Hey, weird people - come talk to me, I like it....

Apparently there is a sign somewhere about my person that lets them all come to find me. That's the only explanation.

So, I'm on the train last night coming home. We had a closing today for a problem file so we were in the office late and I was on the 11:00PM train, so I suppose some weirdness was to be expected. After the station before mine I put my knitting into my bag, put on my coat and walked up to the door to wait until we pulled into the station and the doors opened. The woman in the seat behind me got up at the same time I did and walked forward as well. Nothing weird so far. Except just as we were pulling into the station this woman, who I have never laid eyes on before in my life starts playing with my hair.

Like, picking it up and running her fingers through it. When I inquired as to what the freakin' hell she thought she was doing, she said that she had been wanting to do that since I had sat down and just couldn't control herself anymore. She seemed insulted when I suggested that she try harder.

In other news, the knitting funk seems to finally be over. I think that I have Ravelry to thank. I've never understood the allure of MySpace or Facebook but I have to admit, I love Ravelry with a deep and unrivaled affection. I have found my people here. Being exposed to this large a community of other knitters is remarkably inspiring. It's also kind of nice to be able to have a conversation with people who don't give me that "we love you, but you're a little odd" look every time I mention knitting and don't think that my yarn obsession is the least bit strange.

Duty vs. Enthusiasm - I'll Take What I Can Get

Okay, so it's not what you would call a raging case of startitis, but I have been casting on a few new projects during the past week. More out of a sense of duty (and let's face it - fear of December) than out of any real joy, but still..

My mother and my grandmother are getting shawls for Christmas (my sister-in-law too, if I can find something that I like for her) (something fast). Grandma is getting the Litla Dimun Shawl from Folk Shawls and Mom is getting the cable shawl from Philosopher's Wool - Sheep to Shawl. (I don't think either of them actually reads this blog. I really hope they don't, anyway.) I don't know what to make for my brother - he doesn't wear hats or scarves and he's 6'7" so a sweater is - unthinkable.

In non-knitting funk related news - I went to see a very good play Sunday night called Humans Anonymous. Off-Broadway can be sort of hit 0r miss sometimes, but this was quite good. It was written by a Canadian playwright named Kate Hewlett, who also performed. I loved the play - it was funny and a little sad. The characters and the actors were very real and extremely engaging. I was talking to my mother about the play yesterday and I thought she would like it. The tickets weren't particularly expensive and the theater is pretty convenient to both our offices, so we're actually going to go see it together next Friday.

Not Quite There Yet

I know I'm going to pay for it later, but I still can't interest myself in getting very much done. It's driving me crazy. I have things that I want to make and things that I know I need to get done for Christmas. I keep thinking about casting them on. I even go so far as gathering everything I need - book, yarn, needles - into the WIP basket next to the chair, but I never seem to get quite as far as putting stitches on the needles. And it's not like I'm really doing much else. The past few weeks may have been some of the most unproductive weekends of my life. About the only place I'm actually getting any knitting done is on the train and honestly I don't think that's going to get everything done.

Thing is, I know that a day is going to come - and it's going to probably come soon, when the Funk is going to give way to a mad case of Startitis and I'm not going to be able to cast on fast enough.

Just a Phase

I've been feeling extremely unproductive the past couple of weeks. Nothing is working to get me out of it, I've tried everything - fondling the stash, organizing patterns, going through books, buying new magazines... Nothing. Not a single urge to cast on anything new. And forget the stuff in the UFO basket, it's all just sitting there looking forlorn and abandoned, waiting uselessly to be knitted, fringed, blocked or sewn together. (Or some combination of these.)

I have been knitting socks on the train (everyone is getting a pair of socks for Christmas this year)(That's not all they're getting, but everyone is getting socks)(I mean everyone in my family, not everyone in the world) but even those have just been YarnHarlot's Plain old sock recipe from Knitting Rules! in self striping yarn. I think it qualifies as pretty much the minimum effort you can put in and still call it knitting.

Whatever this funk is - and it doesn't just extend to knitting, I haven't been working on anything else, either - Let's hope I get out of it soon, otherwise people are going to be getting pictures of thier Christmas presents this year. Again.

Whoohooo!!!!!!!!

I'm finally on Ravelry! I actually did a little happy dance in my chair when I saw the invitation in my in box last night. That is all that I did today. No laundry, no vacuuming, no grocery shopping. It's like crack. Happy, happy crack.
I've spent the day adding my books, stash and current projects. Adding future projects to the queue. There are a lot of patterns in the queue. Lots of patterns. I joined groups, I checked out neighbors. It's fabulous.

I'm going back in.

So This is What We've Come to...

Besides the firm that I work for there are three other tenants on the floor of our building, which means that the other women I work with and I are sharing the bathroom with about a dozen other women total. Now anyone who has ever had to share a common bathroom with other women holds this one thing to be true.

Women are pigs.

Following is what is now hanging on the mirror in our ladies room. It probably won't take much imagination to figure out what led to this being hung up.

To the Person or persons who have been leaving “evidence” of your occupation of this bathroom (and you know perfectly well who you are so don’t just stand there getting mad or pretending you don’t know what we’re talking about):

We do realize that there is a certain freedom in anonymity and understand that since this is not your home you feel that you are not technically responsible for cleaning and maintenance of this room. However, we would like to remind you that the rest of us are forced to share this very small bathroom with you five days a week and would appreciate it if you would please observe the following niceties:

1. Flush the Toilet – No they don’t work particularly well and it frequently requires more than one flush. However, pushing a lever is not a complicated task and if you managed to dress yourself this morning you can probably handle it. Keep at it until everything has disappeared.
2. Stop Peeing on the Seat – If you must hover above the seat like a UFO from the Planet WeeWee, please turn around and look behind you when you’ve finished. If the seat is wet it’s because YOU have just peed on it. Please take a piece of toilet paper and wipe it up. Yes, it’s icky, but there is soap and water available to take care of that. Trust us; it’s less icky to clean up your own urine than it is to clean up someone else’s.
3. Stop Doing Anything Else on the Seat – If, as apparently was the case this past Tuesday, you are having – let’s just say “intestinal difficulties,” please refrain from hovering. On the off chance that you were raised in a field where it was considered acceptable to simply drop your pants and take a crap wherever you happened to be standing and so don’t realize that this is not considered appropriate here, we would like to offer this piece of advice. It’s supposed to go “In” the toilet, not “Somewhere in the General Vicinity of the Toilet.” There is no reason why an adult woman should be shitting on the floor of the ladies room.

As was mentioned earlier, no one else actually knows who you are, but you do. So instead of standing there being insulted or pretending that you have no idea that this is aimed at you, please do the rest of us the same courtesy that I’m sure you expect to have extended to yourself and stop behaving like some sort of farm animal.

Bad Blogger!

Wow. Sorry about that. It doesn't seem like its been a whole month since my last post. It just went by so quickly and so much has been going on that I didn't even notice.

In case anyone has been wondering all this time, I did stay in the city to get my copy of Harry Potter at midnight. I got a lot of comments from various friends and co-workers on Monday about a possible sanity deficiency on my part because "all the stores had plenty of copies." I wasn't afraid that they would run out - I wanted it at midnight! These people have all known me for a while. You would think that they would get the fact that I don't like to wait for things by now.


I met a woman, whose name was Karen if I remember correctly, in the knitting aisle at Borders. The two of us just sat on the floor, knitting and chatting until it was time to go line up, so it was a very pleasant evening.


There was this rather odd woman there with us - we did try to keep her included in the conversation as much as we could, but all she kept asking us was how how to knit a cape with a hood. She wasn't asking for explaination of a stitch or help understanding a pattern - she wanted me to tell her step by step how to knit a cape with a hood. She kept pulling books off the shelf, showing me patterns and asking "Would you recommend this?"or "How would you go about attaching a hood to this cape?" or "Do you think I can do this pattern?"


Not that I'm ever unwilling to help if I can, but does this ever happen to anyone else - complete strangers asking if you think they can do something? (The somewhat snarky answer is "If you have to ask, probably not.") I was really quite proud of myself for managing to not say that out loud at the time. Sometimes my mouth engages a second or two ahead of my brain. I'm sure that she was a lovely woman normally, but the whole encounter was just slightly to the left of bizarre.


Anyway, the rest of my missing month has been equally crazed. My aunt got married, I went on another camping trip with my mom and some friends, not to mention various barbeques, cookouts and get-togethers along with the usual level of insane busy-ness at work. I'm actually looking forward to the end of summer so that things will calm down and I can relax a little.



Oh, right... Christmas.