Knitting Notes

How's Picovoli going, you ask?



Fa bene. Tres bon. Muy bien, gracias.

(I just realized I have no idea how to say "very good" in Latin or Mandarin. How embarassing.)

I love the darts. I don't think you can see them in this photo, but the waist nips in, then back out via decreases and increases. They look like the darts on June Cleaver's dress bodice. I love the effect. Then again, I'd like to prance around my house in those oh-so-structured dresses and high heels, with my hair done. (I just got in from mowing the lawn. I am sweaty and skanky. I never, ever saw June Cleaver look how I feel right now. But this is the only time I can grab the computer between Kid1's work on Rosetta Stone and her typing program.)

I loved all the stockinette. I enjoy stockinette, particularly on circular needles, because I can read while I knit. I have a huge pile of lovely, lovely books from the library right now. Picovoli is reposing on one now -- it's an Interlibrary Loan, with huge notices of NOT RENEWABLE all over it. (This, of course, simply means that my local library doesn't want to mess with renewal requests. I used to be in charge of ILL at a university library. Most lending libraries will grant at least one extension.) So, I must get this book read NOW. This has been a great knitting projecct under the circumstnaces.

Unfortunately, I'm now faced with sewing up all those picots. I don't think I can do that and read at the same time. I shall have to turn to watching television. Fortunately, we just discovered that we have access to 7 hours of Star Trek every week day -- 2 hours of Deep Space Nine, 5 hours of Next Generation. (Classic Star Trek is available on Saturdays.) So there's hope.

Overall, though, I'd rather read and knit than watch TV and knit. I used to knit in my college classes. Being a goody-two-shoes, I always checked with the professor first to make sure it was okay. This was back before knitting was trendy, so it was some weird, bohemian thing I was asking. And, hey, it kept me awake in class. I should've tried it in Soil Science, which had the very poor schedule placement of right-after-lunch. I mean, it's not like I consider Soil Science scintillating to begin with (there are those who do, I know). And right-after-lunch was the death knell. I always sat right in front, in hopes that would help me stay awake. Nope. Zzzzzz. Too bad, because now I'm not sure what to do with the clay soil on the front slope of our yard. (My mind wanders a lot when I mow. Consider a sampling of what it's like to be in my head whilst I'm pushing my mower, which, by the way, is not self-propelled. And have I mentioned how hot and humid it is today?)

The other BIG knitting news was reported to me yesterday afternoon by a very excited 6 year old ... the next American Girl movie will be about Molly. Now, Felicity and Samantha undoubtably knew how to knit, but Molly actually had a story line about knitting in one of her books. As I recall (amazingly, we own no Molly books) the girls in her class at school were trying to knit socks for the (WWII) soldiers. Molly sensed this would be a Bad Idea, probably because she didn't want to turn the heels (coward). So, they turned their knitting into a patchwork afghan. I've always wondered about this -- how can the cuff of a sock become an afghan square? Did girls back then typically work socks flat, then sew them up? Did they fearlessly cut them open? If they could do that, why couldn't they turn a heel? Was the author just sort of clueless about knitting? I need to re-read the book -- maybe I'm remembering this wrong. I'll definitely be watching the movie, though. We might get some kid-sock-knitting action going, or maybe some afghan-square-knitting action.