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Reason #1 you should never handknit a sweater for a 7 month-old dog:












I realized after I took the pics that my camera phone lens is dirty. Sorry. I'm too pissed and bitter to clean it off and retake the pics.

The good news is I haven't assaulted the dog yet! (joke!!)

What THEY say...

I heard somewhere that you know you're beginning to grasp a foreign language when you dream or think in that language.

I dreamed in French one night (and one night only) in 1988 during French 101.

The night I learned to knit, I dreamed of knitting the knit stitch all night.

Victoria and I were united yesterday. Last night I dreamed of my feet on the treadle. During the day, I find myself thinking about the motion of the treadle.

I don't think I'll ever fully grasp knitting or spinning, but I think I've got a lot more sweet dreams ahead.

Happy union

Today will be the union of Knitting Mother and Victoria. If you hear squeals of delight early this afternoon you can bet it will be me.

I'm a Zimmerman Fan

I have been a Zimmerman fan for a while. A long while. I've been fantasizing about the Baby Surprise Jacket for well over a year. I expect to tackle it in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I was reading her book Knitting Around when I completely fell for her Moebius Jacket (page 57). You can see an example here.

I Had. To. Knit. It. So off I trotted to one of my LYS where I promptly fell for this lovely yarn:



I just started working on it this afternoon (I'm making mine without the back seams). It's all garter stitch and completely mindless (which is important as I'm surrounded by three lively little boys).

I simply can't wait to have it done...although with Oklahoma's realtively mild winters, I may have to move to Canada to enjoy it. I think I'll go plea my case to DH!

I don't do math

I really don't do math. I have an English degree....or as I like to say: I have a B.A. in b-s. No matter that, I also realize that there is math in knitting. Sometimes there's a lot of math, sometimes there's a little math. Other times I become an obsessed lunatic and start a project that unknowingly has lots and lots of math.

Case in point: I decided to make a dog sweater for Max the Wonder Dog (he's a schnoodle).



I bought a book of doggie sweater patterns a while back, I chose some yarn (it's a dog sweater so it had to be easy wash and not a lot of dough), and went to work. I had an idea in mind, I wanted to make Max the Wonder Dog a team sweater...one that he could wear around the house on game days. I pulled out some knitting graph paper and did this:



See those numbers along the sides? That's M-A-T-H. I calculated, divided, and multiplied. I like to think there was even some high-end algebra in there. When I thought I had all the numbers I needed to know where to start my design I called my knitting math genius friend and blog commentor Lindsey who validated my math and cemented the fact that I was on the fast-track to Math Genius (it's a big stretch but go with me, I need this validation).

So I started my team letters. It was fun, and I couldn't put it down. I started it around 6:00 in the evening and finished near midnight. I'm not a night owl, but by that time I was high on knitting mojo and adrenaline. My math created this:


It's not perfect and it needs to be finished and blocked, but I'm so freakin' proud that I can't stand it. I designed this part of the sweater. WOO HOO!!!!!!!!!! Again, genius with a capital G.

This may well be the last project of this type that I do, at least for a while. I'm also smart enough to know that I got lucky. I didn't have to "scale" my art on the sweater. But by golly for now I'm basking in the glow of my WIP.

Lastly, some of you have wondered what I look like. Here's a pic of me being intentionally goofy as I model my Lucy Bag. I assure that I look much much younger and thinner in real life. The blog adds at least 40 lbs. (it's a big stretch but go with me, I need this validation).

I'm committed (or I should be)

...I have committed myself to Victoria. I expect our union to take place late next week.

Isn't she beautiful???



Bedtime for now. I've been a working genius tonight on a project that I will reveal tomorrow. That's genius with a capital G!

Nighty night!

I'm mad.

I'm mad and more than a little frustrated. I'm also smart enough to realize that these feelings are nothing new to knitters. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to knit. All I want to do is finish a sock so I can jump over an finish a Christmas project before I move over and finish my newest log cabin blanket and then finish the moebius shawl. Really, is this too much to ask? I'm not even asking for time to finish the two other socks I have on needles awaiting my attention.

So here I am knitting furiously wondering if I can get the aforementioned sock finished today when IT happened. I admit it, I'm cocky. I don't think this kind of thing will happen to a knitter like me. Others say they avoid it like the plague, but I just dive in and it always works out for me...until today. I was working with this wonderful wonderful self-striping almost-worsted weight yarn when disaster struck and

This:


GAVE BIRTH TO THIS:


I had a center-ball pull disaster. Worse than that, I was in denial about it. I ignored the inevitable. Cocky cocky cocky. I was just on a mission. I just wanted to finish. The good news is that as of 10:00 last night I finished. Whatd'ya think Mom? Likey likey????


I personally absolutely LOVE them and love the yarn! Did I mention love?

SO I got about an hour's worth of work done on the Christmas project this afternoon while my eldest son and I had a date. At his request we went for pizza, and then he had his first knitting lesson (from someone other than his mother who was, despite what her college diploma says, never cut out to be a teacher). According to his lovely and talented teacher he was a natural.

And when he got a bit weary of the needles and yarn, he took his teacher up on her offer to play chess:



He told me afterwards that he liked knitting but he really liked chess.

Either way, I wasn't jacking around with a center-pull disaster and was very happily working on my Christmas project.

Wanna go for a spin?

I was afraid this could happen. I was certain that if I pretended it didn't exist that I could be perfectly happy in my own little knitting corner of the world.

Then Gwen the Enabler asked me to come over under the guise of watching her and her pals dye yarn. Innocent fun. I stopped by. She sat me down in front of this and told me to take it for a spin. I was entranced. It was pure magic. The wheel hummed, the world stopped spinning, and all that existed was the wheel, me, my inadequate hands, and some lovely roving. I left her house trying to shake the feeling. I thought if I didn't think about it that the feeling would go away. Gwen the Enabler had tricked me. She not only saw me as a spinner, but she sat me down at one of the finest wheels known to man.

A couple of months passed. When I saw Gwen the Enabler she would smile knowingly. She could see the denial in my eyes, but she could also see the truth. I was hooked. I was a spinner. I was a fleece junkie and didn't even know it.

I went by her house one day after knitting up a swatch of her homespun bamboo. Just by coincidence, her friend Donna was there. They told me I should meet Victoria. They said Victoria was portable, wouldn't cost me six hundred million dollars, and could not easily be made pirate ship by Knitting Mother's sons.


Sure enough, I met Victoria last Tuesday. I love Victoria. There is a Victoria in my immediate future.

I'm scared.

When it's not about me, it's about my knitting...

Okay, so I've been thinking about starting a knit blog for a while. I've been feeling guilty about reading everyone else's knitting blogs but not participating. Then I start to wonder what I've got that's worth sharing...but truth be known, don't we ALL want to share our finished products with the entire world? Admit it: you even wanted to share your very first knitted scarf, which in my case closely resembled Gumby except in black fun fur and some other crap yarn from discount store USA. That's another post for another day...entitled something like Why You Should Never Knit Your First Project at Book Club with Black Yarn While Drinking Wine.

I've been doing lots of fun stuff. I'm in the middle of my first toe-up sock done in Reggia bamboo which is so very much fun to work with. This colorway is so fun, and I love that I never could've guessed what it would look like until I started. OH and while you admire the colors I have to brag that I took this picture under my very own OTT lamp which I got for my half birthday (another story for another day). Let me just say that the OTT lamp has changed my life.

As for the toe-up sock technique, the jury is still out. I like it but I haven't gotten to the heel yet. I took a class to make this sock, and the instructor's pattern calls for a short-row heel, while this knitter has long been a subscriber to the heel flap. Should I bite off and do a short-row heal or dig around and find a toe-up pattern with a heel flap? Anyone? Anyone?

In other projects, I just finished some lovely Jitterbug socks. This was my first project knit under my OTT lamp, and I found myself mesmerized by the variety of colors under the lamp. They looked nothing like they did in the store:

Look a little small to you too? That's okay, those are my feet and I wear a size 10 shoe and have cankles the diameter of a large zucchini but the recipient has a much smaller foot. If you look closely, you will note that the left sock has a color change near the toe. My skein had a pretty hefty color discrepancy (hand-dyed) which resulted in fraternal twin socks by color.

What are you knitting?