Unfinished Busyness

I finally finished knitting a super cute Eastern Market Bag. With scant yarn left, I made the strap two-toned. I ran out of yarn altogether before I completed the bottom, so I substituted a muti-colored cotton, which I think “makes” the bag. I rarely exactly follow a pattern. Now I’ll have to figure out how to carry the bag upside-down.

In my June, July, October, and November 2020 journal entries, I mentioned needing to finish knitting this bag.

In my mid-March 2021 journal entry, I mentioned needing to finish it and three other projects before starting the “red hearts scarf” or the “selkie wrap.”

How many unfinished knitting projects do I have, anyway, I wondered? Also, how boring is my journal?

Covid Crochet

I decided to learn to crochet during the Covid-19 pandemic not because of boredom after months of quarantine, but because of this:

Fruit Garden CAL by Jane Crowfoot

I saw no fruit in the so-called Fruit Garden CAL Blanket and didn’t know what CAL meant, but, I HAVE TO MAKE THAT, I thought-yelled when it crossed my screen during my rabbit-hole internet searches for macramé wall-art patterns.

Yarn Counts!

An Annual Reckoning with a Late-in-Life Obsession

If it’s organized, it’s not hoarding

0             Amount of yarn I vowed to acquire in 2020

64           Numbers of skeins I acquired (plus uncounted bags of raw fleece and roving, which don’t count)

The Jazz Hat

[A blog post that took me two years to finish, hence the outdated reference to a class crammed into a tiny room: remember those days?]

The Jazz Hat takes itself for a walk to the Farmers Market, aka Selfie Snafu

I signed up for a color-knitting class, failing to realize that color-knitting was the same topic as the disastrous first knitting workshop I took three months after first taking up needles.

You might be thinking, “Isn’t all knitting color-knitting?” Unless your yarn is, um, white?

Covid Cowl

©DROPS Design Lovely Feathers Neck Warmer

The “Lovely Feathers Neck Warmer” comes nowhere near the neck, and it doesn’t look like any feather I’m familiar with, not even a flamingo’s. Obviously I agree it’s lovely or I wouldn’t have chosen the knitting pattern.

I never knit patterns with the colors specified by the designer. My motto is, “Why knit something that looks like you could buy it in a store?” So far I’ve reached my aspirations in spades. The motto might be, “Why knit an accessory that makes you look sane when you could look eccentric instead?”

March of the Penguin Sweaters

On knitting a garment I hope will never be worn.

Ill-fitting

I’ve come to understand one of the primary reasons I’m passionate about knitting: As I knit, I visualize the person the garment is intended for. If it’s the holiday season, I visualize friends, family, and a flock of juvenile-service professionals who will get to choose from a knitted pile of accessories.

This is a relief after a quarter century of writing: nobody wants a draft of a bad poem in their holiday stocking—although the Man I Married might have preferred a slim sheet of paper over the seven-foot-long scarf I knitted him as my first ever knitted project.

Mistakes, Making It Up, Moving Forward

Brachiosaurus hat?

Or lumpy bowl?

My friend’s sister said, “I have no problem ripping a knitting project apart if I’ve made a mistake. After all, it’s knitting I love, so it doesn’t matter if I have to lose a bunch of work and practically start over. It just means more knitting!” A rumbling of assent, like the hubbub at British parliament, reverberated around the dinner table of women crafters who had been meeting weekly for a few decades.

Not I (though there IS something pleasurable about the sound and feel of ripping out rows of knitting, perhaps the vegetarian’s version of ripping flesh off ribs with our teeth).

Circles

Clever Kates cavorting with crapper cylinders

“Why am I doing this?” I asked the Man I Married as we fastened the backseat seatbelt around my new bundle of joy.

“Isn’t knitting enough?” I continued. “Why take this on, too? What am I thinking? Clearly I’m not thinking.”

MIM knew better than to answer. He squeezed my hand and let me wind myself down.

The orifice hook rattled against the strapped-in spinning wheel as we pulled out of the cul-de-sac far from home. The bobbins clattered on their Lazy Kate—which should be called a Clever Kate—a wooden stand on which the bobbins perch and spin while yarn is plied (when two or more individual strands are wound together to make a stronger, thicker yarn). This one was a step-up from my improvised and borrowed Lazy Kate: a shoebox punctured with shish kabob skewers, on which hung cardboard toilet paper rolls.

Spinning Tales

Now this king and queen had plenty of money, and plenty of fine clothes to wear…

I’ve been thinking about the Brothers Grimm tale of Briar Rose—better known in our time as Sleeping Beauty—in a new light.

The fairytale, true to form, comprises many farfetched aspects, but until I took a spinning wheel class, I’d never before considered the biggest hitch in the plot’s logic.

To refresh your memory:

Causing the whole brouhaha was the queen (always blame the mother) failing to invite the thirteenth fairy to the birthday celebration of miraculous newborn Briar Rose, for good reason—the king and queen didn’t have enough dishes.

Mohair Melee

Angora rabbit thinks it’s snowing all the time.

Most of the attendees at the annual fiber festival looked the same: middle-aged ladies who have clearly never seen the inside of a CrossFit, some trailed by a patient husband like mine. Their outfits could often be described as “creative,” “unique,” and “artfully layered.” Choosing warmth and pride over commercial fashion wasn’t a bad choice for a mid-October festival in huge, warehouse-like buildings on a fairground, serenaded by the the Doplered approach and retreat of racecar engines circling the nearby track in the constant rain.

We arrived on the early side for the Saturday noon opening of the Used Equipment Sale. I envisioned a The Who concert-like stampede by knitters, swarming, grabbing, and elbowing for first dibs on Lazy Kates.

But, no. Quiet and polite milling around the swifts, looms, and spinning wheels disappointed me. A victorious gleam in the eyes of a woman clutching a spinning chair (a damned uncomfortable-looking piece of furniture for a craft that requires many hours of sitting) over her head as she made her way to the checkout table like an Oregon Trail migrant forging a river, was as close to Black Friday pandemonium as things got.