So...

I found this really fantastic shawl at the Thrift Store. Like, really, really fantastic. It's purple and soft and knit with boa feathers in some places, and it has tassels.

AND SOMEONE HAND KNIT IT- AND WHOEVER IT WAS HAND KNIT FOR, THEY DROPPED IT OFF AT THE THRIFT STORE.

*sigh* I mean, before I took up knitting I'd never have been able to tell the difference between machine knit and hand knit, and I'd never have thought anything about seeing something hand knit at the thrift store. But now I'm like "do you have any idea how long it took to knit that? how much it cost? do you have any idea how much someone cared about you to make it?". Of course, the person who dropped it off can't hear me- but I wish they could.

Oh well. It's *mine* now. ^_^

I was going through these Alice Starmore knitting books- they're like knitting sudoku in russian with a blindfold- brilliant, beautiful patterns but Alice even admits to how insane they are... There's a quote near this one shawl pattern about how "some of my cable patterns are too big for sweaters" so you need to make something larger than a sweater to hold the whole cable design- and this shawl is the size of a small blanket. I really want to do the shawl but you need a mountain of yarn for it. But look at this thing- it's art.

The Harry Potter scarf I'm working on is coming along pretty well. It's... about half done, I guess, but it doesn't seem like it's as long as it needs to be. Because it's circular it's almost half an inch thick- I'm not going to die of hypothermia this winter. ^_^ I should have some left over yarn from the project, so I might do a pair of gloves to match, or just add more stripes until I think the scarf is the right length.

It's Been Weird

Sorry for the long break, things have been a bit crazy.

Started my second summer class which is a snore-fest. It's a history class where we spend most of the time discussing where commas go and "coordinate adjectives".

Began working on a Harry Potter scarf. You know, just in time for hellish summer temperatures and the movie. ^_^

Built an epic lego castle- which isn't epic in a huge, or turrets sort of way, but wins in sheer fury and creative use of clear red 1x1s as blood. (KSU did something wrong with my financial aid that day)



There's this study abroad next summer to London out of Valdosta State and I'm seriously planning on going. It's six weeks and there's a class on Shakespeare and another on London as a Setting in Novels (seriously, that's the class name)- think I'll get an extension on the ticket and stay an extra week or two so I can go to Cardiff and do all the stuff I couldn't do in the two days when I was there last fall. I just spent the last two hours reading stuff for class and babbling in IRC to my friend in London (who's asleep) about all the stuff I want to see/do.

(narg. it's still bugging me. i mean, i write stuff, and i never think to myself, "gosh, i'll put the coordinate adjective here." who names these things?)

London. London. London. It's going to be awesome. Did you know I only took about three pics while I was there? Remember when I dislocated my knee in Florence? That was about two or three weeks before London so I was hobbling around by myself on these crutches and it was like a bad comedy putting a crutch aside without dropping it to get in my bag and get the camera out and take a shot. I think there's one of a "do not put your bike here" type sign in the brownstone-y type part of town I was in, the Gloucester Street Station of the Tube, and me at Platform 9 3/4. The hostel I stayed in, the first night I got there, it was about 4AM when I wandered in and when I got up to my room there were like, six bunk beds and the only bed open was on the top of one, and everyone else is asleep and I couldn't even switch the light on while I hauled myself up the ladder with the bum knee. In hindsight it's insanely funny.

Somehow international travel is much funnier than local travel. I can't think of anything particularly funny about this last trip to Florida, back in May. But I think of Italy and there's the night where we were so punch drunk happy to be heading home from Pisa that we danced in the train. Or the demonic killer cherubs painted on the wall of the hotel room in Pompeii. Or my bum knee and climbing up a bunk bed at 4AM. Or this really nice older lady I met on the Tube while I was heading to Kings Cross and she asked me what else I was going to be seeing in England and I said I wanted to go to Wales and see Cardiff and she got so angry with me she started yelling in the train and I thought she was going to punch me. (Wales is like the boonies to people in London) And she wanted to know if London wasn't good enough for me? Couldn't I just go see Oxford instead- Or was I too good for Oxford?!

Heh. Travel. It's awesome.

heartless

mom and I were at the bank today and as we're leaving the teller says, "is there anything else i can do for you?"

and mom bitterly laughs and says "can you get me a job?"

the teller sadly laughs and says she cannot, which is when this gigantically tall woman behind us with a big white bouffant and way, way too much eyeshadow calls out, "i have a job you could do!"

my mom turns to her, hope shining in her eyes for a second. "really?" she asks, almost breathless.

"you could go dig ditches!" the woman says and scoots past us to the counter.

first of all, wtf.

secondly, fml.

third, what is wrong with you you crazy evil woman?! my mom nearly broke down in tears in the parking lot! since september my mom has been out of job- because she didn't come in during the gas crisis! what was she, living under a rock? there's million of people out of work and she takes the chance to make a joke of my mother! all my mother does, day in and day out since september is fill out job applications, send off her resume, and ask everyone she knows if they know if anyone is hiring- and she never hears a damn thing back. the absolute worst thing about being in a situation like this is the people that will jerk you around- oh, just one more interview, we're looking over your papers, we really need someone and you're perfect (but two days later you're too nice (to balance the books!)), what hours are you available? to get someone's hopes up and know they're doing it with no intention of following through... utterly inhuman.

Why do people listen to these guys?

Howard Stern on the Columbine Shooting:

"There were some really good-looking girls running out with their hands over their heads. Did those kids try to have sex with any of the good-looking girls? They didn't even do that? At least if you're going to kill yourself and kill all the kids, why wouldn't you have some sex? If I was going to kill some people, I'd take them out with sex."

By 'kids' he's refering to the shooters. He's wanting to know why they didn't rape their classmates while they were at it.


Rush Limbaugh on Feminism:

“Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.”

Yeah, if by mainstream he means the right to vote, which is where Feminism started, and went on to equal rights like getting paid the same and not having to hand the money over to your husband or father and hope he'd give you some of it. And when he says the quote on film everyone laughs and then he starts mooing and calling women cows.

All things not being entirely equal

I'm taking a MayMester class on Gender and Women's Studies. Right now we're still back in the Women's Suffrage movement era learning about the struggle to get the vote, but today we watched a film called "Killing Me Softy 3" which shows a lot of magazine adverts on how women are sexualized to sell things. To go along with the film we had to bring in a magazine so we could analyze adverts ourselves.

With a choice between Torchwood Magazine and Knit.1, I went with Knit.1. (the Torchwood Mag only has ads for Lost Mag, and Supernatural Mag anyway...)

And after the film I had a chance to flip through Knit.1 with an idea of what we were looking for... And was actually really impressed. Especially since Vogue runs it, and after a movie worth of scrawny models half dressed, Knit.1 was really refreshing.

There's young ladies, old ladies, blonds, brunettes, a college girl in pj pants, some guy from SNL, a guy designer in a clothing warehouse/design shop, a guy in a tie, guys in hats; you get the picture. There's everyone.

And that world famous model pose, with the girl in a chair sprawled with her legs spread? That's actually a guy in this magazine. And it's more sensual than sexualized.

So, anyway, long story of analyzing magazines short, there's obviously guys in the knitting magazine. Modeling stuff. But they're also in there as designers or talking about themselves knitting. The guy from SNL knits. Two of the knitting blogs I like to here go to guy's blogs. Then there's this article. I know two guy knitters on IRC, and one of them is teaching me to spin.

So, we're in class learning about equality and objectification and rights and my female classmate leans over my shoulder to look at my knitting magazine and scoffs. And I'm like 'what' and she's like 'they're knitting'. In the sort of tone where you'd say 'they're eating. WITH THEIR FINGERS!'. And I'm like 'so?' and she says guys shouldn't knit, or guys don't knit, or something equally insane. Clearly they do. And she says she knows, because she saw a guy on campus knitting the other day and she laughed at him.

Part of me is like THERE'S A GUY KNITTER ON CAMPUS?! and the other part is like aren't we in equality class? Aren't we all equal? I forgot how men knitting is a sign of the apocalypse and madness... I know sexism goes both ways, but part of me really really wants to stand up for the rights of guy knitters. Not that John Brinegar really needs me to fight his fights for him, he's kinda big and grrr looking.

Happy Mother's Day!

Notice the expensive knit bag?

I made that. ^_^

My Knitting Birthday

Sometime in April last year was when I started knitting. I can sort of pinpoint the date because the November before I met this super awesome girl and her boyfriend at a Nanowrimo event. Or it might have been the year before's Nano, but we didn't really get to be friends until the 2007 Nano. Her name was Amanda, her boyfriend was Owen. We all sat around at WriteIns talking about our books or his plays, and eventually I was like you guys have to come over and watch Torchwood or Doctor Who or Garth Marenghi's Dark Place- whatever it was, they did and we all started hanging out here and while we'd watch TV Amanda would knit, and I'd ask what she was working on, and she'd offer to teach me, and I'd say, nah, I'm good.

And then they got engaged and he got a job in Chicago and in March she was gone. And as soon as she was gone, I was like, actually, I do want to knit.



That's Amanda and Me at my birthday party, which is why I'm so tarted up.

So, April comes and I... don't actually remember how I learned to knit. I think I looked at some sites on the internet, or checked a book out of the library, and wasn't entirely sure what I was getting myself into, so I didn't want to buy a bunch of stuff and find out I didn't like knitting, so I posted a want ad on FreeCycle for knitting... anything. And someone behind the Marietta Square was like, I have a bag of yarn you could take, and someone near Roswell behind Sandy Plains was like, I have some needles.

I go to the Square, pull up at their house, and I'm looking for the bag, only all I see is this hugenormous yard bag- like for fall leaves, and I'm like, no way is that my bag. Only I peek in the top and it is. It's so much bag-of-yarn that I have to lay it down in the backseat because it won't fit in the trunk. And over in Roswell there's a freezer bag of needles- mismatched dual points, cables, circulars, straight. Enough needles that for a while I had about five matching sets in each size.

So, I start learning to knit from a book or whatever, and it just all constantly goes wrong. Casting on is a nightmare and everything I try knitting just gets wider instead of going straight up like it should...

Which is where I get to my first teacher, my best friend Kevin's Mom, who's from Germany and knits really fast, so at first you're always like "wait, how did you do that?". She showed me how to do a long tail single hand cast on, which is so easy- and what I was doing wrong- the book wasn't clear about what happens at the end of the row, so I kept adding a stitch. So, she sets me straight on what I'm doing and I'm so excited about being able to knit without the thing getting wider that I just start knitting a four or five stitch wide scarf and it's about ten feet long before I realize I don't know how you finish it.



Anyway, around this time Mom has to go to some doctor appointment down at Perimeter so I go with her because there's a knitting store there, and it's really the first place I've ever been to for yarn besides seeing it at JoAnn's or where-ever. We go to Strings and Strands which has so much yarn stacked up you sort of feel as soon as you open the door it's all falling in on you. I find a couple of nice skeins there, and ask what I do to get the scarf off the needles, and she's like it's called a bind off, and this is how you do it. And then I'm able to get the long thin scarf done and move on to something else.

I do a scarf with two colors all at once, a pair of armwarmers in July which I was so proud of I actually wore them right then, and Kevin's Mom shows me how dual point needles work, and I start a pair of gloves.



And you know what pattern I used for those? I didn't. I totally made that up in my head, based off what I learned from Kevin's Mom. I mean, yeah, they're totally shapeless and not formfitting, but I made that up. I didn't know anything about increases and decreases then or cables or anything.

So, I go to Italy which is where really nice wool comes from but no one knits there and I was living in what might have been the only city in all of Italy to have a place that sold yarn and needles. You hiked out of the town, down a hill, turned down a neighborhood street, and next to a Laundromat there was a store that was sometimes open and it sold buttons and pantyhose and beads and they had about twenty skeins of wool there and a few boxes of needles.



I finished those handwarmers the same day I dislocated my knee in Florence. So at least my hands were warm while I huddled miserably in the Florence McDonalds while everyone else went and saw the museums and I had to wait for the bus home so I could lay in our flat's front room and watch Doctor Who on my laptop all weekend.

The only other place to get yarn there was the weekly market- I still have some of it, and boy is it loud. And strange.

I got home and hadn't really gained any new knitting knowledge since I'd learned to use dual points. But while I was in Italy I'd fallen in love with Anticraft's Swamp Witch pattern, and I'd never done a pattern before. I decided not to buy the yarn for it until I had a job, and so it wasn't until late November, mid December that I finally got all the things I needed. Started the project, was super proud of it, took it up to my Uncle's, got done with it and started putting the tassels on. Which is where it all went terribly awry.

I'd screwed up counting the pattern somewhere and one side was about six inches wider and I didn't have enough tassels for it. And Mom was convinced that even though I couldn't finish it and it was lopsided and lacking tassels it was the greatest. thing. ever. Which only made it worse, because... well. I mean, it's broken. I didn't have more tassels. I had to hide it in the garage to get her to stop talking about it.

And it wasn't for... Oh, four or five months before I took it out, used something else for the tassels, and wore it. And everyone was like OMG THIS IS GREAT WHERE DID YOU BUY IT. Which is sort of a riot. One of the guys in my History class was talking to me about it and I admitted the screw up and he was like *rolls eyes* oh, well, I noticed that, I just didn't want to embarrass you in front of everyone by pointing it out. And then everyone at our table laughed.



That's sort of an extreme close up of when I started it.

And somewhere around that time I learned to cable, too, which is so much easier than it looks.



The funny thing is how many guys are interested in knitting. I mean, yeah, knitting. I've met guy knitters, but this time I mean like, oh hey what are you doing? that's neat looking, kind of stuff. I was working on this pink and brown shawl in class during a movie and the guys at my table kept reaching over to sort of pet the fabric. At the end of class they were all asking if I was going to put tassels on it, and maybe they should be bright red, and shaped like this...



That's the shawl. No, it doesn't have red tassels. But then again JoAnn's ran out of the yarn and can't get more at the moment so I'm kind of screwed until I get more.

And here's a hat I made.



And in that year of knitting I've had a bunch of teachers. Kevin's Mom. Jean. The nice lady at Strings and Strands. People at The Whole Nine Yards. And I actually taught people how to knit, too, which is the most astounding to me. Kayla, while we were in Italy, Mom when I got back. I've even gotten to the point where I'm planning knitted Christmas presents this year, and some for birthdays, too.

One of the other things that gets me as a history student is the strange and mysterious history of knitting. Egyptians knitted, only it was more like advanced knot tying. No one is entirely certain where knitting came from, other than probably the Mediterranean, since it's found in every place that had a port that shipped to, from, or through there. It's even in the Bible- the part about the soldiers dicing for Jesus' seamless garment. I always kind of thought that was a metaphor- that Mary was so badass she could sew something without seams, but it's actually dual point knitting.



Basically I am super happy to be a knitter.