Tuesday thoughts

Brilliant title, isn’t it? I thought you’d all like that one.

I’ve noticed that my blogging is erratic. At first, I wrote “and I apologise for that” but we can only do what we can do, as my mother would say. I had a bad fibro-pain week last week, and yanno…apologising seems just the wrong thing to do. I’m a blogger. Whom do I blog for? And why do I blog?

Blogging is a funny thing, isn’t it.

Hm. Let’s put a pin in that Tuesday Thought while I do some show-and-tell of the knitting kind.

I proudly present to you Le Spunky Hat, modeled by its proud recipient, Le Cute Professore:

Here another shot, just because the colours are so pretty:

A close-up of the Estonian braidwork:

And a shot of what the top looks like:

Finally, a peek at the inside of the hat:

Look at those floats! I am such a proud papa (!ohreally?!) of those floats. This is my first real stranded colourwork (the Tomato sort of counts, but not really) and I’m busting bursting with pride at how well the floats and the colourwork balanced turned out overall.

The tension at the top got a little funky (get DOWN with your bad selves, you funky floats, get DOWN) because the floats were longer and when I tried to do the weaving-in thing (listen to me, I am such the guru with my big technical terms), the colours showed through and disrupted the pattern. So, I tried to keep things defunkified, but had a bit of Fail at the top. OH WELL.

But back to the bursting with pride part, because who cares (!) if the top tension is a wee funky, the hat turned out BEJEBUS GORGEOUS and I won’t be modest about it.

Pattern details:

Pattern: Fake Fair Isle by Amy “Boogie” King (spunkyeclectic.com) with modifications at the lower edge.

Yarns: Noro Silk Garden and Dream in Colour Classy.

Mods: The original called for ribbing at the brim, and I just couldn’t get it to look right. The dratted ribbing kept mocking me, curling up, stretching out of shape, and misbehaving in general. So I binned it, as my friend Sarah W. from the U.K. would say. Away with the ribbing!

I dug out my Nancy Bush books (a moment of respectful silence ensueth at the mention of the Blessed One’s name) and did an Estonian braid, the yarnover kind, at the lower edge. Then I improvised an XO pattern, literally drawing a little grid on a piece of scrap paper and just winging it. (I felt very daring. Then I realized that this particular XO pattern is as common as kittens in spring, so that humbled me down a bit.)

The XO pattern is for love. Just sayin’.

Then another braid, and then the main section of the hat as written in Amy’s original instructions.

The question arises: Did I or did I not “cut and paste” the yarn to make the colours flow as I wanted them to, instead of just going with the skein’s flow?

Good question.

Now, back to that Tuesday Thought we put a pin in up there.

(That’s Thaddeus, contemplating some luscious Spunky Club fibre.)

I’ve noticed that blogging in general has dropped dramatically since Ravelry started, and now with Twitter, it’s as though we knitters are using those two social networking sites to fill the role blogging used to fill. Used to be that bloggers would write stuff maybe three times a week, and then the commenters would leave comments, and then the bloggers would write again, responding to some of the comments, and then back ’round again.

Blogging was a form of social interaction. It used to be the only way, short of a few forums, that we could play with our friends online. Now we can play with our friends–in almost real-time–by tweeting on Twitter and posting on Rav. Blogging can have a time delay of days between posts and comments and then reply posts; sometimes, before Twitter, you’d check and check hoping that your friends had said something cool.

Now folks are using iPhones or CrackBerries, and they tweet and text each other sometimes right across the room, in the middle of a conversation with someone else. (We won’t discuss the manners issue right now. We’re creating new social contexts, and methinks none of us quite knows the rules yet. Maybe because we haven’t created the rules yet, or we are creating them on the fly. A topic for another day? Perhaps.)

So where does blogging fit in nowadays? Why do we blog? Do we blog about the same things as we tweet about? Do we post the same photos on our blogs as we do on Rav? Are there separate rivers of communication here, or do they all echo each other?

I have no idea. I’m making up my own rules as I go along. I want to blog here more often; I’d like it to be twice a week. But my work schedule and my friend Fibro disagree with that desire, so I blog when I can.

But you know what? In my head, I blog all the time. In my head, I’m constantly thinking, I could blog this, it would be interesting. Here’s a great story for the blog! Oh look at that, the blog readers would love that…

And I’ve realized something really, really important. Well, important to me, anyways:

I think it would help if I knew who I was blogging to.

Who are you out there, reading this? Leave a comment. Introduce yourself. I’d like to get to know you.

And welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

As a welcome gift, I have this–look! The trees are knitting lace across the snow-laden sky…