Carrying on

It has been a strange week, gentle knitters. Strangest was a meeting of the Langworthy Library Knitters, which I found difficult to endure, so I left early.

As often happens when people democratically connected by little other than a single interest convene, there is some incompatibility among group members. This wouldn't matter if everyone focused on the shared passion of knitting. However, one member continually hijacks the conversation and monologues about her life as it played out from about the 1940s through present, though she seems especially fond of tales from the 1960s. Does she not notice that people rarely, if ever, respond to her chatter?

As usual there was this background noise, but then a new member joined the group, and within about fifteen minutes had informed us all of her extensive and serious health issues, surgeries, and treatments IN A VERY LOUD VOICE.

That was the straw, my friends. I do not go to a knitting club to be bombarded by the semi-tragic and deeply personal information of someone who's clearly looking for...what? Sympathy? Help? To this sad person, I donate a metaphorical Kit Bag. Were she to pack her troubles into it, she might enjoy life. Meanwhile I was the one with the fake smile on my face, while inwardly I wanted to stab someone with my #3 dpns, so nice and pointy.

So, farewell to the Langworthy Knitting Association for the time being.

Yes, people need to relieve themselves of the burdens of their misery, their angst, their fears. We all have confessed or vented to close friends, family members, clergy, and paid therapists. These are either people who know and love us, or people who are professionally qualified to help folks Deal with their Issues. What does it say about someone who foists her baggage on strangers and mere acquaintances? That, like Blanche Dubois, she relies on their kindness? IMHO, it merely adds unfairly to the burdens we all carry, less or more gracefully.

Never has the maxim, Keep Calm and Carry Yarn, seemed so appropriate.

Ted carries yarn.

Friends and their FOs, or A Tale of Two Knitters from Massachusetts

Sometimes knitters actually fulfill their New Year's resolutions.

Margaret's 40+ year-old diamond-lace handknitted socks are finally put to use.

Joan's Colinette-kit afghan is complete!

Brava, ladies!

Sock of Ages

Observe, if you will, these lovely diamond-lace hand-knitted socks. By any reasonable standard of measurement, they would be considered beautifully executed. Suppose, gentle readers, that I told you these were made by my friend Margaret M. in the 1960s, when she was an eleven-year-old stripling? Would you not agree that this is a truly awesome accomplishment?

She brought them by today. I urged her to wear them, now that they've been knocking around for 40-odd years. "It's time," I said. (They still fit.)

Margaret M. artfully drapes the socks across Alfie.

Broken promises?

Well it's 2012 and I'm ever so grateful that the holiday Binge and Binge syndrome is fading into the distance. And also the setbacks of 2011, notably the spirally-fractured left fibula. Now that I'm quasi-ambulatory--it takes a long time to recover from a broken leg, I've learned--I'm hoping gradually to rediscover my ribcage, which (like much else of my person) has chunked up from intensive sitting around. Not that I didn't get a lot of knitting done while I was intensively sitting. That, and many rich hours of piano practice. But after a while one yearns simply to move forward. I have worked up to a daily 1.5 mile walk with Miss Lola, and am hoping to stretch it soon to a two-mile round trip. Ok, enough about me, and happy new year to you!

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Can any of you, gentle knitter-readers, relate to this photo? It is of the neckline of my Evolving Sweater, on which I was picking up stitches when the Expensive Circular Needle, an Addi Turbo, simply folded over and broke. I have occasionally destroyed bamboo-tipped circs, but never a metal one. That is, never until yesterday. Imagine my shock and horror, if you will. It's not as if I'm stronger than I realize, nor was I adrenalin-fortified at that moment. I would be interested in hearing from the knitting public about similar mishaps, so please be in touch.

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As is my custom, I've asked my knitting friends to share knitting resolutions for the coming year. Here are most of them:

Caroline B: My goal is socks, a poncho and...I guess my general resolution is: knit more!


Doree W:  I  hope to spend more time knitting-- learning how to work with colors while holding yarns in both hands so they don't get tangled and learning how to block and put sweaters together for a more professional finish.  Would like to make more of my next year's Christmas presents and maybe some birthday ones too. 


Irene DV:   My resolution is to get a head start on next year's Christmas gifts by making up at least one per month starting in January.


Neuroknitter:  My resolution is to complete a few fair isle projects and to write more neuroscience-themed blog posts.  The first post for the year will be about how fair isle knitting exercises the prefrontal cortex.

Two pics are attached, showing some swatches that I've been playing with.  

Oogyknitter:  While I don't have any knitting resolutions per se, as you know, Neuroknitter and I are embarking upon a year-long theme of "colorwork".  We never really defined specifically what this means, so it's anyone's guess as to what we'll come up with.  I plan to keep up a semi-continuous stream of sock knitting, and perhaps produce an afghan or two in there as well.

Deborah N:  My knitting resolution is to work more with color!

Debbie N:  My knitting resolution this year of 2012 is to knit!  

Joan W:  WIP Hell:  Finish projects I've actually started is one not very exciting goal.    At some point it's too depressing.  Will keep thinking for other ideas like figuring out how to use up at least some the random bunches of wool acquired since this addiction began.

and finally, Susan B:  The last time we communicated, I wrote about how stressed I'd been and you suggested that a knitting project might help.  Well, I took your advice and just got started on a sweater for a friend's granddaughter.  Selecting a pattern, finding the appropriate yarn and getting started have all been a pleasure and very soothing.  My resolution, therefore, is to remember how much I like to knit and not to allow life's little inconveniences to interfere in that process... for too long.

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My resolution? To go with the flow. If I feel like finishing a WIP, I will. If I don't, I won't and I won't obsess about it. For me, most worthwhile endeavors are organically-derived and follow their own time-table.

Here's to a new year of happy knitting!