Passion or Obsession

With me into my knitting and Thaddeus into foraging for mushrooms, some might say it's definitely obsession.

Codependent Behavior
For those of you who don't know, Thaddeus has what could mildly be called a hobby. He has about the same level of interest in amateur mycology as I do in my knitting (was the word "interest" a little mild?). For those of you who care, we've just finished morel season which is Thaddeus' version of Stitches East for me (the highlight of his year).

For months before morel season, he travels far and wide looking for areas that might yield the treasured mushroom. Here's a sampling of what he came home with this year, displayed in front of some of our hobby-related collection.



I tell you this because Thaddeus and I have a very sick relationship. He encourages my insane search and collection of anything knitting related, and I enable his obsessed search for everything mushroom related. As such, our house is chock full of the tools of our respective trades. And since the outside world would for the most part find both our avocations somewhat boring, we've created a rule when we're out in public together. When a discussion of either of our passions takes place with an outsider and the conversation exceeds five minutes, we have to change the subject to some other topic, or risk being interrupted my the one whose hobby isn't being discussed. It works out well so we don't bore new acquaintances to death with talk of knitting or mushrooms.

Donegal
I've made some progress this week on Donegal, and I'll hopefully finish the body of the sweater this weekend. At that point, I'll be cutting the steek for either the sleeve or the neck. I still am amazed daily how quickly Wendy gets one of these suckers done. I've always known her speed was impressive, but actually doing a Fair Isle now, it reminds me even more how amazing that woman is. Go Wendy!


Knitting Pal
I met up with Marcus again to discuss his current sweater. A beautiful argyle sweater from an old Rowan book. Since I was luck enough to have tips from the ladies at the Tomato Factory on intarsia methods, and also Kaffe himself, I was glad to pass on some this knowledge to the fearless knitter himself. This picture is days old, so I'm sure he's made significantly more progress, but it's looking great. He's doing it in Silk Road Tweed by Debbie Bliss...just stunning.



Blog Void
I just read on Wendy's blog and confirmed on Mama Kate's that Kate will stop blogging shortly either temporarily or for good. I will miss her blog, but I can certainly understand her reasoning. It's sad when one of the blogs that inspired mine is out of commission. I can only hope that she comes back to blogging soon.