spaazliciousThursday, September 08, 2005
I have a confession.
Well, actually, a couple.
First, I found the other glove. It was in my knitting bag. My excuse is that the lining of the bag is green, and the glove is, after-all, a camouflage colourway.
This works except the inside of the bag is grass green, but hey, it was hiding under my fake Noro Butterfly sleeve in there and g-d knows what else.
Second, I'm posting this from my mother's new computer. I just set it up, have set it up to the internet and...holy cow dial-up is slow. So here's the confession: I learned to knit because I used to have dial-up.
I know, so shallow in a world full of people who learned at their (grand)mother's knee, or to honour the tradition of handwork, or as a feminist statement, or for therapeutic release, or to challenge themselves to learn a new skill...I learned because our internet was slow and I wanted something to do while I waited.
I was really into an internet forum called The Straight Dope and since it was a bulletin board I was reading with somewhat involved and often preposterous discussions, I found it dissatisfying to shift from the world of whatever book I was reading in these load-times chunks to whatever silly thread I was wanting to read.
The forums took FOREVER to load.
FOREVER.
And every once in a while there'd be a thread or a mention of knitting that made it sound like a fun club to join, and we lived in Montclair, which is kind of like the La Jolla of Oakland and there was a little shop called The Knitting Basket right down in the village and I liked the look of the sweaters in the window so I went and bought a crappy Susan Bates Learn to Knit booklet, US8 Clover bamboo straights (12"s I think) and a ball of Patons Canadiana in a rainbow colourway.
I made a long, five inch wide garter stitch scarf for Tahoe. He looked so cute in his Fog Dog coat and a rainbow scarf wrapped jauntily around his long neck that people would stop and turn around to look at him as he passed. (and not to giggle behind their hands, but with genuine smiles on their faces, )
I was hooked by the repetition, the control over final product, the surprise of the final product (despite the control ;)) and the having something to do with my damn hands while I waited. I also discovered that it is the best way to maintain a flow in traffic. Having your knitting at the ready guarantees that your car will not have to stop. Or if you do, as soon as you pick it up traffic moves again. Almost always, this is true.
Initially, after we moved down here and went for the cable package because SBC apparently stands for Stupid Bitchy Cockweasels who can't set up a working phone line in under a month and a half and will still try to bill you two hundred dollars for a phone number you never were able to use, I was annoyed by the lightening fast loading, because it meant that I'd no sooner pick up the needles than the page would be up. And I read too fast to knit while surfing because one hand is always scrolling down or clicking. Eventually, the two hobbies of web surfing and knitting were pretty much separated. Until now, when the download window of this dial-up machine warns me that it will take four hours to download iTunes.
And I doubt it will take four hours, as it's almost at halfway and it's only been a little over an hour. Hooray!
Well, at least I'll get the second sleeve done today, and maybe the second glove, although I forgot the other one for matching it in proportion.
Oh boy! What an exciting post! One link and zero pictures!
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First, I found the other glove. It was in my knitting bag. My excuse is that the lining of the bag is green, and the glove is, after-all, a camouflage colourway.
This works except the inside of the bag is grass green, but hey, it was hiding under my fake Noro Butterfly sleeve in there and g-d knows what else.
Second, I'm posting this from my mother's new computer. I just set it up, have set it up to the internet and...holy cow dial-up is slow. So here's the confession: I learned to knit because I used to have dial-up.
I know, so shallow in a world full of people who learned at their (grand)mother's knee, or to honour the tradition of handwork, or as a feminist statement, or for therapeutic release, or to challenge themselves to learn a new skill...I learned because our internet was slow and I wanted something to do while I waited.
I was really into an internet forum called The Straight Dope and since it was a bulletin board I was reading with somewhat involved and often preposterous discussions, I found it dissatisfying to shift from the world of whatever book I was reading in these load-times chunks to whatever silly thread I was wanting to read.
The forums took FOREVER to load.
And every once in a while there'd be a thread or a mention of knitting that made it sound like a fun club to join, and we lived in Montclair, which is kind of like the La Jolla of Oakland and there was a little shop called The Knitting Basket right down in the village and I liked the look of the sweaters in the window so I went and bought a crappy Susan Bates Learn to Knit booklet, US8 Clover bamboo straights (12"s I think) and a ball of Patons Canadiana in a rainbow colourway.
I made a long, five inch wide garter stitch scarf for Tahoe. He looked so cute in his Fog Dog coat and a rainbow scarf wrapped jauntily around his long neck that people would stop and turn around to look at him as he passed. (and not to giggle behind their hands, but with genuine smiles on their faces, )
I was hooked by the repetition, the control over final product, the surprise of the final product (despite the control ;)) and the having something to do with my damn hands while I waited. I also discovered that it is the best way to maintain a flow in traffic. Having your knitting at the ready guarantees that your car will not have to stop. Or if you do, as soon as you pick it up traffic moves again. Almost always, this is true.
Initially, after we moved down here and went for the cable package because SBC apparently stands for Stupid Bitchy Cockweasels who can't set up a working phone line in under a month and a half and will still try to bill you two hundred dollars for a phone number you never were able to use, I was annoyed by the lightening fast loading, because it meant that I'd no sooner pick up the needles than the page would be up. And I read too fast to knit while surfing because one hand is always scrolling down or clicking. Eventually, the two hobbies of web surfing and knitting were pretty much separated. Until now, when the download window of this dial-up machine warns me that it will take four hours to download iTunes.
And I doubt it will take four hours, as it's almost at halfway and it's only been a little over an hour. Hooray!
Well, at least I'll get the second sleeve done today, and maybe the second glove, although I forgot the other one for matching it in proportion.
Oh boy! What an exciting post! One link and zero pictures!
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