I really love the UUA's General Assembly. Part of it is the opportunity to see folks from other congregations I've been involved with; also there are some excellent workshops in which I learn a lot; there are reports from various commissions and leaders which keep me informed about the state of the denomination; this year there were some inspiring sermons, and a lot of amazing music (who knew that UUs were capable of singing outside the 19th-century Western music box?). But most of all, as I alluded to in my last post, I feel that the "congregation" of GA is like finding My People. How I wish I could find a congregation that more closely resembled the spirit of openness, enthusiasm, activism, mindfulness and spiritual depth that I find each year at GA. Perhaps I'll have to create this congregation for myself.
Also, there was much knitting. I started Birch the day before I left, and finished it on the plane ride home (after a two-hour delay on our connecting flight out of Chicago). Here she is, in her current un-blocked state:
As I'd hoped, this was the perfect project for my trip. Easily memorizable (unlike the Peacock Feathers shawl which requires careful observation of charts), yet detailed enough to keep me interested. Well mostly. In the middle of the project I was not enjoying the purl rows, so I decided to practice knitting back-backwards on most of them. I got pretty fast at it, and enjoyed not having to turn the work, especially as the rows got shorter. Yeah, I'm a freak.
I returned home to an exciting package - the VKOTG: Ponchos book in which I have three designs! This series doesn't usually use models, and I was wondering how that would work with ponchos. They wisely opted to use models this time. The book looks great, and I'm proud of my work. I don't think it's out in stores yet; Amazon says it comes out August 28 (last time I checked, anyway).
I also returned home to my Peacock Feathers shawl. After putting in several more hours on it, I realized that this whole time I had been doing the wrong kind of double decrease. I should have been doing a centered double decrease, but I was doing a left-slanting one. I realized this when the pattern starts having right- and left-slanting double decreases as well as the centered ones. And the centered ones really make more design sense than the ones I was using. So guess what? I ripped the whole thing out, with nary a second thought. Here's how far I had gotten before starting over last night:
Yup, I sure am a freak. Any normal person would have accepted the errant decreases and realized that no one would ever know that they weren't correct. (But I would know.)
Birch is lovely, and yeah, why not? How are you gong to be a knitter of extensive skills if you don't practice them when you can. And as far as Peacock goes, I'm with you, I realized the centered double decrease only about 40 rows in, and it doesn't show, but I did switch, and I didn't rip. Shhhh: only you know.
Posted by: julia fc | July 04, 2005 at 10:16 AM