Eureka!

I have just had the biggest eureka moment since I learned to knit.  Yes, I've had many eureka moments in knitting since learning the first humble knits and purls.  The eureka of my first finished scarf, finished hat, finished heel turn, finished toe graft, finished sock, finished pair of socks, finished cable, finished garment, finished lace repeat, finished lace project, finished blocked lace, just recently the first finished BSJ, but this eclipses all of those.

This evening, because I was determined I could do it (and perhaps feeling a bit bored, or ambitious, or adventuresome... the exact details are unclear) I taught myself to knit continental.  No, wait, it's cooler than that, I taught myself to knit and purl in continental.  It was amazing!  Okay, the first two rows of knit were maddening and I wasn't sure I could ever figure it out and I considered chucking the whole thing as I already know one perfectly good way to knit and why could I possibly need to know two.  And then I reminded myself of colorwork mittens.... and I stuck out those two knit rows.  Then I started a purl row.  Or I started a purl stitch.  And started it again.  And five more times.  And decided that there was no way I'd ever need to know this stuff and that there was no way the instructions in Stitch & Bitch could possibly be right.  I was also briefly convinced that it simply wasn't possible to purl in continental and that continental knitters were lying about it.  Afterall I've never seen them do it, and they do knit in the round perhaps suspicously often, so much so that they get excited about steeks.  So I ripped out what I had done, wound the yarn back around the ball, thrust the straight needles I'd scrounged up for the learning experience into the ball of yarn and decided to chuck it for the night.

This didn't sit well.  I'm not a quitter.  I picked it up again, cast on twenty stitches and worked a row of knit.  A bit awkward still, but managable.  I could see myself being able to figure it out enough to muddle through some mittens.  And on the next row I was going to purl.  The whole thing.  I wasn't backing down or giving up or anything.  I didn't even bother to pull the diagrams back out.  I just went for it.  And it took about as many tries as the first time, but I watched myself on each try and on that last one it made sense.  I don't know how, or why, and it certainly didn't stop feeling strange and  completely ungainly, but it did make sense.  I awkwardly purled the entire row.  And then knit another row, purled another row, knit another row and purled another row.  It is absolute magic.  Magic!

For anyone reading who doesn't yet know how to knit "with both hands" please don't feel like you can't do it.  I understand that you might not want to, but I assure you that you can.  You learned to knit.  Remember how awkward it was, remember the frustration, and how clumsy you felt, and how sometimes you dropped stitches and missed stitches and had too many stitches.... you may have that again.  You'll certainly feel like a new knitter, perhaps even moreso than when you were a new knitter, but you'll get it.  You were smart enough to figure out how to knit in the first place, right?

.....and now I'm thinking about ripping out my current BSJ in progress so that I can knit it continental for practice.  I may be a touch insane.

Things you could spot in my baby knitting pictures if my baby knitting pictures were REALLY easy I Spy pictures:

1) My couch pillow.

2) My knitting basket.

3) My pepper grinder.

.... I am feeling a bit humorous.  

Baby Mania

I should first like to point out that I am glad that I am making no money on this blog, or on my creative endeavors, as I am a terrible correspondant.  That said, I do love to post pics for all of my friends reading, and I realize that being that I am neither making money on this blog, nor on my creative endeavors, they don't really have to be perfect, but it might be nice if they were less sporadic.

That said, I am going to endeavor to worry more about posting more frequently, so I don't miss any posts that might be interesting/exciting and to worry less about the cropping and editing of my photos and the proper photo placement within the blog entries.  You're likely to see a less polished blog, but more often, and especially more pictures--I do want to catch up!

Today's blog is BABYMANIA!  Not my own (as I've pointed out in an earlier entry) thank heavens, but that of my dear brother and sister in law.  After finding out about their baby I knew that the FIRST thing to be done was to get my greedy little hands on an Elizabeth Zimmerman book, that I might join the hoardes of BSJ knitters.  And I have!
I used Bella Moden sportweight in Prague and Wizard of Oz (at least I think that's what the colorway names were) and I still have a good bit left over for an accessory or two.  I am debating what accessories, exactly, but no matter figuring them out so quickly as I've got much more to be working on.

I haven't added the buttons yet, but I already know where they'll go.  I realize that you're supposed to "wait for the baby" but I wanted a crochet edging with crochet buttonhole openings and I wanted it to be finished.  If the baby is upset that the placement of his/her buttons confuses people about the pronouncement of his/her dangly-bits (or lack of) I'm sure he/she will let me know. ;)  And also there's a 50% chance I've gotten it right! 
I just LOVED making the baby surprise!  I loved making it so much that I've now become obsessed with 1) making BSJ (see evidence):
and 2) making mitered sqares (evidence again):
This square now has a yellow companion and the beginnings of another companion in the lighter green/blue/yellow colorway on the top and will continue to acquire companions (also in two other colorways I had to stop at the yarn store to pick up because I realized I was going to need more yarn, and figured why not have more colors as well.)  When all of these squares grow up and converge they are going to be a pretty spiffy baby blanket, inspired by the four-square baby blanket by Wendy Bernard's at Knit & Tonic.

And after listening to a very informative Knit Picks Podcast discussing knitting for baby, I knew that I must also make a set of baby bibs.  Thankfully, I had four hanks of machine washable Corntastic in four different delightful colors.  This is the first.  

I'm fairly certain that I've got other projects planned, and a good number of other things OTN, but right now my head is so full of baby knitting that if I tried to think about other knitting ALSO my head might explode.  I'd rather that not happen as there are SO MANY more baby things I want to knit!!!

(I should mention that she's due in December, so I've also got plenty of time to make piles of baby things before the baby actually comes.  Piles and piles.)

Life/Geek Updates

And very little blogging.  I've missed blogging.

The previously mentioned health problems are being attacked with a vengance.  I'm seeing a specialist and have an appointment in July to see about another specialist.  I've got new pills for my gastrointestinal condition and anti-anxiety medication for my everything else.  These seem to be helping.

Apart from the health problems, we've had some family stress, both bad and good, and things have just seemed extremely out of control for awhile.  Things are beginning to seem more in control now.

Just when things were finally all coming together, I managed to wreck my bike, all by myself this time--I hit a curb the wrong way, and fell on my right knee (why can't it EVER be my left knee?!?!), my left shin, and most painfully fell on one of my handlebars with the my left lower abdomen right at the "bend" between my belly and my thigh about 3" to 4" from my hip-bone.  I was TERRIFIED that I had done serious internal damage, but things seem okay.  Still pretty painful (it happened on Thursday) and VERY black and blue with extra emphasis on the black, but I'm walking and feeling better.

In long awaited geek news, I saw Star Trek and Wolverine this weekend, and I thought both were awesome.

Trek was AWESOME!!!  Zach was excellent, and I think that the Spock role is one that he could really make his own.  I'd watch at any rate.

Wolverine was just awesome, but I expected that going in, and I was pleased with how fun it was.  I was disappointed with Deadpool, and even more disappointed with him when I realized they plan on giving him his own movie.  (Can't talk?  SURELY they're going to fix that at least, right?)  And I was APPALLED at Emma.  I know that there are liberties taken when comics are turned into movies, and especially with the X-Men (heck, there are liberties taken with X-Men IN X-Men) but the diamond skin is a secondary mutation.  She doesn't have the diamond skin until well after she's gotten to know Scott and participated in the thorough torture of his girlfriend.  Emma was the lame-point of the movie, by far, but not so lame as to make Wolverine not awesome.

And a quick geek run down of shows, as I can think of them:

Heroes:  I'm done.  I'm finally done.  I'm quitting Heroes, I'm sparing myself the anger I feel everytime I think about the hours I've suffered through hating this show.  Also, if I contract a terminal illness, I'm considering doing all manner of unkind things to the writers.

Chuck:  Amazing for what it is.  I'm not saying that it's a great sci-fi show, it really isn't.  But it's fun to watch and fairly clever.  I hope it gets picked up again.

Fringe:  Can't wait to see the finale, this is THE new show, as far as I'm concerned.  This is one of the ones I'll be talking about for years.

LOST:  LOST is THE show without qualification.  This show, especially if it ends as well as it's been going, is going to be everything that B5 should have been, but failed to become when they had all of the confusion over the 5th season.  LOST is the show that they'll be teaching in college, it will be the Television standard for generations.  Utterly brilliant.

Krod Mandoon:  I hate to admit it but this show is hilarious.  Its essentially a South Park/Family Guy type show but for geeks.  Great fun.

Legend of the Seeker:  A very good little show.  It's probably not going to become much more than a very good little show, but it is, and I believe it will continue to be.

Primeval:  I thought Primeval was going to start to get really bad.  I thought that it was going to become unwatchable.  I've delightedly been proven wrong.  I won't say more than that as I'm not supposed to be watching it, and likely you haven't seen the new stuff yet.

House:  I'm two, soon to be three, episodes behind and I think I'm probably going to stay that way.  Too much over-drama, too much hype.  It's like everyone forgot that this is just House.  It's a seriocomic medical procedure show, it isn't art.  This season it's like the writers got together and decided that they'd all rather be novelists so they were going to start to write the show that way, since they couldn't be writing their novels instead.  This story might be interesting, but not in House.

Okay, I think that's it.  There's LOTS of knitting/crochet/yarn stuff to review, but I'm going to try my bestest to take a bunch of photos and get it to ya'll over the course of the week.

Keep on geeking and knitting--it's good to be back (again)!

PSA: Not Preggers

I owe everyone LOTS of pictures, which I promise to begin to update, possibly this weekend.

This post, however, is to inform my rav-buddies that the rampant faving of adorable baby items is not an indication that I have decided, against previous proclamations, to personally recreate the John Hurt moment. (The fact that I can, with a bit more of a cringe than a grin, refer to it as the John Hurt moment, should prove that not only have I not reevaluated my decision to remain child-free, but that I'm making the RIGHT decision.)

I will say, however, that the biggest benefit of people I know having babies is that I can knit baby clothes. You can't just knit a BSJ for noone. It would be silly.

A few nice things:

Still on the down-side of feeling well, although I did take the bike today and will probably do so tomorrow.  And a few things were very nice indeed:

1) (Belatedly) listening to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and finding out that the joke TP app, iWipe, is actually a REAL app that scrubs data from your iPhone.

2) Finding out that there will be Peeps in the weekly produce box tomorrow!

3) Made a date w/ Phil for Friday night to see Monsters vs. Aliens!

4) Figured out what to do for my Gram and my Mom for Mother's Day

5) Ordered the combo set of Blue Planet and Planet Earth (I am such a geek over Blue Planet it's absurd.... if I had to pick between Blue Planet and no cashmere again ever...... BP would probably win out.)

Of course now I'm awake resolutely avoiding the narcotics and the sleeping pills in favor of "waiting out the pain" and playing with my iRene, my iPod.  She does have cool new things, though, including Pimselur's Portuguese, so things could be worse.  Oh and I've already watched Torchwood S2 KKBB and knit over an inch on Phil's socks!

Night and pleasant knitting dreams!

Personal life creeps in a bit

I'm not feeling very motivated to make a real knitting/yarn post.  I've got all that nice new Malabrigo to show off, and a few projects that I'd like to show you.  As it happens, though, life is rather getting in the way.

Without going into too much detail, I seem to be on a downturn of my still-mysterious health problems.  Specialist visit is scheduled for May.  It was scheduled in early March, but May was the first time they had.  I'm grateful to get to see a specialist at all, though, and am just keeping my fingers crossed that I'm continuing to travel down the road of eventually finding a treatment.

I have every intention to keep up with my regular updates and to provide photos and squeeing over all the things I've promised to show and squee over.  I also still intend to post photos of the yarn I'm giving away, although I'll admit that that'll likely get put off until at least the weekend after the coming one.

I'm going to go back to my knitting until I get tired and then go back to my novel, which is (unfortunately for my knitting projects) a good bit more distracting.

Love and good knitting to all, and I hope to be back to full health and back to more exciting blog posts as soon as I feel up to it.