Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Time is still marching on...

I haven't yet given in to the ribbed tank, if only because life has exploded (in a good way) to the point where I can barely keep on top of eating and showering, much less knitting!

Which is not to say I haven't been knitting, just that I haven't been doing so very quickly. And that, my blog friends, is because this happened:



After months of planning and learning the necessary business steps as I went along, I finally did something I've been wanting to do for ages. I became my own boss.

Long story short: in 2005, a coffeehouse called Slow Jed's Mud House opened in a town very close to where I live. Being the eclectic sort, I fell completely in love with it and practically lived there until it closed in early 2008. And since '08, it just sat. And sat. And sat.

When it became apparent that nobody else was going to go in and reopen it, I got the crazy idea that maybe I should. And it wasn't an easy or fast process, but I managed it. I now run the very place I loved as a customer for two awesome years. It's completely exhausting, but rewarding as hell.

Now, of course, most of my not-quite-so-rapid knitting gets done during lulls at the cafe rather than at home, but I am moving along with my two pairs of socks!



One plain old sock, done save for grafting, in Plymouth Yarns Sockin' Socks. (Can't remember the colorway right now, but it's a departure from my predominantly blue sock collection!)



And Cookie A's Stricken, in progress, in KnitPicks Essential Kettle-Dyed. It was the Spruce colorway, but it looked too green to me and was subsequently overdyed to a color more my liking.

The plain socks are better for cafe knitting, since I don't need to cart a pattern around and I can stop and pick back up with relative ease. But I may toss Stricken in my bag tomorrow for a bit of a challenge. We shall see if I can keep up with it between pulling espresso shots and steaming milk for lattes!

Mood: tired
Music: The Airborne Toxic Event - Innocence

Monday, May 4, 2009

It never rains, but it pours

It must be some sort of variation on Murphy's Law that knitters get startitis at the most inopportune times.

Like now. The past week has been one of the busiest of my life, and yet my brain continues to clamor at me to cast on new projects. It doesn't seem to care that I'm already working on Stricken (after messing it up three times); or that a recent trip to my LYS yielded a beautiful skein of Plymouth Yarn's Sockin' Socks, which is now being worked up into a pair of plain vanilla socks, ready to be picked up in the rare moments of downtime.

No, for my insistent brain, regular life business, a stack of library books, and two ongoing projects is not enough! It is now demanding that I cast on a ribbed tank, the very same ribbed tank that I once tried to knit before gauge and I had become friends (and therefore failed at miserably). It craves the mindlessness of k2p2 on large needles, and it just plain won't take no for an answer.

I haven't given in yet. But the six skeins of blue-purple ribbon yarn in the stash are calling to me.

Watch them not be enough.

Music: Harry Nilsson - Everybody's Talkin
Mood: antsy