I finished the project in December, and  it was followed by a wave of enthusiasm for smaller projects. I finished the mittens I’d been working on for three years (on and off), made a hat in two days, and started a scarf. And then the ideas started flooding in again.

I have all sorts of ideas, and my main problem last time was picking one and focusing on it. Most of them don’t make it to the detailed sketch phase, where I plan every section. Sometimes I’d get stuck on one detail that wasn’t working right, or sometimes I’d try to swatch and find I’d made things too complicated for myself. I’d have multiple ideas for different things I could do within a project, and be unable to settle on one. This time, I am picking the most straightforward and developed idea that I have, and seeing it through from start (idea, sketch, swatch) to finish (pattern write-up, getting test-knitters, publication). I am going to tweak it until it is just the way I want it, I am going to make sure that other people can understand the pattern I’ve written, and then I am going to publish it as a free download.

And last night, after a few sketches, I managed to make a swatch that I’m pretty happy with:

• A scarf that was too short and that I never wear.
• An owl hat that is too short and that I never wear. (I should try blocking it properly. Or make another one. Or, I could even rip out to before the decreases and make it longer. Maybe I should do that. It’s an awesome hat, I don’t even know what my problem is.)
• The Hurry Up Spring Armwarmers from Stitch ‘N Bitch Nation. (I wish I had a digital photo of these. They were my first cable project.)

I had nothing against cables, I just found them slow and I didn’t really understand them. When I read left-leaning cable, I couldn’t figure out which way to hold the stitches to make it lean left. When I read C4B (cable four back) I couldn’t picture which direction it would cause the cable to lean.

Then I went on a cabling binge. I did some armwarmers and incorporated a pattern from the Vogue Cable Stitchionary. I did a cabled beret. And now I’m working on another cabled beret. And it finally clicked, and now I know that if I want to make a left-leaning cable, I should hold stitches to the back of the work, and if I want a right-leaning cable, I should hold stitches to the front. So now I can check against a photograph of what I’m knitting to make sure I’m going the right way, and it all makes sense, and I don’t have to constantly double check. Knitting cables goes a lot faster.

I also learned to knit without a cable needle. My learning process went like this:

• 4 years ago: Look up how to cable without a needle. See that it means taking live stitches completely off the needle and just letting them hang there. Freak the heck out.
• 1 month ago: (Having completely forgotten the above.) Decide I don’t feel like using a tedious cable needle. Wonder what could possibly go wrong if I just, you know, drop the stitches off and just, sort of, let them hang there while I knit the next few stitches, and then pick them back up. Experience moderate success, albeit having to fix a few unravelled stitches.
• 1 week ago: Decide to look up proper instructions for how to cable without a needle , find out I’ve been doing it right, but that if I pinch the base of the dropped off stitches they don’t unravel. Experience great success, and much faster cable knitting.

I am much less afraid of fixing unravelled stitches than I used to be. And now I want to see if I can design my own cable patterns.

Since my last entry I’ve made a pair of leg warmers for roller derby. They’re alright. They serve their purpose, which is to keep my ankles warm while I’m on my way to derby practice in the cold weather. But that’s not what I’m excited about. I’m excited about this. A lace advent scarf. It started on December 1st, and there’s a new section revealed every day until Christmas.

There are many reasons why I should not be knitting this scarf. Aside from those outlined above, I have a very busy couple of weeks coming up. I haven’t finished making my (non-knitted) Christmas presents for my family yet. I don’t have enough yarn for the full pattern, so I’m cutting it in half doing math every day to make the number of stitches make sense with the stitch pattern repeat. I don’t need another scarf.

But. But. I get to use this fabulous Fleece Artist Sea Wool that I love. I’ve had it for 2 years now and it needs to be used. And it will make such a pretty scarf. And I love knitting along with people from all over the world. Plus! December 1st was a Wednesday this year, and Wednesday is the night I have my knitting group. It was meant to be.

The first section. I'm using smal needles, so I'll have to block it before the yarnovers become noticeable. The little triangles will look like Christmas trees.

My Ravelry project page. For anyone who’s interested in the math or seeing my progress day by day.

A lot of derby girls are knitters and crafters. (See for example, a search for roller derby on etsy.) I am not at all surprised by this.

I have an important thing to share with you. I moved recently, and while packing up all my yarn into more than one rubbermaid bin, I discovered that in the last year, I only bought 2 balls of yarn! Only 2! (Oh wait: I am just now remembering the yarn I bought for Metadata Futurecat’s cat cave. Okay. 5 balls of yarn.) (UPDATE: Okay 6: I bought this skein and blogged about it for my birthday.) It’s not just because I haven’t been knitting since March: I’m counting all last Fall too. You know, when I was learning to sew and buying all that fabri… never mind! The important thing is that I cut back on yarn, even when I was going through an excitement about knitting phase in the winter. I am proud of myself. There are a couple of yarn stores in Halifax (and apparently a really good one out in Dartmouth which I refuse to make a field trip to until I have a specific need), and I wander in from time to time, but I’ve been good. Aside from the cat cave yarn, the only two balls I bought were in support of some earthquake victims, and really, if I can’t spend my consumer dollars on earthquakes, what am I supposed to do?

Fig 1: Metadata Futurecat also appreciates the book.

I love mail. And I especially love getting books in the mail. Some days when I go to the mailbox I think “I hope someone sent me some books!” even when I have no reason to believe that any books are on their way to me. But yesterday when I got home a package was waiting with a book inside it! Which goes to show that if you want something hard enough it will come to you.

It also goes to show that I have a thoughtful aunt.  She sent me The Complete Book of Knitting by Barbara Abbey, published in 1971 and originally owned by my aunt’s mother-in-law. It has obviously been lovingly consulted over the years.

The book (pictured in Fig. 1) has the basic intro to knitting chapters about equipment, choosing yarn, and all the basic skills you need to knit. It also has a really detailed section on taking measurements for knitting. What’s interesting is that it talks a lot about skirts and suits as though we’ll all be knitting our business wear, and even gives several examples of tightly woven stitches which would create an ideal fabric for more formal knitted garments. I don’t see a lot of patterns for stuff like this nowadays: knitting seems to be framed as a more fun activity for either whimsical accessories or warm sweaters.

Fig. 2: Apparently, this is how you knit with ribbon

Another section of note shows how to knit with ribbons: the ribbon is  wrapped around the working needle several times before beginning (see Fig. 2) and the  section is full of italicized warnings stressing that this is nothing like knitting with ordinary yarn (see Fig. 3). And of use to me since I’ll be finishing my cardigan really soon (!!!) are detailed instructions on how to insert a zipper. Protip: use embroidery floss instead of regular thread to sew the zipper on: regular thread tends to cut through the yarn with wear. I would never have figured this out on my own.

Fig. 3: Ribbon knitting is SERIOUS BUSINESS

Best of all, the stitch dictionary at the back is categorized by reversible and non-reversible stitches, which is a must for me (how will I know if I want to make a scarf out of it if I don’t know if the stitch pattern looks good on both sides?).

All in all, a neat book, made all the better because I know a little bit of it’s history as an object.

I wonder what book I’ll get in the mail tomorrow?

Last night I found myself with about an hour of spare time. A whole hour, even after I’d worked out, eaten dinner, and took the cat outside on her leash so she could chase bugs and chew on grass. I’ve felt the knitting itch a few times in the last week or so, since I posted about still needing knitting, but I didn’t act on it until last night.

I got ambitious. I decided to work on something from my 2010 knitting goals list. I even decided that I might tackle sewing together the seams on my cardigan, the one I’ve been working on for over two years. I peeked in the top of the bag I keep it in, where the live stitches on the collar were sitting at the top. I knit a row on the collar (which would have been the hood until I remembered I hate wearing hoods). I then hunted around the house for a needle to sew up seams with. And then then I took the whole project out of the bag, all gung-ho about sewing up.

Only to discover the seams had already been sewn up. Well then. I must have blocked it out because it was so horrible. They don’t look horrible: in fact they look pretty neat. I decided to celebrate by weaving in a few ends (I did 3: there are about 20 more to do). And then I knit a few more rows. And right now I’m looking forward to knitting a few more tonight. If I’m still feeling motivated after Zumba* class, laundry, and probably placating a cat who’ll have been alone for at least 4 whole hours by the time I get home. (Was she ever mad that I was knitting and not letting her chew on the loose ends last night: I had to give her a plastic stitch holder to fend her off, and she chewed a piece right off of it.)

I can’t promise I’ll make a habit of it until fall, but at least I did it. Are you proud of me?

______

*Don’t make fun: it’s better than jogging. Worth-paying-$8-a-class better than jogging.**

**Did I learn this sentence construction from a yogurt commercial? Pretend I didn’t do that.

I needed it while I was in school. I needed it to de-stress, I needed it to get through three hour lectures on metadata* standards, I needed it as an excuse to connect with my friends so we could kvetch in an environment where we were also being creative. I am not in school anymore. My life is better. I still have stress, but I also have time to deal with that stress. I don’t have three hour periods of time where I need something to do with my hands anymore: my hands are usually busy at the computer, merrily working away at developing repetitive stress injuries.

It’s not a matter of having enough time. I sit at a computer all day, and in the evenings I swim or do yoga, read, and play with Metadata** Futurecat. On weekends I volunteer at a zine library, go to the farmer’s market, wander around the city, watch movies and hang out with the boy. If I had more time, I might knit more. Or I might write more letters, clean the house, cook more meals, read even more, or watch even more movies. I could just as easily spend my evening time listening to podcasts or audiobooks and knitting instead of reading, but lately I haven’t been. The point is, without a compelling need, I won’t necessarily incorporate knitting into my life.

But then I remembered an episode of Spark that I listened to a few months ago (when I was still knitting). Spark is a CBC radio show about the intersections between people and technology. It often touches on issues of interest to information professionals, such as information overload, social media, and copyright reform. This episode was about bringing meaning back to your work life. Norah Young interviewed the author of a book called Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, about abandoning academic, knowledge-based work in favour of working with your hands in a skilled manual trade. The author points to things like the rise in DIY culture, and his own motorcycle repair business to argue that many people are happier doing manual work, and a real need for it has risen in our culture.

It struck a chord with me. I like my work, but I have one of those jobs where it’s easy to wonder what it is I actually do. What does my 7 hours of work a day amount to? I can answer that question if you’re my boss (I took the seminar), but when I really start thinking about it, it makes me feel disconnected. Knitting allows me to produce something tangible, and see my efforts translated into something useful and/or beautiful almost immediately. I can hold the yarn in my hand and think about the person who wound it into a ball, the person who spun it, the person who sheared the sheep, the sheep who grew it. When I hold my apple wireless mouse in my hand, I think about factory workers committing suicide in another country. Or rather, I try not to think about that.

As I go further down this career path, the production of something tangible, is something I’m going to need more and more. So yes, I still need knitting in my life, even though the reasons I need it have shifted. And that’s a good thing. Because otherwise thinking about the amount of money I invested in my yarn stash is going to seem even more depressing.

____

*Metadata is the go-to term that librarians use when we want to cloak our profession in an air of mystique, in an effort to gain reverence and justify funding for our positions.

**I came up with her name after attending an advanced seminar called Ensuring Job Security in the New Economy Part 1: Catalyst For Success.***

***Never trust advanced seminars with puns in the title.

When the conference was over, I headed to Toronto for the weekend. I saw what looked like some lovely yarn stores in Toronto, but I did not allow myself to go in. I was too pressed for time, and I am not buying yarn right now, especially since I’m not really knitting right now. But! I did go to the Bata Shoe Museum and saw their exhibit on socks, which made me very happy. There were all kinds of things which I would not have thought of as socks, but which were meant to be worn in between a shoe and a person’s foot, and could technically be considered socks by definition. (See the leather socks, on the left, for an example.)  And then there were some beautiful, intricately knit socks that I kind of drooled over (see photo at right). My favorite were the tiny socks knit for the stop-motion movie Coraline. They were made with sewing needles as the knitting needles, and each one had a different design. I kind of want to try that now. I did not get a good picture because I only had my iPhone and there’s no zoom or flash on it.

If you’re in Toronto, I recommend the museum: it’s small enough to be manageable in under an hour (I find myself rushing through big museums because I feel like I need to see everything), and some of the footwear is really interesting. And they have way better postcards than the ROM, just saying.

I wonder if there will be other knitters? If it were a library or archives conference, there’d be knitters for sure. Are post-secondary web people the knitting type? Will I be able to knit through all the sessions without raising eyebrows? We shall see.

It has been about a year since I graduated. While I was in school, I did not have time to be very nice to my body. Now that I’m out of school, being nice to my body is one of my main priorities. Exercise. Yoga. Food that is delicious and good for me. Enough sleep, and a regular sleep schedule. Better posture. Doctor/dentist/optometrist appointments. I’ve been working on these things a lot over the past year, and it’s made such a difference in my quality of life.

And unfortunately, knitting does not always fit into the being nice to my body category. Sometimes it does. It can help to relax me if I’m really stressed out. But it often comes at the expense of sleep. And it almost always comes at the expense of posture. I don’t like to take breaks when I’m on a roll, even though I should stop and stretch out my arms and shoulders.

This is not to say that I will give up knitting, just that I have to hold back on it while I figure out how to do it in a way that’s good for me. I don’t want to do it right after yoga and undo all that good work I just did. I don’t want to do it when I should be sleeping; I want to fit it into my day. (I did try to join a knitting group that the boy found for me to help with that last one, but they are taking a break for the summer.)

I started making a yoga mat bag, which I think sort of contributes to being nice to my body instead of taking away from it. And then I put it down for a few days, and now I can’t remember which row in the pattern repeat I’m on,** and I’m finding it difficult to read what I’ve already knitted, so I think I’m going to have to knit a little swatch until I get to a row that looks like the row on my needles right now. I’m using yarn from the unravelled tank top, which is exciting.

So. Not really knitting right now. But it’s okay. Because I know it will come back. It always does. In the summer I’ll start getting excited about Christmas presents again, and by then my new patterns will be established and I’ll be able to accommodate knitting without giving up sleep or good posture.

Until then, my blog posts might be about Metadata Futurecat and What She Bit This Time (I’ll Give You a Hint; It Was Everything).

_______

**You may be saying, “Nicole, isn’t there an app for that?” and the answer is yes, there is an app for that, and I bought it and then forgot to use it, which is uncharacteristic of me and I… can’t explain it. Come to think of it, I haven’t even started a project on ravelry for the yoga mat bag yet, which is really unlike me. I’m usually obsessed with updating the progress bar.