Knithropology

With a title like that, you might expect this post to be something philosophical, perhaps with beautiful prose on nature and the timelessness of our planet. But as the autumn leaves, now faded from green to the palest yellow, cascade down to the parched earth, and the dry summer grasses are replenished by the life-giving rains (hang on…), this weekend has brought me an even more exciting gift: the common cold.

Now, as we crafters know all too well, being ill presents us with fantastic opportunities. “Uh-oh, I feel a cold coming on…guess I’ll have to sit and knit - er, I mean rest. I’ll have to sit and rest.” So we happily run to our WIP or start a new project secure in the knowledge that we’ll have time to work. Even better, we might be able to rouse someone’s pity at our sniffly state and get them to make us a cup of tea. Alright, I don’t wait for pity, I ask for tea, and I’m lucky I get it. My lad knows I’ll extend the same courtesies to him next time he is sick and watching telly all day - you know, resting.

In the interest of not spreading my plague to others, and because public displays of mucous are not my thing, I’ve stayed home today. To rest, obviously. Right now I’m resting on a new Irish Hiking Scarf (I’ve rested so hard I’ve managed ~18in/~45cm) and I’m thinking about starting to rest on the Central Park Hoodie. After looking over the 240+ projects on Ravelry (sorry, non-Ravellers) to see how other folks went about knitting their CPHs, I decided to go with the knitter’s old friend Cascade 220 in a lovely blueredpurplegrey (that’s a real colour, I swear - who cares that they call it Heather Tweed?). It isn’t too blah to be boring and it isn’t going to obscure the cables. When I finally cast on and get some good hard rest done on it I’ll post pictures.

I’m excited to report that I’ve finally joined the ranks of Those Who Cable Without Cable Needles. It’s a mild case of necessity breeding invention, really - I’ve lost my two favourite cable needles and I was getting fussy about having to use a DPN. Grumperina to the rescue! I also find with her technique that my last stitch in the cable tends to be tighter and neater, so I think I’ll be sticking with it.

I feel as though I should offer an apology to all the folks coming here after googling for the Cobblestone Pullover. Since mentioning it on here, I’ve had loads of visitors looking for my commentary…which, as you may recall, doesn’t exist. Yet. Argh. We’d pretty much decided that it wouldn’t work, but after (again) looking at the FOs on Ravelry, indecision has returned to taunt us. There are some fantastic finished Cobblestones on there. Oh dear. More thinking is required. I may have to Photoshop my lad’s head onto some pictures.

Finally, a couple of things I found whilst reading the news this week:

Two alpacas offer hen protection

You can’t go wrong with knitting and cats

Off to do some more resting - see you soon.

Chinchilla being the online alias of my beloved laptop, of course. After four years of near-constant service, she finally had her first problem: her hard drive went. She’s a great laptop; built like a tank, pared down to her essentials and runs like a charm…until she beeped and says ‘hard drive failure imminent, please back up your data immediately’. But even then she held on and nothing was lost. And the warning was nice, anyway - there’s nothing worse (computer-wise) than turning on a machine and hearing the Click of Death. Well, perhaps flames shooting out of the power supply, but still that’s easier to sort out.

But she warned me and stayed alive long enough for me to back up a few files. That’s my Chinchilla. I’m sure it helps that I’ve done computer troubleshooting and repair for a good portion of my life; you learn how to keep things chugging along. My desktop, Garibaldi (like the biscuit) got some additional memory this week and is now faster than a cat jumping out of the bath. Fantastic.

So, one week and a new hard drive in Chinchilla later, we are back in business. Not much knitting has gone on (argh), as classes have started and I’m still learning the new routine and realising I have to (gulp) study. Add to that a cascading failure in my Sanguine Danica (I still can’t figure out what I’ve done, and after knitting two of them with no trouble, that’s really saying something), a sari silk bag I just can’t get quite right, and a Cobblestone Pullover that we’ve decided isn’t suitable, and I’m not having many successes. At least the Ow, My Hands! is getting some more use. Right. I’m going to make a felted bag for an electronic gadget this weekend if it kills me, and once I buy a 4.5mm 16″ circ, that sari silk bag in my head will become reality. And I may knit a felted cover for my canvas messenger bag. The winter is coming and I wouldn’t want my oh so expensive textbooks to get damaged.
Pictures soon; in the meanwhile, have a look at these:

Apple cozy

The Gods of (non-vegan) Knitting

It’s good to be back, or as Brucie would say, nice to see you, to see you - NICE!

…pick up some marzipan and frost yourself a sweater. (Edit: there’s also a tutorial linked from that page now.)

Coming soon:

* reflections on World Wide Knit in Public Day;

* my own experiences knitting in public;

* thoughts on the creation of a knitting podcast;

* more moaning about my endless Dream Swatches (who knew I’d have so many odd balls of Patons Grace in my stash?);

* and the revelation of the very strange thing on my needles.

In the meantime, marzipan sounds good to me.