Whoa.

It's either a miracle or a cruel cosmic joke.

Every once in a while I pull out my old lappy, the one that died many months ago. I plug it in and push the power button and have about three seconds of hope before nothing at all happens.

Today something happened.

The lappy turned on.

It's still not in top shape, and I have to wonder- is this just the last gasp of this mechanical relic? Will this last only for a few days before abandoning me to my computer-less existence again?

But it's a little miracle, and I take miracles whatever size they come in.

What am I DOING?!?

I will not quit.

I will not quit.

I will not quit.

Never mind that my life is hell. Never mind that I just started a new job. Never mind that I'm likely to go even further out of my mind.

This is tradition. This is what I do in November. There is no November without NaNo.

But.

Did I mention my life is hell? My life is hell. A big, roiling, boiling pot of hell on wheels. Fiery, burning waves of scalding hell in a soup tureen.

Great galloping goblins, my life SUCKS. It SUCKS. I cannot overstate how much my life totally and completely SUCKS.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

<\whine>

Disciplers

I have to admit, I skim my blog subscriptions more than I read them these days. This is why it is beneficial to have short paragraphs, small words, and plenty of pictures on your blog, because that's what it usually takes to get my attention. Dan Edelen's post got my attention with a pretty picture, but reading it has gotten me thinking. And wishing.

Dan is apparently lucky enough to have had bad experiences with "disciplers". Myself, my experience with "disciplers" ended around the time I entered middle school. He describes the ways discipling relationships can go wrong; I wish I could experience some of them.

Who am I learning the faith from?

I have to ask myself, again and again: where can I find real spiritual food?

The more I learn, the more I am learning that I am just beginning to understand the basics of the gospel. What I was taught for years about the Christian faith was hardly gospel at all. But now that I have tasted the real thing, I'm desperate to find someone who can feed me more of it.

But who? Where? Where is the godly person who can take time to teach? Where is the one who teaches with authority? My mentors in the faith are people with blogs and podcasts, people I may never meet face-to-face. The Bible is impenetrable to me without someone whom I can ask for help and guidance. But it seems to me that those who teach don't know, and those who know don't teach, so where is the one who will show me how to follow Jesus?

Somebody please catechize me.

Wake-up calls

My phone has started doing something interesting. At approximately six o'clock every morning, Monday through Friday, I get a call. When I answer, a robotic voice says,

Hello! I'm calling for a substitute.

Now, this is not totally unexpected. I've been hoping to get calls like this. That's what I was aiming for when I applied to be a substitute teacher. But there's just one problem: I can't accept the jobs yet. To accept a job, I need a PIN, so that the system knows it's really me- but the sub subcontractor (hahaha) has not sent me those precious digits.

It's like getting woken up every morning by a maid in a frilly apron with a tray of strong coffee and Cocoa Puffs who stands in the doorway, laughs, and leaves.

So I'm spending my days reading, replaying old Doctor Who episodes in my head, tangling up large quantities of yarn, and wondering how I will ever last in a classroom full of restless natives exuberant children. Mostly I imagine all the ways this new job, if it ever materializes, could go very, very badly. When I get stuck in that mode of thought too long, I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and think of November, because November proves I can do anything. Twice.

What? You don't remember what November is? You must need some coffee. (I always need extra caffeine in November.)

We're less than two weeks away from National Novel Writing Month, and I'm starting to get excited.

Well, excited and nervous.

Well, okay, mainly nervous.

It may seem like a minor thing, in light of the chaos the rest of my life is in, but my muse seems to have gone on vacation. He checks in every once in a while, sends me postcards with pictures of beaches and a hint of a plot idea scrawled illegibly on the back, but basically he and my Inner Editor have gotten married and are off on an extended honeymoon trip. There are flashes of inspiration, sure, but they're lightning bolts, and I would settle for a nice, steady night light. The plot I was thrilled about at midnight has faded by the time I wake up at noon. Characters are figures so shadowy I can't see the whites of their 70's disco wear, let alone their eyes.

Last year I started planning in July. I am starting to panic.

I know other NaNo writers have been in this same position many times- some of them late in November. And I know others have wise advice on how to reach the 50,000 word mark. I just fear I'm going to end up with a month's worth of confused and verbose dreck. Particularly, I dread having to take up a strategy like that of one "Indie", whose forum topic is titled "This Year, I Shall Mostly Be Padding My Word Count With Pornography".

No, this year I want to write a serious novel. Not characters being chased by agents of death and stopping to play mini-golf. Not misfit alien voyagers who make chicken soup and teleport onto football fields. I want to write a Real, Proper Novel. One that doesn't involve randomly placed animals or long discourses on cheap food.

I need a panic button.



Ahh, that's better.

Cheque-ing in

Is it August again? I swear it's August again. It's hot outside, my life is thoroughly boring, and I'm hunting for a job again. Does this sound familiar?

It's hard to say how I feel right now. I feel like I've been stuck in the same place for months. On the edge of going broke, with painfully unoccupied days and a thousand desperate plans to get some quick cash. I always thought people who took vows of poverty were noble and brave, but right now I think they might just be crazy.

I'm making a crazy move right now; I'm going to apply to be a substitute teacher. It would be a good position in so many ways- it would get me some teaching experience and give me summers off to to SIL training. Brilliant, no? Here's the catch- it will take nearly all the money I have to pay for the training to be certified.

It's terrifying. But I have to try for something. I just hope whoever cooks for Bible study in the next few weeks cooks lots, so that I won't have to go buy lots of groceries before I have a paycheck.

Of course, if anyone would like to buy, say, a pair of hand-knit socks or mittens, or a crocheted quilt, that person could help ease my worries... ;)

The poor among us

I will do my best not to make this a rant and not gossip. If I thought the problem was only with the anonymous man mentioned below, I would not write so publicly. But it's too easy to see the same kind of reasoning in churches across the country, and I can't keep silent about it any more.

I didn't make it to church today. I was on my way. I was looking forward to being there. I needed to be there, I thought. But I didn't make it.

I was waylaid by another member of my church. Why, exactly, he stopped me, I don't know. I don't have any idea what he was trying to tell me, or at least not what was important enough to stop me on the way to service for. But stopped I was, and stop I did. Something was on his mind, and for some reason, instead of fleeing from him and his pontificating ways (like I usually do), I stayed to listen.

The topic we eventually got to didn't surprise me. It was the homeless people who sleep outside the church.

It took us forever to get there, so I'll spare you the defensive and outrageous conversational padding and get right to the major points. Here's what he said, in one poisonous nutshell:

1. Our church has good preaching, a good organist, a good choir, and a pretty sanctuary.
   
2. Despite this, our church experiences only minimal growth.
   
3. Since, in his words, we have the "big things" covered (as detailed in point 1), we should look at "small things" that are keeping people out of the church.
   
4. Outsiders have complained to him that the homeless people outside make them uncomfortable.
   
5. This is a problem because without numerical growth, monetary giving to the church will decrease.
   
6. Any adequate solution to this problem involves forbidding homeless people to sleep on our porch.
   
7. Anyone who doesn't like this solution is too wishy-washy to make a decision and stick by it.

So what's the problem? Well, this:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor...
Isaiah 61:1-2a

... or any other of what must be hundreds of instances where God makes it clear that in his Kingdom, his poor are taken care of.

There are many things to be concerned about in this reasoning, but I'll just highlight one. It seems obvious: "What you win them with is what you win them to," as some now-anonymous wise person said. If your primary attraction as an organization is fine oration, good music, and beautiful architecture, then of course the presence of the poor on your doorstep is just an aesthetic problem, just a blemish. A little bleach and elbow grease will have it out, and the crowds will come pouring in to your sanctuary.

If only Jesus had said, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you surround yourselves with beauty." I wish. But it's "if you love one another". And people don't get excluded from "one another" because they have to take their weekly bath in your restroom sink.

It's the first part of that verse, though, that is at the heart of my concern. "All me will know that you are my disciples." What does that mean? It means that we take up our cross. Not necessarily that we do pleasant work, or even safe work, but that we do the will of our Father in heaven. If our primary concern as a church is to preserve our organization, then we are dead already. And if we are doing the will of our Father, it's probably going to turn some people away.

Could we do better? Absolutely. The sight of a homeless man sitting at our church door begging, day after year, seems ominously prophetic in its symbolism. Should we be opening our homes to these people? Probably. Not that I have any room to talk. But letting people sleep under our porch is one small concession we can make toward having a ministry of hospitality. It's one step closer to having the poor "among us" in a real sense. In short, it's one tiptoe closer to doing the will of the Father.

And because of that, I get to say something unpopular. If I were the one to choose between one more white middle-class family and the poor, smelly drunk at the door, I pick the smelly drunk. There are any number of places that will happily show the love of Christ to a family of nice people with advanced degrees and well-behaved children. But this church has a duty to love its neighbors, which means also to the people who sleep, literally, next-door. And the call of this church should be not to comfort but to a discipleship that gets its hands dirty, to a way of living and loving and serving that will ultimately cost us all we have- including our sense of security and comfort.

♫ You say goodbye... and I say hello ♫

I was getting nervous. Application after application went in, and no prospective employers called back. I think I was failing their automated exams, which I am convinced are illegally discriminatory. But railing against the automated application process wasn't getting me any work either.

I was learning what it meant to pray "Give us this day our daily bread". I was scared.

Last week, I sold my most precious yarn, giving me enough to buy a decent load of groceries for that week. I told myself it was a good thing, really; I was learning to let go of material things. Store not up for yourselves treasures on earth and all that.

This week was harder; I sold a shelf-full of my books. Books I love. I gave them one last caress before handing them over to the used book dealer, who cared for them not at all. 22 books turned into $15. I tried very hard not to cry, and succeeded- barely. I still believed God would provide what I needed, but I suspected the Almighty and I were disagreeing on just what constituted need.

I got home, dejected but with money enough to eat. And I looked at the phone. I had a message.

This morning I was selling bits of my soul. This afternoon I had a full-time job. Tomorrow, I'm going back to work.

I say, old chaps, this is a lovely picnic spot, wot wot? We ought to call it Jehovah-jireh. The Lord will provide, you know... eventually.

Nothing new under the sun

On the knitting front:

• I found the lost dpn.
  
• My size F crochet hook is MIA.
  
• I finished up that pink shawl from months ago.
  
• The cursed Christmas afghan yarn is rapidly turning into a log cabin afghan.
  
• I am avoiding weigh-in because yarn is scattered all over the house.

Knitting does not occupy my mind as much as the state of my church right now, though. I know full well that the Living the Questions handout does not represent the actual views of more than, say, 15% of my local congregation, but what I read is still terrifying.

Take this snarky little statement:

And yet many Christians today make it proof of their faith and a litmus test of their relationship with God that they embrace thousand-tear-old religious ideas- and are proud of it.

The handouts for this series have been abominable at best, but this last one really takes the cake. It's seven pages portraying believers- the kind who think that maybe orthodoxy isn't a bad word- as stupid legalists afraid to think and afraid to lose the religion of their childhood. The growth in conservative churches and the death of liberal mainlines is explained by saying "people are desperately looking for just one place in this crazy life where things don't change". If you're not on board with the progressive Christian- or progressively less Christian- agenda, then you're a dead church that teaches stale rules and makes people shut their brains off in church- and you're so stupid, you like it.

Have the authors of this thing ever stepped inside an actual conservative church? Where on earth are they getting their facts? The model of churches they set up looks like this:

Type 1: Church of the Evil Conservative Nuns with Rulers

• God hates you.
  
• Stop thinking and follow the rules.
  
• The Bible is the fourth person of the Quiddity.
  
• God never meant for you to be nice to people.
  
• So scared of change we're theological LARPers.

Type 2: Church of the Smart People who Love People

• God is love, love, love and never gets mad, except at conservatives.
  
• Rules, schmules. Our only rule is... all that social justice stuff from the Old Testament.
  
• The Bible is a book written by ancient, stupid people.
  
• The only thing God cares about is that you try to do good.
  
• The only thing we fear is old stuff.

This is madness. We started the series by jettisoning the Bible, because no thinking person could ever believe that. Then we jettisoned everything else that looked vaguely orthodox, because no thinking person could ever believe that. And what have we ended up with? The sort of Pelagianism that no thinking person should believe. The earth's orbit must be bit wobbly, because I believe the Reformers, that brainy bunch, must be spinning madly in their graves.

How can these "progressives" miss that all they have is a kinder, squishier legalism? Nothing new under the sun, I guess.

Senseless Saturday

From BBC Sport:

England's experimental team ran up a record score against Wales as they put a second-string Principality side to the sword at Twickenham on Saturday.

...

Fly-half Jonny Wilkinson, who looked sharp throughout, kicked 18 points as a dominant display by England's massive pack gave him an armchair ride in temperatures of 30C in London.

...

Wales infringed in desperation and England kicked the penalty into the corner before a machine-tooled catch and drive from the line-out saw Easter - like Perry looking much fitter - power over once again.

This time Wilkinson converted and with Wales looking under increasing pressure up front a big score was already on the cards.

The hosts collected a third try before half-time when the England pack once again put the Welsh on the back foot and a hot-stepping Wilkinson set up a beach head from which Borthwick plunged over.

I read things like this and think, We really don't speak the same language, do we? I mean, what's this about an armchair ride? Isn't 30C a bit hot to be carried about in an La-Z-Boy? There are all these words that I recognized- "romp", "fly", "massive", "beach", "machine-tooled",- but I can't put them together into anything that makes sense. The reporter might just have well written about his colorless green dreams sleeping furiously, for all the sense I can make of it.

No wonder rugby hasn't made it big on this side of the pond. Nobody can understand what the commentators are talking about.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find a metal detector. Somewhere between casting off one sock and casting on for another, I lost a dpn, and I'm down to three. I really like the first sock, and I need that needle to make the second one. Wish me luck.

It's poison, I tell you.

I have decided that politics is bad for me. Really bad.

I read the news that the chief justice of the US Supreme Court had a seizure, and my first reaction was, Maybe he'll have some horrible disease and have to step down.

I am ashamed. I am a terrible person. Politics has somehow sucked away the last trace of my humanity.

Besides, at this point Bush would just replace him with another sycophant who eats civil rights with his Cheerios in the morning.

Terrible. I am a terrible, terrible, terrible person. How did I turn into this?

How to mop a floor.

1. Run out of dishwasher detergent.
2. Substitute a small amount of regular liquid dish soap.
3. Use a dishwasher that randomly develops leaks every three months or so.
4. Have my luck, courtesy of our friend Murphy.
5. Use a mop to clean up the results.
6. Admire the nice, sparkly floor.

Tonight is the night for Harry Potter! Old Voldyface is going down. And both Harry and Dumbledore are coming out the other side alive. That is what I choose to believe. (But I think we'll either be saying farewell to Ron or Neville- and please, if there is any good left in the universe, let it be Neville. And not, like, Professor McGonagall or something.)

The celebration in my hometown starts in three hours! And to celebrate... a little poetry from Shakespeare and the Doctor...

Foul Carrionite spectors, cease your show
between the points 761 390!
Banish light and tinker’s cuss, I say to thee…
EXPELLIARMUS!

See you when I've finished the book, and finished crying.

Wanted: one clue-by-four

Here's a conversation I don't want to have again.

Me: "I need to schedule an appointment."
Doc: "Leave me a voicemail and I'll call you back."
Me: "I don't have a phone where you can call me back."
Doc: "I need a phone number where I can contact you."
Me: "...I wish I had one. Still can't help you."

Two days later...

Me: "I need to schedule an appointment with Doc."
Receptionist: "You need to leave a voicemail."
Me: "I can leave a voicemail, but Doc won't be able to call me back."
Receptionist: "Try us again in two hours."

Two hours later...

Receptionist: "Doc left me some possible appointment times."
Me: "I'll take the one that's not before dawn."
Receptionist: "Great. I'll let Doc know. I'll call you if there's a problem."
Me: "O...kay?"

One week later...

Receptionist: "There was a problem and we couldn't reach you. You need to reschedule."
Me: "How will we do that?"
Receptionist: "Leave Doc a voicemail, and you'll get a call back."
Me: "..."
Receptionist: "...Oh."
Me: "Can Doc send me an email?"
Receptionist: "Oh, no, the doctors can't do that. Privacy blah blah blah."
Me: "Well, how else is this going to work?"
Receptionist: "I... don't know. I guess I can take your email."

Two days later...

Doc (email): "I don't usually do email. Call my office for an appointment. I really need a contact number for you."
Me: "...Would you like to buy me a phone?"

Hymn in three parts

Part One: Reduce

It was the day for getting rid of things. I was ruthless. I was getting rid of t-shirts not just because they didn't fit or had holes but just because I do not need ten t-shirts. I don't.

I took out two garbage bags of clothes. I didn't even stop to count the things inside, because getting rid of a number was not the goal any more. (Plus I was afraid that in the process of counting I would rethink some of my purges.) The goal was not getting rid of things; it was just to have what I need, and no more.

I took the piles of clothes out, and when I was done, I walked in to my closet and sighed, "Thank God for the things I do not have!" And I meant it with all my heart.

Thank God that the poor will have their clothes back. Thank God that my mind is free from the deadly attachment I had to those souvenir shirts. Thank God that I am, for a moment, sure of myself without the support of my things.

Part Two: Reuse

What's a financially strapped would-be spinner to do? It hardly seemed like the right time for me to start up a new, potentially expensive hobby. I did not have a spinning wheel, a drop spindle, or even the correct supplies to make a drop spindle out of an old CD. More significantly, I did not have any fiber to spin.

Which is when I remembered the cheap little pillow, whose stuffing was trickling out of several growing holes.

When I want to do something, I do it. I don't let a little thing like being broke stop me.

Spindle? Leftover piece of dowel rod, plastic lid from a tub of oats, old CD, super glue. Fiber? Polyester stuffing- impossible to comb, incredibly short draw, dingy white. It's like spinning rainclouds. (And if I could do that, by the way, I'd have plenty of fiber, and those clouds would do more good than they are sitting in the sky pretending to think about raining.)

The results could charitably be described as slubby. Actually, they could charitably be described as yarn. But it's something. At least I'm not ruining good fiber on my first sad attempts. If I can spin this, I can spin anything. (My own hair is next on the list. From short draw to loooooong draw in one fell swoop. I promise, no one will get my knitted hair as a present.)

Part Three: Rethink

I hate patriotic "hymns". Hearing them in church makes me want to vomit spectacularly, all over the "hymn"-writer's shoes. I heard this week (maybe from Bruce Ware) that there are four major world religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Americanism. I concur, with tears.

But then I discovered a hymn in our old Cold War-era hymnal that made me rethink the "patriotic" hymn, from a guy who must have known the best and the worst of this country.

Thou Judge by whom each empire fell,
When pride of power o'ercame it,
Convict us now, if we rebel,
Our nation judge, and shame it.
In each sharp crisis, Lord, appear,
Forgive, and show our duty clear:
To serve thee by repentance.

Search, Lord, our spirits in thy sight,
In best and worst reveal us;
Shed on our souls a blaze of light,
And judge, that thou may'st heal us.
The present be our judgement day,
When all our lack thou dost survey:
Show us ourselves and save us.

Lo, fearing nought we come to thee,
Though by our fault confounded;
Though selfish, mean, and base we be,
Thy justice is unbounded:
So large, it nought but love requires,
And, judging, pardons, frees, inspires.
Deliver us from evil!

-Percy Dearmer, 1867-1936

Silence great and small

I saw the film Into Great Silence back when it was in town- what, a few months ago? The experience was nothing I'd ever experienced before, but I never was able to process it into anything I could share. Fortunately, Ponder Anew has a response that could just as well be mine.

Sound and silence move me in powerful ways. My brain responds to them. I need both in my life. But silence is incredibly difficult to come by, and when I finally find it, it's initially painful. The detox process for the sound addict is very, very uncomfortable.

It happens too often: I bombard myself with input. I start to get used to having music playing in the background, having the TV on when I do other things, listening to my books on tape instead of reading them. I get used to talking and talking, and listening to other people talk, and listening to many people talk very fast and all at once, and eventually my brain just wears out.

It's a crash. I have taken in so much and have processed so little of it that my brain simply runs out of memory. It refuses to take any more. I can only hear so much before I just can't hear any more.

Seeing Into Great Silence was like the first few days of being sober (I gather). For a few moments, the silence is nice. Then it's excruciating. It's not just the lack of sound but the visual silence, too: the review has it right when it says it's like watching a still life. A few minutes in, watching a statuesque monk at his prayers, and I started to get fidgety. Then I started to feel desperate. The temptation to move, to make some sound just to avoid being left with that awful, deafening silence, was overwhelming.

And then it got easier to bear, and easier, and eventually it even became refreshing. I even started to envy the monks, whose way of life gives them the liberty of not having to speak. Frankly, I'm still envious at times- when I'm interrupted at prayer, or when I know the only words I have are unkind, or when I'm just too overloaded to speak. There are so many times when I am socially obligated to make noise, when it would be better for me to let there be silence.

This is such a challenge for me, to allow myself some silence. It feels unproductive, awkward, inefficient. But it also, when I am in the midst of it, feels so fully human that it seems cruel to break it. How can I reclaim that freedom to be still, in the face of a supercharged, fast-moving world?

Well, whaddaya know?

The Ubiquitous Brown Plaid does have a name.

Now I can sleep at night.

Uh-oh.

Yarn Harlot!



I have a bone to pick with you.

A few days ago, on your blog, you shamelessly posted an image of the Baby Surprise Jacket, without giving any thought to how this might affect the welfare or safety of others.

My human, being equally thoughtless, made a brave attempt to knit the aforementioned jacket from the picture, without a pattern. While her efforts were admirable, and for a while there it actually looked like the finished product might fit a human infant, the end results were not pretty.

Not pretty at all.



Ms. Harlot, I am holding you responsible for my pain and suffering. Maybe next time you'll think before you post tempting, patternless garments on the internet.

Amusing the muse

You hear that?

That endless noise like cosmic giggles?

That's the knitting muse, laughing her head off as I knit the first row of a 250-stitch-wide afghan, only to realize I started knitting with the cast-on tail. Try to ignore the noise; she's probably going to be cackling for a while.

The Harry Potter House "Sweater" needs two more things:

A left armhole and a really good blocking. I promise, that picture is not distorted; it really is that wide. I also promise that I am definitely not that wide.

It turns out I didn't have anywhere near enough yarn to put sleeves on this thing. Turns out, I have just enough yarn to finish that armhole. Fortunately the pattern was written with unbelievably huge amounts of ease, so I'll be blocking that dubba-wide vest thing into something with recognizably human proportions. That's tonight's project: tomorrow, the show!

Speaking of things in odd shapes, would you believe that this...

...is a hat?

It's a pattern I'm test driving for the fiber arts ministry I'm hoping will get going in August. The pattern will come with beginner's kits:

... so that total newbies won't have to suffer through the misery of a garter stitch scarf. Unless they knit the largest size hat, which is roughly equivalent. Instead, they'll have something hat-like and not rectangular at the end, which is definitely more interesting than a scarf. That's the theory, anyway. I'm still, er, fine-tuning the pattern.


Meanwhile, on the Dark Side: the Death Star strikes again.


The one blanket just wasn't enough, so I pulled out all my [s]crap yarn and... ended up with another WIP that looks like a [s]crap yarn blanket. At least it's not bland.

And, as though I didn't already have way, way too many WIPs, the Silky Wool got Hooked.

I'm not even going to tell you what it is yet. Look at that. Look how lovely it is. I don't think you could make a bad project with that yarn. You could knit up a trash can cozy or crochet the world's strangest toilet lid cover, and the Silky Wool would be like, oh, I'm so glamorous in an understated and elegant way, I totally transform any tacky purpose you put me to into something noble and glorious.

Revere the wool. Pray that it never turns its powers against you.

Musings: Hospitality, Generosity, Opportunity

(With any luck, tomorrow will be the day for knitting pictures- possibly including one of the HP movie ensemble. Fake grafting of the House "Sweater" shoulders is in progress; neckline and armhole ribbing is scheduled for completion tomorrow, followed by a very long session of weaving in ends. If I have any strength left after that, you'll see pictures.)

For the first time in my life, I think, I have hit what I could fairly call "hard times". The past few months have taken their toll, and I sit at the end of them tired, sick, broke, and now without income. It's not a particularly pleasant place to be. These circumstances have, however, given me just the right amount of time for reflection.

I knew it would be best if I stayed in the same town while my medical issues sorted themselves out. This meant putting off my dreams of grad school or, alternatively, a short-term mission placement. My life was put on hold while my survival took center stage. I was disappointed. But finally, after months and months of tough times, God delivered his whack of the clue-by-four.

I'm starting to realize that having to give up my plans is not a setback: God's timing is best. It is an opportunity. I believe I have work left to do where I am, both for myself and for my community. What exactly that work is, I can't say. I'm still waiting for the Cruise Director to hand out the itinerary, if you catch my drift. But I am learning to trust and wait. It's not an easy lesson.

Meanwhile, I'm struggling to figure out how exactly one serves God while dirt poor. Maybe the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, but the lack of money sure makes it hard to serve God the way I want to. How can I show hospitality to people when I can't spare a can of condensed soup to feed them? How can I put in my two pennies in the offering plate when it's all I have to live on? How can I be generous when I owe people money and I could run out of food next week?

But in my good moments, I find joy again. When I'm at my best, rather than panicking about how to get things, I'm weeding things out of my life that aren't necessary. Extra blankets. Extra clothes. That second coat in my closet that belongs to the person who's shivering in the cold. (Well, not shivering today, maybe.) In some ways, this lean time is a blessing. I feel less cluttered; my purpose is in clearer focus. Not to sound too proud about it, because I'm only making meager beginnings, but I'm learning to throw away everything that separates me from Christ.

It's a fast of sorts, and I'm grateful for it. I have never been poor before, and though I'm not anywhere near real poverty yet, I feel like a layer of scales has fallen off my eyes. I'm just not quite sure what I'm looking at yet.

I do not fear change.

In fact, I embrace it to the point of undertaking it just for the heck of it. (It's the furniture-rearranging gene that was passed down from my grandmother.)

Today's significant changes are two in number and bloggy in nature. The big one first: I'm consolidating my blogs into one big blog. The old pages will stay up, but I won't be posting there any more. That means that this page will be Me HQ.

This move is totally contrary to my usual behavior, so I fully expect myself to feel a little wrong-footed when it comes to what goes in the blog. Enjoy the ride with me.

The second is that I am instituting a monthly Yarn Weigh-in, to occur at the end of each month. Mainly I've decided to do it this way because keeping a running total was slowing down my creative process (read: making me think before I cast on yet another WIP). I figure a yarn diet is like every other diet: you don't stand on the scale until you see the number you want. You try to do things that are better for you and check in at the scale periodically to see how it's going. Besides, it's way harder to keep track of every scrap of yarn I touch than it is to do a half-hour monthly inventory.

What am I working on now? Well, after the Bridal Shawl I discovered that working on a deadline, with daily goals, really helps me get moving. And since I already had a deadline in place- July 11- I did the math and realized that that leaves me ten days to finish my House sweater.

Ten days is not a whole lot of time.

I started setting daily goals, because if I left it with just a deadline, I'd be hating my needles and cursing my yarn at 11 pm on July 10. The daily goals are pretty steep, though. For instance, at the end, I set a goal to knit a sleeve each day.

Haha. Yeah, right.

Fortunately, I've left myself an escape clause. This is as much because of my knitting speed as because I think I'm going to run out of yarn, and because it's hot in July. This House sweater may end up being a House vest. I'll do ribbing instead of sleeves and call the thing good.

Giving myself a day or two to recover, I'll have another week to finish off some Quidditch socks to complete my book release ensemble for the party on July 21. I hope no one will blame me if after this, I refuse to ever knit anything again.

But the outfit will be awesome.

Deviant

First things first: I finished the gift knit, a shawl for Checkers' bridal shower.




I am enormously proud of this thing. I designed it all by me onesies. The yarn is Rowan Cashcotton (YUM!), and you see the cast off? That's a long chain crochet cast off. That's right, the c-word. I was a little nervous about this initially, but once I got going it was sort of addicting.

So I moved on to my first real crochet. (gasp! shock! horror!)

I started an afghan in single crochet, after which I realized that this was not all that much faster than knitting, and after all, the prime advantage of crochet was supposed to be speed. I frogged that, and then I remembered the first book my aunt had given me when attempting to trick me into crocheting: granny square afghans.



Feel the granny square love. I've started assembling them now, because the idea of sewing a hundred thousand granny squares together at once makes me woozy. There's no real pattern; I'm just putting them together in big blocks, and I'll organize them later.

Meanwhile, earthchick passed on some really fat baby yarn that had gotten passed on to her. I knew immediately what this had to be, so I pulled out my N-hook, and roughly 5 hours later:



It's Beth's star-shaped baby afghan, and my first crochet FO. Am I proud? Enormously.

I never thought I would learn to crochet. It's been six years since I first started trying to crochet, off and on, and I was sure I would never get beyond rectangles. Now I'm churning out crochet things like I've heard they're discontinuing Red Heart Super Saver (and why are all the crochet patterns I have written for that sad excuse for yarn?). It's addicting. It's crack for knitters.

There's just one major crochet drawback: When I went back to knitting, I started wrapping the yarn backward.

As they say in the Vaterland...

Ich bin dran. The lovely earthchic(k), originatress of the Seven Things project, has tagged me. The meme? 7 random things about me. I don't think this is coincidence, do you?

1. I was a conlanger in my youth. I made up languages- words, grammar, alphabets. Now I just make up alphabets and study conlangs that other people make up. This leads to the world's most awesome penpal arrangements. (!Shorah brehgeltahnteeokh D'ni)

2. I am considering consolidating all my blogs into this one.

3. I use the Dvorak keyboard layout, which is easier on my wrists (and therefore allows me more comfortable knitting time). However, people no longer like to share computers with me, since I have a habit of forgetting to switch the keyboard back, leaving the next unlucky person to wonder why the keyboard is typing gibberish.

4. I only eat cucumbers with feta cheese. I cannot stand either one of those foods separate from the other. This is a leftover from my trip to Greece, where the one food we could count on having at every single meal was a "salad" of cucumbers, feta, and tomatoes. And I don't like tomatoes.

5. This did not stop me from growing tomatoes last year on the patio last year.

6. My favorite prime number is 17, which totally pwns 23. 7 is my least favorite prime number, because I feel it gets overused. 5 doesn't get enough attention as a prime number, and 3 is too obvious; 2, on the the other hand, is too showy. I mean, isn't it enough of a distinction to be a prime number without having to be an even number, too?

7. Far, far back in the recesses of my childhood lies the beginning of a recurring dream, in which I find levels and levels of extra rooms under the church I grew up in. There are all sorts of odd statues, artifacts, sculptures, and parents of Sunday school classmates with the bodies of giant tarantulas. Going downstairs is more interesting, but after having this dream for about ten years, I finally discovered that if you climb up through the attics, you'll come out on a mountaintop where there's awesome snowboarding.

I, as usual, will decline to tag anyone.

Detailed knitting updates will have to wait for the weekend, but suffice it to say I'm on a manic knitting streak and I'm wearing my arms out trying to finish up a gift. You'll get to see it once the recipient has seen it first.

I'm going to my first SnB tonight- wish me luck!

Infodump!

I moved the yarn pile from the living room into my bedroom today. (Apologies to PSD, who was probably having a quiet moment in his office while I was doing this upstairs. I didn't keep dropping things intentionally, I promise.) As I relocated, I also took a detailed count of what was in the pile, and I came up with:

19 works in progress
179 balls, hanks, skeins, and blobs of yarn

Not as bad as I feared. It helped that there is no longer a frog pond: I threw all that stuff away. Thrift, shmift. Ripping out old sweaters is a pain, and for cheap cotton, it's totally not worth it.

Instead, I am now reveling in my pile of indulgence yarn, and hoping I can make it last a while. Here, friends, is where those forty yarn blobs were added:


Merino Sei. This almost doesn't count, since it was marked down from $8 to $3 per ball. I wouldn't feel guilty about it, except that I pounced on the opportunity and bought enough for two sweaters. I did not know that fate led me to just the right colors for this:

My Harry Potter House sweater. I am in a little bit of denial about the color of the stripe; I'm telling myself it's blue and not purple and that it really is in Ravenclaw colors (blue and bronze), so play along, okay? I am so looking forward to wearing this in the middle of July, when the Peony and I are going to our Hometown, which will be turned into Hogwarts Central for the night. I have already started praying that the man in a kilt and a poncho will show up. (Go read Book 4 again and come back when you get it.)

Moving forward. This...

...is the reason it's a bad idea to talk to me about how much yarn I buy. This was a revenge purchase. 19 hanks of fairly nice cotton. It's not much to look at now, but... well, I'm making up the sweater as I go, so it may not be much to look at ever. Just don't tell that to the evil person who hounded me about my yarn investments. (He, of course, has been spending my annual yarn budget on woodworking tools.)

In moments of happiness and sale-price hypnotism, there was also this:

(Sierra and Silky Wool)

...and this...

...the A-squared sweater, so named for the angora and alpaca yarn it's made from. This sweater is partially knit from the stash; the angora was a birthday present from the Peony. The alpaca, on the other hand, was a problem. If her book had come out sooner, I might have heeded the Harlot's advice: don't stand by the counter too long. 600 glorious yards of undyed superfine alpaca? Of course I had to get two colors. It's doubled up in the sweater to match the worsted-weight angora.

I do have exactly one guilt-free item, knit entirely from the stash:

The Mermaid sock. It's one of Lucy Neatby's patterns in Cool Socks, Warm Feet, and I love it. I changed the heel and the toe, of course, because I can't follow a pattern to save my life. But I really like the way the pattern works with the stripes. At the hospital, though, they apparently thought it was dangerous:



...because it came back to me in a biohazard bag. Maybe the size 0 needles scared them.

Now, gentle reader, I am off to eat dinner. And after that, I'm going to pick up a project from my pile. Between all the sweaters, afghans, socks, and stuffed animals on my WIP list, I suppose I shouldn't have any trouble finding something interesting to knit- in theory.

Battles and wars

Some of you may have noticed that it's been several weeks since I posted anything on any of my blogs. I am glad to report that I am making my way, slowly but surely, out of the blog silence. With any luck, my life will decide to be less absolutely maddeningly crazy, making it possible for me to become acquainted with the internet again.

What have I been doing in the meantime? Well... falling off the stash wagon. In a big way. I didn't even make it all the way through Lent. There are times in life, I feel, that require comfort yarn no matter what previous resolutions one might have made, and I hit several of those times. I think, though, that my LYSs (both of them) are partly to blame: they have been putting things on sale especially to tempt me. I mean, Malabrigo and Koigu PPPM at 50% off? How am I supposed to resist that?

While the stash wagon was rolling off into the sunset, the WIP wagon was not far behind it. I've been on something of a sweater kick lately, and I've been starting one with pretty much every new yarn purchase. Alas, I have not been in the mood to finish things, so I have- wait, let me count- four sweaters on the needles (I think it's just four, I could be wrong) and still no more actual wearable sweaters than I had a year ago. But boy, knitting sweaters sure is fun!

However! I am not giving up! I'll be relocating the yarn swamp soon (from the living room to my room, since roomie has moved on), and when I do, I will update the yarn stats on the sidebar. Try not to look to shocked when I do. I think my yarn weight now exceeds my body weight, which is a strong statement coming from the woman who's eaten Cocoa Crispies for dinner for the past week. I'll be chasing the wagon down and hopping back on it, whether the other yarnoholics want me on board or not. And when I do, I'll flash my stash again and give a tour of my WIP pile, including such items as:

• A sweater or two- or three- or more
  
• Various half-hearted attempts at stashbusting
  
• More Ann and Kay-inspired thriftiness
  
• Evidence of total lack of thriftiness
  
• ...and some items that will come in handy on July 11

Stay tuned. You won't want to miss it. (Well, I don't want you to miss it, so come back anyway.)

♫ Busy, busy, dreadfully busy... ♫

Once I actually started hauling out the knitting I've done since my last update, I was kind of surprised. I've been busy, all right. Just not on a single project. Knitting infidelity is just in my nature.

But first, the outcome of that luverly sunshiny yarn.



I'm calling it the Sunshine Shawl of Absolutely No Subtlety, because- well, I suppose you can see why! It started with the choice to use short row shaping to make something roundish (inspired by Knitty's Bloom shawl pattern), which made the stripes run longways like rays of sunshine. By the time I got to the end of the body section, I had plenty of yarn left over, so I figured I'd drive the imagery home with a sledgehammer and add a pointy edging.

It was good to get it out of my system. And boy, did it make me happy while I was knitting it. It still needs blocking, but I'm reasonably pleased with it as a quick, soothing knit in the middle of a long winter.

After that- at least, I think it was after that- I started two other projects, both from the stash.



The dishcloth is part of a stack of dishcloths I'm making, six years too late. See, when my grandma taught me to knit, she bought me some sparkly Sugar and Cream and a book of dishcloth patterns, on the condition that I knit her some dishcloths. I intended to, but the first patterns I tried were too hard and came out looking like the incarnation of suck. I proceeded to mostly forget about my promise until recently, when I started making dishcloths for Da House. I put as many handknit dishcloths in the kitchen as I thought were reasonable, which was only a few more than fit in the drawer, but my appetite for dishcloth knitting was not sated. Which was when I remembered my Ancient Promise to Nana. I hope this will help me kill off the unending cone of Sugar and Cream that's haunting my yarn shelves.

The sock is made from souvenir yarn; I made a very amateur hat for The Peony with it for Christmas a few years ago (which she graciously treasured, even though I made it exactly not to her specifications). It was also my first experience with yarn that came in a hank, which meant mostly that I sat on my bed for hours trying to untangle this messy new kind of skein I had discovered. Not a pleasant experience. The sock, thankfully, is only a little bit enormous on my foot, instead of the usual circulation-obstructing tight socks I usually make. I figure it's wool, so I can adjust it somehow, right? Right?

Okay. Brief pause for a less enthusiastic moment. I loved Eunny Jang's twisted I-cord bind-off, and I had planned to make a really awesome tank out of it. But! I had next to no idea about sweater construction when I planned this. Plus, the yarn is recycled cotton from a thrift store sweater, and the way the plies are, it's basically like knitting with three strands of crappy string held together. Say goodbye, sweater.



Because you, and your accompanying yarn, are hitting the trash can. How's that for stash and WIP reduction?

(Someone please remind me to pull out my needles before I set the trash can on fire.)

And now, as promised...

It's the How Many FOs Will This Skein Make? Show!

The goal is pretty simple. I take one skein of yarn and make a lot of little things out of it. The more, the better. Theoretically, all the same. If you have frequent second sock episodes or can't stand knitting in garter stitch, well, this is probably not the game for you, but you're welcome to watch. (But if you must faint, please do it outside; I just "organized" the stash, and anywhere you fall you're likely to disarrange hours of difficult yarn wrangling.)

For my hopefully-not-too-monotonous one-skein kniting premiere...



It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mitten-Making Marathon!

The mittens are roughly baby-sized and thumbless. I'm making them from Lorri's pattern. The yarn is a supersoft acrylic from my other grandma, who had it lying around somewhere. (I appreciate all gifts of yarn, so I try not to ask too many questions.) The yarn is very very very plain white, so I'm thinking I'll make a big batch of mittens, then use yarn scraps to embroider something small and cute and mitten-y on the backs. The finished mitts will be going to KnitWits, because what I could I do with a massive pile of baby mittens? I made two pairs this afternoon (each mitten takes me about an hour right now) and I'm not even bored with the pattern yet.

And did you know those plastic zippered things that bedsheets come in are perfect for storing knitting? Seriously. Actual zippers, and no way are the needles poking through that plastic. It's a little ghetto, but I'd rather spend the money on yarn. (Except that, like the rest of the high-church knitting world, I gave up buying yarn for Lent. Rats.)

Coming attractions!

Just popping in to say that I spent my spring break sleeping till after noon, watching TV, and doing a little knitting. I'll catch y'all up on the progress tomorrow, but here are the previews:

• The FO from the Yarn of Sunshiny Happiness
  
• The new WIP, which is actually from the stash, I swear
  
• Episode 1 of the How Many FOs Will This Skein Make Show!
  
• ...and I will finally do the Unthinkable and take Desperate Measures

Stay tuned. It should be good.

Lead us not into temptation

So... the stash grew.

The first purchase was intentional. I've been longing to knit a sweater for a while now, and when I got my tax return, I knew just what it wanted to become: the Stacy Pullover from Big Girl Knits.



Look at the yummy stitch pattern! (The color is digitally unenhanced- I couldn't figure out a way to keep the color and the stitch definition. :/) I'm very excited for this sweater, since I don't have many sweaters.

(The best reaction came from my roommate, who, as I was describing BGK's totally awesome approach to plus-size knitting, gave me a horrified look and said, "But you're not a plus size!" Oh yes I am, darling, and I'm not ashamed, either. I like my curves; I like feeling like I have substance. Not to mention I actually get to enjoy food this way.)

I flew into this sweater, doing the fastest knitting I think I've ever done. I got the yarn on Thursday, and yesterday the sweater looked like this:



The armhole shaping seems to defy my ability to count, but I started on the sleeve so that I could have something relatively mindless to work on during class. I really want to wear this sweater before it gets too warm. (Which, the way the weather is going, means I've got at least three months to finish it.)

That was the planned purchase. And then... today happened.

I walked into the yarn store with the intention of getting some of the sale sock yarn I had seen when I got the sweater. The sock yarn bin was gone, so I skimmed through the other things, thinking maybe I would see a skein of something really interesting. I wandered past some ribbon and some silk, and then.

Then.

From across the store: a sunshiny yellow.

I sprinted over to it, the happiest color of yarn I have ever seen in my life. In the middle of a blizzard, I needed some sunshine. I picked it up and fondled it a little bit. I tell you, I could feel the sunshine oozing out of the fiber. I was in a trance. I picked it up and took it home and made it my pet.



...along with several of its brothers and sisters.



It's a good thing I only had cash on me, because if I had had plastic, I would have gotten the other five balls. (Hey, it was clearance yarn- $4 a ball! How could I resist that?) It's a good thing the roads are snowy and awful, or I might have gone back to get the rest of them. I've never experienced a yarn like this before- I didn't even stop to think, just picked up all the yarn I could afford and took it to the counter. No second thoughts. No project in mind. Just absolute bliss in my fibery trance.

Now what will I do with 800 yards of sunshiny yellow yarn?

Maybe I'll just fondle it for a while.

Emergency winter knitting

It is absolutely freezing cold here, so cold that the local TV stations are running school closings at the botton of the screen, and I haven't seen them repeat in more than ten minutes. Every sensible school has called things off, since there's been a wind chill advisory, you can get frostbite in minutes, and nobody wants students out walking in that kind of weather- except our lovely university. Since I was out walking in the -20 and more wind chill today, and I didn't have a hat or a scarf, I needed to crank out some FO's, very fast.

Look, an FO!


I finished this guy last night, so it was ready to wear today, and I managed not to lose my ears to frostbite. It's a double-knit hat in what my semantics prof calls "patriotic" colors. Nice and thick, and...

Reversible. Isn't double knitting great? That folded-up part is the best, because it makes the fabric quadruple thick over my ears and forehead, where I need it most.

Next up: the dishcloth. This is so boring there's no point in taking pictures of it. It's just a super thick garter stitch washcloth, made as a hint for a housemate and said housemate's egg-coated frying pan. I finished it to be able to say I had finished something, and together with the acquisition of my soon-to-be job and the completion of last semester's coursework- finally- I had an excuse to celebrate by buying some yarn for a scarf.



Mmm, Manos. The colorway is mulled wine:



That's what I had on Friday, and today I had this:



Leftovers on the head of the Yarn Guardian.

No, really, the spider is the Yarn Guardian. He was a gift from my friend the Peony in the aftermath of a moth scare. See, his tag proves it:



(Too fuzzy? It says "I am the Yarn Guardian. I eat moths!")

Oh, what else did the Manos turn into? This:



Check out the awesomeness: It's a reversible cabled scarf. I was knitting away during Knitty Gritty on Thursday, when Lily Chin was on, and she uttered the magic words: Reversible cables. I about snapped my neck, I looked up so fast. Cables that look the same on both sides? Who ever heard of such a thing?

I wasn't sure I was going to have enough. I got two hanks, ostensibly of 135 yards each, but when I got done with the first one I had a little less than what I considered to be half a scarf. But either I had invisible gauge changes, or "about 135 yards" isn't a terribly precise measurement, because this is how much difference there was between the two hanks:



That's, like, a foot of knitting. Kind of a big difference. Fortunately, the scarf came out exactly the length I was hoping for, so all in all the Yarn Guardian and I are pleased.



With any luck, all this knitting will help me come through the long walks in the arctic blasts with all my body parts un-frostbitten.

Large, lacy temptation

Over the summer, I made an impulse purchase at my LYS: four skeins of laceweight alpaca/silk blend, in a lovely dusty rose color. I've been looking for the perfect lace shawl pattern ever since, but lately I've done a lot more searching. I'm telling myself I'm not allowed to cast on any more new projects, because 12 WIPs should be enough for anyone, but naturally, as soon as I made that decision the temptation to cast on for a sweater or a shawl tripled. I really, really want to knit a sweater, but I thought maybe I could subdue the large-project hunger with something large, intricate, and lacy.

I was out searching for patterns when I stopped dead in my tracks. Because, of course, I already have something large and lacy (and, conveniently, pink) on the needles. I'd been neglecting it because of an error I couldn't quite fix with my crochet hook, so it sat abandoned until I could summon the strength to either fix it or live with the mistake. I hauled it out the other day, and here's what it looks like now:



A large pink butterfly in the garden. The yarn is Cascade Sierra, a 80% cotton/20% wool blend. Here's the lace pattern, spread out (indoors this time- 20% wool isn't enough to protect a shawl from January temperatures for very long):



The completed non-trivet wanted in on the glamor shot action.



All this knitting seems not to have had much of an impact on my stash count, however- I have finished off exactly one ball of yarn this week. I've made sizable dents in some others, but I can't change the stash count yet. Maybe with the next non-trivet.

It's a what now?

My semantics prof has always taken an unusual interest in the stuff I'm knitting. It's not all that unusual for a professor to comment about my knitting, since I knit during my classes, but this particular professor tries to guess the identity of every project I bring to class. (I think he secretly wants to be a knitter.) Today he took a look at this:

and asked if I was making a trivet.

No, I said.

A what? I thought.

It turns out that some people, when they have to put hot dishes on the table, don't use a potholder. They use a trivet. If I were going to make a trivet, I think I would make it out of something thicker than sock yarn, but maybe the squareness of the thing just threw him off.

The non-trivet is, of course, the beginnings of another piece for the Sock Cabin Stashghan. I've been knitting on this almost exclusively since I started it- the log cabin thing is seriously adddictive- and here's what I've got so far:

Modelled by the capable husband. (Is there an official name for this kind of pillow? I get such strange looks when I call it a husband.)

I like the squares by themselves well enough, but I'm not really sure how they're going to look when I put them together. I'm trying to tell myself I don't care, and it's half true, but I do wonder about it from time to time.

When I started this thing, I was afraid I wasn't going to have enough sock yarn in my stash to get to the end of this blanket, especially because I blasted through lots of small bits on the first square. I now admit the total foolishness of this fear. I have not actually finished off a ball of yarn since the inside of the first square, and it occurs to me that this could be an enormous blanket by the time I've used up even a reasonable amount of the sock yarn stash. And the thought of all that blanket that lies ahead of me is enough to send me scrambling for the knitting. Clearly, I have some work ahead of me.

I need to learn to knit faster.

The new obsession

Puppy wants to do the big reveal of the new WIP; he's pretty excited!



Look! Look!
It's a log cabin from leftover sock yarn!



I do so love log cabin knitting. I don't know why. I know that huge amounts of garter stitch should be painfully boring, but it's not. It's great. No decreases, no purling, no worrying about color changes. You just pick a side, pick up some stitches, and go- no worries, no planning, just yarn and knitting. Very zen.

This is what grew out of that swatch-sized bit from yesterday; I've been knitting on it all day. I have since discovered that I have a burning need to knit more socks, so that their leftovers can be incorporated into the blankie. And those socks should be anklets, so that there's more yarn left over. Actually, I have discovered that I am sorely tempted to forgo the sock part altogether and convert my sock yarn stash into one large light-weight blankie.

And yes, blankie, not blanket. This thing is for me, and I don't care how weird the color combinations are. It's knitting nostalgia. It's souvenir stash in functional form. I remember fondly each project whose leftovers are in this patch. It's comforting knitting, and I fully expect it to grow into a mostly-grown-up comfort blankie.

Not to say that I'm paying no attention at all to how it looks. I'm trying to plan what happens, now that the stripes are so wide, when self-striping yarn gets worked in. I'll probably make several little blocks, like the one I have now, and put them together.

Puppy wants to model the blankie (and give his owner an excuse to take more gratuitous knitting pictures).



Ah, but what are puppy and owner not quite as excited about?



Weaving in ends. Ah. Every knitter's favorite part. If I were smart, I'd start weaving them in now, but what fun would that be? Besides, I just remembered some sock yarn that has failed to turn into socks four times, and I think it's going to have to go into this blankie...

I couldn't stop myself.

Uh-oh.



Bear, what is that you're holding?



Is that a new WIP?



Doesn't your owner have socks that look like that?

Well, yes. But I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my sock yarn leftovers, and the higher WIP count is totally worth it for the pleasure I get out of this kind of knitting. What is it? It's a secret! (But fans of Ann and Kay can probably figure it out...)