Knitting Fiendery

So, as I think I've remarked, I'm taking an online class on Reversible Cables. Practice projects are scarves. Class started Saturday. Check out this baby:



Three days, four feet of cabled scarfy goodness. And not only is it reversible, it's wonderfully smooshy, too. A little shorter than I usually like my scarves, but out of yarn, so what can I do? The color doesn't look as nice on me as it could anyway, so I might end up giving it away. It still needs to be blocked, which will nicen up the somewhat icky end. That'll have to wait until next weekend, though, because lesson two involves some tips on doing it. And I need to get my hot little hands on some blocking wires, too.

Monogamy Is Overrated.

Project monogamy, that is. Like in knitting and stuff.

Somewhere along the line, the idea spread among knitters that project monogamy is the ideal to be aspired to. I don't know where it started; probably with some Big Name Knitter. I know Wendy Johnson is a monogamous knitter, which certainly helped the propagate this idea even if it started elsewhere.

There's nothing inherently wrong with project monogamy, if it works for you. It does help finish projects sooner. Some people express that as "faster", but that's not really accurate. A knitter might get a small benefit from monogamous knitting if it helps him memorize the pattern, thus spending less time looking at the sheet and more time making stitches. But even that's going to add up to a very small advantage. Nonetheless, if a project takes a month of solid knitting time, you will finish one worked singly sooner than you will finish either of two worked in parallel. But two projects get finished in the same amount of cumulative working time.

However, there are disadvantages for many people in monogamous knitting. A big one: the project slog. Sometimes when you're working on a project, you just get flippin' bored with it. Sometimes you even get to the point where you just don't want to do another stitch on it. Twice this weekend alone I've seen people say that they've been avoiding knitting because they just don't work on their monogamous project. Dude, put it away and cast on something else! This is supposed to be fun. If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.

I'm coming to embrace my polygamy. On the other hand, I am trying to keep it under control. Right now I've got three project bags. My idea is to have that many going at a time, and not to start another until I've either finished or frogged one of those. I'm not sure three is the optimum number, but it's a starting place. (Right now I've got a scarf for my Reversible Cables class, the Baby Draco sweater I'm so bloody sick of that I just can't work on it much right now, and a lace scarf that turned out harder and slower than expected. I might need a fourth bag for a 'definite no-brainer' project.)

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Next topic: Maybe I need to rethink my approach to online patterns. Currently I've been bookmarking just about everything I like, and then going back as I have time and saving them to my hard drive in neat formats. That means I've got, according to file count, 183 patterns saved in neat formats, and another 9 or 10 that need some cleaning.

Now, saving patterns isn't a bad idea. The internet is not a permanent media, after all, and the Wayback Machine is far from perfect, especially on anything graphic intensive. But, I'm never going to make all those things. I find myself thinking, if I don't like something enough to put it in my Ravelry queue, or at least on my favorite patterns list, maybe I don't really need to take the time to save it. The odds are good that I will NEVER get to it. And frankly, with the exception of some toys, I think at this point that there are few patterns that I couldn't recreate if I realized that yes, I do absolutely need that after all, and no, it isn't available any more. It's not as easy, granted, but I think for me its doable.
I think I could at least handle cutting down. Of course, this is an invitation for my Ravelry queue to grow out of control, but that's OK. It's fairly easy to manage.

Yay, Dobby socks!

Here, in all its unblocked glory, is the sockmark.



And the photo even came out all Slytherin-y this time. It'll be a bit better behaved once it's blocked (sometime this weekend), but is very cute in person nonetheless. I don't plan to do this pattern again unless I get some wood or bamboo glove needles, though, and even then it's unlikely. LOTSA work in that little guy.

It's time for me to accept that I'm just evil.

(I shouldn't use that subject line the same day I do a religious rant. Ah well.)

I decided to try making a Dobby-style sockmark, which is a bookmark with miniature socks at the ends. Guess what colors I used.

Slytherin. (That's green on there. Really. Stupid indoor lighting.)

The baby Draco sweater's coming along.

Slytherin again.

On the planned list is a Weasley Sweater Cell Phone cozy. Only I don't care for the Gryffindor theme, so when I make it with a "K", what color scheme will it be in?
Slytherin.

Of course, I had to get worsted weight yarn for that, and I'll only need a little. And I also need two colors of worsted yarn for the squid I'm going to make, and there's no sense being wasteful, so what color scheme will my squid have?
Slytherin.

OK, I like the idea of the Slytherin squid. But I still think it's time for me to just accept that I'm evil.
Actually, I'm not evil  I'm ambitious and clever. :)

Actually, if you went by personality, I'd be a solid Ravenclaw. But bronze does not look good on redheads with classic Celt coloring. (And I thought the change to silver in the movies was a cop out.) Likewise, red and gold is right out, and yellow-black not much better. But green, green I can wear. Green I look fabulous in. Green and gold is better, but silver'll work OK.

That little sockmark thing is far more evil than you'd ever guess. Ignore it's size; that bugger has a LOT of stitches on tiny needles. The thing is an absolute hand-killer, too. I don't know if it's because I'm using metal needles, or because there's so much extra needle compared to the stitches on each, or the low number of stitches that doesn't give me a lot of working room to begin with, or what, but it'll make you stiff fast. This little guy is a good reason to practice project polygamy, so when your fingers can't take him anymore, you switch to something with bigger needles you can actually get a grip on.

I am also sooo sick of working on the baby Draco sweater. No more baby shower knits unless it's for someone I know well and really like, or it's quick socks or a bib or something. I've got one more sleeve, and two rounds of stockinette stitch on the body bottom. Then I'm going to neaten up the color joins on the side and do a border of two garter stitch ridge along the fronts and around the collar, then return to the bottom and do a similar garter stitch border there. The ideal thing would be to do the bottom and sides at the same time, but I don't have a circular needle that long, and I don't care about this project enough to go buy one. I'd like to just leave the side of the fronts as they are, but they look very unfinished in person. I think the garter stitch border will be a big improvement if I can figure out the right number of stitches to pick up for it.

Zealots ruin everything.

During my last chain store visit, I was frustrated to discover that prayer shawls are going the way of the WWJD bracelet: something that had good meaning and intention when it was limited to a small group who believed in it, moved into yet another brainwashing technique, and is now on its way to becoming meaningless commercial fluff.

I suppose first I should specify that I'm talking about Christian prayer shawls, not to be confused with the Jewish Tallit or any other article of religious clothing. A Christian prayer shawl is given to someone during a time of hardship. The very original seed of the idea was a wonderful one. The idea was to mindfully knit a comforting items for a (preferably specific) person in a difficult time in their lives, keeping them in mind while working. It was to be a very spiritual, meditative practice, basically a physical manifestation of a prayer.

Well, it went wrong almost as soon as it started with The Prayer Shawl Ministry. Yes, I am aware that I'm saying the people who first codified the idea are doing it wrong. You know why? 'Cause they're doing it wrong. As soon as just about anything becomes a 'ministry', it becomes a failure at its original purpose. Why? Because the focus is no longer about helping people in need; it's about 'spreading the word of Jesus'. Only last I checked, the 'word of Jesus' was about loving and helping people. If you stop concentrating on loving and helping people in favor of talking about it, you've failed. It's a terribly tragic spiral. People are the message, and if you've put aside the people in favor of the message, you've put aside the real message.

In the case of the Prayer Shawl Ministry itself, almost immediately the focus was no longer the people in need, but rather the shawls. Prayer Shawls became yet another way for churches to get face time, and giving aid to people in pain was a convenient side effect. Many makers are not mindful, but rather crank them out, just thinking or praying for the recipient "when they come to mind" as one maker put it on Ravelry. Some churches keep a stock of them back to hand out whenever they're 'needed', which can be anything from a tragic accident to a birthday gift. It doesn't matter who gets them; it only matters who from what organization makes them. So, basically the original idea is in the toilet.

Naturally, Lion Brand yarn is very happy to help you with your Prayer Shawl. They recommend Lion Homespun. Interestingly enough, it seems that most prayer shawls are made out of Homespun. So much for grass-roots and non-profit.

Suffice to say, I'm pretty disgusted, both in how this particular idea was corrupted into a propaganda scheme, and how that seems inevitable with anything spiritual in modern American Christianity.