Exhibitionism

Much of the impetus for me to knit and to blog is the exhibitionism factor.

Knitting in Public
I just love showing off my knitting skills. On Friday, Thaddeus needed to go in for his fourth eye surgery, and it required a longer visit at the doctors than initially anticipated. Of course I wouldn't be caught dead without my knitting, so I had Donegal with me and the self-patterning sock. With five other people in the waiting room and four staff folk behind the counter, I pulled out one of the most impressive sweaters I've ever made and began working away.

Not a comment. Not a sideways glance.

Finally, when we went up to the counter to discuss the schedule with the staff, two of them asked me about my knitting. The first one asked me what I was knitting..."was it an afghan?" I felt like berating her, but I just told her no, it was a simple pullover. When she looked closer, she realized how intricate it was and showed the other two staff.

Finally, the recognition I craved. They oohed and ahhed appropriately.

Reader Input
Peter asked what he called a "dumb question".

Before I answer his question, I have to ask, why do most folks have difficulty letting someone consider their question dumb? It's like an automatic response to "I have a dumb question" to say "The only dumb question is the one not asked." Well, I don't consider Peter's question dumb, but I have heard some dumb questions.

Anyway, his question was why use wooly boards except to get a good picture of your completed sweater.

My answer would be that some of us (me included) need to uniformly stretch out sweaters done in stranded knitting, and the wooly board is the easiest way to do that. It's not to stop the sweater from stretching, on the contrary, it's to stretch it out to its final size while it dries.

Speaking of which, Thaddeus tells me that it might be a little harder to make one of these than I had originally thought. I may have to block this baby without one.

Knitting as Art
Searching around for interesting knitting links, I found a great site with an art exhibit that features fiber artists. Part of the exhibit started with a Japanese artist that led seminars which extolled Japanese housewives to start to see their knitting and other stitch work as expressions of art.

http://twistedthread.com/knittingandstitchingshow/index.asp

Being a huge fan of color, I loved many of the pieces in this exhibit. Being a knitter who expresses his majority of creativity through his knitting, I loved the concept of the show.


Donegal Confessions

All last week while I was in Albany, I didn't have my tape measure, and the number of centimeters completed were estimated. As it turns out, I overestimated by about 2 centimeters. So I worked feverishly this weekend to make up for my miscalculations. Well, I finally got Donegal back to where it was before I realized my terrible mistake. Furious knitting in the waiting room at the eye doctors allowed me to pick up the pace a little.



Working on this sweater takes a lot of my concentration and gets boring at the same time, so I did intersperse my knitting of Donegal with the patterned sock. I finished the first sock and got the toe done of the second sock. Here are some pictures of the sock.



A closeup of the heel.



And a closeup of the toe.



At this rate, I'll have a pair of socks done before I get Donegal done. But I can always switch to the finer gauge socks in cone yarn if I finish the patterned socks.