Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Is it just me, or ...

I assure you I have no illusions about my technical savvy and computer know-how. I have none. I actually thought for a moment that a side benefit of starting a blog might be learning a little of the technical wizardry that seems to come so easily to other mortals, yet perpetually eludes me. But then I remembered it's me we're talking about here and set that little fantasy aside. So when, after several fruitless tries, I proved unable to accomplish a task as simple as uploading a few photos I was sure that: 1) There was some absurdly obvious step I was overlooking that even a five-year-old child could spot that was preventing me from uploading my photos; 2) The forcefield that surrounds my house arbitrarily and sporadically preventing any piece of technology from functioning as promised was in full force; or, most likely, 3) It was just me. Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered that group trouble shooting discussions on blogger revealed I was not alone! Untold numbers of people were experiencing the same problem!! (What the heck, imagine my delight at even figuring out that such a group existed. I may be a few megabites short of a full memory in the computer realm, but I know when to be grateful!). It's not you, this seemed to imply; you're not a complete idiot! You're actually doing everything right! Just wait, and in time the problem will correct itself (or rather be corrected by the wiser, more talented folk who work at blogger). However, time has passed and still no photos for me. WTF?

Friday, April 21, 2006

I tink, therefore I knit

Isn't this supposed to be the other way around? I mean, I'm no expert, but I've come pretty far in my knitting in the few years that I've been doing it, and I'm pretty sure that what I'm doing lately is the inverse of what knitting is supposed to be.

Don't get me wrong. I'm well acquainted with knitting back. Tinking is a skill I developed and honed to a high level quite early in my knitting experiences. I know this method inside and out, backwards and forwards one might even say. I've even developed a somewhat zen relationship to tinking; knitting is about the process, right? If I didn't love the process itself I wouldn't be doing it, so knitting back just gives me a chance to knit more (ok, so I'm grasping). But there's something about the Annie Modesitt silk ribbed lace corset pattern that has me hitting new all time highs in my personal tinking records. I love, love, love the pattern, love the garment that seems to be resulting when I am knitting forward:

(pictures to come - I'm new to this blogging thing)

So what it is about this project that has me knitting back at a rate that makes me feel as if I've already knit this thing a dozen times over? In fact, if the tinking and the knitting forward were added up, I'd probably have 20 or more of the gorgeous items in my wardrobe. It's not all that complicated a pattern, there are charts as well as written directions so you can work either or both ways, and I'm using my lovely little stitch markers religiously. So what is my problem?

Sadly, my relationship with swatching is not nearly so evolved and intimate. If it were, that would no doubt have prevented me from knitting the beginnings of this pattern three times over in three successively larger sizes. But that's for another post.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

What the world needs now ...

Another knitting blog. Right. But here I am anyway, eager to join that fraternity of knitting bloggers I've been reading and loving and being inspired by, intimidated by, amused by, overwhelmed by, and touched by for well over a year now.

I have noticed that some people in this community are squeamish about seeing non-knitting (e.g. political, social, political, related to other arts, and political) content on what purports to be a knitting blog. If you're reading this and happen to be one of those people, my words to you are this: get over it. (Let's for now gloss over the fact that I am already imagining that someone, somewhere, at some time, might actually read this thing.) This is my blog, after all. I can -- within the rules of blogger and the bounds of technology -- do what I want with it. I'm not going to try to define what that will be at this jumping off point, but I will say I'm a reasonably monogomous and a reasonably slow knitter. If we relied on my knitting output to fill this blog, let's just say content would be thin on the ground.

A word about the title: I daydreamed about this for a long time. Once I so much as toyed with the idea of having a blog, I began to think about a name for it. "Knitting out loud" is, on one level, a simple handle for what the act of writing a blog about knitting is. But it's also meant to convey something else. It's the name dreamed up by someone who has traveled a really, really long journey to begin to let her voice out, and who is still on that road; someone who is an actor and, against all odds, a voice over artist, and has even been a singer. It took me years (and years) to begin to admit that I might be entitled to be an actor, to use my voice, years to acknowledge that I might even have something to say (I'm still not so sure about that last part). Without being too grand about it, this is another step along that path. Finally, I know from startling experience the importance and the power of finding your true voice and using it. "Knitting out loud" is meant to be a reference to that -- a little note out in the blogosphere that doing anything out loud has power!