FINISHING UPDATE

I have a will of iron! Backstitching is complete on the seed stitch pullover. Tonight, I have to pick up the stitches for the neck and knit 5.5 inches (in seed stitch again, will it never stop?) for the turtleneck, and the sweater will officially be complete. I also got in a little time on the Marsan watch cap (very bad, should have been picking up stitches…) so I am onto the crown decreases there. Very exciting.



BLOG TRIALS

Why will the comments not work? Why? Why?



GRANNYSQUARE EXPLAINED

Because I cannot let a day go by without rambling on at length about something, I do believe that I will take this opportunity to tell you all about “grannysquare.”

Side note: I always want to write “y’all,” instead of “you all.” It must be my inner Texan. I hold myself back, however, because one cannot do that sort of thing when one was born and raised in Connecticut. It just doesn’t work. People laugh.

So back to grannysquare. You may be wondering why, since most of this is about my knitting endeavors, I have chosen to name this blog after a well-known crochet motif. Here’s how it goes.

I now seem to have reached the stage in my knitting at which I am actually unable to go for long periods of time without picking up the needles. I cannot bear to have a spare five minutes and not knit a row or two. It’s sick, I know. I’m not proud. I’m not saying this is how it should be, or that I am the most amazing, dedicated knitter. That’s just how it’s going for me at the moment. In any case, this compulsion to knit during my spare moments has led me to bring small projects in to work with me. I like to knit during my lunch hour. Often, I will go to my local Starbucks and knit there; but other times, when I do not feel like exchanging 3.95 for a cup of coffee and the right to sit down, I will simply knit at my desk.

So I am sitting at my desk, knitting calmly on a fuzzy scarf (one of my earlier projects, in the pre-shaping days), when a co-worker comes up and says excitedly, “Wow! You know how to knit!”

Apparently this woman’s daughter, who is around ten, had just taken a little summer workshop class on knitting and was completely hooked. Obviously, this child does not have the same trouble committing to the craft that I did when I was ten. Hm. Very admirable. The co-worker’s next question was, “Can you crochet, too?”

Well, my friends, yes, I can crochet. Much better than I can knit, actually. It’s sad, since there are so few items that I would want to crochet. I admitted to the co-worker that I could crochet. To keep this story’s length down, I will not write out a blow-by-blow account of the remainder of our fairly banal exchange. I will merely tell you the conclusion: this woman and her daughter now had a teach-yourself-to-crochet kit and were having some difficulty making sense of it all. Could I help them out?

Always delighted to help another fiber-obsessed individual, I agreed, and the next day, said co-worker brought in the hook, yarn, and instructions. Glancing quickly at the directions, I saw that they were attempting to teach the novice crocheter the how to make a granny square. Unfortunately, they were, without question, some of the most poorly written instructions I have ever seen. They made me momentarily forget how to make a granny square, and I have crocheted dozens. I could walk the co-worker through the steps to make a square, but how could she ever refer back to this pattern without becoming completely bewildered once more? Almost immediately, it occurred to me that I could probably find instructions on the web. I mean, hey, you can find patterns up the yin yang for dishcloths of every description, why not a simple granny square? I googled. I found a pattern and printed it out. Problem solved. The co-worker, much less confused, went off to share this new information with her daughter, the budding crocheter.

After she left, another co-worker turned to me and asked, “What did you do? Log on to grannysquare.com?”

I chuckled, as one does at such comments. But, it stuck in my head. It was catchy. It reminded me of “dangerouschunky.com” or “squibnocket.org.” (Now squibnocket.worstjewever.com. Not quite as catchy, but still very good.) Was it a site already? Another internet check showed that it wasn’t. Should it be my site? Well, we shall see. I have registered the domain, and should I ever discover that I have a talent for html coding, I may start something up. In the meantime, thanks to the nice folks at Blogger, I give you the grannysquare blog, to tide you all over.