Uninspired

That's exactly how I've felt these past couple of weeks...uninspired. But I did force myself to sit down tonight and weave up the other sleeve and front of Baby M's birthday bog jacket. I even crocheted the border. Now all I have to do is finish the cuffs, get some cool closures for the front and sew in my little "Made With Love By Mommy" tag and it'll be all finished.

Photos to come.

Meanwhile, send a little inspiration my way. I can certainly use it.

Operator Error

I'm on vacation this week, so you'd think I would be blissfully enjoying my time with Baby M, knitting, blogging and just generally recharging the ol' mental/emotional/spiritual batteries...right?

So, what have I actually been doing?

Stressing about work. I wrote a big, long post about it which I decided to only save as a draft (call me paranoid, but people have been fired for blogging about their jobs) as a way of getting it all out of my head and then hopefully being able to forget about it for the next seven days.

Except my boss contacted me and wants to talk tomorrow morning. So *pffffft* goes my peace of mind and my playing/knitting/blogging plans. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Well...that's not completely true. I did have a blast taking Baby M to her very first movie-theater movie yesterday afternoon. We are lucky enough to have a theater near us that shows second-run films for $2 a person, $1 on Tuesdays. I figured that if Baby M were frightened or bored or just couldn't sit still for that long, it wouldn't break my heart to lose the two dollars and walk out. But she LOVED it! We went to see Happy Feet, the penguin movie, and boy was it cute. Lots of singing, dancing and other onscreen excitement -- plus a kid-sized box of popcorn and cup of iced tea went a long way towards holding her interest. She even made us sit through to the very end of the credits because they showed the various penguins tap-dancing to the music as the credits rolled. I only wish DH had been there instead of at work -- and I'm sure he feels the same way!

So, at least I've been trying to enjoy my time off with Baby M. I haven't gotten much knitting done, and sadly, I haven't been able to get my spiffy new-to-me Auto Knitter circular sock machine to work yet. At least I figured out what the problem is. It looks like during shipping, the yarn carrier (the piece that holds the yarn in the right spot for the needles to grab and knit) got pushed out of alignment, so now the yarn isn't in the right place for it to be knit. And I just can't seem to figure out how to adjust it. At least I finally got my act together and posted a question about it to a sock knitting list, so maybe before I go back to work I'll at least be able to knit, if not an honest-to-goodness sock, then at least a lame little newbie tube.















My spiffy Auto Knitter, ready and waiting for me to stop being such a dumb-ass and figure out how to work it.

Seriously, What's With Twinkle?

So, I swear I was all set to blog about my ultra-cool antique sock-knitting machine (which I still haven't figured out how to work yet) and share gripes about Kaffe Fasset and his designs from hades, but then...

Then, I discovered Twinkle (aka Wenlan Chia) and her book of Big City Knits. The patterns are gorgeous, stunning, to-die-for...and sized to fit women with bust sizes up to 34".

That's right: up to 34".

The last time I had a size 34 bust, I was in elementary school. As for the small sizes...well, I'm sure some woman out there has a 25" bust, and it's very nice that there's an entire book of patterns designed specifically for her, but c'mon, Twinkle...how about the rest of us?

I'm a Big City Girl. I like funky, chunky knitted designs. I can wear the hell outta a cabled sweater-dress, size great-big-bust and all. Just who exactly are you designing for?

So, there's my rant. Move over, Kaffe...you've met your match in Twinkle.

Good God, It's March

And I now have an honest-to-goodness circular sock knitting machine!

I also have a raging headache, an ongoing -- and stress-inducing -- work negotiation, and a (rather unreasonable, I suspect) dislike for every knitting pattern ever designed by Kaffe Fasset.

More on at least some of those later....