thing in pot of boiling water just to watch in fascination as it felts up. Just so you know.

So Goes It

Flip, 25 min. drawing.

Flop, 25 min. drawing.

Had a rough time trying to focus this session. It didn't help to be told that I needed to work on arm definition. After that, all I could see were arms. With exception to these two poses. I hate that she has chub hands in the bottom pic. She was so graceful and cheery. Oh well.

It's Benderin' Time, Baby!

Twas the Father's day cake as decorated by four wee impressionable persons. It's all Futurama, military history and love. Just like daddy.