the Village Knittiot

This morning I woke up and I could hear the heater clicking on. That means it is very cold. Which in turn means I don’t want to get out of bed. Fortunately for me, I have a sweetie who brings me coffee in bed every morning. I never, ever get tired of saying that. Of course, in a week, that is going to turn into green tea in bed as we are slowly, slowly weening ourselves off the caffeine. Wish us luck and if you don’t hear from us in a week, please send out a St. Bernard with a barrel of espresso around his neck.

Fun With Yarn

Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking a class with Annie Modesitt at Loop in which she taught us the techniques to make her circular, reversible, upside down, right side up, inside out wearable sweater (the one from the Fall 2005 cover of Vogue Knitting).

First, let me talk about Loop. Loop is an amazing store. Craig is truly the first yarn shop owner that I have ever met who really, really understands about making you feel relaxed and comfortable and welcome right away. His staff members embody this same understanding — they give you help, they ask you questions. They also give you space. They smile and are pleasant. They are honest. They are also knowledgable and enthusiastic. The spacious, open area allows you to really move around and look at things and this is a wonderful, beautiful thing. Also, he has impeccable taste. I mean impeccable. His yarns are top notch and gorgeous. They also are on the very, very expensive side, and as such, I have to think long and hard and go back to the store a few times before deciding on something. They do also have a few more afforable yarns — a massive selection of Cascade 220 and the Malabrigo, which is like Manos, but with slightly less thick/thin variation and with more yardage for a little less money. Their book selection is out of this world. They have everthing. Always plenty of needles and so forth. It is just a pleasant place to be in general. Taking a class there is even better.

Yesterday was the first actual knitting class I have ever taken and let me tell you this, I will be taking more. It was phenomenal. The amount of information I absorbed — a lot of it from the instructor, but an equally important amount from fellow knitters — was like nothing I have ever gotten working on my own. I am convinced that Annie Modesitt may be a bit of a genius (of the Mad Hatter variety) and the sweater that she taught us the technique for may be just about the most versatile pattern I have ever seen or used. Seriously, you can wear it inside or outside, upside down or right side up. You can substitute any yarn you want and can fit it precisely to your measurements. It is clever, inventive and very fun to work with. We did two swatches in the class — a rectangular one, just to get a feel for the technique, and a circular one to get a feel for how it would be to work the pattern. I turned my rectangle into a cape for my water. As an Aquarius (you know, the water bearer), it seemed only fitting that my water bottle should have a cape.

Despite my attempts, I failed to find the right yarn to begin the pure genius sweater, and since it can truly be made with any yarn, I may just find the right roving and spin my own. And since the postman (who is fast becoming my favorite person in the universe) delivered a package all the way from a certain wonderful blogger in Canada containing this (thank you JoVE!),

Blue Faced Leicester is at the top of my list for potential candidates.

Things I learned in no particular order:
1. How to knit in the round using two circulars (can someone tell me why I thought this would be really complicated or why I thought I needed to buy a book to learn it?)
2. Inox needles are not the unpleasant experience I thought they would be. As Juno pointed out — “They’re pointy!” Yes indeed. How could I not have found these sooner.
3. Random increases and the telephone number technique
4. The way I purl may be slightly inefficient and there is a speedier way if I can master it
5. I can actually learn how to alter a pattern, take my own measurements into account and design my own sweaters — as soon as I take the classes that will teach me some of the things I absolutely need to know
6. This is an expensive hobby
7. Living in a city with decent public transportation is as awesome as I imagined it would be
8. I know more about my adopted city than I thought I did
9. Knitters make the world a better place

Fun With Books

As some of you will remember, my dear, wonderful friend Kaizerin (who tragically lives on the other coast) did some co-blogging with me through the Knitting Olympics. In addition to our shared obsession interest in knitting, we are also quite the rabid bookworms. One of our favorite weekend activities involves five hour conversations mostly about what we are reading, intespersed with our thoughts on life, the universe and everything, with frequent stops in which we marvel at how much we have in common and how come it took us so long to find each other on this planet.

What started out as a discussion about how we could have more frequent, in-depth book discussions even though we live on separate coasts of a rather large continent, turned into a decision to go into the co-blogging business for good. Thus I give you The Bookish Dark, a site devoted to our passion for all things bookish.

Like all new blogs, we are still working out some kinks and getting up to speed, but our first joint discussion is up, covering the book Feed by M.T. Anderson — a title I tend to blather on about quite a lot both here on the blog and in real life.

While we will be doing a lot of joint reviews, we will also be posting individual reviews of what we are devouring in our own private reading lives. We both tend to take our reading very personally, and we want to talk with other people who do too, so come on over and check it out!

The Bookish Dark

This entry was posted on Monday, March 20th, 2006 at 8:20 am and is filed under this Knittiot Life, this Random Life, this Reading Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.