Best Birthday Present Ever

My birthday presents arrived today (a month and a half early). I'm starting to wonder if this knitting-geek thing has gone too far.

Behold my wooden swift:


Gaze upon my new wool winder:


Attend, ye, my perfect center-pull yarn cakes:


I'm going to go root through the rest of my stash and see if there is anything else that needs winding. Then I'm going to go get the dental floss. I wonder if I can use it for speaker wire?

Going up to Eleven

I, along with a couple of my knitterly friends, have decided to take the knitting geekiness to the next level by joing the Knitting Guild Association and entering their Master's Program. Clearly, I don't know everything there is to know about knitting. I figured this would be a great way to challenge my existing skills while also gaining new ones. Is it geekier than the Knit Geek code block? You bet. In fact, it's one louder.

Purling retard, that's me!

I have to frog Ezra's sweater and start over because a) I don't think I need to cast on as many extra stitches in the armhole--the armhole is ginormous, and b) not only are my purl stitches are WAY bigger than my knit stitches, but they also slant to one side.

I didn't realize how bad this was until I started the sleeve.



Unlike the body of the sweater, the sleeve is knit in the round (knitting only, no purling). Pictures do not do justice to the beautiful and orderly way the stitches of the sleeve line up. I cannot illustrate their perfect tension, their glorious evenness, in digital still-life. Neither can I accurately portray the hideous misshapenness of the purls in the body of the sweater or how they moan and lean and, yes, even drool. My purl stitches are retarded. The progress on the sleeve is beautiful. The rest is ass. No, it's worse than ass. It's ball-sack. It's hairy, stinky ball-sack and I have to frog it.

I checked knittinghelp.com to try and figure out what I'm doing wrong. Guess what--I have been purling through the back loop. This has caused every purl stitch I've ever done--every single one since the day I started knitting--to lean, to drool, and to essentially look like ball-sack in every single project I have ever made that required purl stitches.

I want to scream.

But, at least I now know. Also, I believe purling the right way will allow me to go faster.

I think I'll scream anyway.

Knitting Geek

I am such a knitting geek! So much so that it was hard to resist the Knitting Geek Code from Knitty. What kind of knitting geek? Check out my code block:

---------------BEGING KNITTER'S GEEK CODE BLOCK------------

Version 1.1

KCR+++ Exp+ SPM++ KP++ AddiT> !Syn Nov- Cot Wool+++ Lux> Stash Scale+ Fin Ent? FI? Text !Lace Felt !DPN ML+++>$ GuageW(F) EZ+ FO++ WIP Blog AltSP>
----------------END--------------------------------------------------------

5 for Monday (+1)

1. I am knitting away on Ezra's sweater--I adore the pattern and the yarn, so I'm loving this project.

2. I've finished the Christmas socks for Ezra--have cast on the Christmas socks for Isaac. Photos will be posted soon.

3. The March dishcloth is not going well. At some point, I didn't increase or decrease where I should have and was a stitch short. I frogged it and will start it again later.

4. We went to a kid's birthday party yesterday. A great time was had by all. Last night, Isaac had some questions about the birthday girl. I've transcribed the entire converstion verbatum because it was so funny:

"Mommy, is she five now?" Isaac asked.
"Yes, she is five," I replied.
"What comes after five?"
"Six."
"What comes after six?"
"Seven," I say. I'm also starting to feel impatient because Isaac is supposed to be going to sleep.
He continues, "what comes after seven?"
So, ready to end this, I say, "Take a guess."
"43?"

I guess time is fluid when you're 5. It's also funny because the birthday kid really is 5 going on 43.

5. Perusing the blogs, I found this. Kind of fun. Apparantly, 1,397,854 people in US have the first name Jennifer. Only I have the last name Seelaus.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

6. My Elizabeth Zimmerman books arrived yesterday. I am so going to make a baby surprise jacket!