Dark tunnel

Oh, things look dark right now. Grim. Ominous. I am too near the beginning of too many long, dark, seemingly endless tunnels.


This is a shed. Well, it will be a shed. My sweetie and I just brought this very large (and heavy, I assure you) stack of wood home this past weekend. (Thanks again Mom!) My sweetie and I have decided that the two car garage is no longer big enough for two motorcycles, two bicycles, power tools, and yard equipment, so we are building a shed in the back yard. Well, he is, I am helping by fetching, carrying, and feeding any random slaves, er, volunteer helpers, that show up.

This week, however, our garage is plenty big enough. BOTH motorcycles are in the shop right now. Mine was planned, and will be hope hopefully before the weekend. Then while I was driving home from the office, I happened to notice my sweetie, in a parking lot, staring at his bike with a dark expression. Two more phone calls later, the Harley store was picking up the bike. Who knew they did rescue work? So now we have two repair bills instead of one, and I have to figure out how to pay for it all. Mabe we can just give up eating this month.

Even my knitting seems a bit of a mess these days. That indistinct mess is four socks and one shawl in progress. Three out of four socks are the second half, so maybe the knitting tunnel isn't as long as I first perceived. For the moment, I should finish getting ready this morning, grap a random sock, and head to the office. Every tunnel has an end, you just have to take enough steps, even small ones.


Today, it is all about the small steps.

Stuck in the middle

That's right, I am stuck in the middle of Knitdom. I am working on the second trekking sock. I and working on the second MIL sock. I can't say that I am in the middle of it, but I am working on the gray Poland shawl. I am in the middle of everything, and have no good reason to take pictures, show anything off, or discuss anything new.

I am Judge Pro Tem again this afternoon. Great knitting opportunities, though the $25 for the afternoon pay leaves much to be desired. I don't usually work for minimum wage anymore. Really, I just do it as a favor to the judge and for the honor. I could just go broke with all this honor.

Oh, yeah. And my bike? It is being taken to the shop today. So I guess it is at the beginning of being fixed, but half the battle was getting someone to answer the freaking phone so I could schedule the repair, so I am calling that the middle.

Today, it is all about the middle.

Swatch you

Although I admit to the logic and usefulness of swatching, I hardly ever do it. So far, I have mostly knit socks (and I already know what needle size I like to use with basic sock yarn), and sweaters in which I didn't have a pattern and instead just winged it with a needle proper for the yarn I was doing.

For my next project, however, I wanted to do a shawl. Another step in my quest to learn lace knitting. I knew the basic shawl pattern I wanted to do (stockinette with your yarn over inceases of 4 per row) and I knew what yarn I wanted to use (this pretty shimmery dove gray yarn I bought in Poland as few years ago), and of course, guage is not really important to a shawl because you just keep knitting until you run out of yarn or the shawl is the size you want (hopefully the latter and not the former), but. . . . . I didn't know what size needle I wanted. I want the shawl to be soft and drapery, not too tight, but not too gapey, either. Three swatches later, I am still not sure which size needles to use. This is not that difficult a decision, is it? Pick one, and start knitting. I am tempted to go up one more needle size, but, well, I only had three balls of the yarn, so I would have to frog one of the others first. Hmmmm.

In other news, one skirt nearly finished. Only the hem to go! Already sorting through the delicious materials and dazzling patterns to choose my next victim. I have some great linen blends that I bought years ago, and those can be made into something fit for work.

I am playing judge again. Every other time, I have done child support court, but this time it is Juvenile Court. I am dealing with deliquents and children who have been removed from their parents' care. It feels like I have graduated one more tier up the judge ladder. Not that I want to be a judge by any stretch of the imagination, but it is interesting to get another perspective on these cases, since I am usually a lawyer in them.

And of course, in the downtime, I knit. Socks in progress, swatches testing, don't look at me like I am crazy. Haven't you ever seen your judge put down her knitting to begin a hearing before?

Today, it is all about the swatching.

Garage knitting

My sweetie and I had a garage sale this weekend. So while manning our wares, I was busy knitting. I have to admit, I don't think I have ever knit in a garage before. I was working on my second trekking sock, and a new sock I have started for my mother-in-law. Not to be finished by Mother's Day, of course, a "just because" sock. (Though, now it occurrs to me that I have never knitted a sock for my own mother, so maybe I should start one for her as well, so they can at least be in progress at the same time.) Anyway, the MIL sock is in Opal, something I bought years ago. I am a little frustrated that I am only 1/2 stitch in 4 inches off guage, so of course, the pattern only works part of the time. Note to self: never bother buying a complicated jaqcard patterning yarn again.

Not as frustrating as the necessity of selling some of my stash in the garage sale of course. My craft room is now down to more of a craft corner, so some things had to go. I hade a whole table filled with sewing patterns, yarn, cross-stitch leaflets, pillow forms, and so on. I watched in horror as one by one, things disappeared for a fraction of the original cost. I was, however, comforted by the fact that I still have a LOT left, and it now leaves more time and attention for the remaining cream of my stash.

In addition to picking up my cross-stitch again, I have started sewing clothes again. I dug out a skirt in progress, and started working on it again. I had stopped before with the lining, because working a sewing pattern twice is ten times worse than a second sock. So now the lining and the skirt match, and all is left is the waistband and hem. In pawing through my patterns to decide which ones to sell, I found so many lovely ones that I can't wait to make, most of which I already have material that would suit.

In closing, in addition to my own and my in-law, happy mother's day to all the mothers out there. We had joked that it would have been nice to gift our mothers with a grandbaby on the way, but we have only been married three weeks, and we are still practicing.

Today it is all about the mothers.

THOSE knitters

You know the type I mean. They, in addition to everything else they do in a day, they knit an extraordinary amount of yarn. They finish a pair of socks in a week. They finish a sweater in a month. You see them starting an incredbly intricate lace shawl one week, and in a New York minute, it is finished. They buy yarn one week, and are sporting the new finished object the next. You know who you are. And my questions to all of you. . . Where do you find the time to knit so much? Do you not sleep? Do you needles spontaneously combust from the speed of your knitting?

I, on the other hand, have the same two pairs of socks that I have been working on the past month. (Four if you count the two that have been languishing in my basket for over a year.) And we won't even talk about the sweater that just needs sleeves, and the uncountable UFOs in there too. My stash is starting to take on a room of its own, and yet, I am disenchanted with half the yarn in there.

So in defiance of all of THOSE knitters out there, I chose to work on this today.

Today, it is all about the protest.

Uninspired

I am back from my honeymoon, and trying to get back into the swing of real life. I find that I am uninspired. For real life, for knitting, for writing, for everything. Maybe once the bags are actually unpacked, and the house is in order, I will feel more like myself again. In the meantime, I am inching along on the second twisted rib trekking sock, and trying to figure out where to get the money to fix my bike. The wedding money disappeared a lot faster than intended with the untimely demise of the washer.

Today, it is all about the letdown.