A new year, a new start...

So, I've been looking at this rising pile of knitting books for the past year...um, years. Many are review copies--freebies!--that you'd think would spark joy in my life (to quote the neatness guru, Marie Kondo, whose classic book on life-changing, magical tidiness was a gift from, ahem, my cleaning lady), but actually I feel a quiet desperation when confronted by them. Because some I've read and loved (e.g. Deborah Newton's definitive tomes on knitting well-sized garments) and want to review (and haven't yet, but I will, since classics never die), and others are total mistakes and shouldn't have been published, and many are underwritten by yarn companies that just want knitters to buy their yarn so they commission designers to make patterns using their yarn, and well, what can I say about that? Should I hold the lofty view that only divinely-inspired knitting texts are worthwhile, or should I opine that payola is okay if the end result is a good pattern?

Usually I try a pattern in a review copy, to gain a sense of the designer's aesthetic. Most of the review books I receive fail to pass the smell test (for different reasons), so I just don't review them. I would note that I tried what seemed to be one of the simpler patterns in Nicki Epstein's bizarrely-titled book Knit a Square, Create A Cuddly Creature (her editor or publisher may be responsible for that clunker) and was appalled by the dysfunctional instructions, so I abandoned ship. Needless to say (but I will), I don't recommend this book, even if errata have recently been added.

However, I do have a new new year's resolution (along with the usual clichés to lose weight, be more prudent, etc.), which is to review a few of those in my tower o' books over the next few months, to appease my conscience and to tell you about some that are worth reading and using. So, stay tuned.

This also means that I will be more diligent about posting on this blog. When I looked at the blogroll (to the right) I was comforted to see that many of the folks whose blog-work I follow have been as reclusive as I during the past year. Since I know two of them, I understand why their posts are so sporadic, and basically with all of us it comes down to the same thing:  life interferes. Whether one has a demanding full-time job, a family that includes young children, or a physical issue (moi, la main droit), there are often barriers to posting frequently. And yet we all do...eventually.

My ornery hand has been treated and is somewhat responsive, so I've been knitting a little, as well as learning to weave on a rigid heddle table loom, something that many knitters have been attracted to of late. There are good reasons for this, and I hope to do some posts in the future talking about the connection between knitting and weaving. In the meanwhile, I send you all warm wishes for a year of good knitting, beautiful yarn, and good health. My mantra this year--and perhaps forever--is (to quote the song):

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me....

Lola looks to the past with one eye, and examines the present with the other.

Hello, 2016!

Stoic? Disgusted? Resigned?

Molly's default expression since her well-documented adoption five years past just about sums up my response to the state of our Union and world affairs, except that unlike my semi-depressed pet, I seek consolation in knitting, not Hill's Prescription Diet i/d Digestive Care Chicken Flavor Dry Cat Food. I was horrified to learn yesterday that adult coloring books are now toute la rage, and while I expect they provide the soothing benefits of light repetitive motion and help stressed people offload their anxieties or whatever, I wonder what happens when you go outside the lines? Could that actually make things worse?

At least if you knit away stress, you end up with something warm and fuzzy. Let me now extol the benefits of mindless, (in)terminable knitting:

Behold! Ted and the knitted mohair rectangle.

I am making this fabric on a #9 circular needle, and have almost finished using two balls of Schoppel Wolle Mohair Lady yarn, a nylon-reinforced semi-bouclé in a teal hue that causes innocent bystanders to approach me constantly when I'm knitting in public and gush compliments.  I cast on 110 stitches--that was the hardest part, because the yarn is very thin and extra-difficult to work on a fat needle--knitted a few rows of garter stitch, then began a stockinette. I'll probably knit at least two more balls of this yarn, until I decide it's long enough. That is the pattern. The shawl is somewhat too wide, I think, and in the future I will cast on fewer stitches, perhaps seventy-five or eighty, and I might even go up a needle size to make the fabric even lighter and more luminescent.

As I said, that is the pattern. I profoundly believe in the benefits (myriad) of mindless knitting, and I hope to convince you to experience it for yourself if you're not already with the program. This is the best kind of knitting for traveling or talking, or both, since you don't have to pay attention to anything except which side of the stockinette you're on.

Since the beginning of the year, six days ago, I've come across many knitting articles and blogs whose writers document their resolutions, most of which involve the failure to complete knitting projects in the past, and feeble promises to deliver a wealth of FOs in the future. Gentle knitters, these are boring and empty accountings, and I hope you aren't among the crew who beat themselves up for not getting things finished. If everything in life were neatly finished we would all be machines.

My new year's resolution, the inverse of the everyone's 'I will lose weight' fantasy, but one which made me incredibly happy, is to admit that I completely hate belonging to a gym and that it's a ridiculous waste of my money, time, and mental space. I walk into that den of ugliness, of metallic contraptions and sweaty, slobbily-dressed people glugging their water bottles between and during whatever bloated gizmo they're pounding away at, I see the ubiquitous TVs broadcasting idiotic sporting events, I try to block the hideous pop music with earbuds (encased in a knitted sleeve, of course), I grit my teeth and I do my diligence. To what end? I am no fitter than when I signed up two years ago. That's not the gym's fault--it's mine, in the sense that I find it so disturbing to be there that I avoid it as much as possible. Not a good situation. My contract expires in March, and so--goodbye! I can do my usual fitness things at home--walking with Lola, yoga by Youtube instructor, climbing the many flights of stairs in the house. Amen. And then I will have extra money for yarn.

With this post I've commenced a new blog feature--I'll be regularly linking to Free Patterns I discover or invent (moreso the former) that I hope you'll find inspiring. Some blogs do this fairly regularly, and they have nice alliterative handles, like "Free Pattern Fridays." I can't tie myself to a predictable day like Friday, because I never know when I'm going to sit down and write my little heart out to you, but I do plan to draw your attention to some excellent designs out there that may be accessed gratis. To me it's like foraging for mushrooms, which I have done (and survived, obviously), or better, wild asparagus. I know a place in a nearby conservation area where there's an ancient asparagus patch, the remnant of a long-gone farm, and I diligently monitor it in the spring so as to get the stalks when they're at peak. They are so beautiful and good, and it's such thrilling fun to reap a serendipitous discovery.

Sunrise, Wood River, January 6, 2016. 

Sending out best wishes to you for a good life and good knitting in 2016!