When Clapotis burst onto the scene in Fall of 2004 (Knitty that year), it was a huge success. It was /the/ thing to knit. Everyone was making one and more than one. It’s got almost 20 THOUSAND projects listed in Ravelry.

And I went ‘enh, whatever’.

I’m not much of a lemming. I’m not much of a follower on the trends. I didn’t knit February Lady when everyone else did. I didn’t knit myself a Birch when it was all the rage. I got around to Jaywalker and Monkey socks /eventually/.

This time, I had some nice yarn (stash yarn, discontinued, Fiddlesticks Country Silk) I wanted a scarf from. I had a vacation that I wanted something easy to knit that showed off the yarn and not the pattern. Finally Clapotis rose to the top of the queue.

Well now I get the appeal. It’s fast, it’s easy, it looks awesome. You get to unravel your work and have it just look /good/. Alright, alright, I’m a slow lemming.

Gather scarf 2012 is done.

Happy thanksgiving to all who are celebrating it this weekend (and to those who wait for November, consider this a very early Thanksgiving greeting).

I’m grateful for so many things every day, from the way the light highlights a flower, to the birds that come to my feeder, a lovely little house, creativity and knitting and friends and the cats and my best beloved well.. life is good. Life is generally very good.

And right this moment, I’m very thankful for my husband having made me dairy-free pumpkin pie. This girl’s got her priorities straight.

Following up on the length revelation a few weeks ago, I sat down and had a good hard look at the sleeves for Decimal. Now, I might be a 4X in the body, but somehow my arms are quite slender. (Relatively speaking) I had a tiny bit of this revelation when I started, and knit a 2X sleeve rather than the 3X (a good 3″ narrower just to start) and then I had a look at the measurements. And a quick measure of me and my wardrobe.

Right. Rip out started second sleeve, cast on for medium. Yes. Medium sleeves, 3X (shut up, I’m optimistic) body and size sm length.

Bodies are such weird things.

I have a bit of a confession to make here. I’ve been knitting for about 15 years, and sewing for closer to 25 (even if that’s more off than on, but still) and I rarely get garments I’m happy with.

I can be a bit of a blind follower when it comes to sweaters, probably because I never am happy with what comes out, and well, I dont follow any size ever, so surely they know better than I do, right?

No.

I finally measured a sweater I wear often. 20″ long. And another. 22″ long. I looked at the pattern I was knitting in a size that was closeish to my actual size. 28″ long.

Well you /idiot/, no wonder you find all the sweaters to knit for yourself to be dumpy and unflattering. I need the small or medium length directions, and the 4X width directions. Why yes, I am short and fat, thank you for noticing. 😉 (Weirdly, I dont think at 5’6″ I am all that short, but as I need petite length trousers and every sweater pattern ever is about 8 inches too long on me, apparently the world is certain that by being a 4X I’m also 8 feet tall or something.)

At least I came to this revelation only 5″ into my decimal rather than 17 inches into the 10 inches I need before armhole shaping.

Untitled, originally uploaded by Jazmin_.

What a fundamental basic /duh/ moment. I mean /really/.

I am getting oh so very close to the end of Frosted Ferns. Last pattern row! (Then of course there will be the resting row, the crochet cast off, and then the procrastination on blocking.)

I am very /very/ good at the procrastination about blocking. I keep telling myself that I’ll block this and Trollblume at the same time, and then take both of them to show and tell at the KW knitters guild.

Which I finally joined. Finally. I’ve known about it for years, but finally getting off my arse to go out to KW in the evenings. I’m glad I’m healthy enough (generally) to still manage to do something after work. It’s nice to be amongst my tribe, this tribe at least. I have a lot of tribes, but I’d missed a handwork one. It also gives me a deadline to work against, I want to show this at the guild meeting. So I’d better get it blocked.

Circle Sock Pattern, Knitpicks Stroll in Jester

This is the sock that’s been my travel knitting for the last four months. Circle Socks in KnitPicks Stroll, the Jester Multi colourway on I’m going to guess 2.5 mm needles, but I honestly have no clue at the moment and stupidly didn’t put it on my Ravelry project page. (Which is odd for me, I usually am rather anal retentive about my Ravelry project pages)

Some knitters hate it when things pool, I love it in this case, I think it looks awesome. Now I just need to get the second one done. I give it another 4 months, at least.

Non-Knit

I find this quote from Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda really interesting. He is, for those who weren’t wildly geeky net denziens in the mid-late 90’s, the founder of Slashdot. It was (and is) sort of a collection of stories, commentary and so on for the hardcore computer geek crowd. A bit of news, a lot of nerdery, forums and social media before anyone knew about social media. I still own a /. shirt, even though I admit, I don’t read it much anymore. Anyhow, on to the quote. (Full interview here.)

“I still shun the term Blogging just as I shun the term Tweeting. It’s all just writing. It’s like trying to subdivide Novelist, Columnist, Blogger, Tweeter. Words are words. It’s not really interesting to keep slicing and dicing and sub-categorizing to me. I just write some stuff or share some stuff. Distinguishing between “Journalist” and “Blogger” is a waste of time. I’m all of those things and none of them.”

I find it fascinating as I regularly refer to myself as ‘not a writer’. Yet I journal (750words.com for the win, even if I haven’t in a while), I do online text based gaming (Yes, I’m a MUSHer. Have been for coming up on 17 yrs this coming Jan.), I even took a stab at NaNoWriMo this year. (First time. Failed horribly. 8K words is nowhere near 50K)

But yet I maintain I’m not a writer. It’s interesting how we put such stock in labels. I am a knitter. I’m not a writer. I am a larper. I am a gamer. I’m not a whole lot of other things.

Anyhow, you’re not here for the writing (or at least I hope not, or we’re both in trouble), you’re here for the knitting.

Neverending Shawl

It’s probably unfair to stick such a label on this shawl just yet. I’ve only barely started it (Nov 22 says my notes) and it /is/ a laceweight shawl designed to be somewhere between huge and ginormous. The smaller size is a mere 177 rows, and the larger size is 237 rows. I’m not a small person, and why yes, I am selfish enough to make it for me, so I expect I’ll be going the 237 rows. Which makes the excitement of having done 72 rows.. well a little flat.

Gwendolyn by Stefanie Bold

The relevant details are that it’s Gwendolyn (rav link), by Stefanie Bold. I’m working it in random ‘had it forever’ blue laceweight on a cone that is probably some flavour of poly-cotton and I’ll worry about blocking later. 3.0 mm needles, and I think that photo is from row 61, not row 71. Imagine another 10 rows of the same thing. I only manage to work a pattern row or two a day, so it will look much like this kinda forever.

At least I’ll always have something to blog about.

I am a colourful person. Even if I tend to err on the side of caution a touch too often. (More black/brown/drab in my wardrobe? Awesome!), at heart.. I’m a colourful soul. I’m drawn to the brights, the variegateds, the splotchy, the stripes, the spotted. I’m not much for patterns, per se, I’d rather random globs of colour here and there, drawn around by the design.

Like my recent mittens.

I happily break the ‘rules’ on lace and do doilies in variegated thread, or coloured thread. I dye like a colour blind monkey with a paint brush.

I just, only a few hours ago, put in a Knit Picks order, full of rich reds, eye popping yellows, hot pinks, and then I was reading blogs later and it happened. A moment of yarny twinged regret.

The Yarn Harlot (who is awesome, but that is rather besides the point), posts today about a scarf.. and the scarf is lovely, but along with the scarf is a pair of mittens. And those mittens are much like the heavens opened and there was a song of angels and I went ‘oooh!’.

And they were neutral on neutral. Go look here. See?

I don’t own neutral yarn! AIEE!

Hopefully it passes quickly. I’ve hot pink on it’s way!

The parasol has firmly hit the almost there stage of completion. A mere eight more beads (out of 72), and then I have to decide if I’m patient enough to wash and block it or if I’m tossing that sucker straight onto the frame to call it done, Done, DONE! I was very tempted to nip off to the KW Knitter’s Fair today, and I still keep having urges to jump in the car and just go. But with flying to New Orleans on Wednesday, the time to finish costume bits (like the parasol) and the urge to conserve knee cranky is strong, so I am going to be good, and do errands and sewing and beading instead. There’s always next year, right? More pictures when I finally finish the parasol. I promise.