She knits!

Betcha thought that I wouldn't carry out my plan from Tues post, but I did.  I started that cute zigzag scarf and here's a pic to prove it.  Yep, it will need blocking, but it's fun to do, and really auto-pilot. Yarn is Knit Picks Palette and very pleasantly woolly.  The way wool used to feel before we all got into merino mode.

Here's an outfit that I did on the fly for Miss P's AG doll:  The colored yarn is one of mine, and the white is an undyed ball of my Benji yarn (100% SW merino; 3 ply).  I did a slap/dash bit of knitting here.  The white top neckline is a bit off balance, but Miss P won't care, and the skirt closure isn't great, but it fits, and if you don't look, then you won't tell.

And here's a blankie for one of her dolls.  My Diamond Modular pattern worked in a ball of JoJo Land something or other.   The safety pin is to tell me how many modules I do this week.  I love to keep track of progress.

Light & Dark Lace Club :  Wow, are we ever getting customers!  People are signing up like crazy, some ordering more than one colorway.  I'm stunned, and very, very happy!  Good thing I found 20 more skeins of the yarn hiding in a tub!  I'm going to close down the sign-ups on Jan 15, or whenever I run out of yarn!  I really am stunned! 

Oh, dear!

This morning I decided to go through my knitting and crochet book collection. Oh, dear, what have I gotten myself in for? So far, I've checked out 8 books and one magazine, and can't toss any of them. Each one seems to contain at least one project that I need to knit! Or ideas for projects that I want to play with! What's a woman to do? This is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm too embarrassed to count up just how many books and mags I own. Suffice it to say that I have way, way too many.

So, here's my solution: I'm going to bookmark one book/mag at the beginning of each month. Work on a project and then move on to the next one. Right. Sure. The world's most disorganized human being is organizing her knitting. I don't dare call it a New Year's Resolution because that's the kiss of death. I never keep any resolutions. Why bother to make them when I'm setting myself up for failure.

Feel free to call me on this. Sit on my head; yell at me; call me bad names; force me at needle point to actually do this.

Here's the first book: Schreier, Iris - Reversible knits

There's a cute little scarf called Dangerously Chic, and it's a sawtooth scarf. I have a bunch of Knit Picks Palette yarn, totally irresistible because it's pretty, cheap and in lovely colors. 

Here's the deal: If I hate knitting it, or it looks ugly, I reserve the right to frog it and go on to the next project.



Do you think I can actually carry out this plan? Snort. Laugh. Giggle. Snort some more. But at least it's a plan.

In the meantime, I'm accomplishing nothing whatsoever in getting rid of books. They are all so tempting. The trouble is that I can't resist buying them. I've gotten much better; I now reserve at the library and check them out first. Just about all of those books I do not buy. The problem is with the ones that I do buy. Sigh.

So what are you planning to do with all your yarn/books/magazines in the coming year?

Yarn news:  I've put every single yarn in the Etsy shop on sale.  I'm tired of looking at them.  That's it.  Get 'em out of my house.  I love each one, but I have way too much of my own stash.  So, each one is a couple of bucks off.  You get a good deal, I make room and a little bit of profit (to buy more knitting books!), and that's not half bad!  http://fritzl.etsy.com

Kitten With a Whiplash - I have no more room for shelves, bookcases or anything else.  It's an epidemic of books, yarn, and the Hubbo's garage sale treasures.  HELP!

CarolynJean - I've decided it's a benign disease!

Scrabblequeen - I saw that.  It's a great colorway.  And now I have room for more yarn.  uh huh. 

KV - You know me far too well! 

Henya - Oh, do I ever hear you!  How can we part with books that have lived with us so long?   

White Stuff

Need I say anything more?

Holidays

Merry Christmas to all my Christian friends.  I hope the holiday is all that you wish for.

For those of us who are not Christian, enjoy the quiet of the day.  Just think:  no shopping, no malls, no crowds.  Perhaps a good movie, family time, whatever s peaceful.  And if you are Jewish, Shabbat Shalom!

Scrabblequeen - It doesn't get any better than this, does it?  

Still here.

I haven't gone anywhere, OK, we were in MA for the weekend at the Principessa's Nutcracker moment, but that's been it.

I don't have a single picture of projects to show you.  Can't show you knitting.  It's all hush hush, top secret,  Light & Dark lace club knitting.  If I show you, you won't be surprised.  I will tell you that it's all very pretty.

I will show you the mess on the living room couch and on the coffee table.  Such chaos.  Unfortunately, that's how I operate:  in total confusion.  And it's gotten so much worse since I retired.  When I was out in the normal work force, I didn't have the time to make a gazillion projects.  Now I do, and so I have graph paper and pencils everywhere.  Scissors, project bags, books, and anything else relevant to my craft.  What a mess!  But it's my mess, and I sorta love it.  OK, I don't love it, but it is how I am.  And that's my story.

Junk Flows

Don't forget to check out the Light and Dark Lace Club!

That's what the Hubbo says.  What he buys at a garage sale today may be sold later on or donated to a thrift shop.  And then someone else buys it and so it travels.  I tolerate his garage sale mania because he likes it so much.  He has to pick up every single item and check it out.  With his odd engineering take on life, he has to figure out what it is and what it does.  So I get bored and more bored.  And then I start really looking at the junk and I've come to a conclusion here:  there are certain items that move from garage sale to garage sale.  They sneak onto the tables without the owners knowing about it.  You seen them all:  the junky dishes that people got at the supermarket, the really ugly salt and pepper shakers, the bubble-gum pink afghans that someone's granny crocheted. The detritus of life all on tables in driveways and in garages. 

It reminds me of an archeological dig, except that this stuff is visible and on tables.  Do you wonder if 1000 years from now, someone will find a garage sale covered by a millenium of rubble and dirt and wonder what it was all about.  When they pick up the supermarket giveaway dishes, will they say:  "Ah, an example of the local pottery culture"?  Will they think this stuff was our high culture?  What will they think of the 2 conductors batons that the Hubbo owns?  What if they find his Mau Mau hunting spear in the cellar?  Will they think we hunted game with these things.  Will ancient computer monitors become valuable collectors' items.  And what about that afghan that we love 'cause granny made it, but it is ugly beyond words.  What will they say about that?  "Hot pink was an important color for ceremonial blankets."

Will they exclaim with delight over the totally out-of-date chemistry textbooks that someone wants to sell.  The ones they used in college 20 years earlier?  What about the knick-knacks, and the sets of glasses, and the Christmas decorations that should never have been bought in the first place?

I'm not talking about genuine antiques here; just the stuff that appears on top of folding tables.  The stuff that makes the Hubbo drool in delight.  Did you ever notice that the same stuff can be found in many garage sales.  Does it travel at night?  When these things were new, was there a mad dash to buy every one of them? 

On the other hand, I have gotten a warping board, any number of great American Girl Doll goodies, brand-new towels in my colors, cookbooks that I don't ever use but have pretty pics,  so I'm not really ranting here.  I like the idea of buying and selling your tired junk.  I might like it even if you don't.  A few years ago, I bought the nicest hand-thrown mugs at a garage sale.  It had been a wedding present and they had never liked it.  So it flowed over to my house.

It used to be, in the BOD (bad old days), that you didn't go to garage sales unless you were really, really poor.  Now, everyone does it, and good for us.  Don't you love going to a good thrift shop and finding a clothing bargain?  You get to buy a one-of-a-kind sweater at an amazing price.  Or a pair of jeans that fit perfectly at a couple of bucks.  I'm pretty fussy about which thrift shops I'll go to.  We were once in one where I saw a couple of bugs dropping down from the ceiling.  Did I ever drag him out!  So fast he didn't know what hit him.  Nope, I'm talking about Junior League Thrift shops, and various consignment shops, and even Good Will is getting into better merchandise.

So let the junk flow where it will, and just think how the archeologists of the far-off future will try to figure it all out.

Still no knitting pics.  I'm knitting, I'm charting, I'm complaining, but you don't get to see any of it, 'cause the pieces are all surprises.

So, instead a bit of a kaleidoscope moment here.

jlabate - How could I ever forget this?  We drove up to MA on Fri in it.  Really, really great car!  Do you know that he bought the Madison house also at a garage sale?

Scrabblequeen - Way too early for me, too, but the Hubbo gets up around 5-5:30.  Also conks out around 8 PM.  So there you have it.

merrilymarylee - She sounds like a real character! 

Still on her bread toot.

I learned how to bake bread by using an ancient Sunset book on bread baking.  I looked at the pictures, attempted to read the instructions, and with a great deal of trepidation, made my first loaf.  I can't stand written instructions; never could.  Neither can my mother.   I remember the kitchen table, the floor, and me all covered in flour.  I remember the sticky mess.  Man, did I hate that sticky mess.  Somehow I produced a loaf of bread.  It took me forever.  Amazing that I ever made another loaf.

At the time I had a lovely cleaning lady from British Guiana.  She came from a poor family where nobody had 2 pennies to rub together.  Everything was made by hand.  Her son was the first person in the family to graduate from high school;  people were lucky if they finished 8th grade.   Her mom made bread for the family constantly.  Her town had a communal oven, and everyone baked her bread in it.  She would clean my messy house every other week, and we'd talk about everything.  So it was time for her to come to me about 2 weeks post-first bread.  I told her everything I had done, showed her the cook book, and she proceeded to tell me how her mother did it.  And she encouraged me, and laughed at my grumps about sticky dough, and I learned so much from her.  She did get her laugh of the year from my description of my mess.

I know a lady from Portugal.  Her English is sketchy; my Portuguese is non-existent, but we manage to chat and understand each other.  We were talking about bread the other day.  Lots of hand motions, guess-work on our parts, and it was so interesting.  She too comes from a place of communal ovens.  She told me that her grandmother used to make the bread for the week in one day.  The entire kitchen table was covered in dough; she and the other ladies of the village marked their doughs so that they would recognize what came out of the oven.  And here I am, across the Pond, and I'm doing the same thing.  OK, not in huge quantities, and I have machinery and a stove, and such, but bread is bread is bread.  And we're tied together by this.

Bread baking goes back to whenever.  Remember the Israelites fleeing Egypt with their bread that had no time to rise?  Maybe we would think of it as pita bread?  As soon as someone figured out how to grow wheat or teff or whatever, someone else figured out how to use it.  Some ground-up grain, water, and whatever yeast was out there, mix it up, work it, bake it.  It is such an elementary bit of food, nothing but flour, water, yeast, and a bit of salt to keep it from rising to the moon.

I love the fact that it ties me to my ancestors.  That someone in ancient times and I could have chatted about it and understood each other. 

Isn't this amazing?  OK, I'm in love with it.

DJNL - I don't dare bake cookies; I'd eat them. No willpower whatsoever.

kv - And there is enough steam build-up so that afterward, you can wipe down the microwave and get it clean.

chemo - I'd love to check your blog, but can't find you through your link.