Tombstone Generator

You Are An INTP

The Thinker You are analytical and logical - and on a quest to learn everything you can. Smart and complex, you always love a new intellectual challenge. Your biggest pet peeve is people who slow you down with trivial chit chat. A quiet maverick, you tend to ignore rules and authority whenever you feel like it. In love, you are an easy person to fall for. But not an easy person to stay in love with. Although you are quite flexible, you often come off as aloof or argumentative. At work, you are both a logical and creative thinker. You are great at solving problems. You would make an excellent mathematician, programmer, or professor. How you see yourself: Creative, fair, and tough-minded When other people don't get you, they see you as: arrogant, cold, and robotic

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Okay, people. It's time to finish up some FO's from the many things I have 90% done.

Here is an entry dedicated just to showing off some FO's that I've taken all the way to completion, and I hope you will comment and encourage me to keep on finishing up the finishing! 

 

Lisa (42 Main's) Slippers Before Felting

After Felting

Her Right and Left footed boot socks, chevron pattern, well-loved and a bit felted

Mom Clogs before felting

After Felting

Kim’s Scarf

Kim’s Scarf Closer

Crochet Dishcloth

Doughnut Pincushion - Picture this with multicoloured pinheads showing just like sprinkles. It's very cute!

Regia Socks super custom fit

Regia and Opal 6-ply socks

Opal 6-ply socks

Zack’s Sweater

 

 

I knit for therapy.

 

I am not a production knitter....I have a mild case of startitis, I am pretty good about the knitting completion stretch, but I have a vicious case of terminal finish-itis. This means that I like to start new things, LOVE to be in the process of active knitting (that is the therapeutic part) and get satisfaction of casting off.

 

But.

 

I really don't enjoy the finishing work that makes an item useable. In fact, the stress of knowing that there are SO MANY things down in my needlework room that need that last hour of finishing to make them gift-worthy, use-worthy, donate-worthy, or gift-overdue-from-Christmas-2005-worthy kind of undoes all the relaxing therapy of just knitting...knitting..knitting....

 

People complain about plain stockinette. I LOVE plain stockinette. Or plain ribbing, or other patterns that repeat every few rows. I really do. I occasionally foray into more complicated stitch patterns, it's true. I have to try everything once, to prove I can, but mostly I then moan a big luscious moan of relaxation as I pick up the latest sock in progress for some mindless but productive knitting. I knit a feather and fan stitch Kureyon hat, and it was too small so I frogged it and re-knit it in entrelac. Which is also a bit small. It would, however, fit my mother, who has been asking me to finish the brim for about 8 months.

 

I knit feather and fan instep socks, but the guage was too tight for the yarn so I frogged them too....can't waste Artyarns Supermerino on inferior socks that have way too much pooling, right?  I knit a feather and fan scarf that I hate, even though it is made of a huge skein of super lux kid-mohair and silk yarn that looked like a beautiful beige mother-of-pearl shell with opalescent highlights while it remained in the skein. I made a scarf of double-knitting, which was supposed to be a Christmas gift but which is still sitting at home waiting for all those ends to be woven in, partly for the pattern (which was stars, and perfect for my sister) but also to learn double-knitting. I also tried Coronet, in gray, to learn to graft and to try cabling. I think it's still kicking around, unfinished. I tried a fair-isle hat, and learned picot edging and three-needle bind-off, which I had to fully finish as it was made by request of my sister. I then tried a pair of Fox and Geese mittens from Robin Hansen's book, just because it was a charted, complex pattern that maintains a fairly involved colourwork pattern even through the increases and decreases. Oh, and it meant I could learn to fair-isle two-handed - one colour English, one colour Continental. I finished one mitt, minus the thumb, and considered that technique conquered, too.

 

Do you see the pattern? Try it to challenge myself, say "hunh, so that's how THAT works" and toss it aside and reach for a pair of stockinette socks with fun and frequent colour changes to amuse my simple mind.

 

I always have a sock on the go. ALWAYS. And they are often plain stockinette or ribbed-instep/ankle socks, usually for myself,  that I can do without thinking hard. I suspect that my fascination with socks is easily and unimpressively explained by my laziness, lack of concentration/special tools/pattern required, and also the fact that their finishing consists simply of weaving in two short ends, or just one at the cuff if I have been on the ball with capturing the first loose end (I knit toe-up) in my knitting as I went. And since I do the EZ sewn bind-off at the cuff, freeing up my needles for the next sock is the incentive I require to get out the needle to both bind off and keep on going long enough to darn in that last little end.

 

Yes, I knit for therapy. But who will pay the therapist bills when I suffer bad self-esteem for my lack of ability to follow through on a project?

 

 

This post dedicated to my Knitty CASP3, Knitherapy.  MWAH!!!

 

Anyone else see the clear trend toward startitis and non-finish-itis here?

 

I also owe my CASP a few things that will need some assembly. Paint, rivets, like that....you know. Double YERK!!!  Luckily they can wait for her third package. I hope she can stand it.

 

Okay, this is a totally depressing account for a Monday Tuesday AM. It's not even a full-length week. I'm so screwed.  

 

So yesterday I gave yarny advice to a colleage. She asked me was I a "good knitter" to which I replied that I was a knowledgable knitter, not to be confused with someone who produces a great deal of very professionally knitted stuff. But hey, I have pored over knittyboard.com as much as the next gal or guy and I can spend megabucks on magazines and books and download useful techniques articles as fast as anybody. Anyway, she followed my advice ("knit the hat first as a test object because that fluffy chenille  - Paton's Bohemian, luscious colour, but I digress - will obscure the stitch pattern of the complicated sweater you really want to knit") and now she sees that my caution was deserved. I predicted a yarny problem, and was proven right, and she will use a simpler pattern for the sweater. Does that make me a knitspert?

 

Somehow I doubt it, but hey, it made me feel good. Lookit me, I'm learning something! Oh, and her first yarny problem, solved yesterday, was how to covert a back and forth hat pattern (what idiot thought that was a good idea) into an in-the-round one. I rewrote the pattern for her on the spot, which also made me feel special. And I was getting confused looking at the k's and p's on the page, so I just sized up the photo and wrote down the pattern changes as it looked on the model, which made me feel uneasy and like I was cheating but she seemed impressed so whatever right? (Right? Oh never mind.)

 

I rock! Lookit me go!  I can refer Knittyboarder Knewbies to books and instructions to solve their knitty knotty problems now. I can answer questions. I can predict the outcomes because I know the yarn! I'm a knitspert!

 

Except I'm not.

 

I still feel like I'm "faking it till I make it". I wonder why? When do you know you've "made it"? When ...or DO ...you ever stop feeling like you're just winging it until you have read all the books and gotten guage with the precision of an atomic clock? 'Cause I never do guage swatches, and I never follow the pattern right all the way through, and I never use the right yarn or the right colours, and I never do short row toes because I don't like doing it. I hold yarn in my teeth and needles in my hair, I scratch with my dpns and have used one to stir my coffee. I keep using the "good" end of one dpn because the cat chewed the point off the other end, and I curse every time I stop paying attention and try to shove the raggedy chewed end into the first stitch of the next needle.

 

I'm no knitspert, but I might be a great pretender.

 

 

Okay. Harumph.

 

So I've decided I might serious about this blogging nonsense. Not uber serious, just....posting once a week or so maybe? Much more often that I have been anyway. I like to write, and one can only deluge others via email and Knittyboard PM's so often, can't one.

 

But what to write about? I don't have aggravating kids who are being toilet trained or learning that the dog is happy with the haircut he already has, ThankYoupVeryMuch. I have a spouse who sometimes makes me a bit crazy but I don't believe in grumbling behind his back, I'd rather just chew him up and spit him out right to his face on those occassions when he has royally earned it, y'see. Nope, he's not good blog-fodder. Can't complain about my sisters, they might read this. Hi Darling Sisters! Love ya! Mwah!

 

Maybe I'll just meander along and give you the product of my own musings when they aren't so weird that you'd call your ISP to have me tracked down for the safety of my fellow commuters. 'Cause you might be one of those Responsible Citizens who calls THEM for every little thing, imaging yourself a Superhero and Protector of the Common Good with a bad vinyl purse.

 

Oooohhhh, let's talk about that. I was a Superhero once. I called in to tattle on a woman who was very obviously not fit to be driving. Either that or she was a spatial physics researcher testing her theory about whether two bodies of detroit metal can occupy the same space at the same time, if they were travelling at the velocity of X in the direction of Y.  Nothing got done, 'doh. The Busybody Superheroes of the world, and Rodney, don't get no respect.

 

And all the big trucks you see with "Is this vehicle being driven in a safe manner?" . Those are silly. I saw one asking me to report the driver if he was driving more than 90 K, but it was moving too fast compared to the car I was in to make out the number to dial. I shouldn't have called the driver a he...it's sexist considering I couldn't see her or his gender in that blur either.  Oh, and I was a passenger, and the truck was right of my vehicle. This truck that should be driving sensibly? Carting a load of oil or gas from a major retailer. Real effective safety strategy there folks. Truly.

 

Now, the REAL opportunity for the Busybody Superhero is in policing the junk mailers. And they should have shiny whistles, or some nice Fox 40s. THAT would be a public service! "Hey, you, stop putting that flyer in those people's front doors! Fweeeeeet!"  Or how about "Sir, do you have a permit to put that neon pink photocopy of a badly designed ad under the windshield wipers of cars in this parking lot? No? Fweeeeeet!!!"   Or my favourite:  They could pick up the phone and teach telemarketers a lesson. "If you give me the number of your company owner, or your marketing strategist who recommended telemarketing as a good idea, I'll talk to them, but not you."  "Hello, idiot who thinks telemarketing is a good thing? I've got a comment for ya. FWEEEEEEEET!!!!" 

 

Now we're talking. A calling for the Busybody Superhero -----  to stop the calls.