She Who Measures

Well, I woke up this morning.  The sun isn’t up yet, but the fact that the chickens and I are up leads me to suspect that the sun will rise, that a giant wolf did not eat the world over the course of The Longest Night, and so we get another year.

That’s my personal holiday celebration out of the way; please allow me to wish you and yours all the happiness you can grab out of your own festivals!

In one hour, I will be (sniff) missing the second night at William Street, because I am a big scaredy, and although right now it is only very wet and foggy, in an hour or two I have every expectation that it will be wet, foggy, and also icy, and although I love knit (and other stuff) night lots already, and will miss it until it reconvenes in January, if I die on the road I will definitely not finish that sweater. So I will be knitting here, alone, instead.

I have a finished object I forgot to post:

I love these clogs. When I grow up, I’m going to marry them. They’ve hardly been off my feet since I finished them – I can even wear them outside (up to a point, anyway) because I put silicone soles on them, so they’re un-slippery, and also waterproof. (And proof against any other surprises that might turn up in a barnyard, come to that!) This was not my brilliant idea, it came to me via Nicole, who describes the process in detail here.

Oh, and I’ve signed on for Sharon B’s Take it Further Challenge, which starts in January. Basically Sharon (In a Minute Ago) will be posting a concept and a color scheme or a shape, and everybody will have a month to resolve it into a fibre design project. Much clearer detail on her site, there. But it sounds like lots of fun, and my personal hope is that it will give me a way to focus my otherwise scattered and easily lost things-I-want-to-do into some things that actually get done! I’m looking forward to it – and you can too, there’s still time to join up! Just go give Sharon a comment on her blog and she can add you to the list.

Otherwise, it’s been pretty much aran all the day, and really I have nothing much to say. Although I did just get an exciting email, but nothing is finalized yet so I’ll just have to dangle that teaser at you for a bit. Exciting news, still in the future. Are you tantalized?

Tuesday night was the very first stitch n bitch for our brand new bunch of yarn (and thread and felt and…) addicts in Chatham. It was organized by Jen and Carrie, and despite some quiet, hardly spoken fears that there would be four of us sheepishly knitting in the William St. cafe, I was really looking forward to it.

Four of us. Yeah. So imagine all our pleasure and surprise when this happened:

It was a great time. Mostly there was knitting, but crochet was not under-represented, and there was also some embroidery, a weaver (guess who I’m gonna suck up to?) and Brenda (blogless as far as I know, but she has a great etsy shop) was doing needle felting, which looks like a great way to relieve stress – I hadn’t realized it was so violent!

This picture does not do a good job at all of showing off [this nice lady whose name I’ve lost]’s knitting needles with lights in them. I so think that is a good idea for knitting in the car at night!

Laurie was there – she’s the one who made these fantastic shadow-box things that were hanging on the wall in the cafe:

Aren’t they wild? Laurie didn’t know how to knit when she showed up, but she thought it sounded like fun. Jen rushed to her aid, and by the end of the night:

All better.

Carrie was working on a mitten, having pretty much exhausted the market for baby booties. Hiding behind her but betrayed by that gorgeous patchwork sweater is CK, (aka Stalkermom). I’ve mentioned CK is blog-free, but ha! If you are on Ravelry you can find her as ckartist! She was working on some knitted pants for The Squeak, but somewhere around the time this picture was taken she’d decided there was a reason they’d been knit on straight needles, and not the circular she’d decided to adapt them to. It was that kind of day. I was working on this:

Sean’s aran. Looks about the same as it did last time, doesn’t it? Yeah. That would be because I frogged it for the second time on Monday morning, and now it’s back to that length. Again. But it’s wider, now. And I tell ya true, if he puts it on and there’s room for another? Sherrie can wear it with him, I do NOT want to rip this back again! They’re coming on the fifteenth, and I think I have finally accepted that it isn’t going to be finished. Part of the reason for that is this:

With winter decidedly upon us, I have bumped myself higher in the list of “people who need to be swathed in wool” and am knitting, for me, St. Brigid. I have fallen head over heels for this sweater. I guess it’s no secret by now that I’m a sucker for fancy cables. I am finding this as much of a joy to knit as I’d hoped it would be, and I’m sure I’m going to love the finished sweater. The yarn is that “grass stain”, by the way – it may be a silly name, but I’m standing by it – that’s still what it looks like to me, and let me tell you, around here that’s one of the more practical colour choices!