alisonknits

Last to Catch On

In the marketing world, there's this term, "early adopters."  My understanding of the term is that these are the people who are the first to buy the latest cool gadgets and whatnot.  I am not an early adopter.  I'm a middle-to-late adopter.  I wasn't the last of my friends to have a cell phone, but I held out for a pretty long while.  I still don't have an iPod, although I do have an MP3 player.

I'm like this with cultural phenomena also.  I didn't discover the Harry Potter books until three of them were already out (and only then because a friend sent me one for my birthday - thanks Noah!). 

My most recent late-adoption is Project Runway.  I'd like to be able to say, "Why didn't anyone tell me how great this show is?"  But I was told.  And I ignored the hype.  This Saturday when my plans were cancelled due to impending snow, I found myself stationed on the couch when a Project Runway marathon was underway.  I was hooked within 15 minutes.  Here are some of the things I love about this show:

• It's about creative people, and you get to watch their creative process unfold.
• The challenges are really interesting (an ice skating costume!  A dress made out of flowers and greenery!)
• Santino, the guy you love to hate, makes for really good TV.  And he is occassionally hilarious, when not being an egomaniacal asshole.
• Fashion designers are similar in temperment and personality to theater people, so it feels like home to me.

How lucky for me that Bravo is showing all the episodes over and over, so I'm catching up quickly (though not entirely in order, taking some of the drama out of the eliminations.)  If you haven't seen it yet, I believe there's another marathon next weekend - check your local listings.

In knitting, I'm working on Fern.  No, not Alice St*armore's Fern, but Kim Hargreave's Fern.  I'm using the black Frog Tree Merino that I bought recently.  I knew I wanted to make a cardi with this yarn, and thought I'd probably design something, an almagamation of several other sweaters, and pulled out all my Interweaves and Rowans for inspiration.  But I ended up falling for Fern big time, and was shocked when I got gauge on my very first try.  I thought for sure I'd have to change something.  But I'm actually knitting it exactly as written.  Will wonders never cease.

I also have a lot of for-hire knitting to do.  Will someone please remind me not to take any more for-hire knitting?  I just hate it.  I have to knit two Christmas stockings (these I've been avoiding for over a month now, but it's hard to get motivated to do them since she doesn't really need them for almost ten months).  Then last week a woman asked me to do an exceedingly simple shawl.  Then she said if I do two in different colors she'd pay me $100 apiece.  I couldn't turn it down.  But I should have, because it's going to be SO BORING.  It's just not worth it.  There are better ways to make money, I'm sure of it.

Speaking of money, thanks for all the supportive comments about my debt recovery.  I sure appreciate it.

One Day at a Time

Recently I shared with you the synchronicity I've been having lately around AA and recovery narratives, and asked the question "What does it all mean?"  I didn't really think I would find an answer, I was ready to just let it go, but I believe that I have.

Last week when making my monthly payment to my credit cards, I discovered that due to a recent late payment, my interest rate has skyrocketed and my minimum payment is now more than I can comfortably afford.  I decided to finally look into home equity loans, something I've been meaning to do for some time.  You see, I have some serious credit card debt.  I make a lot of excuses about my years as a struggling artist in NYC, but the basic truth is, I was living beyond my means for years.  And if I'm honest with myself, I've continued to rack up more debt in the last several months.

I went to the library to see if I could find any information about shopping for a home equity loan.  What I found were some good books on debt reduction, including one called How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously, which is based on the principles and techniques of Debtors Anonymous.

I may have been vaguely aware that such an organization existed, but I never gave it much thought before.  Reading this book, I couldn't help but recognize that I have a problem.  I am a compulsive debtor.  Starting now, I'm turning this around.  I began yesterday, by not incurring any new debt.  I haven't debted today, either.

You know what they say in AA, right?  One day at a time.

Another powerful statement I found in this book: The cavalry is coming.  I am the cavalry.

Found Time

Ah, a snow day.  Sunday is normally a workday for me, but since we were hit with a big snowstorm, I decided that church could do without me yesterday.  I then proceeded to spend the entire day and evening in front of the TV with my knitting and a bunch of movies and shows.  Much was accomplished.  (This is to me one of the best things about being a knitter.  We can spend countless hours in front of the boob tube and pat ourselves on the back for our productivity.)

First, I finished the sampler baby blanket.  I am quite enamoured of it.

So much so that I took a slew of pics.

But I think three is enough for posting.

Yarn, again, is Feza Baby, a completely non-icky acrylic with great yardage.  My own design, with a big assist from Barbara Walker and a couple others.

Finishing is really amazing.  I should really do it more often.  What an exquisite feeling it is to take a bunch of scraggly-looking pieces, yarn ends hanging off, curling up in various directions, and make it into a whole lovely piece.  I kept thinking of the expression "more than the sum of its parts."

I was on such a high I decided to do more finishing.  Some time ago (was it last year or the year before?) I made hubbo a sweater.  It was knit out of bulky cashmerino from School Products that I bought on a cone, and had a big gorgeous cable up the front.  It was also navy blue, so no photos of it have appeared on this blog.  I got as far as knitting all the pieces, joining the shoulders and knitting the neck.  Then I stopped.  Some time later I sewed in a sleeve and one side and sleeve seam.  Then I stopped again.  For a long time.

I hate to admit this, but I'm very selfish with my knitting.  I knit a lot for myself, and a little for pay.  A few gifts - like maybe two a year.  When I'm knitting for myself, I'm motivated to finish because I want to wear the item.  When I knit for pay I usually have a deadline, or at least some expectation that it will be finished in a timely fashion.  Gifts sometimes have a deadline, and that's good motivation... but this sweater was not for any particular occassion, so I had only the anticipation of Scott's joy in receiving and wearing it as motivation to finish.

I'm ashamed to admit that it wasn't enough.

But that's all in the past as I made short work of thost final seams, weaving in ends, and washing it to bring out the softness and loft of this lovely yarn.  And I gotta say, it's a great sweater.  You'll have to trust me on that, since I couldn't get a decent shot even on this sunny day. 

The pattern is my adaptation of one from Interweave a while back - that cover with the two waiters.  I took the center cable of that sweater and did the rest in stockinette.  I'm so happy to have finished it!  Scott's happy too with his early Valentine.

So that was two finishes in one day - all by about 2pm.  I thought about what else I'd been putting off.  There was a for-hire project.  I got a good start on that.  There was also my impulse buy of a few weeks ago, Karlsro from the Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton Collection.  I made good headway there.  Here it is, looking much more like a sweater than a heap (a miracle):

I'm not as in love with the color combination as I was with it on the ball.  Ah well.  It's still cool.

I did some work on the Aran afghan, but the square I had set aside to start the baby blanket was coming out much too small, so I ripped it out.

This is all an attempt to thwart start-itis, which I feel coming on.  I bought some yarn on sale at work on Saturday - Frog Tree Merino in black for a cardi.  I also have been pining for a new Starmore Fair Isle - I'm thinking of Firebirds.  But it's hard to justify dropping $200 when resources are less-than-abundant.  So I will wait.  And push on with my current works-in-progress.  Really, life could be worse.

So there you have it; a long, meadering post for a long, meadering couple day.  If you're in the Northeast, I hope you enjoyed your snow day as much as I did!

What does it all mean?

I believe in signs.  Well, sometimes I don't actually know if I really believe in signs, but it's my nature to try to find meaning and see patterns to things, so at the very least I behave as if I believe in signs.  In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron talks a lot about synchronicity.  Here are some of her examples of synchronicity:

• A woman admits to a buried dream of acting.  At dinner the next night, she sits beside a man who teaches beginning actors.
• A woman wonders how to rent a rare film she has never seen.  She finds it at her neighborhood bookstore two days later.
• Even the most timid life contains [synchronicity]: "I will get a new love seat after all!"  And then, "I found the perfect one.  It was the strangest thing.  I was at my Aunt Bernice's and her neighbor was having a garage sale and she had this wonderful love seat her new husband was allergic to!"

I enjoy finding synchronicity in my own life, and I usually try to accept whatever messages and gifts the universe is sending my way.  I try to believe that there are no coincidences.

But every now and again, the messages puzzle me.  Like lately, I keep encountering Alcoholics Anonymous and tales of subtance abuse.  First, in a group I was leading with six participants, three of them shared that that were recently recovering alcoholics.  The next day I met another person from AA, and the following week yet another.  I was in a bookstore in the midst of all this and picked up Dry, by Augusten Burroughs, his harrowing memoir of recovery, which I've been wanting to read for a long time after loving his first (highly disturbing) memoir, Running With Scissors.  It was a fantastic book, darkly funny and very moving - I read it in a couple days.  "Maybe the universe was just pointing me towards reading this wonderful book," I thought.  But then yesterday I got an e-mail from the local library, saying that the book I reserved is on hold for me.  I never put a book on hold.  The book is A Million Little Pieces, which I understand is also about substance abuse.

Isn't that weird?  What is the universe trying to tell me? 

Anyway, while pondering the mysteries, I knit this sock last week:

It's my own design, pattern available someday when I finally get my website up.  (Gotta get on that.  In my copious spare time.)

UPDATE: And now one of my favorite UU bloggers writes about Liza and recovery/alcoholism.  Maybe it's just in the air these days.