Yesterday I had an ephiphany. I teach a knitting class and a few of the students are in the midst of their first sock project. Do you remember how confusing all the shaping seemed to be? Little reminder notes would go a long way during the various decreases. It occured to me to get out the string tags that I usually use to identify finished spinning projects . I attached them right by the appropriate stitch markers and wrote the decrease directions. This particular student is following a seamed sock pattern. The crappy picture was taken by my palm pilot, but if you squint a bit you can make out the K2tog and SSK directions. Voilá!

I didn’t intend to take a blogging break, it kind of snuck up on me. I found myself with nothing really to say and that kind of thing can take hold. Although I did notice that not posting everyday got me loads of comments! and I am a comment whore. ;)

You may be surprised to hear that I am doing some Christmas knitting. I don’t usually knit Christmas gifts – as a matter of fact I become hostile at the thought. I can feel my blood pressure rising even as I sit here thinking about it! Before I work myself up into a lather, let’s just say I try to only knit for people who will value all the effort and time that goes into a handknit gift.

So here I am knitting a Christmas present or two and where does that leave the blog? These people also read purlingswine, so I can’t chance it and post pictures. The logcabin square above is going to be the back of a present. The front is an intarsia piece. I really enjoyed knitting both. I used a variety of tweed yarns and am loving the wooly smell. I keep pausing between rows to sniff my knitting. I probably spent more time smelling it than I did actually knitting!

Do you remember when Cara first caught logcabin fever? How she raved about it? I couldn’t understand why she was so enraptured. It seemed like such a humble and simple technique, that it could cause such passion was beyond me. It would be like a great chef raving about celery. It’s celery for christsakes. We had many conversations where she would try to explain to me why she loved it so much. I just did not get it. She said it was like jazz music. I confessed to not really getting jazz either. Kay tried. I remained unmoved. I turned away and worked on my lace projects and tried to ignore the hubbub.

So yesterday I tell her that I spent the weekend working on a logcabin square. And she puts on her I-told-you-so-voice and says, “And?! What did I tell you?!!”

sigh. So now I’m eating celery with my crow.