Art salon opens today... I don't know if my pieces got in, after all. When I went to the place to pick up rejected pieces, to see if my poor sweater and shawl were there, it was locked. On the other hand, I haven't gotten any angry email saying "pick up your crappy art". So we'll see if it's hanging up in the galary once I get off of work!


I started a new square for the afghan project. Ivory cables. yum. There's something so wonderful and classic about it. My boyfriend (scroll down for "Dan learns how to knit") was watching me knitting my guage swatch for the square and started telling me about this fisherman's sweater he had as a kid and how he wore it everywhere, all the time, even when he had outgrown it. His mom eventually took it away because it was hideously too small, but he kept insisting on wearing it everywhere. I told him that if he had a picture of it somewhere, I'd try to make him a new one that would fit. But what was it about a simple rope cable in ivory yarn (mmm... lamb's pride bulky.... drool...) that brought the memory to surface? What about the timelessness of the design and how much that sweater spoke to him that would compel him to tell me that as I messed around with pattern?

Last spring I switched mostiurizers to Oil of Olay, which is what my mom uses. When I put it on for the first time, I felt so mature and grown up, because of the smell I had always associated with my mother's beauty...

I got new yarn from peace fleece. Something about new fibers and colors that invokes so many project ideas, even though I bought the yarn with a project already in mind. Maybe that's what makes me think of the sweater and shawl I entered as "art". Knitting-wise, both projects were pathetically easy. The sweater was knitted flat in stockinette with almost no shaping. The shawl's just garter, but both projects were fiber-inspired. I saw the yarn, let the yarn speak to me, and knit it how it wanted to be knit. So often I think, I want a cabled cardigan. Maybe green. And then I go buy green yarn for said cardigan. Fiber is picked for pattern, pattern isn't picked for fiber. With the shawl I thought, I want to knit something pretty for mom with really nice yarn. She likes blue, and it went from there. With the ocean sweater, I was at the yarn store and saw it and thought "wow" and then remembered my budget, but I kept being drawn back to it's shelf, kept picking it up and feeling it, leaving, and coming back. So I said "screw it. I'm on vacation. Nice yarn that I can't afford, it is!" ha.

Dan Learns How to Knit
a short story

So Dan wanted to learn how to knit, so I sat him down and taught him. I teach a class here on campus, so I thought, sure, no problem. First of all, how can an eagle scout not know how to do a slip knot? yeesh. But he learned. He kept coming up with perverted sayings to remember things, but that's him, and they made me laugh. I learned really quickly. He was really good. But, sadly, he's a perfectionist, so he'd get frustrated really easily and swear loudly and throw his knitting across the room, needles and all. He's not allowed to knit anymore. The end.