Spinning a dream

I'm spinning the bundle on the left--a lovely merino from A Verb for Keeping Warm, colorway "Cosmos"--as a lace weight. This is dyed with cosmos grown in Kristine and Adrienne's dye garden and overdyed with indigo. I'm in love!

Stitches West

I spent yesterday at Stitches West in Santa Clara. I had a great time, met a lot of people from Ravelry including the guys from Yknit and Jenny and Nicole from Stash and Burn, and visited a lot of vendors that were new to me thanks to the Ravelry passport game.

I'm still recovering from the yarn fumes, so here is my day in pictures.

The patterns:


The books:


The yarn:
Sock yarn from A Verb for Keeping Warm; for my mom.

Primero from Brooks Farm; also for my mom.

Sock yarn from Tactile Fiberarts; for my mom.

Millends from Blue Moon Fiber; medium-weight Socks That Rock.

The roving:
Fire on the Mountain merino superwash from Blue Moon Fiber.

50% merino 50% bamboo from Creatively Dyed Yarns.

Merino in "Cosmos" and polwarth in "Correopsis" from A Verb for Keeping Warm's Garden Series 2007.

A change of heart

I've decided that the Architectural Rib Pullover would look better on my daughter. So I've gifted it to her. I really enjoyed knitting it. Since it's all about process for me, that is enough.

Don't judge too harshly

This is the architectural rib pullover on. It fits closer than I thought it would. I got gauge and thought I picked the right size according to my measurements. My daughter says it looks better in real life than in the photo. I hate having my picture taken and never hold my body in a natural way when I know the camera is on me. So forgive the wrinkles above my bust.

Fighting Tofu

I have been in an ambivalent frame of mind when it comes to knitting. As Natalie Goldberg writes in Writing Down the Bones, I was fighting the tofu. Fighting the tofu gets you nowhere.

The conversation in my head goes something like this:
"I want to spin."
"You need to finish knitting Caitlin's sweater."
"I'll knit later; after I've spun for a little while."
"You'll knit right now!"

So while my head talks to itself, nothing gets done. I don't spin nor do I knit. Goldberg goes on to say "If those characters in you want to fight, let them fight. Meanwhile, the sane part of you should quietly get up, go over to your notebook, and begin to write from a deeper, more peaceful place." So for the past couple of evenings, I've let my head fight it out while I picked up my needles and knit. I don't have pictures yet. The knitting is easy; I can do it without looking. And, after awhile my head stops fighting and begins to enjoy the creative process.

This sweater which has taunted me since the end of January is practically knitting itself because I've stopped resisting the process. I've got my knitting mojo back. It's not come back in a blaze of fire. It's just back and I've stopped looking for reasons not to knit. I didn't really do anything special to get my mojo back. For the first time in a very long time, I let my life take its course and did what felt right.

If spinning felt right, that was fine. I spun. I even thought about the sweater, but I always brought myself back to what I was doing at that moment. I just took note of the command to get knitting and filed it away. I kept spinning.

A few days ago, I picked up the sweater thinking I would knit a few rounds. And those few rounds became a few more. Tuesday night while knitting at a friend's house, I enjoyed the conversation and let my fingers feel the knitting. When I got home I was surprised to see that I had knit about 3 more inches of the body.

Yesterday, I was reading Goldberg and came across the phrase "fighting the tofu." It seemed to perfectly describe what I've been going through with knitting. Now, mind you, I've read this book a few times and this never jumped out at me before. I really like it.

And, I'm going to stop fighting the tofu.

Oh, and this is what I've spun when I haven't been knitting.