A Bluestocking Knits

Here’s a new knitting meme started by Grumperina, ten "knitterly" things you probably don’t know about me.

1. I’ve started my Christmas knitting already!  Can’t show you, of course.

2. I’ve got a bad case of the knitting jitters lately — you know, when you can’t decide what project to do next, and you start one only to look longingly at another, and another, and maybe even another.  A shawl?  Jaywalkers in Shepherd Sock "Lakeview," perhaps?

3 and 4. I dreamed about this last night —

It’s from Romantic Style by Jennie Atkinson.  I bought the book for this pattern, although luckily it has a lot of other interesting things as well, because I try not to buy knitting books unless I want to make at least half of the things in it.

5. I answer almost every comment made here, and for those I don’t answer specifically, I return a comment on that person’s blog.  This comes from my feeling that this blog is supposed to be a dialogue as much as a monologue, and also that if a reader takes the time to comment, I can take the time to reply.  (I apologize to anyone whose comment I apparently ignored the past couple of weeks — TypePad’s notification feature hasn’t been working again lately, and so I haven’t seen a number of the comments.)  The knitting-related part comes in because I regard this blog as a knitting-group substitute, and enjoy the back-and-forth of commenting very much.  (That said, I’m actually not much of a talker, and don’t seem to comment much on the blogs that I read.  I’m trying to change this.)

6. Like Grumperina, I find myself often baffled by Rowan’s designs.  But then a lot about Rowan baffles me.  Why is 4-Ply only 2-ply?  Why if Yorkshire Tweed is "a classic" is it being discontinued already?  What color is "Turbid," anyway?

7. My oldest unfinished project is at least ten years old.  No, maybe not that long, but it’s old.  Many years ago, I bought up just about every bit of the extra-fine wool at Super Yarn Mart, in hopes of some day knitting a Norwegian luskofte.  After making a Swedish Halland-style sweater, and not being able to wear it more than two or three times a winter, if that, I thought of making a luskofte-style scarf, using Elizabeth Zimmerman’s sock-toe scarf idea from Knitting Without Tears and some of the Setesdal luskofte charts in Sheila McGregor’s The Complete Book of Traditional Scandinavian Knitting.  It’s still a pretty good idea, I think, and a nice scarf, but it is so fine and the needles so tiny that it makes my hands hurt and it takes forever to work even one round.

Well, I can’t even find the scarf, it’s been so long, but here’s the Halland sweater —

8.  But since I started blogging, I finish a lot more things than I used to.  Maybe I’ll pick up that scarf more often.

9.  I learned to knit two-handed on the Halland sweater, so it was 1989 — but for some reason I’ve never tried to knit Continental on its own.

10. When I had long hair and wore it in a knot, I used to stick my needle in the knot instead of setting it down beside me.  Sometimes I’d forget and walk around with it there half the day.  It was very handy, though, and I miss my hair so much that I’m letting it grow out again.