Confessional

I watch way too much TV, often during the day after it's been aired, so I can fast forward through all the boring commercials (although I have been known to stop and watch one if it's got something interesting going on).

One of the new shows I've picked up this season is Pushing Daisies. Sadly, it's got all the hallmarks of a show that's not going to make it. PD is the show that made me realize I needed a knitting blog, when they showed Chi McBride (who plays one of the main characters) knitting as a stress reliever. They even said that he was knitting in stockinette because he found it soothing, and made a point of saying he was on a purl row later when he had to put his knitting down. It even looked like he was *actually* purling at the time -- they showed him making more than one stitch.

At the end of the show, they show him in a knitted vest and two knitted handgun covers (he's a private detective), and I thought, "gee, I really want to squee about how knitting's gotten so popular that they can put it on new TV and expect everyone to take this for granted, guess I'd better get a knit-blog..."

In actual knitting content, last night was the inaugural meeting of the Berkeley North Starbucks knitting thing. It was just me and one other person, which I actually kind of liked -- we got to sit and chatter away and get to know each other without trying to connect to lots of people all at once. She can't make it next week, but the person who I was originally organizing it with (who couldn't come this week) can, so maybe I'll get to meet another nifty person solo.

Sadly, even though I knew J. (the person who came this week) couldn't make it before 6:30 due to Monkey-care issues, I went at 5 anyway just in case anyone else wanted to come. They didn't. On the other hand, I got 20 rows of my Arctic Lace project (the North Star scarf) knitted, so I suppose it was a net win. Once J. showed up, I switched over to the mini-scarf I've got going as a travelling project, since complicated charted lace doesn't exactly lend itself to conversation.

It might be worth pointing out that perhaps splitty alpaca yarn (Garnstudio Drops Alpaca) combined with slippery metal needles (the size 4s from my Boye Interchangeables kit) isn't the best idea ever. I managed to not drop any stitches, but I'm going to consider that a gift from the knitting gods. The yarn's not really that bad, but since I had to rip out my cast-on three times before giving up and doing a knitted cast-on, I got a bit frustrated with it. (I kept under- or over-estimating the amount of yarn I needed for my long-tail cast-on, because despite knowing all kinds of tricks for estimating it, I always forget them in the heat of the moment.) The pattern is showing up beautifully, though, so I'm quite pleased. I suspect that my scarf is going to be a lot wider than the 10" the book says you should be getting with quiviut on size 3s, but that's okay -- I like nice wide scarves.

The mini-cable is going well, just like it did last time. The seed-stitch edges are doing this neat thing where the stitches pull apart from each other, leaving a sort of lattice effect. (I know it's not supposed to do that, but since it's never done it in any other yarn/needle combo, I'm not too worried about my ability to do non-weird seed stitch, and it is neat looking.) I was thinking of giving it to TG's father for Christmas, but TG pointed out reasonably that his father is something of a giant, and that perhaps a scarf that I refer to as "mini" isn't the best choice, even if I do try to pass it off as a cravat. He was properly impressed by my cabling without a cable needle, though -- I don't think he's ever seen me cable before. I must admit that one of the things I like about cables is that they're almost as good as lace for acheiving the "how'd you do that" effect.

No pictures of anything at this point, because I haven't gotten around to digging out the camera -- even though I'm deeply enamoured of the whole "putting pictures on Ravelry" thing, using the camera with the broken screen in the back is just an unbelievable pain, especially since the break is spreading. I shall have to scrape up the money to get it fixed.