The Heathen Housewife

I have a lovely neighbor named Laura, who lives across the street from me. (For those of you who read often and may be confused by my constantly referring to two different families that live “across the street” – it’s because we live on a corner and have two sets of great “across the street” neighbors). In the two years since our family moved into this house, we’ve really grown to appreciate how lucky we are to have so many great neighbors. Even the hateful old biddy who lives next door is good in her own way – at least they maintain their property well and do no worse damage than mean-spirited gossip and snipes. But that’s another story.

Laura and I have become friends over the last couple of years, and we have some things in common like children the same age, similar beliefs and outlooks, and actually, other friends. As with most people I meet, I’m sure Laura knew from just about the first time we met that I like to knit. Because I *am* a crazy knitter, and if I’m not in fact knitting something as I talk to you, I’m pretty much guaranteed to mention my crazy knitting at some point in our first conversation. Imagine my shock and surprise, then, when a few months ago Laura grudgingly admitted that she knits “a bit.” As my jaw dropped open, she explained that she didn’t want to say anything to me because she knits differently (I think kind of mirror-imaged to standard right-handed knitting) and maybe something about not being as good as me or whatever.

And the whole reason it came up in conversation at all was because I was in the middle of winding another long skein of yarn for self-striping, and it turns out she’d been experimenting with food dye and yarn herself! And suddenly the already-cool neighbor became even more interesting because now we have something really awesome in common! But it gets better.

Yesterday, Laura presented me with a set of the stitch markers she’s been making. They’re really cool because they’re meant for smaller needle sizes, and I’ve never seen ones like this before – they’re made out of beading elastic so that the loops fit in between your stitches on the needle better and don’t get in the way as much while you’re knitting past them. They’re very simple, but they’re a new idea and I think they’re super cool.

Now, I have to admit…I’m not really a stitch-marker-lovin’ knitter in the first place. I see lots of knitters who love to place that stitch marker to mark the beginning of the round pretty much every time, even if they’re using double-points, so they know the beginning of the round is right there at the beginning of the needle on the side where the cast-on tail is hanging down. That’s not me. I usually only use markers if I’m working on a pretty complicated pattern like lace or if I’m using circulars and need to either mark beginning of round or where decreases go.

Having these new markers hot in my hands, though, I really wanted to try them out. First, I have to show you my normal preferred method of marking increase/decrease spots on double-point-needle tubes.

I love those little Clover coilless safety-pin type markers because you can use them either on the needle itself or, as pictured here, right in the fabric. As you’re working around, you don’t have to slide them from one needle to the other but your fingers brush it in the fabric to let you know that something interesting is going on in this spot, and you only have to move it up every once in a while. Very functional, but not all that glamorous.

So I tried putting my cute little marker in its place, and it really is cute. These markers look so “mod” or almost art-deco with their square little crimping things next to the round beads. I love their tiny size matching the tiny size of the yarn and needles. I’m not very good at accessorizing myself, but hey look I can have the perfect accessory for my knitting!

Those are, by the way, the legs for Sophie’s pants, working their way up towards the knees. Yes, I cast on provisionally so I could create the picot hem by folding over on a row of YO-K2Tog and then knitting the cast-on stitches together with the live stitches. I meant to find a good resource explaining it before typing this post, but sorry I forgot. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have something for you.

Here we have a pant leg in progress that has gone a little over the top with the accessories…

That’s a yarn bra on the cake of yarn and a point protector on the needles. I just got the point protector in the mail while I was taking these pictures during lunch today. I had ordered them from Mielke’s while I was ordering the niddy-noddy (which did finally come just like I wanted – they were very apologetic about the mix-up and sent it out right quick when I let them know.) And it was a great deal. Only three dollars! That’s a lot less than other similar double-point needle protectors I’ve seen on the market.

Here’s Pomatomus wearing the green ones I bought at the Yarnery a while back for at least double the price. And speaking of Pomatomus, here’s where it stands at the moment. I’m well past the heel and gusset, and it’s straight on to the toe. It’s on hold till I get a little further on…

Baudelaire! Which is just past the heel going in the other direction, and now straight on to the top of the cuff for this one.

And here is an overview of the current small-project collection floating around our house at the moment.

And there’s only one problem. As much as I want to keep knitting on Pomatomus and Baudelaire, because I think I could finish one or maybe both of them before class next week, I think I need to cast on for another sock. Sockapalooza socks need to go out on August 2, and I haven’t started the second sock yet. The first one only took me about a week, I think, but I want to have the second one done and blocked with time to spare, especially since it’s time to start thinking about the pre-camp to-do list. I think tonight’s couch time will be devoted to Sockapalooza.

But anyway, I’ve digressed. Back to my friend Laura. It turns out that not only is she a secretly quite-good knitter (an a modest one at that) but she also has a blog that she’s been keeping from me for more than a year! And on top of that, she does other cool crafts like stamping and beading and I’m sure all kinds of other stuff that for some reason she’s been secretive about. I don’t know whether to hug her or shame her for not telling me sooner. Because I found all of this out, and suddenly she’s opening an etsy shop full of really neat stuff that I want to buy. You should go check it out, because you, too, could become the new owner of some super-cute teeny tiny stitch markers – and for not very much money!

And now I have to add that I started this post LAST night and didn’t get to finish it because Sophie woke up and I was tired so I just went up and took her to bed with me. I’m so behind. Now, before someone wakes up or my time runs out, I’m going to sign off and go start in on the first season of The Wire, which I borrowed from the library and I only have one week to watch all five DVDs.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 3:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.