Philosophical

So, this morning I was thinking; there is no day so good it cannot be improved with the application of a chocolate doughnut. This probably has something to do with why (when I stopped by the grocery store for some fresh fruit to go in my lunch on the way to work this morning), I wound up at the grocery store with the Dunkin Donuts, instead of the one I usually go to. Also why I left for the grocery store without breakfast. I did make a halfhearted stab at convincing myself I'd be happy to eat a granola bar intead, but not even I really thought it would work. I find that convincing oneself of things is actually very difficult, especially if you don't believe them to begin with...the last couple of weeks really have been filled with deep thoughts, as you'll see.

After putting the colowork sweater in time out last week, I spent some time mulling over what to do with the neckline. I kind of already knew what I wanted (a placket neck) but it took some time to come to terms with it. Also, I'm still pondering zippers vs. buttons, and it's going to be fiddly and I'm not sure whether to double the facing in stockinette or do a single thickness in ribbing. So you can see I'm putting off doing that third steek there's a lot to decide. And I haven't had a chance to crunch the math to figure out what to do next with the green Aran (the pattern's for a turtleneck pullover and I'm converting it to a V-neck cardigan), so that wasn't helping. I needed simple, portable thinky knitting.

So. I started some simple socks for the Christmas box. And some mittens to use up some spare yarn left from the blue and white afghan. And slippers to use up the yarn left from the mittens. (Cogitating with bulky weight is always useful- the quick results are gratifying). And then I was still thinking so I cast on some children's mittens with another random leftover skein.


This leads my to my second philosophical truth of the day. Thinking uses up yarn.

And of course the other thing I've been doing- besides knitting, working and amusing the cat- is writing. I've been saying for several years that I wanted to do National Novel Writing Month, the first year I wasn't ludicrously overscheduled. For those who haven't heard of it, it's a program to encourage writing by motivating people to write a fifty-thousand word novel in a month. (That's actually a very short novel-- an 'average' paperback is around 100,000-150,000 words. And since the focus is on cranking out wordage, quality is not just secondary--it's irrelevant.) But while 50,000 words is short for a finished work, it's a perfectly respectable length for a first draft, which is what I'm aiming for.

So, if I'm not around quite as much this month, picture me lounging in a cafe, wearing a beret and exchanging elliptical remarks about metaphors with other writers. (Okay, sitting at home with the cat trying to get me to forget the laptop and pay attention to her while I resist the urge to go looking for another chocolate doughnut is more likely.)

And even though this is only day 5, I've made yet another exciting discovery. Sitting down and writing every day, makes words appear on the page. Who knew?

Waste Not

So the other scrap yarn project that I'm working on is a the Log Cabin Moderne baby blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting. Which is not to say that I've actually read the pattern (I should do that some time), but I've adopted the concept as a way to use a bunch of odd skeins of baby blanket yarn.


Here we are at about a foot square. I've doubled some of the finer yarns to get a more consistent thickness. (I had intended for Woats to model it, but she wasn't in a mood to be photographed.)

All of these are skeins from yard sale box lots or boxes of yarn given to me or my mom. The few that had enough to do anything useful with have long since been used- a log cabin blanket in two colors last year, a baby sweater some years before that.

This isn't for anyone in particular at the moment- but it's a sure thing that if you knit a baby item, soon enough a baby will show up to claim it!

Two by Two

When last we left our knitter, I was wondering whether I would run out of yarn and have to rip back the Optic Waves scarf. I did just barely have enough (it's currently waiting to be blocked), but decided to do one last pass through the stash and make sure I didn't have another bit of that pink yarn lurking in some forgotten corner. If I do, it has eluded me for the time being. However in the course of rummaging through the yarn (two three-gallon pails and a large basket- I'm a real lightweight in the stash department), I realized that I still had a lot of untasked yarn lying around. Specifically, I had a bunch of yarn that I had intended to knit up *before* buying a bunch more sock yarn.

Ahem.

Well, there were extenuating circumstances regarding the sock yarn (I happened to be in a yarn store), but I decided that I might as well take a break from socks and try to do a couple of quick knits and eliminate some of the yarn overage.

Hence, mittens- there was a third pair, but they got given away before being photographed.


I happened to be knitting these at our local knit night (which I managed to attend for the first time a week or so ago), and someone asked what I was doing. I explained that I was knitting mittens- two at a time, flat, on straight needles.

"But, why?!" she asked. (I presume she meant 'why knit them flat instead of in the round?'. Why knit mittens at all, is kind of a non sequitur in New Hampshire.)

Well. There are several reasons to do it this way. For one, I'm faster on straights than on dpns or circulars. And I don't mind seaming, as a rule. But there's a practical reason as well- when I'm using up scrap yarn, it's very important to me to knit both mittens at once. I double wind the yarn so I have the middle in the center of the ball and two ends to knit with, and then I don't need to count rows, I can add stripes at the same time, and best of all? When I run out of yarn, I run out at the same place on both mittens at once. So when I change colors, it looks planned, because the two mittens match. And I use up nearly all the yarn- I'm generally left with less than a yard. And yes, of course I could knit two mittens at once, in the round, on circular needles, if I had them. No doubt when I get around to picking up that size of circular, I'll try it. But this works fine for me.

*pauses to defend breakfast cereal from marauding cat*

Where was I? Oh, yes, using up scrap yarn. Mittens. Of course not all yarn is suitable for mittens. In particular, I had a bunch of balls of fluffy blue yarn, quite likely mohair. Pretty color, but the yarn had been used to knit something else and ripped out, and then wound very tightly so it was all stretched out. By itself, I couldn't think of anything good to do with this yarn. It was too damaged to knit by itself- it just didn't look right when swatched. And even doubled with something else, it just wasn't strong enough for something that gets as much wear as mittens. But I couldn't bring myself to just throw it out, so it has hung around for years. Until last year when hats occurred to me.

I also had a lot of white acrylic, a staple of yard sale boxes. (My theory is that people knit-or-crochet afghans with it, then use up the remnants of the interesting colors on other projects. Then they can't think of anything to do with it, so they stick it in a box with two or three bright skeins on top to disguise it and sell the box as a lot....) Anyway, put together and knit on bulky needles, the duo makes perfectly respectable hats. And since I couldn't face more than one hat? A long, long fluffy scarf chewed through the rest of it.


And now I have room for more sock yarn my yarn basket isn't overflowing, though I have come across a few more odd balls of yarn that ought to be used- but that's a topic for another day.