Look what arrived on my doorstep today! Lots and lots of yarn. I've been feeling the need to knit for charity for a few months now. But not just any charity. I've been wanting to knit for homeless LGBT youth.
Did you know that somewhere between 5 and 10% of youth in the US identify as LGBT, but 20-40% of homeless youth are LGBT? Approximately 26% of LGBT kids are kicked out of their homes when they come out. They are also significantly more likely to be sexually assaulted, become addicted to drugs, to be forced to turn to sex work for survival, or to attempt suicide. They're even more at risk for abuse from shelter staff than their heterosexual counterparts. (That there is any abuse of anyone by shelter staff makes me sick to my stomach.)
These are kids who need help. They need to know that there are people out there who care about them. And they need to be warm. So I'm knitting for them. Right now I'm positively obsessed with hats. I've knit two in the last two days, and I have two more that I knit in January with the intention to donate. All that yarn in the picture above will be hats soon. After that there will be scarves and cowls and fingerless mitts.
So far I have one place identified to send these items-- Larkin Street Youth Services in San Francisco. There's a woman who collects knit and crochet donations all year long to go into holiday gift packages for the kids. I've also contacted an LGBT youth center here in Indianapolis to see if they have a need for hats and scarves for their clients, or know of a program in the area that does. (I'd really like to keep at least some of this local.) And I've found programs in Iowa, Michigan, New York, and Nevada that look like they could use handknits. I'll have to contact them and see if they have any specific needs or guidelines for donations.
If you know of any LGBT programs in your area that could use handknits, please let me know and I'll add them to my list to contact. And please, consider making a few yourself if you're crafty, or finding other ways to support this population. They sure as hell need all the kindness and support they can get.
I finished a new knitting project tonight. Don't adjust your screens, it really is this bright.
OK, maybe the color doesn't come through really well in this picture, but trust me, it's BRIGHT.
The pattern is Sockhead, and the name of the colorway is Frog in a Party Dress, so I've named this Frog in a Party Hat. It's nice and cozy, but not so heavy that I couldn't wear it in spring or fall as a fashion statement. (You know me, I'm all about the fashion statement.) I'm quite satisfied with this hat, and I expect that there will be more Sockheads to come. And I already have plans for the leftover yarn, of which there is a fair bit. A book of sock patterns came in the mail today, and there's a really cute one that calls for just a little bit of a contrasting color. This pink and green yarn should be almost a shock of color against a black yarn. Or maybe it will work against some deep purple I have in my stash. We'll see.
My brother and sister-in-law came for dinner tonight. Jer's birthday is in mid-February, and he very humbly requested another pair of heavy house socks. He asked for a pair for Christmas, and he loves them so much that he hasn't been willing to skip wearing them around the house long enough to get them washed! Clearly, this is a guy who needs at least one more warm pair of handknit socks.
Check this out! I got the coolest card in the mail today.
Does that not just rock? I think this one is going to have to go on my permanent magnet board, once I get the damn thing hung again.
In other news, I don't have much news. I'm reading A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant, which is pretty amazing so far. There's been a lot of buzz about this one, and if the rest stays as good as what I've read so far, it will be totally deserving. I'll let you know how it goes.
I saw on twitter that Candace Havens is getting ready to run another Fast Draft class, and I'm seriously considering signing up. Has anyone taken it? Any advice? Apparently the idea of the class is that you're supposed to write 5,000 words a day, so at the end of the two weeks, you should have a 70,000 word first draft. That's one unusually long m/m romance, or quite possibly two average-ish length ones. I'm not sure if I'm up for that kind of pressure, but it sure would be a kick in the ass to get writing. And the class is only $20, so it's not like it's a huge financial investment. (Although a significant time investment if I'm really going to do it.)
As far as the rest of my resolutions go, the cleaning one isn't going exactly as I planned, but I am making progress. Today was trash day, and I managed to ditch a whole trash bag full of crap.
I have the next knitting project for myself planned out, but I'm trying to wrap up a few ongoing projects before I start it.
The "read less" resolution is in the toilet. I looked at my little red book, and as of the first of the year I only had 295 books to read to reach 1,000 since I started logging them. I think I'd rather hit 1,000 this year, so 295 is my new goal. I have, however, managed to not buy a book for 5 whole days. That's pretty good for me lately.
Let's see. What else? I haven't done any exercise since that little bout on the Wii last week. I haven't bothered with the picture a day thing, either, although I'm still enjoying taking pictures with my Samsung thingie. Mostly of the cat.
I think that's everything new and interesting. Or even not so interesting. I'm not even wearing any lip balm today!
I don't know about you, but for me the week between Christmas and New Year's is always an odd one. The old year is over, but the new one hasn't started yet. It's a time for wrapping up old business and gearing up for the new.
For the old business, I'm mostly making sure that my book and knitting records are up-to-date, bills are paid, that kind of thing. Reading the last of the holiday stories-- tonight's is Carol of the Bellskis, a m/m Hanukkah story. And wrapping up a stray knitting project-- a hat made from the leftover yarn from my brother's Christmas socks that I intend to donate to a local homeless shelter.
For new business, I've started my first knitting project for myself. It's this sack sock to collect all the random plastic bags that I keep finding all over my room. (For someone who rarely leaves the house and shops almost exclusively online, I have a shocking number of plastic bags floating around the place.) (Bonus, it will help me keep my room clean!) I've picked up a couple of songs that inspire me for the beginning of a writing soundtrack. I'm not working hard yet, but I'm poking in that direction. And I've got my eye on a reading challenge over at Goodreads that should help me control the ebook buying issue. I felt like crap today (monthly surge in symptoms, plus I'm just worn out from the past week or so), so no activity whatsoever, and no cleaning. I think I might need the same for tomorrow. But Wednesday, look out! I'll poke around and do something or other. My favorite Wii game encourages me to compete against myself, to always go just a little further, so once I get into it again that should help keep me motivated.
So, progress.
And with that, I will leave you with a picture. I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I came back I discovered someone had stolen my spot.
It's a little hard to tell, because the bed is so cluttered. But that green thing is the hat, almost finished then, and completed now. There's also a cone of white/black/pink yarn that I'm using to make my sack sock. I'm getting an interesting swirling stripe effect as it knits up. I'll take a picture in a day or two, when I'm further along and it's easier to see what's going on.
I'm really, seriously thinking about taking on a new project. There's a book I've read in the last few months, and it's stuck with me a bit. Even better, it has a gorgeous cover.
Delish, don't you agree?
What I'm thinking of doing is knitting a shawl inspired by the book. (No, there is no knitting in this book. Just hot, macho, New York firefighters. But knitting is my medium.)
There's a very popular shawl pattern called Clapotis. (Pronounced clap-o-tee, or so I'm told.) I like the concept of the shawl, but it's a rectangular, and I really prefer triangle shawls. So right now I'm doing a bit of sketching and calculating (well, it's too late for calculating tonight, but definitely sketching) to see if I can convert it. Several other people have done so, but not quite the way I'd like to do it. So this will be a Becky Original, as well as my first attempt at knit design.
I've been looking for yarns to make this in, because I have a very particular idea in my head of what colors I want and how they should be used. No dice, of course. So I have two options as I see it. First, I find an experienced dyer, try to explain my insane vision, and hope that whatever they come up with is in the ballpark. Option two would be to buy some undyed yarn and all the pots and chemicals and try my hand at it myself. While I think it would be great fun to say, "See this? I created the design, dyed the yarn, and knit it, all by myself!" in not sure it's practical. I keep getting hung up on the pots and chemicals (and face masks) and mess and expense of trying to dye it myself. I've never done any dyeing, and I can't guarantee that my results would be any closer to what I see in my head than what an experienced dyer could do. So there's that.
What I see is a shawl with lots of smokey black (they are fire fighters after all, and one of the heroes is Italian with gorgeous black hair) and splashes of red and yellow and orange. Something that screams heat and fire. (And also the orangey red is the hair color of the other hero.) I want to make sure I get that smoke and fire theme across, because it would be very easy for these colors to get Halloweenie. I don't want the yarn colors to mingle too much, or stripe. I want what we in the fiber arts community call pooling or flashing. Pooling is when you get, well, a pool of one color. It can line up funny that way some times. Flashing is like pooling, except that it zig zags across the piece creating a lightning bolt-ish effect.
If all works out as planned, I'll call the pattern Not Clap (because it borrows the theme from the Clapotis, and it's know casually amongst the knitting community as the Clap). And then my particular shawl will be the Hot Clap-- a reference both to the pattern and the book that inspired me to knit it.
What do you think? Too crazy or what?
Oh, and the Lip Balm of the Day is Pink Cake. Too lazy to look up what all is in it right now, but it's yummy!
I've been making pretty good progress on my shawl, and I got my dad to take a picture of it this evening. (Still haven't found my camera.)
It starts really small in the middle (in the pink section) and grows by a couple of stitches every other row. At this point there are too many stitches to stretch it out on the cord and let you get a good look. But the pattern makes it wavy-- it's called feather & fan-- it's not because it's all crunched up
This is the result of my first, slightly larger than fist-sized, ball of yarn. I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon and evening winding two more, and here's the result:
My giant balls!
It's hard to tell, because there's nothing to give you a sense of scale. But these are approximately the size of large grapefruit. And the yarn is sock yarn, also known as fingering weight. That's much thicker than thread, but on the finer end for yarn. Which means that there's a hell of a lot of yardage in each ball. I don't think that there's enough here to finish my shawl (I want the long edge, the wing span if you will, to be 5'7), but it should probably keep me knitting for a week and a half to two weeks. And then it will be time to wind more balls.
Balls!
Oh, and the lip balm of the day is Peacock Puffs. That translates to lime, blueberry, and cake flavor. (I always have to look that one up.)
OK, as much as I enjoy rubbernecking, it's time to attempt to be A Better Person again. So I decided it was time to do another post about things that are making me happy right now. We haven't had one of those lately, and I have more reason to be happy than I have in a while.
The first thing that's making me happy right now is I Am a Paleontologist by They Might Be Giants. Someone is using it in a commercial right now, and it makes me want to boogie every time I hear it.
Something else that had me whooping and bouncing on the bed recently was Monday night's episode of The Closer. Captain Raydor (Mary McDonnell) was first presented in the show as a nemesis to Brenda. Then she shifted to an unlikely ally. This season she's been revealed to be a pretty valuable supporter, even if Brenda doesn't always know it. (Chief Pope can seriously bite me.)
Anyway, I loved seeing Raydor lead that chase last night. And then when she whips out that shotgun? Whoa, momma. You go girl! Definitely one of the most badass moments of the series so far. And I absolutely loved the look Tao gave her as she was walking away.
If you haven't ever watched The Closer, and you at all enjoy cop shows, I suggest you do what I did a few years ago and rent season one. It's a fantastic series, and well worth watching. (Although I'm bummed that this is the last season.)
Happy Thing #3 is that it's looking like I've got at least a little bit of my knitting mojo back! I hadn't touched the needles in months, until this past weekend. I poked around on Rav until I found a pattern that looked promising (of course I changed my mind and did something different when the needles actually kissed yarn), and then I hauled out all my sock yarn scrap. Y'all, I have a boat load of sock yarn scrap. Three big, overflowing bags of the stuff, and then some.
I sorted out all the scrap, and most of it was sufficiently bright. So then I sat and watched TV and wound a ginormous ball of scrap yarn, tying on a new color when I came to the end of each scrap. This thing was easily half again the size of my fist. When you consider how thin sock yarn is, that's a LOT. And then I cast on my Shawl of Many Colors. (It'll probably change names a few times, but that's what it is for the moment.)
After a couple of days, the SoMC is on row 87 or so, and growing all the time. This pattern isn't super specific. You get to a certain point and then they give you a general recipe to continue, because the size needed on something like this can vary so much, depending on who it's for an how they want to use it. I could probably stop right now and have a respectable head scarf. But I want a full size shawl, which means the wings span is equal to the height of the wearer. I'm 5'7, so I've got a ways to go. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I've got enough sock yarn scrap to make it happen. But at some point in the not too distant future I'm going to have to start rolling another ball of yarn.
I'd planned to post a picture of this grand masterpiece, but I can't find my camera. Or the batteries that go in it. So that's going to have to wait for a day or two. By then it will be bigger and more colorful and more impressive anyway.
One more thing that I'm really excited about. There's a challenge coming up in my M/M reading group called the Quarterly Gang Bang. (Trust me, not as kinky as it sounds.) Every person who signs up picks a book for each other member, and they all pick books for you. By the time the picking is done you could have 50-60 titles on your list. The idea is to read all those books in the next quarter. The reading part doesn't actually start until October, but sign ups start on Thursday. I've been wanting to do this for MONTHS, but I felt like I needed to clear out some of the mainstream romance I'd managed to accumulate but not read in the last several years. I did get some of it read (89 out of 198 books read so far this year were non-m/m), and I hope to knock out a few more in September. And then the rest of the year will be dedicated to reading as much delicious m/m lovin' as I can handle. I even have a few holiday reads lined up already. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and I can't wait to dive in.
So that's all the happy stuff. And I know I said I wasn't going to gossip any more, but I just have to mention that we've had our first official *flounce*! Someone who, by her own admission, left the group for a while and only recently came back, felt the need to declare us all terrible people and announce that she was leaving the group again. So there! It was kind of funny, because a) although she claimed we were all rude, her post was by far the most obnoxious one to date, and b)... oh, hell. I forget what b was. But anyway, you know you haven't had a good internet kerfluffle until someone loudly declares that they're taking their ball and going home. I suspect the whole thing will have petered out to nothing by this time tomorrow.
It was all amazingly civil for an internet dust up. If this had happened on my knitting forum there would have been a pile on, and by the time the mods stepped in the offending parties (not always the original offenders, either) would be ripped to shreds. A half dozen people would dramatically flounce (only to quietly return next week), and whoever is left when the dust settles would be quietly knitting sweaters from the remains of the deceased.
Knitters are Hardcore.
I couldn't imagine it happening in the Betties. I mean, I know it could happen anywhere, and we certainly aren't immune to petty scandals. But accusations? Histrionics? I don't see it.
Anyway, that's what's going on with me for the mo. I'll try to control myself in the future. And I'll let you know about positive developments. I'm not quite ready to say anything about them yet (besides, this post is ridiculously long already), but I'll update you when the shift from "things I intend to do" to "things I'm actively doing". Intention is important, but if you don't follow it up with action you won't get very far.
Those are the two pair of socks I knit for my father for Christmas. I finished the last one about 5 minutes ago. I still need to weave in a few ends on the face cloths I made for my mom and on the scarves I made for my brother's in-laws, but that shouldn't take long. I hope to take care of the face cloths tonight before I go to bed. The scarves I can work on tomorrow in front of the rest of the fam, since the in-laws won't be there.
Done, done, finito, done!
Also, I know my hair looks like it survived a recent encounter with a pair of hair clippers, but I promise, it's just pulled back in a pony tail. It's as long and snarly and multi-colored as it's always been.
The Christmas spirit is finally creeping into Huddleston Drive. Yesterday, with out meaning to, all of my TV was holiday themed. I watched Tuesday night's episode of Glee, which was entertaining but weird. Why were Puck and Rachel so enthusiastically going along with all the Christmas music? Puck, in his own skewed, Puckish way, is very proud of his Jewish heritage. So why would he shut up now? And Sue playing out the Grinch story was so hackneyed I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The bit about Coach Beast and Artie's present from Santa made me cry a little, though. (But why was she Santa? That part was straight out of bizarre-ville, too.)
And then Mom wanted to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Always a favorite around our house. It was followed up by a Prep and Landing short that was really cute. Dad slept through the whole thing, and Mom dozed off and on. I finished the scarf I've been working on for my brother's father-in-law. Yay!
After they went to bed I took the bag of Christmas refrigerator decorations that Mom found the other day and put them up. (It wasn't quite the ninja decorating I've been doing so far. They knew I was going to put them up, they just didn't know I was going to do it last night.)
And then to top off the festivities, I got 6 Christmas cards in the mail yesterday. It was just the tip of the domestic Christmas card iceberg-- there are many more to go. (The international cards went out on Monday. Fingers crossed that the recipients get them before New Year's.) But it was progress.
Last night, after the not-quite-ninja decorating I sat down and took a good look at the calendar. Then I took a look at the knitting that has to be done in the next two weeks. After I stopped hyperventilating, I made a list. If I stick to the schedule, I should be able to finish all my knitting in time for the big day. Fortunately for my schedule, my traditional, gotta get it done Christmas movie will be on TV next Friday-- A Very Brady Christmas. I don't know what it is about that movie, but I always seem to do my best last minute crafting while watching it. Thank you, TV Programmers!
Today I start with a tissue sweater for my great aunt. (It's a cozy for those little packs of tissues you put in your purse.) It looks to be a quickie project, so there should be no problem whipping it up and then doing another half a dozen or so cards. Maybe I'll even get a jump start on tomorrow's knitting!
The other day I mentioned the baby hats I've been knitting, and I've finally gotten around to taking a picture. They're cute, if I must say so myself!
I didn't have 5 little baby heads sitting around the house to display them (um, ew), so I searched the pantry and found 5 cans instead. Not the perfect option, but it works. In the background you can see my empty bookshelf, except for a small stack of stuff that still needs to go to Half Price Books. I'll get to it this week.
I've made a lot of progress, although there's always more to do. As of this morning I have an airline ticket for Sept. 4th. My brother is coming down to drive my car to Indianapolis, and I'm flying to Massachusetts. In 18 days I won't live here any more. I emailed my best friend, and she and the baby are going to meet me for lunch next week. I've been so frantically busy these last couple of weeks that I've been able to totally ignore what all that frantic busy-ness was for. I'm leaving my home. I've been teary for a good part of the day. I think I just need to put on a really sad movie and get it over with. I know I've been joking that the plan was to keep it together until everything is done and then fall apart spectacularly. I'm beginning to worry that the spectacular even might occur while I'm sitting at the airport, waiting to get on the plane. Or even worse, on the plane. I think maybe it's time to stop being so tough about this. Airport officials get nervous these days when a passenger bursts out in hysterics, even if said passenger has a good reason for the hysterics.
