Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a woman and her daughter who shared a love of fiber arts. Neither of the two every went anywhere without their needles and yarn, and between them they made many, many garments over the years. Sadly, though, the mother and daughter lived apart in different lands, far away from one another. So that they may be able to share their projects not only with each other but also with others in the many lands who also loved the fiber arts, they decided to keep a log of their fibery pursuits. This log was stored in a vast library, called The Web, that spanned every land in the world. Sadly, the log was rebound one day, and due to a malfunction in the re-binding, the log was locked so that neither mother nor daughter could access the inner pages of the log to add new entries.

Days passed, then weeks and months, and still neither the daughter nor the mother were able to gain access to their log. As time passed, the two became busy with other tasks, and the log fell into disrepair, lost to memory. When time permitted, the daughter searched the vast library for other logs that might give her the key to re-opening their own log, and finally one day she was successful. With the new tools in hand, the daughter hacked open her log and restored access to the inner pages. She had the log rebound once more, this time with a binding that allowed the log to be opened and written in once more.

. . .

Yeah, we’re back. An upgrade of WordPress caused massive problems in accessing the dashboard, and nothing seemed to fix it. After a while, I just sorta stopped trying because I got so busy. But… I think it ought to be fixed now. Yay!

So, a lot has happened since I last posted. I’m not even going to bother trying to recap the last 5 months. I’ll just pick up with the last few weeks. :) So, here are the major plot points:

I have a new nephew!

My brother and his wife had their first child on January 19, 2009. He’s a strapping baby boy, weighing in at 8 lbs. 6 oz. at birth, and they’ve named him Joseph Timothy Manning.

Mom’s spent the last two weeks up in Memphis helping them out, and she’s completely smitten with Baby Joe. I, myself, cannot wait to meet him. I was, however, able to knit him a cute little baby sweater, which I gave to CJ and Meagan at Christmas when we visited. (Ravelry link)

Current Knitting Projects

I’ve been knitting up a storm lately, which is good, as I’ve gotten more yarn in the last month than I have in all of 2008. Sock yarn, sweater yarn, yarn for gloves, yarn for hats… I’ve been on a non-stop yarn-indulgence spree. It’s rather ridiculous.

One of the projects I worked on over Christmas was a pair of sparkly lacey fingerless mitts for my neighbor, Natalie, who is so wonderful to watch my cats while I’m traveling. (And I travel a good bit for work.) They took me about a week and a half to make, and they were a LOT of fun to knit. And the yarn was so fun! Zen Garden Bling — it’s got real silver in it, even! (Ravelry link)

One of my goals for 2009 was to learn to knit continental. I started out by doing a simple two-color stranded hat with some Cascade 220 I had lying around. (Ravelry link) However, the hat was ending up too big, so I put that off for now and will rip it out later to restart it. Meanwhile, I cast on for a pair of 2×2 ribbed socks with some Prism Saki I had purchased last spring. This gave me the chance to work both knit and purl stitches in continental. (Ravelry link)

I have to say, I’m fast falling in love with continental knitting. I may never go back to throwing English style. For one, it’s a hell of a lot more convenient when you’re trying to do ribbing or seed stitch, and I do love me some seed stitch. For another, I don’t have the twisting problem I do when I knit right-handed. For whatever reason, I add quite a bit of twist to the yarn when I throw, a problem that seems only to have begun a few years ago and results in me having to put the yarn down after about 100 sts and untwist the yarn to keep it from getting too kinked up. Knitting left-handed and picking my stitches prevents this occurrence altogether, and that alone makes it a worthwhile change to my methods.

Current Spinning Projects

I’ve also been doing quite a bit of spinning lately, though perhaps not as much as I’ve been knitting. Mom gave me a new spinning wheel for Christmas — a Majacraft Pioneer, which I fell in love with almost immediately. I’m currently spinning up some Chameleon Colorworks Optim (in colorway Brier Rose) that I picked up at Knit Purl in Portland when I was visiting there this past August.

It spins like butter, and I may end up buying some of the Optim undyed to dye myself sometime down the road. What’s amazing to me is how much more pink it looks spun up than it does in the braid. But that may just be because I’m spinning it so thinly, and all I’ve gotten lately is that bubblegum/carnation pink.

Other Knitterly News

I started working at the yarn store in Raleigh last fall. I only work a couple Saturdays a month, but it’s a nice change of pace from the office, and it’s also a nice little bit of spending money in my pocket. I’m also teaching some classes on weekday nights. The prospect terrified me at first, but it turned out I’m actually fairly adept at it. My first class was a bottom-up hat class that dealt with knitting in the round and working with double-pointed needles. I taught the first class back in December, and I’m teaching it again in March because so many people kept requesting it after the winter session filled up so quickly. The pattern we’re using is “Everyone’s Favorite Hat and Scarf” (Fiber Trends AC-62) by Evelyn Clark, and my sample hat is below (done in Classic Elite Waterlily). (Ravelry link)

I’m also teaching two other classes this quarter — an intro to lace class in February and a beginning sock class in March. The sock class is already full, and I’m thinking about adding another session to accommodate all the people who want to learn how to knit socks. The only downside is that I’d have to hold it on a series of 3 Friday nights, which kinda sucks. Giving up 3 weeks worth of Friday nights isn’t ideal, perhaps, but I’d make some people happy, and I’d make a bit of extra spending cash as well… So, it’s a thought.

Anyway, that’s about all that’s new here. I’m going to try to be a bit more diligent about writing from here on out. And maybe Mom will een stop in once in a while, now that we’ve got the site back up and running! :)