Tag Archives: process

tangledness

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i admit that i miss them.

since the box went out two days ago,

i have often walked by the shelf where they had been

and done a double take with the feeling that something is amiss,

it is then i remember having packed them in, taped them up tight and sent them off.

it’s funny, designing.

you work hard on stuff you’re excited about

but you can’t chat about it, blog on it or show photos of it

and all too soon after the success of getting them ‘just the way you wanted’…

… they are gone.

mailed off to photo shoots

and final editing in places you’ve never been yourself.

the box that left this week headed to montana

to the offices of the new on-line publication tangled.

soon to be part of the premiere fall issue (going live in a few months).

to whet all our knitting appetites,

they have begun releasing fun free patterns already.

check this out by tracy and this one by brittany.

i find that i’m so looking forward to seeing

just what company my patterns

will be keeping there.

‘soon’ taken from 4:29 in the book of mark.

circle

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i am giving in.

i thought i never would,

but faced with two large skeins

of sappho 1 (1700 yds of lace weight)

the concept of hand winding, which i usually love,

is really just too much.

*

my mum remembers

winding skeins by hand

with my great grandmother.

my memories are of winding with mum

and lately helping my eldest hand wind her balls.

maybe someday soon i will watch her help her little sister

(or even her brother) wind fiber of their own for projects of their own.

these things make me smile.

*

to top it all off

i like the way it feels

to see the ball forming in my hands;

the sensation as it slides between my fingers…

still, tonight i will borrow w’s gear

and watch

(both hands off)

as the colors twist and twirl

into the beginnings of my next design

and i’m sure this will make me smile, too.

‘circle’ taken from 26:10 of job.

vanilla

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it was a day of ice cream

eaten outside with spoons held in mudcaked hands

way, way up high in the swing set fort.

this was my first time ever (d finished it late last fall)

and wow!

so what if spring’s not here yet,

the mud, fever (spring fever that is) and even a couple of bugs were all seen today by my brood.

and the youngest decided

that the knit picks comfy i’m knitting the ‘like an owl’ pullover in

was just too yummy to keep her hands off of.

so, while i was knitting on one end

she was jabbing the skein

fairly rhythmically

with a shiny ‘g’

hook

saying, ‘look mama, i’m knitting.  look mama, i’m knitting.  look mama…’

(you get the point).

can’t say as i blame her

this stuff is ‘cozy-up to me real quick’

and ‘never let go’ super soft.

(also machine washable and all that.  whee!)

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*

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*

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*

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i’m done the back and 1/2 way up the left front

and the speed at which it is becoming a sweaterish thing is keeping me ever so

motivated.

‘never’ taken from 7:46 in the book of john.

about-face

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tarn

is such

a good time.

because as i’m knitting

i’m thinking (among other things)

‘this was a t-shirt’.

fyi:  i did discover that tarn does not block well with any kind of open stitches.

my plans for lace by necessity morphed into textured stitches  instead.

‘plans’ taken from 14:14 of second samuel.

beware

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baffled

bewildered

and befuddled.

how, oh how could just

2 and 1/2 short inches of knit

take me over seven hours to get ‘right’?

the entire scarf took me less time

than the teeny tiny wisp

of edging at the ends.

it’s just crazy

but, it is

done.

‘knit’ taken from 139:13 in the psalms.

to rehang or not to

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‘ok is good enough for us’

this is the unofficial ‘family motto’ of the cousins we vacation with each august

(just to be clear, this is my side of the family, not d’s)

and i do my best to suppress a little smile

everytime i hear

one of my driven, nearly over-achieving, all but perfectionistic cousins

slide this phrase off the tip of their tongue

while they play with the warm beach sand underfoot

and if you didn’t know better, you might even believe that they mean it.

but i know better.

still, today i had one of those days.

a bonafide ‘okay really is good enough for me’ day.

now, i was tired from knitting way too far into the night last night

to finish the bit

that absolutely had to get into the post today

to be expressed to the other side of the country to get the photos taken

to meet next week’s deadline.

truth be told

it may be lame,

but this is my excuse

for what happened next.

i heard the hand towel ‘plop’

onto the downstairs bathroom floor

(i have at this stage of the game fine tuned my mother radar to precision)

and called out ‘you pick that up. now! do you hear me? please…’

later, when i got round to actually checking to see that my words had been heeded

what i saw caused me to grab my canon powershot and shoot.

on a different day i might have sighed,

or forced the culprit to rehang

or yelled

or cried.

but not today.

today i smiled & whistled a bit

as i carried out my afternoon

with the artistry of it still circling in my head.

see, i’m just overtired

or i’m finally beginning to lose my grip.

but, perhaps i’m gaining some perspective.

let’s go ahead and say it’s that last one.

that one sounds

the very most

worthwhile.

‘enough’ taken from 24:25 of genesis.

question

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how do you block a slouchy hat that’s meant to be bigger than a head form?

answer:  borrow an unused balloon from your dad next door.

blow this balloon up

inside the hat

until the top is stretched

and the brim is not too stretched.

spray, but not the brim (or it will end up too big for any human head).

set it on the forced hot air heat vent overnight

be sure to rescue the hat

(by removing it from the balloon)

before it is tossed, kicked and otherwise enjoyed in ways it was not meant to be.

‘ question’ taken from 1:27 in the book of mark.

almost

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silence

this is rare in my house.

but the flies on the wall heard it (or didn’t)

yesterday morning.

i stayed home from church with my boy

who was very mellowed from a fever

as he cut construction paper colors into ‘different shapes’

when i asked him ‘what shapes?’

he said ‘every one is different’.

i started to tell him that snow flakes are like that, too.

he was not amused.

silence again.

sitting on the floor beside him

with bits of red and black paper clinging to my hair, my socks, my knitting…

and finally with a huge sigh of release,

i finish the decreases for my newest hat pattern.

doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment

i know

but this is my third prototype

and my 5th or 6th go at the decreases themselves.

having started it last november

it took a deadline breathing down my neck to get this done.

and get it done it i did with a full 19 or 20 hours to spare.

aah.

now we hear this:

the silence of  being content.

‘almost’ and ‘silence’ taken from 94:17 in the book of psalms.

leaves

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for Christmas i got a little plastic cup with a peat pellet in it and a pack of seeds.

my little e and i carefully read the directions

(well, i read them and she repeated them after me)

before we planted them.

she was so ready to see them growing 5 minutes later

and as she somberly carried the cup from the window sill to me, she sadly said,

“they didn’t work“.

ah, patience is a learned skill and i am perhaps not the best model of it.

a week and a half later when the little seedlings poked their tiny newborn heads out of the soil

taking their first peek at the world,

my youngest tenderly carried them around quietly singing to them.

this greatly concerned my son.

‘is that good for them?‘

‘do they like it?‘

‘will she hurt them?‘

i think my assurances only partially comforted him.

we find it so hard, don’t we?, to accept things outside of our own understanding.

i even find it hard to believe God, the creator of everything, when His way is not my own.

(this, of course, is often.)

next, my girl decided she must share the new sprouts with everyone, absolutely everyone.

so each person who entered the house

each family memeber who entered the room

and each soul who braved a telephone call into our day

was told at the top of her little lungs ‘smell them!‘

as simultaneously the  fuzzy green growth was thrust at their faces

(or at their receiving ears as the case may be).

i love her enthusiam.

i hope

no, i pray

that the things that are important to me are obvious

blatantly unaviodable, to everyone who touches my life in anyway.

this is all on my mind as i tie up the loose ends (literally) of my test crochet for karla.

it is the leaves that got me thinking.

we work so hard to flatten and straighten our work

when it is nearly finished

by wetting and blocking and drying it just so.

yet, these little green bits of crocheted wool of the andes

look the most like ‘real’

the most like the way leaves were actually created

if left to curl

and bend

as they will …

… sometimes i spend a lot of time,

ever so distracted.

fighting against all the wrong things.

here’s to today, a monday, a new day

and to a clean (forgiven) slate.

‘leaves’ taken from 22:2 of revelations.

such things

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i have been holding off writing

because what i’m working on i’m not at liberty to tell all about.

i’m not so good with telling half of the story.

i’m more a truth straight ahead at full steam kind of gal.

but, i was told by my friends at the taunton s’n’b last night that partial telling

is what’s done in cases like this.

here’s my best foot forward on that front.

etsy fascinates me.

i really, really like all that handmade creative stuff set in one place

just waiting for me to wander through.

all those many ideas make me think.

and that is where i found mike of north street crochet.

this man meticulously, in his free time, turns unused t-shirts into yarn.

sturdy and machine washable in worsted or bulky weight

the official name for this fiber is ‘tarn’.

so

i’ve been

working with it.

have created a pattern.

have had that pattern accepted by petite purls.

will have that pattern available there when the spring issue goes live in mid-march.

boy, oh boy.

(a little peek)

i have so much more to say.  but, i won’t

just yet.

i’ll be good.

‘think’ taken from 4:8 of philipians.