War is Fun!

I am having a great time with the Sock Wars!
I have emailed my target, and my assasin. I have even had an email from my assasin's assasin! I spend my days in fear of the post office, and my nights knitting and strategizing about the speed of other knitters, the mailtime from the Midwest to New England, to Hawaii and from Australia!
My coworkers tentatively ask me each morning, "Are you dead yet?" My parents are checking my post office box for me during the day. My friends think I am the biggest knitting geek ever, and I don't care! I am a part of a huge multi-national force of knitters and we are poised and ready to strike!
This is only the first step in a massive global takeover!
Muh-ah-ha-ha-HAH!

(Nope! Not giving away any clues! No photos of work-in-progress or finished weapon-socks, no UPS tracking numbers, NADA!)

Bedridden

Strange what being injured does to your head, strange what it does to your knitting. I took some time last weekend, stole some time from all I had to do and all I had to give to my job and house and relationship, stole it right out from under all of that and took it for myself. I used this time to go diving. Both days. Two whole days of diving and hanging out and getting nothing of any consequence done except for floating among the fishies.
I also injured my back. Something to do with carrying tanks and a lead weight belt around my tipped pelvis- doesn't matter, my chiropractor is working on it in his way, and I am working on it in my way:
I started a fussy new knitting project, of course! The lovely Bayerische sock from Eunny Jang. As she states:

I've found that when my brain is in danger of melting altogether and dribbling out my ears, a couple repeats of Bavarian-style twisted stitch patterns set everything right. All the little lines are so graceful and logical, so tidy, so totally devoid of chaos. What you see is precisely what you get - and it doesn't hurt, I suppose, that what you end up getting is almost always really, really beautiful.

See, that is just it: My head is too full of too many things. Work, relationship, writing, friends, what it all means and what I want to be when I grow up and why I needed to steal away two days and why did my body crash out from all of this? An ex once told me that when you re-injure yourself, you must go back to the time of the original injury and revisit that pain in order to work through it. He said that the body's constant reinjury was a reminder of something unresolved. I first injured this area of my back years ago in a gardenia and yoga-mat scented summer in North Carolina. I was independent, newly graduated, tremendously in love and yet drifting and sad like many women that age. Healthy, beautiful, and unfulfilled, living as an addendum to my boyfriend's dreams for lack of my own. I remember feeling raw, sensual, new, and fragile. Everything went easily straight to my heart, and I lived with an unguarded immediacy that I have not felt since. My heart broke at the end of that summer as I left him and I left that town, and in the years that have passed and the walls and guards I have built, I still lack the lower back core strength to protect from this reinjury. It all reminds me of how little I have journeyed from that time. I am still raw and drifting.
"I don't have a handle on this knitting thing," a friend just told me, "I know that I need to check in on you when you are injured, missing work, and thoughtful like this. But I don't get how to read the knitting yet."
Well here it is: I am unfulfilled by the projects I have working now (the Kyoto to rip, the 2nd useless glove) and in that boredom, have chosen a project beyond my abilities. While I attempt to convince myself that I will be learning new skills (tiny needles, cables, cable-needleless twists) and shall be forgiving of my own newbie mistakes (there are a few already. I am understanding, but hardly forgiving) the real purpose is distraction. Like maybe if I pour out all the thoughts and obsessions and worries, pour them into the knitting, those thoughts will run like rivulets along the tiny precise cables of this complex pattern, and the pattern itself will create a beautiful order to it all. Maybe when I am done I can look at it and say, "There. See? It all makes perfect, beautiful sense."

Too Much Work

I am at a place where it is all seeming like too much work. That big black blob is the mis-sized Kyoto that I need to do some math on and then rip out. I want to figure out if the inch or so of top section is the right size, and then maybe only rip the bottom out?
That green bit is one almost-finished glove. I want to find a very loose and stretchy bind off, and may need to rip it back a bit for enough yarn. I hate the little lace bit on the back of the hand. I need to start the second glove before I forget what I did, but here is the problem:
I have said before that, even if I know how to fix a problem, don't just fix the second sock, because I am still left with an unmatched pair. So do I repeat the little lace bit that I hate? Or do I trust that I will embroider over it? Or turn it around and make it the palm?
The third bit is swatching for my Assasin sock of doom for the upcoming Sock Wars! Yay! It is Rowan Kid Classic, which I think technically is not DK weight but maybe Aran weight? I got gaugue with size 3 instead of 5s.
Not pictured is the Bayerische sock from Eunny Jang, which I just began, having never done twisted cables, or cables of any nature, or socks on a size 0 needle. Am I in over my head?

Hand-knit Hand-towel!

I finished this little hand towel this evening while watching Project Runway (I can not believe they brought back Vincent and Angela! They were the worst!). The pattern is the Mason-Dixon dishcloth made longer. I love the idea that I can knit everyday items for my new little place: towels, rags, rugs, pillows... It feels decadent and yet everyday. Like I can make everything (or almost everything) myself.
(Check out the new Tiki mug! And the other towel is...K-Mart. 4-pack for wicked cheap. What? I said almost everything!)

Score!

I had a fight with Dearest BF the other day and buried it in retail therapy. I bought the sockyarn in the back and some unpictured small-sized circular needles. And Yes! Those are the sweetest knitting bags ever! Very professional/luggage looking, spatious, organized yarn project bags! Yay! My little anal-retentive organizational side just loves these enough to forget about the fight with whats-his-name.
Am I burying my relationship issues in knitting and knitting accessories? Will such habits make me even more of a reclusive scary cat lady?
At least I will be a lonely crazy bag lady with great bags?


Big black one in the corner is not included in the set: That's the cat. You can't have him.

NEW KNITTY!

Check it!
Fall 2006 Knitty is up!
I like Viveka, and Ivy, and Cruelty, and and and...
You think maybe I finish WIPs first?

Decadent, Useless...

I am using these beautiful yarns to make gloves. Yup: Silk and mohair fingerless gloves. Totally useless, decadent, ridiculous gloves that I can hardly ever wear in Hawaii. I don't care. I love the color, I love the 80's throwback of gloves lacking fingertips, I love the silk, and, quite frankly, I love the useless decadence of them. Maybe I will wear them while driving. Maybe I will wear them with a tank, or with my equally-useless ankle-length Dr. Who scarf.
Come visit! I will be that weird girl with the gloves and the scarf, digging for wool in the Ace Hardware Eyelash-yarn bin!