sorry, knitters!

totally autumn in progress

Oh my gosh, I have been so out of it lately. I had what seemed like a million emails piled up in my in-box from knitters in need of answers, and finally got some time to answer them today after letting them go way too long.

I feel so guilty when people write in with questions about my free patterns, and I take forever to answer them. Some questions are quick to answer, but some are brain-teasers and require some quiet time and perhaps even a calculator to answer... and that can take me a while to find. Next thing you know - a whole bunch of unanswered emails.

Sometimes I wish that knitting were my job, so that I could be justified in spending my days with hands full of yarn, dreaming up new designs and casting on sections of existing designs to be able to answer people's questions in a clear fashion and a reasonable time-frame... alas, my job is something totally different. And actually, I am very glad for that. I don't think I would enjoy knitting and designing nearly as much if I were trying to make a living at it. I think that's why I've always avoided publishing anywhere but here on my own blog.

I have to offer my thanks to Gloria and Wendy, who alerted me to a serious typo in the Super-Natural Stripes pattern, which I fixed today. My apologies to all of you Daily Knitters who knocked your heads against the wall trying to make the largest size.

Fooling around on the Free Pattern Fridays page made me realize how long it's been since I posted a pattern - not since last June! Oh, for shame! I must fix this state of affairs toute suite. I see lots of baby patterns in this blog's future...

Most of my knitting time lately has been taken up with my green version of Totally Autumn, which went into hibernation last autumn when I didn't even come close to finishing it in time to be a first anniversary gift to HWWLLB. I pulled it out again recently thinking I could finish it up in time for Valentine's Day. Ha ha! Not quite. But I cant see the light at the end of the tunnel now... I am working on the last long lace repeat, and I bet I can get it done in time to use it for at least a few cold nights of couch-based snuggling before spring gets here.

my goofy valentine

I must admit to liking Valentine's Day.

It's not the romance or the compulsory gift-buying - those are lame. I just like the love part. I really like sending goofy Valentines to my friends, my grandmother, co-workers... It's nice to have an excuse to say "I love you" (or at least "I like you a lot") to people who might appreciate hearing it.

As for the romance part... it's also nice to say "I love you" to the person/people who really need to hear it from you, but hopefully they're getting that in regular doses. For me, Valentine's Day is an annual excuse to be corny, and deep in my soul I am really a very corny person.

This year I made some valentines, and I also bought a box of those ridiculous children's valentines that I think are intended to be given out to classmates. That's what I like to give out at the office. It tickles me to no end to have my co-workers come in and find a puppy valentine on their desk that says something like "It would be RUFF if you weren't my Valentine!". Last year I gave them Hello Kitty valentines, and one office-mate still has hers tacked to the corkboard.

In other warm fuzzy news... I am drooling for the pretty new Blue Sky Alpacas colors over at kpixie. I could knit with Blue Sky Alpacas yarn all day long and never get bored of it. I want to knit myself a big red alpaca-silk valentine. In fact, I can hardly imagine a better way to spend this Saturday.

new duds

Check out what I got! Bliss spruced up some thrifted maternity clothes for me!

This whole maternity clothes thing has been rather difficult for me, as a greenie who hates buying new things. Some folks might remember that last year I decided not to buy any new clothes all year. I took the Wardrobe Refashion 6-month pledge in February and then re-upped when it expired in the summer. I had a couple of stumbles (damned shoes!), but I was really cruising all year with a $0 credit card balance and steadily dropping student loan debt. I made a serious effort all year to include all kinds of stuff beyond clothes in the non-buying pledge, which helped a lot.

I am proud of having paid my student loans down quite a bit last year through shopping abstinence. But towards the end of 2008 my non-buying pledge started to take a serious hit when the emergence of a baby-bump threw my wardrobe for a loop. Oh well... It was good while it lasted.

The long and short of it is, I bought some (shudder) maternity pants. Ack, it's hard to even type such frumpy words! Several pairs. Also some brown boots became instantly, deeply necessary in a way I still can't rationally explain. I was really surprised - maybe a bit disappointed in myself - at how much the early changes in my body and wardrobe made me feel insecure and alienated from myself. And at how buying some new clothes soothed that - not completely, but a little, and pretty concretely. As an anti-consumerist, it pains me to even type these words.

Luckily, the thrift store is my friend. I have been there a lot this winter. The thrift store has let me indulge my sudden interest in bright colors, my itch to wear dresses all the time (free around the middle - woo hoo!), and my need for longer and longer tops. At the thrift store I've also found some maternity clothes, since the Goodwill where I shop has a lot of Gap and Target overstock (nice, huh?).

That's where Bliss came in. She is one of my favorite local craftista artists. I was finding maternity clothes generally to be depressingly mainstream and boring. Bliss takes thrifted garments and transforms them to fun, funky, one-of-a-kind pieces of wearable art, and I have a few of her pieces in my closet already. She was really sweet to take on a custom order, and now I have some funky new big-belly clothes!


I love the yo-yo detailing on the shorts - these used to be ugly sparkle-pinstriped navy blue dressy trousers.


This used to be a dull brown gap tunic. How great is it now??

Thankfully, I am much more at peace with my body now that I've had some more time to get used to it looking so different. And I have to say, the custom duds don't hurt with that, either. I think I'm going to try some embroidery and appliqué of my own on some of these other little numbers around here.

things i want to knit

It must be time for the change of seasons at the yarn designers. Pretty things keep catching my eye and making me dream of staying home all day with a hot cup of tea and the knitting needles click-clicking.

Last fall I started a vest for HWWLLB that went nowhere, partly because I was making up the pattern as I went along, and I didn't really have a vision for the vest that I was excited about. Then I saw the Angularity Vest from the new issue of Knit Circus:


elizabeth morrison's angularity vest

Isn't it snappy? This is so much better than the je ne sais quoi that I sort of had in mind last fall. If only there were time to knit this for Valentine's Day (I am definitely not that fast).

Also, I am stuck on open-front cardigans lately. I am really into the Open Cardi and the Empire Waist Cardi from Classic Elite's new spring 09 catalog, which is full of enticements. These two cardis unfortunately remind me of the Minimalist Cardigan that I started over a year ago for myself and never finished. I really should dig that out of the stash and finish it before I make something practically identical in another color. Another color, and another totally different and enticing yarn...

There's also this little bag of Blue Sky Alpacas Skinny Dyed organic cotton yarn sitting in the stash calling out to me. It would make a great little baby/kid garment, like a jumper or a little girl's A-line spring jacket. That would be fun to make.

Then there's also the oodles of things in my Ravelry queue... and on and on. I'm going to need to take a leave from work to do half the knitting I want to do for this spring. But it is nice to have ambitions, isn't it?

By the way, thanks so much for all of your congrats and thoughtful comments about the new baby on the way. I am excited about it, and also very grateful for the supportive community we have around us (geographically around, and on the big internet-world around). This is going to be a lucky baby.

new life

2009 is going to bring some incredible changes to our world - to our big shared world, and to my little personal one as well.

We have a baby Pea on the way.

I can't tell you how much just knowing and feeling this fact has already changed my outlook on the world, myself, and even my knitting (not to mention my diet and sleeping habits). I think these are all things that I'll be sharing with you via the blog, so I wanted to share the big news, and give you a preview of things to come. There will be more knitting of course, and I imagine some exploration of how to be creative and sustainable in raising a little one.

Other things I probably won't be sharing as much about are the very personal things - about my family and the baby itself. Y'all probably already know that this isn't really a personal blog, and that is in part a reflection of my cautious approach to the internet. I feel it now more than ever - and I hope it doesn't disappoint anyone that there won't be any pictures of my uterus or lists of baby names (I know some of you are sighing with relief!).

But there are definitely lots more baby knits in store.

This fall was the first trimester, and I found it very difficult to knit. I could probably count the total stitches I knitted this fall without too much trouble. It seemed that along with all my physical energy, all my creative energy had been diverted to this one, all-consuming purpose. Now that I am comfortably situated in the second trimester, knitting has returned, though I found that I got rusty in my hiatus, and my fingers still seem frustratingly slow.

Nonetheless, I did get started on a teeny sweater made from sock yarn leftovers. I'm making this up as I go along, and I think it will be an easy pattern to share when it's finished, maybe with some matching booties.



So, it's off to the stack of books by my bed, which I seem to fall into by 9:30 every night with great regularity these days. We are counting down to May 31, when the little one is supposed to make an appearance. I have a feeling I need to cram as much knitting and sleeping in now as I can.

say amen!

My favorite part of the inaugural ceremony today was Reverend Joseph Lowery's wonderful benediction.

I wrote yesterday about how much looking back we've done at our civil rights journey to this day; Lowery's benediction seemed to me to be a look forward, at the world our children might inherit from us, if we rise to the call to be our better selves that rang from his words, and particularly from the words he borrowed from Lift Every Voice and Sing.

Here's the text of his beautiful (and funny) benediction, in case you missed it:

"God of our weary years, god of our silent tears, thou, who has brought us thus far along the way, thou, who has by thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray, lest our feet stray from the places, our god, where we met thee, lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee.

Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand true to thee, oh God, and true to our native land.

We truly give thanks for the glorious experience we've shared this day.

We pray now, oh Lord, for your blessing upon thy servant Barack Obama, the 44th president of these United States, his family and his administration.

He has come to this high office at a low moment in the national, and indeed the global, fiscal climate. But because we know you got the whole world in your hands, we pray for not only our nation, but for the community of nations.

Our faith does not shrink though pressed by the flood of mortal ills.

For we know that, Lord, you are able and you're willing to work through faithful leadership to restore stability, mend our brokenness, heal our wounds, and deliver us from the exploitation of the poor, of the least of these, and from favoritism toward the rich, the elite of these.

We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that yes we can work together to achieve a more perfect union.

And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.

And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.

And as we leave this mountain top, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.

Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little angelic Sasha and Malia.

We go now to walk together as children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone.

With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen."

AUDIENCE: Amen.

LOWERY: Say Amen.

AUDIENCE: Amen.

- Reverend Joseph E. Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivering the Inaugural Benediction on January 20, 2009.

where we've come from

It is a beautiful coincidence that the inauguration of our nation's first black President happens to coincide with the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr's legacy in the United States. It seems that Americans are doing a great deal of looking back just now at the civil rights journey we have walked together as a nation, at who made this day in history possible.

Usually on the King holiday I post a speech or sermon by Dr. King. (If you are looking for some of his words today, visit the King Institute's web page, or check out one of his wonderful books from the library). Over the summer I read Strength to Love, as well as the Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr, and found them both incredibly inspiring.

Through that reading I learned a great deal about where Dr. King's roots lie, particularly his guiding principle of social change through non-violence. King was profoundly inspired by the philosophy and political organizing of Gandhi, who led a non-violent movement for independence in India that revolutionized King's thinking about how to achieve freedom in the United States.

So in the spirit of this looking back today, I thought I'd share a few words of the mahatma, Mohandas Gandhi.

"The fact that there are so many men still alive in the world shows that it is based not on the force of arms but on the force of truth or love. Therefore, the greatest and most unimpeachable evidence of the success of this force is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the wars of the world, it still lives on.

"Thousands, indeed tens of thousands, depend for their existence on a very active working of this force. Little quarrels of millions of families in their daily lives disappear before the exercise of this force. Hundreds of nations live in peace. History dies not and cannot take note of this fact. History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul. Two brothers quarrel; one of them repents and re-awakens the love that was lying dormant in him; the two again begin to live in peace; nobody takes note of this. But if the two brothers, through the intervention of solicitors or some other reason take up arms or go to law – which is another form of the exhibition of brute force,their doings would be immediately noticed in the press, they would be the talk of their neighbours and would probably go down to history. And what is true of families and communities is true of nations. There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations. History, then, is a record of an interruption of the course of nature. Soul-force, being natural, is not noted in history."

-Mohandas K. Gandhi, from Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule), 1919.

If you haven't seen the film Gandhi, it's a wonderful way to understand the universality of the human struggle for freedom, and the spectacular power of love and non-violence to bring about that freedom. And if (like me) you are a community organizer, you will probably be awe-struck at Gandhi's brilliant campaigns, just as you would be by the genius of King's organizing campaigns from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Voting Rights Act (just as you have been by Barack Obama's meteoric campaign to the White House).

We are at another crossroads on the long, hard road to human freedom. I believe that it's worth studying the philosophies and the methods of those who have led us here.