28 September 2006

A Nice Contrast

The beret looks terrible. I'm gonna have to fix, uh, something. The problem is the brim, so I may have to take the whole thing out and do it again. Ugh.

But that's not the point. The point is that a wonderful thing happened to me this morning at work. Six months ago or so I had a disappointing incident with the art teacher at my (former) school, which I wrote about here.


This morning, one of the teachers at my new school approached me in the hallway and asked if I'd made my scarf (the Kata/Felicity Scarf). She then asked me what stitch combination I'd used. She then asked what yarn I'd used. ("It's, um, Alchemy? I had to go to North Carolina for it?" "Oh, yeah, I know that one.") She then invited me to help her lead the knitting club on Mondays after school. Aha! She's the art teacher!

"Come by my room, we'll talk fibers sometime," she said as we parted ways.

I am so working at the right school now.
And there is hope for the creative futures of our children.
Thank you, God.

27 September 2006

Lull

There has been a bit of a lull in the knitting.

First of all, I finished the Kata/Felicity Scarf from the previous post, and knitting with any other yarn just seems like kind of a letdown.

Secondly, I've been working on getting ordained. That takes considerably more time and effort when the people who are in charge of your process act like they have their heads up orafices that they'd have to be pretty stupid to stick their heads up in the first place.

Thirdly, I ran out of yarn and patterns that worked together. Well, I ran out of neither yarn nor patterns, really, but it sure felt like it for a while.

Then I went to a therapist for a day (part of the ordination stuff -- "they" have to make sure I'm not crazy. And I'm officially not!), in a part of the Atlanta metro where I almost never go, and so I spent a bit of time at this yarn store. I spent a bit of money there, too. I'm just sayin'. It was a good store -- if it weren't an hour away from any place I ever want to be, I'd go there more often. But I have new yarn now, which means new knitting inspiration.

I've been needing some inspiration lately. I was going to write a post titled "Inspiration," but I just couldn't get excited about it.

Anyway, inspiration. I now have yarn with which to make Christmas presents for Joel and for his mother. I think I'm going to start, though, with a beret for myself. I'm feeling the beret again this season, which is nice. I used to be a beret kid, back when I was a kid. I think it's time again. I'm hoping I bought enough of the yarn I plan to use, because I misread the label in the store and may have underbought. And that store is at least an hour from my house.

And I have two discoveries to share. The first is that my old-new favorite yarn store is no longer a favorite (they're moving away from the yarns I love, toward lots of yarns I don't love), which is especially too bad because my job is a less-than-five-minute drive away. The second is a new-ish blog that has quickly become a must-read for me: PeaceBang's Beauty Tips for Ministers is a hilarious read (the Manolo meets New England Unitarian Universalism in the form of a fabulous single female minister who just wants us all to look as good as God intended) by a dedicated almost-daily blogger with a sense of decency and style. If PeaceBang had an email address, I'd let her know privately how much I enjoy her blog, but as it is, she has no contact info on her Blogger Profile, and so I must share with the world my love for her (and let her know about Ann Taylor LOFT's new "Julie" trousers, which are the most flattering trousers I have perhaps ever found for the very-bootylicious ministers among us). Thank you, Ann Taylor LOFT. And thank you, too, PeaceBang, for your unending quest to bring a little bit of taste to those who think they are not of this world (but who still have to live in it!).

Now. To the beret!

02 September 2006

Knitting with Honey

So, that link I used to have over in the sidebar that said something like "Yarn I Love But Have Never Seen"? I've seen it now. And I love it even more than I thought I would. If it weren't so darned expensive, I would swear to knit with nothing else for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, at $20 a skein, I simply cannot afford to make a promise like that.

Joel and I went to North Carolina a few weeks ago. A college friend of his had eloped last January, and she and her husband had this big "We Got Married" weekend celebration up in the mountains near Boone. (Great town. I could totally dig that vibe, man.) And as any good knitter would do, I googled something like "yarn store, Boone, NC" and came across a couple of different options, one in a town just over the mountain that sold Alchemy Yarns. So when we got up to Boone, I made Joel drive over the mountain in the rain -- we had to call for directions twice -- to find this shop and buy some yarn. I bought two skeins of Synchronicity, a 50/50 silk/wool DKish blend. Amazing stuff. I normally hate knitting with silk. There's something about the feel of it that grates on me, like knitting with synthetic fibers. But like I said, I really don't want to knit with any other yarn, ever. It doesn't feel like silk, it feels like honey.

I immediately went to the new yarn store I love in my old 'hood and begged the owner to start carrying Synchronicity. We'll see.

After carrying the two skeins around for about three weeks, they finally told me what they want to be. The Kata Felicity Scarf from Mindful Knitting (a book that I do eventually plan to review). I've been working on it for a couple of days now, and the yarn is perfect for this pattern. Just the right shine, just the right drape -- the particular stitch pattern combined with the silk makes the yarn look like ropes of jewels (emeralds, since I bought a deep green) that somehow magically hang together in invisible settings.

Despite the premise of the book from which I got the pattern, I am not meditating while making this scarf. I am watching improv comedy. There's a huge tournament happening this weekend at the theater where Joel works, and I almost always knit during the shows. (I've made it my short-term goal, since I apparently am going to be in Atlanta longer than I had intended, to become one of those local celebrities: "The Girl Who Knits At Dad's Garage.") So I've been working this pattern in the dark, which is particularly fun because it's a lace pattern -- lots of yarnover and s1k2togPsso action to keep track of, but a pretty simple repeat -- and I have not made a single mistake in the pattern (knock wood). It looks amazing. And when the lights come on, I stop knitting and work a crossword or talk with friends instead.

I hadn't realized that knitting in the dark was all that unusual (everyone knits at the movies, right?), but last night I met a fellow knitter during intermission. She was working on a sweater and I asked if she was making much progress during the shows, and she said that it was too complicated a stitch pattern to work in the dark. A k1p1 rib. Too complicated. Oh. I had just showed her my lacy scarf. On the one hand,
I am terribly proud of my knitting-in-the-dark skillz. On the other hand, I hadn't meant to make her feel like an inferiorly-skilled knitter. Whoops. Hopefully she didn't notice, or overanalyze the situation like I just did.

Anyway, there are two more shows tonight, and then the tournament is over and I'll have to knit my honey/jewel/improv-not-meditiation scarf by the light of day again if I want to finish it and move on to something else. But for now, I'm just enjoying the feel of time slipping through my fingers.