You cannot know the power of the dark side.

Blue Moon Fiber Arts Laci colorway Corvid.

It will be this.

It just goes to show you that the old "never say never" adage is true. I am not a fan of the faroese shawl, never was. It was kind of klunky looking, and the patterns out there were nothing that grabbed me. There was an ok one now and then, but I wouldn't have called any of them beautiful. So I pretty much wrote them off, and stowed the whole thing in that part of my mind reserved for scrapbooking and webkinz and entrelac socks, the brain equivalent of file 13.

Then came Anne Hanson, whose incredible design not only turned me to mush, but had me chiming in with her daily mass of comments and blithering on endlessly about how much I loved, wanted and needed this shawl. And when Miss Vanity here throws that much pride out the window and starts with the hem kissing, it's all over.

The pattern came out yesterday. Faroese shawls have been granted a reprieve. I am no longer remotely concerned with becoming a knitter or a Knitter. I've gone from zero to Jedi and straight over to the Dark Side.

And they really do have cookies over here.

The chicken oracle speaks. Or maybe boks.

First, I would like to thank everyone who sent in their guesses as to what I broke right before blogger broke. No one guessed, and that was probably due to my lack of information. It really could have been anything! So I took all the names of folks who sent me a guess, assigned them mystical symbols and went out to the chicken. I then spread some feed out and watched the chicken eat until she got bored and scooted off. Then, in the feed appeared a symbol which closely resembled the symbol corresponding to ... Jen! Congratulations, you get a skein of Raven Series STR as soon as it's available!

Sadly, this was not the strangest thing I have done this week. Prior to this I managed to break my toe by using someone elses' steel toe boot. That is the thing that topped off my weekend. And in this picture? The color is actually pretty accurate as of 2 days ago.

Now you see the similarity to the Raven Series colorway. Lots of black blue and purple. My whole foot started getting blue grayish. Fun!!! Now it's much better although I'm still staying off it as much as possible. And while I'm off it, I'm knitting. I finished Jareds' Hemlock Ring Blanket . It was an extremely satisfying knit, and I am in love with the finished throw. Excuse the crappy picture, hey, I'll get more creative when I'm not having to hobble around like a one legged turkey.

And in a total fit of startitis, I cast on these. Yesterday. I can't stop knitting them.

Bird Foot socks by Robyn Gallimore. You can get the pattern of kit from Red Bird Knits. Yes, Canadian, but worth the wait. And, as you see, my foot is much better. Now I have to go and knit some more on the Bird Foot. So I will leave you with one last picture.

Yep, a one legged turkey. (that rear leg is cut off at the knee. She hyperextends the stump and bends her good knee to walk. we call her hobblegobble)

Am I missing the point?

OK, will someone please explain lace knitting to me. I have determined that I am pretty much a process knitter, but this is ridiculous. Way back in the mists of time (well, last February) I started a Daisy Meadow shawl. A "beginner" lace project. I'm a beginner, so, ok. After ripping and reknitting every single row at least twice, I made it this far before I had to walk away.

A few weeks later I decided to pick it up again and spent an entire day knitting, ripping and reknitting chart 4. At the end of the day I had made it this far.

Before I admitted defeat. I don't know what it is about chart 4 that is so bad, but I couldn't get past it for love nor money. So back into its ziploc it went and aged several more months before I could stand to look at it again.

The problem is that I love the idea of knitting lace. The designs and the yarns are unbelievably beautiful, and I dream of knitting a Tina shawl or a Forest Path stole. Really. I have the patterns and I pull them out and look fondly at them and look toward the day I'll know enough to cast them on.

At least I used to feel that way. Until yesterday.

So I decided I'd pick up the scarf after another multi month hiatus and give it a go. I knitted the roughly 900 stitches of chart 4 4 times before nearly breaking down into tears. Not girly tears, not tears of sorrow, failure or remorse, but those special tears of frustration that say I know deep down in my heart that there isn't enough weapons grade plutonium on this planet to make a bomb big enough for my personal needs right now and that is why I cry. Oh, people, what is this lace knitting about?

Last row chart 4 I am one stitch short. Always. I think I find an error. Always. I tink back to fix it being very careful not to foul up tinking the fiddly bits. I begin to reknit, find a dropped stitch. I think. It looks like a yarn over, but that's not possible, last row was all knit. This happens in different spots, I think, but it is always the same. Picking up the stitch will make the number of stitches come out right. I pick it up. I knit. The lace pattern is off. I am somehow still one stitch short. And I seem to have a short column of stitches now where I picked up the alleged dropped stitch. Always. I look close, see where the error obviously started. Shouldn't have picked up that thing I thought was a stitch. Go back and undo to before I "fixed" it, but it doesn't look the same. See the obvious error. Fix it. Lose another internal stitch in the column of stitches and at end of the row I am still a stitch short. Always happens just like this. If I continue, I will eventually end up with a really short and mangled section in the internal lace structure and will never recover the 1 stitch I am short. Rip back to lifeline. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So for many hours work yesterday, I was finally able to achieve this:

I don't get it.

All work and no play makes me order stuff on the internet.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Between the pollen making my asthma flare up and work being its usual crazy self, not much knitting progress has occurred. In anticipation ofI have ordered some undyed Opal to play with. Hopefully I will be able to make the sign up even though I'll be out of town and nowhere near internet access this weekend. Oh well, if I don't make it, I'll still play with dyeing, and that's the point.

I have also been on a pattern buying binge that really has to stop. I think I have a pattern stash that will soon exceed the yarn stash, but when I don't get to actually knit, this is the sort of thing that happens. So it is my bosses' fault. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Meanwhile in "the Birch is going nowhere" news, little overall progress has been made, but I have finally figured out what went wrong the first time I tried it. First, I am a loose knitter, second, I knit looser in Continental than in English. The first attempt didn't make it past the 1st repeat, when I found my yarn overs were making holes big enough for the cats to crawl through. So I had to frog it completely and cast on again, and let me tell you I don't ever want to frog KSH again. Oh, no, next time I am buying an extra ball and just cutting that mess off. I am now knitting Birch perfectly, and the secret is to knit English and choke the living *#^! out of the needles with tight stitches. Probably it would have worked just fine going down a needle size or twelve (the holes were huge, I tell you, huge!)but I must do things the hard way sometimes.

And now, I give you my favorite plant in the whole world - my lotus. Last year's happy baby plant. Now that it has been repotted and it's in the pond, it should be ginormous. Oh, and the Eglu gets ordered soon. I have been chicken free for too long.

Victory, hard won (is there really any other way?)

I have realized that good knitting requires listening to my body. As I move through the process of skill integration, I find that I have very visceral reactions to seeing projects I am going to have trouble with. Tonight was the first night my stomach didn't bunch up just thinking about lace. So I decided to give it a try again.

I finally got through the repeat on the Daisy Meadow Scarf that tried to send me to the crazy house. Being my first real foray into the mystical world of lace knitting, I realize now how much this project is teaching me.

One of many lessons learned is that lace is the great equalizer. The more I read blogs and musings of those who I consider to be really great lace knitters, the more I find that we are all having very similar experiences, even though we have very different skill levels. Everyone, it seems tinks, curses, and approaches tears or stultifying boredom in turns, just like me! So I am going to trust that I will also be like everyone else when blocking time comes, and will feel that all the effort was worth it. I am already pretty happy when I stretch it out.

Something else I learned is that the lace itself will let you know if you are a lace person or not. If you survive the insanities of the process and don't quit, or even still want to knit lace after it is done, you are a lace person. If not, and you still want lace, my advice (even at this early stage of becoming a knitter, I give advice..) is to befriend a lace knitter and trade for lace. Find someone who sucks at something you can do in your sleep, like aran or fair isle, and make a deal. Cause if the lace tells you you aren't cut out for it, trust it, you ain't.

I also learned that there are many levels of patience attainable to the dedicated student of knitting. Sort of like the different levels of meditation, or martial arts, and as you master one level or type of patience, part of what you learn is how badly you need to achieve the next level to be that much better. And so on, until you attain grand master status like Monkee or Eunny or Grumperina or Wendy. Then you get to help others on their path. And from all those wonderful knitters I just mentioned, I learned (among other things) that they still swear over their lace, which has been a most relieving thing for a little lace grasshopper like me. One day maybe I will approach the greatness of the knit fu lacemasters, but for now, I am still one white belt lace knitter who has to call out all the stitches as I go.

Count with me, yo, k, yo, fiddly thing, yo, k, yo, fiddly thing......

Chapter 12: I am driven to madness

I know I went too far. The finishing of all the projects before the due date, coupled with too much beer and repeated watching of the awesome "unpimp your ride" VW commercials combined synergistically to unbalance my brain, and when it came time to cast back on, suddenly the instruction to "cast on 299 stitches" didn't seem unreasonable to me at all.

But it isn't my fault, (it never is, you will soon come to learn about me) it is Eunny and Monkee's faults. Poor Eunny, she doesn't even know me, but I would swear she timed her awesome lace tutorial just to catch me at my most vulnerable. Just like Lolly got me all excited about socks, Eunny has taken advantage of my impaired state to hook me on lace for good. Even though I am sucking at it at the moment, I am loving it. And Monkee spreading all these great lace vibes around the place. Ladies, the damage is done. Lace is the new sock.

I like to call this "Still life with Birch, HP and Cat Butt"

In continuing sock madness news, however, even as I am inching fearfully forward to casting on the 2 color turkish socks, I must tell you a tale of frustration. A little while ago I saw these socks on Claudia's blog. Candy socks. Delicious. Had to have.

I have learned a lot about the self patterning sock business since this whole thing started. About the evils of limited runs, and the equally nasty ways shops lure you in with promises of wonderful self patterning color ranges only to produce large piles of grey, brown, black, and greybrown yuk they haven't been able to unload over the past humpteen years. In desperation, and in the throes of a creativity streak that had me designing candy purses to go along with my socks, I wrote Claudia asking for help. She was very kind and gracious, especially considering that I must have come across as a complete lunatic, and she shared her source as well as some other places to start my search. Nice lady, talented as all get out, too.

You know how it is once you have your mind set on something. After several attempts to purchase from various online sources only to receive an email of regret followed by removal of the item from their online catalogues, I was on a freaking mission from God to track down the last Trekking XXL Color 126 on this planet. And because when I am on said mission I am as stubborn as a mule on crack, it was inevitable that I triumphed.

Now, I'd like to say that tracking this yarn to a shop in Berlin is not even a little extreme, but I would be lying if I did so. I think I have gone round the bend, twist or any other metaphor I can think of, as long as it means I am completely mental. And I am having a hell of a time denying it. I had to pay for my yarn in freaking Euros. EUROS. But I am happy. Is that wrong?

Taking it to a new level entirely

Today is a day that will go down in infamy. It will be remembered as the day I got serious about my knitting. What made this day different from all the rest? I went shopping, people, shopping. But in a very different way.

Since I began knitting, the general shopping experience has been a formless and chaotic thing. I wander into a yarn shop, look at the bewildering array of yarns needles books and tools and let it sort of wash over me. Sometimes something would swim up to my notice out of the deep, other times some yarn or useful tool would leap out and assault me until I had to purchase it just to regain some inner peace. Then there's the stash, the ever-growing stash. It speaks to me. It forces me to bring home more yarn for it. It is hungry.

{Begin Digression}
In Kitchen Confidential, author Tony Bourdain names the bread starter at one of his kitchens "The Bitch" based on both it's requirements and the difficulty of dealing with it. For those of you who don't know much about baking, starter must be "fed" regularly by adding small amounts of fresh ingredients to it, mostly to feed the yeasts and keep it risable and useful. "Feeding the Bitch" was the way he referred to the daily difficult task of dealing with the starter. Well, this is like unto my stash now, it demands feeding with new yarn in a way that makes me think I should name it soon. And although one could possibly more accurately compare it to Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, it will more than likely be known and referred to hereafter as The Bitch.
{End Digression}

So today I name the stash. This is not, however, where our story began. It began when I realized a very specific item was needed for a specific task, and with intent and focus I went shopping, found just the thing, bought it and only it, and came home, mission accomplished. Let me tell you, people, it was awesome.


I dared to enter the testosterone-laden halls of the temple. I moved easily amongst the giants of NASCAR fandom, Budweiser imbibement and plaid flannel. I strolled confidently past the giant stuffed mooses near the hunting and meat processing section and through the maze of clothing that was made by men, for men and which could only impress other men. And why this heroic (or psychotic) endeavour?

Because I knew that 50# test fishing line would make the best material for lifelines for lace knitting. And it does.


HA! Today is a day of greatness. Today I name myself as I never thought I would, and I never hoped I could.
And because I can hardly deny a project I am actually showing you pictures of, and also because now that I'm a bad-ass knitter I don't care if you all know, I can also admit that I joined this:

Now, for a well deserved beer.

Rumors of a secret project patently untrue!!!

I deny any knowledge of a new project. I deny that this project is taking place at work on my lunch break. I deny that this was any justification for starting any project prior to my March 1st starting date established and duly ratified by me. I did not receive any packages from Canada recently in the mail. This is a complete fabrication. Any information you may receive regarding the alleged stealth project is wrong. After all, I don't knit lace; how preposterous!


The alleged "project"