11:55 p.m.
Wednesday, the Ninth of August, 2011
A lady sits in her kitchen, weaving in the last ends of a sweater, carefully reinforcing seams. The sweater is knit at five stitches to the inch in silk and stainless steel fiber, spun so fine it can’t be called other than thread. The sweater took ten months to knit. The sweater took ten days to seam. The sweater is due in the textile arts building of the exposition hall in twelve hours.
I haven't done a finished object blog in a long time, but it's not like I'm not knitting. So let's have a parade.
A couple at my office recently produced a set of twins so I made a set of sweaters. Incidentally my task was less time-consuming, less messy, and doesn't keep me up at night.
I walked Luke to an aisle at the back of the fabric store. Surrounding us were bolts of brightly colored fabric in neat rows and columns nearly to the ceiling. I spun him around to face the wall of felts.
"This is Robin Hood Hat fabric."
My son's old green play hat, which has served us well on adventures from Neverland to Sherwood Forest has grown too small and today we were questing for a replacement. This one was to be a Robin Hood hat.
Two Robin Hood hats, actually.
I have a serious case of startitis. This is not my standard m.o. I’m a serial monogamist when it comes to needles and skeins. I pick a project and slog it through to the end. Okay, sometimes there’s a little socks on the side, but that’s in the name of a travel project.
“So where are you off to? Someplace fun?”
“A yarn conference.”
“A... yarn conference...”
“Uh huh.”
“So... would that be a yes then?”
It’s hard to explain Stitches to unindoctrinated. You can’t easily explain to your boss that in a mere two-hour’s drive you’re going to be in a land where picking up a skein of yarn, burying your face in it, and taking a big whiff is a perfectly excepted ritual before purchase. He’d think you were nuts. More nuts.
We’re almost down to it. I’ve got one week, less a handful of hours, to keep my 2010 resolutions.
You folks at home are thinking that I’m in dire need of new calendar, right? I’m a week past the start Chinese New Year, a full two months past the standard Gregorian calendar, and the groundhog already said spring is on the way. Fair points.
For the past three years, I’ve been knitting for the family. I did six scarves a-swinging’ and ten sock pairs dancing. This year it was gloved hands a-waving, and I apologize up front because I did an appallingly incomplete job photographing them.
When I turned the calendar page to November, I performed the ritual count of weeks left until Christmas, looked at the to-do list in my head, and had my festive pre-season panic attack. How did it get so late in the year and why is the finished-project basket so empty? I glared at my spinning wheel. Seductive little tramp. I resolutely turned my back on the singles waiting to be plied and turned toward my knitting needles.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
-Paulo Cuelo, The Alchemist.
Luke requested an ewok costume early in the year and remained adamantly stuck to that idea, and to the fact that the ewok should have a bow and arrow. Shawn and I did a divide-and-conquer on this one. He played with sticks and I wrestled with fur. Behold the ewok!
At some point in early June, I suddenly knew what I had to be for Halloween this year and I was bouncing with excitement to get going. This is early for me. Perhaps not in the scheming and initial design sense, but certainly for the execution phase. When that little serendipitous inspiration struck me, I was entrenched in sewing ballet costumes for a performance under the direction of another, and while the costume director was doing a great job, the perverse part of me was bristling to color outside the lines.
