I’m behind, which is no news to anyone around here. I’m particularly behind on snail mail, which I have no love for. I was surprised and amused to find out that my oldest child shares my dislike of mail since I always figured that he would like getting stuff. However, he told me the other day that he hates it. “It’s full of junk, and if there is anything for me, it’s bills.” My feelings exactly. The personal letters or invitations are few and far between in mine. Most of my friends either see me as a matter of course, call me, or email me.

The exception to this rule, of course, is when I order stuff. I love mail order! It always feels like a present when it arrives. I used to love ordering from catalogues, and now I enjoy ordering online. I currently have an order in with King Arthur Flour that I’m excited about, but I’ll save that for another day. I could’ve ordered everything they have–I love baking stuff.

So, it seems like I would love a sock club. What’s not to love? Great yarn, pretty colors (yes, I have preferences, but I’m not really tied into one color group or another), patterns, and it’s all a surprise for me in my mail box! It really seems like it would make snail mail almost fun!

So, I joyfully joined the Rockin’ Socks Club at the beginning of the year. This was what I decided I wanted for Christmas, and I excitedly looked forward to the first shipment. And it was perfect–gorgeous sock yarn with an interesting pattern called Inside Out. It was even a toe-up pattern, which I like best. Perfect! I sat down to knit it up right away. If you look here, you’ll see many pairs of these socks knitted up.

As you can probably tell from the build up, it didn’t work the way I hoped. I want to add here that it’s not the fault of anyone at Blue Moon Fiber Arts, and their club really is fun. But these socks were designed for someone with very slim ankles, and mine are not slim. I couldn’t get the sock comfortably over my ankles after working the pretty cables, and neither could my son, who is the only other member of the family with feet long enough for the sock I knit. For some reason I added to the foot which also made it too large for me, but perfect for my son. Except for the top. I ripped the top out and knitted a plain ribbed top, finally finished the mate, and sent them off to my son. They’re now baggy around the top, but he’s happy with them.

So, as I said, none of this is a problem with the club or its products–just a quirk of my own feet and ankles. I noticed that later knitters with this problem added gussets, and I thought of some other adjustments I could make, too, since I did love the way they looked. The subsequent yarn has also been beautiful, and I’ve stashed it all with promises of future knitting. I’m not sure if I’ll stay with the patterns, although the main point of the club for me was supposed to be to make myself try some new techniques. But I now feel a little pattern shy. I’ve always used the pattern from Simple Socks, and am still a relative newbie to sock making since I only have about a half-dozen pairs to my name. Priscilla Gibson-Roberts has a wonderful, customized aproach to sock making, and I have to admit that it didn’t occur to me that my feet were so odd.

The lovely ladies at Blue Moon recently sent out a renewal form, and even though I haven’t knitted any but the first socks and really don’t need more sock yarn in my stash, I’m torn. I’ve mentioned that I’m a joiner? I don’t want to be left out. However, my more intellegent side also kicks in here, and points out that there is a lot of lovely hand made yarn that I want to try out there, and I could do my own personal yarn club. Cheerfully! I think this side is winning. I think.

Well, my youngest decided that my pumpkin hat was so cute she had to have it. HAD to have it. But by then it was too late–it was too big, being sized for an adult with a big head, not a kid with a normal head. This caused some friction on both sides, but when I completly finished my hat, I found that there was enough yarn for a pumpkin beanie. So, we now have two pumpkin hats at my house. This isn’t exactly Earth shattering, but I figured, as long as I was here checking out some other stuff I’d just go ahead and make that announcement.

I’ve spent most of the morning feeling both anxious and amazed. Anxious because I actually do have other things to do besides screen suck, and amazed because there is so much out there that I want to knit. I was doing a tour of the blogs that I’ve bookmarked, and found all sorts of cool things that I covet. Since I really need to get to work, I’ll save this discussion for later.

Christmas is coming, and while I usually don’t get myself sunk into a pile of Christmas knitting, this time is different. I’ve actually gone so far as to put away my stuff that’s not for Christmas and commit to leaving it alone until the New Year, or at least, December 26. Since I’m trying to primarily knit out of my stash, this has been an excuse to buy some stuff since I don’t really have a lot of yarn in the traditional Christmas colors in any of those boxes. I know, go figure. But I had to interrupt the Christmas knitting for a couple of occasions.

The first is that youngest kiddo’s teacher is pregnant. She’s a very nice young woman, and I decided that I wanted to do something for her since she’s a good young teacher, pregnant for the first time, and a member of her family is quite sick. It sort of tweaks all of my caring buttons at one time. And since I’m not cooking as much right now, that leaves me with wanting to give her something knitted. She’s tall—I’m tall, and she’s my height plus a little, so I know I can’t make her a blanket in any reasonable time frame, and she doesn’t strike me as the shawl-wearing type. So, I committed myself to making her a baby blanket. This commitment, I should add, isn’t to her but to my daughter, who helped me pick out the yarn for the blanket. Normally, I don’t promise anything for babies. I’m always excited and happy when they arrive, even if I don’t know their mother very well. But, let’s face it—most people want their baby blanket before their child leaves high school, and I’m an average speed knitter who’s often unable to resist starting something else. However, I’m proud of myself this time. I’ve been working on this blanket steadily, and I think it’s going to be done soon. 

Things come up, though, and yesterday I fell off the wagon that I’d only managed to stay on for a week. The occasion? Halloween, of course! In my stash I have balls of bright orange and bright green yarn. I got them years ago to make a bunny hat that I thought was way cute at the time—they were supposed to be for the carrots. But when I pulled the yarn and pattern out sometime later, I found that I wasn’t so in love with the pattern after all. For reasons that I’m not sure about, the yarn’s been lying on the bed in the spare room where I see it and thereby remember I have it, and I felt this urge to make a pumpkin hat. I proposed it to my youngest, who let me know in no certain terms that she does not intend to wear a silly hat like that. It’s amazing how quickly they become conscious of their own dignity. So I decided to let the matter drop until I saw the pumpkin hat on Crazy Aunt Purl. It’s what I had in mind, plus she had this great idea to make the green top in a kind of vine-like curly-q. How cute is that? Of course, it looks to me like she’s using some prettier colors than my bright,  primary orange and green,  but that’s what I have on hand. 

Newly inspired, I tried to get youngest child interested again, and it was a no go. “People will laugh at me,” she told me firmly. I feel like I’m too old to look cute in a silly hat, but I decided to make it for myself anyway. “People will laugh at you!” she told me in some shock. I explained to her that if I wear a silly hat for Halloween, people will be laughing with me instead of at me. This distinction is important, but hard to grasp, I guess. So, if you see an older mom wearing a pumpkin hat in shocking orange, wave. I’ll be wearing it both because I can’t stop myself from knitting this thing, and to show my daughter that sometimes, being silly is okay. I’m sure, though, that in my daughter’s mind I’ll only be fulfilling my parental duty to embarrass my kids. 

I decided to start blogging again, in spite of the ongoing picture problem which I let sink me last year. I’m sure this can be sorted out by someone, but in spite of some techy credentials, I don’t have a clue. So, I’m not going to worry. Really. No, really! I’m going to write, and if I can’t get pictures right on the blog I’ll figure something else out. I am now on Ravelry, and I’ll have to open a Flickr account, so maybe that’s my best route.

I’m also pitifully obsessing about the best way to handle a blog. There’s always pressure to do whatever the cool kids are doing even long after high school and believe me, I’m long out of high school.  I’ve noticed that the cool kids in the blogisphere have blogs that keep pretty well to one subject. I’m amazed at how that works, both because I have trouble imagining keeping my mind on one subject that faithfully and because so many of the focused blogs stay pretty interesting. Not always, but most of the time. Given that I’m also interested in the way people write in their blogs and how blogging works, it impresses me that they’re interesting at all.

It’s just not that easy to keep entries day after day that people want to read no matter what you’re up to. Just look at the evening news, for example. They have teams of people working just to grab people’s attention away from the competing news sources. It’s a struggle that they often loose, and as everyone is aware, it often means that the content suffers. Most blogs are run by one lonely person, but they still come up with something interesting, at least to someone. That someone can be their friends and family, but those people count.

So, what does that have to do with me? I guess it’s back to my (very old) entry about needing to do something and not just keep thinking about it. I picked knitting as my lead subject because I already knit constantly, and I own more yarn than I could possibly need. I also have patterns and fiber books, magazines and old samples of knitting and crochet. I don’t crochet very well at all, but I’m learning. I also spin, although my wheel’s been pretty well neglected for quite a while. I plan to start weaving someday, too. Fiber arts are such a fascinating, friendly, wonderful subject that it seems like a good one to start with. And, what prompted me to get going was seeing how much fun everyone else was having talking about their knitting and showing it off. I’m such a joiner. I really want to give it a try. So here goes again!

We went to see the Yarn Harlot last night, and we had every bit as much fun as everyone always says they do. I don’t know how she does it , honestly. I have had the experience of accompanying an author on tour, and it’s draining, disorienting, and downright hard to look like you even care that you’re at your how many dozenth stop. Stephanie managed to make it look easy. She was very funny, and we had a blast!

But I don’t have any pictures! I didn’t think about taking my camera. And even if I had, I don’t have any way to put them up. I’m going to figure that out this weekend, I guess. What’s the point of a knitting and etc. blog if I can’t put any pictures up? That’s taking lame to a whole new level.

Anyway, I can’t overcome the lack of pictures of the event, although I suspect she’ll have some up on her own blog pretty soon.

She is one amazing personality.

I am going to have to face it; the blog is to write in. I’ve worked over a couple of templates since I couldn’t find one that was exactly right, and finally came back to lovely Minima. I couldn’t leave it alone, either, but at least the results are closer to what I want.

I left this blog sitting for so long that I forgot my password to get in. Once I did get in I realized that I had a really nice comment from Irie, from Irie Knits podcast. I like the fact that she includes Yoga for knitters in her podcasts–I get very TENSE while sitting without realizing it.

This post is going to have to be short. I don’t seem to have my mind set for blogging today–I’m too busy thinking of everything else I need to do. I’m just too scattered at the moment. I’ll regroup and come back later.

I want to see how this theme looks with more than one post.

I worry so much about things being just right before I do them, but I don’t think that’s going to be a productive way to run a blog. In fact, one of the things that I hope to accomplish with this blog is learning to fuss less. Just do it! So here goes. My first post, a post I’ve fussed over about fussing.

Here’s a great fussing example. I’m still fussing about exactly what to name this, although I think “Knitting and My Life” probably covers it. I could make it longer to cover knitting, writing, and my life, but the writing part is sort of implicit, isn’t it? One of the main reasons for me to have a blog is to write. I enjoy the part where I talk about my knitting, since it’s a fun subject for me, but getting myself to write is the main issue here.

And since I go off on tangents pretty often, I know a good bit about my life is going to seep in. Maybe that’s implicit, too, but I figured I might as well say it up front. What other things are in my life? A really big family (not the number of kids, just the number of relatives), dogs, baking, technology, gardening (mainly indoors), a too-big house, and…well, I know I’ve forgotten something. But that’ll do for a start.

Now I need to find a layout that makes me happier for this blog. This generic Word Press template does not make my heart sing. More fussing!