Coexisting, weaving, and happy.

During the waiting time before my 3rd daughter's homebirth, I debated the extent to which I would clean. My place ususally is kind of a wreck. At any given time, it is a good bet that I have several huge acute disasters, and lots of longer term buildups of things like cobwebs and dustbunnies that I never get around to dealing with. (Though at one point I was trying to figure out if I could use the dust bunnies for a felting type project). I really didn't want to give up my precious creative time to hausfrau duties. Surely the midwife would have seen messier houses, right? I finally decided that the cleaning would focus on critical areas of horror and I wasn't going to worry about the rest. What a relief. Letting the cobwebs go, I invited my house's spiders to the birth.

We read Shel Silverstein poems to the girls before bed and last night I found this one for the first time. We've read the books over and over but for some reason, this one has hidden from me until now. It spoke to me.....

The Weavers

I was sittin', I was knittin'
On a sweater I could wear.
When I finished, I said proudly,
"Hey, I've done some weavin' there."
But ol' spider on the wall said,
"Can you do it in the air?
Can you spin it out of gossamer
From ceiling to the stair?
Can you let the wind blow through it
So it sways but doesn't tear?
Then can you grab onto it
And swing lightly on a hair?
When you can--then you may truly say,
'I've done some weavin'there.' "

Shel Silverstein, "Falling Up"

People always tell me that I'm so prolific. They ask me "How do you find time to do all this?" and "When do you knit?" as if I have discovered a secret time warp. But it is really pretty simple. There are only so many hours in the day. I only do what is most important to me, in order of priority. Kids, crafts, then all the other stuff on an as needed basis. When my kids are awake I try to be present for them and I don't get to spend that much time doing my personal crafts (Though I do usually walk around with a ball of yarn dangling from my circulars, with a cat trailing behind that, as I play house with the girls). My baby doesn't like it when I knit while she is nursing either. She's very strict with me tsk tsk. So I use that time to make googoo gaga eyes at her and get a lot of good ideas simmering in my head. I was kind of restless with this at first, but now I am appreciating the forced quiet time.

At night, I sit on the couch and work on my ideas. My list is so long that I never get finished with all the stuff I want to do. Ever. I admit that the cleaning comes last. Creativity is something that is given to me like a gift and when it comes I have to take advantage. I can't call it up when it is convenient for me. And I definately won't put it off to go clean the floor. No way baby.

So, the spiders and I coexist, they weave, I knit. It's all good. Maybe one day I will invent a way to make yarn out of dust bunnies and will become motivated to sweep. Please don't hold breath, friends.

I've got a ton of projects on the needles right now. It's almost to the point where I need to focus or else I will make about one row of progress on each and will be done with them all in 20 years. Not so good since most are kid things.

The two I've decided to bust a move on are baby pants for my new daughter. She is fabulously Reubenesque, which is great for juicy baby hugs, but not so good when you spent the whole pregnancy knitting sweet little (Emphasis on the little)diaper soakers and pants. I have two pants in progress which need to get finished for her to wear this spring, before it gets too hot and she gets too big.



These are a pair of cargos from Knitty, knit in Cascade Fixation. This yarn is an elasticized cotton. It is soft and stretchy and wears my fingers out when I knit with it. The yarns and color scheme are from the Jane of the Jungle Bikini, also from Knitty. The pants knitted up easily but I have been working for months on the swiss darning embroidery (Basically you embroider yarn in a pattern that follows the yarn pattern of the stitches) to make the leopard prints. Ugh, I like to knit. Embroidery - not so much. You have to watch what you are doing, so you it's harder to get it accomplished when you want to veg in front of the tube watching Battlestar Galactica. I have to get these done though, their sordid history is that these pants started out as a dress for my second daughter about 3 years ago and never got finished, obviously. I'm too stubborn to let it happen again. Will post when they are done.

My other project is much more fun. I read a blog from a woman who unravels cashmere sweaters and knits fabulous socks for herself, for mere pennies. "Great!" I said "Bring it on!". I've recycled wool sweaters before for felting projects, but never to reclaim the yarn.

I went to the resale shop and picked up a bunch of wool sweaters to get going on. Learned a few things. Angora is really hard to frog. Also, you need a microscope to see the seams and to frog cashmere. Sigh. So I am focusing on a purple merino sweater. It's a fabulous purple so I'm not feeling too bad about it at all.


It was easy to unravel and I got a bunch of yarn out of it. The yarn itself is a bit funky. The sweater was machine knitted, and the yarn isn't normal. Instead of it being a spun strand of yarn, this yarn is more like a compilation of thin threadlike strands of yarn. You can pull them apart easily, it isn't wound. The yarn also smells like some majorly stinky woman's perfume. I was kind of afraid to hank it up and wash it because the yarn isn't really cohesive. I am just going to knit it up and then wash it once the pants are done. I should have washed the sweater first.


Here it is on the needles. At first it was hard to knit with because my needles aren't super sharp, and I wouldn't get all of the teeny weeny yarn strands aroung my needle, but now I'm used to it and it's going better. The pattern I'm using is an old favorite, the Wooly wonderpant from Wooly Wonders.

I've deconstructed a bunch of sweaters now and have a huge pile of yarn. This will be my first finished project though with it.

So there we go. My ribbed cardigan for myself, my daughter's Flirty Skirty, and the wool I want to dye are sitting getting cold while I try valiantly to get these done. Focus!

Knit on friends.