And the 2008 -alongs begin

Have you noticed, dear reader, that my right hand navigation has been updated? Probably not, since you surely subscribe to my RSS. No matter, here's the scoop!

Mystery Stole 3: the button is gone. Yes, I never finished it. I'm something of a failure that way. Although I prefer to think of it less as a failure, and more a solid grounding in lace theory. I might finish it... someday. Knowing that I'm only a week's worth of knitting away doesn't help, somehow.

ABC-Along: A challenge to post photos for each letter of the alphabet, every two weeks. I'd love to think a bit more creatively with photography (being not much of a photographer at all... I use it for documentation of family and knitting, hardly for art). This should be a good challenge for me, and if I work in knitting that's fine, too! I have a few days to post my "A" entry, and I have a few ideas.

Project spectrum: Lolly most likely doesn't remember me from college, but I do remember her. More to the point, I love her knitting and her use of color. I've held back from participating in the past, but I think this year (the year of knitting for me?) I am more prepared to think critically about color and tone and looking at the world through more varied colored glasses. After all, most of my recent projects were shades of green or blue- isn't it time to mix it up? Fire is the first element we are exploring this year, and I have some beautiful burgundies and rust colored yarns to use. I'd hazard the guess that I'm most closely aligned with the Fire colors- my blog is all over red and pink. I'm still doubtful about orange, but my Jayne Hat will fit the bill. I'm hoping that I will also use Project Spectrum as another excuse to amp up my photography skills. Surely I can get some ABC-along shots, too! It all comes together.

In Love with Autumn Rose knitalong: Still going on this. Rather, I have never begun. My kit arrived, and I have been just plain scared of it. My goal for the month is to swatch the darn thing- let's keep our expectations low! Casting on would be a great step for February.

Anne of Green Gables knit-and-read-along: This knitalong is going much better than the others. It is nearly over, and I am on track- with half of January left, I have only Rilla of Ingleside left to read. I completed the Endpaper and Fetching mitts (very almost-Victorian!), and I can imagine Anne knitting snowflake socks for Gilbert in their later years. Why not? Everyone needs fun socks. I didn't finish my Philosopher's Wool sweater, but I did start it. That's a good first step.

Coming up: A is not for apple.

A very knitty October, before a very wordy November

I have sold a whole bunch of skeins of yarn since Ravelry came out. This makes me happy. Sometimes I just get very freaked out by clutter and messiness. Looking at old pictures of my old apartments reminded me of how very much I need to get back to taking care of my things, and thus taking care of myself. It really is all connected- I need to move my body, eat a bit more worshipfully, tidy my living quarters, and shape up my reading and knitting queues. There are so many partially finished projects that it has begun giving me heartburn! Well, maybe.

My biggest heartburn, or at least heartache, is that I CANNOT knit Seraphim anymore. All the color printers are on the blink at work, and I am out of color ink at home (as I have been for months now)... which means I have no way of printing the charts. I finished the stockinette section this evening, and was raring to go when I realized that I can't read charts via computer screen. Apparently our intrepid heroine will be trekking to Best Buy in Tenleytown tomorrow- my favorite last-minute stop for necessities such as iPods (mine was broken!), headphones, and of course color ink. It's a PSC 1510xi All-in-One. That's my gentle reminder for tomorrow.

Besides continuing my love affair for Schaefer Anne and the Seraphim, which will be perfect metro knitting should I ever manage to print the pattern, I realized I have very little in the way of convenient portable knitting. I try to keep a few relatively simple projects on hand at all times for the metro- simple baby blanket squares, patterns with easy repeats, scarves and such. But right now, apparently everything on the needles is just too complicated. The super-secret holiday project is fairly portable, and the aran baby blanket would be fine if it weren't already a pretty hefty project. Maybe I should start a sock pattern? Unfortunately, all the socks I want to knit right now involve plain-colored Opal yarn in fantastically intricate cables. That defeats the purpose of portable!

What's a girl to do. Besides obsessively read Anne of Green Gables. I had forgotten how much I adore this book. I had forgotten how it made me laugh aloud, and weep copiously when I first read it in third grade. I thought maybe that was because I was a high-strung child. I know I've become more calm and rational in the intervening decade since I last read the books. But within a page I was laughing and tearing up. Oh, LM Montgomery, what a mighty tale you weave. My mother insists I was Anne-like from the beginning, so I didn't simply model my curiosity and wordiness and obsession with beauty on her alone. If I did not consciously mimic her, then we must simply be perfect kindred spirits. She was the first memorable heroine in my world, literary or real, and it is such a pleasure to revisit her now. I want to scream and shout at her that it will all turn out fine, that her optimism is anything but misplaced, that her imagination is natural and to be celebrated. Rereading Anne of Green Gables puts me in the mood to write, fast and furious, and peck out a real story of my own. I'd best get knitting, since it looks like I will be spending November in its accustomed novel-writing haze. Not much time for any other craft once I take up the quill, or in this case my baby laptop, and start on my goal of 2000 words a day. Maybe this year the tale will even be a bit more publishable. To my mother's eternal dismay I did not turn my young love for fantasy and dragons into becoming a JK Rowling, and I don't even write romance novels. I haven't written a memoir of my time in France, even if she did help me with a title. And explaining my job title to the non-computer set poses a bit of difficulty. I am thus somewhat of a failure of a writer daughter. Last November I attempted to rectify this- I ended up writing a lot of tripe, but it was enough to win NaNoWriMo by meeting the 50,000 word goal. Anyone with me for this year? Can we set down our pointy sticks long enough to create fiction? It's not too late to sign up...

Knitalong Happy

Seraphim continues apace- I've got 61 stitches in each of the stockinette pattern sections, which means I have only another trillion increase rows to go. Trillion may be putting it strongly. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, for essentially knitting stockinette fabric for most of the shawl.

Brian's sweater is so close to finishing I can taste it- I completed the sleeves, picked up and knit the neck, and sewed the sleeves to the body. I even wove in a bunch of ends. All that's left is to seam up the sleeves and the sides of the sweater, but that is apparently proving to be too much for me. After all, just the two small seams and the collar took me 3.5 hours. Did I mention this is a huge sweater? Maybe I'll go home and finish it tonight.

Or I could go to a new knitting group and work on Seraphim. Hmm!

In other knitty news, I have joined my third knitalong. MS3 is essentially over, though I have 3 more charts to complete before my shawl is actually done. Clue 4 has two charts, and then I have to do the inset piece to bind my two symmetrical sides together. My Autumn Rose fair isle can't get going until the yarn gets off backorder- presumably the 25th, and they will ship it after that. It's quite likely that the yarn will not arrive before I head out on vacation, so I will not be starting that until at least the second week of October. Then yesterday (care of Ravelry), I discovered the Anne of Green Gables Read and Knit Along and I'm in love. I truly adore LM Montgomery. I have all but the most recently printed couple of books- all lined up in a row of my bookshelf. The goal of the knitalong is to read two books a month, October through January. And knit something Anne-related while doing so. I'm suspecting I would like to knit a counterpane or a tablecloth. This is one nice resource for vintage patterns: the Antique Pattern Library. I could also just make some military-issue WWI era socks, but that's not the challenge I'm hoping for. I need to bear in mind that November is inside the KAL months, however, and I might not be knitting or reading a thing that month. If I decide to write another novel. I will probably try to read one of the books for that month in October and December, respectively. No worries.