On Saturday, I went to the library in Dartmouth, which I never do, because they have a really good children’s reference section there, which I needed to use to work on assignments for my Services and Resources for Children course. The Dartmouth trip also had another purpose besides schoolwork. See, the library is very close to Tangled Skeins, a yarn shop I’d never been to before. You can see where this is headed.

I love Tangled Skeins now, of course. I managed not to buy any yarn, although I do know what I want to bring home with me in the future, namely some Noro Kureyon and some Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride. But I did not buy any yarn. I did buy stitch markers, though. I’d been looking for cute stitch markers recently, because I need stitch markers for a project I have in mind (one which is too hard for me, so I feel too embarrassed to mention it even on this blog), but all I’d been able to find were boring plastic ones. These, however, are decidedly cute stitch markers.

It is also obvious that they were made by Steph of A Little Bit of Happy. So while at Tangled Skeins I am wondering if the girl working there (I call everyone a “girl” or a “guy,” regardless of their age) is someone whose blog I read, which is eventually cleared up for me when she tells me that she made the stitch markers.

“So that’s your blog,” I say.

I do not say I like your blog, which I should have said, but let me just clear this up for the record: If I ever acknowledge to anyone that I read their blog, that means that I like their blog. Trust me, I don’t have enough free time that I can waste it by reading blogs I don’t like. If I read it, I like it.

Yes, it is her blog. Steph tries to convince me to go to Knitting out Loud sometime. I have been aware of its existence since the summer, but I have been too.damn.shy to go. There is something unnervingly convincing, however, about a real live person saying things like, “We’re kind of loud, but you don’t have to be scared of us! It’s fun!” It reminds me of me and Jaymee trying to convince random strangers to do NaNo, but saying, “Come knit with us for two hours! It’ll be fun!” is so much saner than saying, “Write a novel in a month! It’ll be fun!” that I decide I actually will go sometime, after all this crazy end-of-term stuff dies down.

Oh, I forgot to mention that there’s a 15% student discount at Tangled Skeins. Fifteen percent discounts are sexy.

I did nothing but schoolwork for the next few days. I sure am glad to have my presentation for Services and Resources for Children out of the way. At first I wasn’t sure how well it went, but I got my mark back and it was good, and my professor wrote on my comment sheet that I had a “provocatively irreverent” approach. “Provocatively irreverent.” Heh. I want that on my tombstone. Here lies Kitten. She was provocatively irreverent. I would be thrilled even if I didn’t think it was meant as a compliment. I think it was, though. If my other professor tells me that my Indexing and Abstracting assignment is provocatively irreverent, I’ll know that’s a bad sign, but I think it’s a good sign in this case. I didn’t know it was possible to be provocatively irreverent in a presentation about the Newbery Medal, but apparently it is.

On Tuesday I realized that in May and June I will be taking a course on Tuesday nights, so if I did want to go to Stitch ‘n Bitch, I might as well go now, despite all the crazy end-of-term stuff. So I went to Uncommon Grounds on Tuesday night, bringing with me Pocket Purse-in-Progress and the Bernat Illusions from last summer that still looked exactly like two balls of yarn and absolutely nothing like a scarf.

Everybody at KOL is very nice, by the way. I would mention who-all was there, but I am not sure exactly who everyone was, and I don’t want people eventually reading this if I ever let people know that my blog exists and feeling all sad because I left them out of this post. So I’ll just say that everyone is very nice, although I didn’t talk much because I am too.damn.shy and I think everyone there already knew everyone else except for me. Yes, people did try to include me in conversation, but it’s not easy for them to when I’m such a poor conversationalist and all I can think of to say is stuff like, “I have a cat, too.” Okay, not really quite that bad, but you get the idea.

Also, everyone else there was knitting like real grownups. Like sweaters and socks and things. I, on the other hand, was trying to sew a button onto the Pocket Purse. I had finished the actual knitting parts of it at home. Ooh, I can k2tog and do a yarnover. Give me a medal. <rolls eyes> (Oh, wait a minute. I already failed to earn a medal.) Although I had feared the yarnover, it was no big deal once I figured out what the diagram wanted me to do and actually made the attempt. I sewed the button on it at home, but it turned out to be sewn on way too low and I had to take it off again. Then I promptly lost the sewing needle I used for it, the one with the biggest eye. (This is a constant theme in my life. It doesn’t just apply to yarn needles.) It occurs to me just now that the needle is still on my bedroom floor somewhere and I should probably be careful where I walk.

So on Tuesday night, while other people actually knit, I spent at least half an hour squinting at the near-nonexistent hole in the needle, licking the end of the thread, and proving that I have no hand-eye coordination as I tried and failed to thread the needle so I could sew the damn button back on. This is also how I spent most of my sewing classes in junior high. I don’t know why I took sewing for three bloody years. I think I was seven the first time I sewed a button on something (I needed to for a badge in Brownies), but I still can’t adequately thread a needle. I threaded it once that night, started sewing the button on, and then oooops, the needle came unthreaded and the button was only loosely attached. Aargh.

Eventually, I gave up on the damn button and cast on a scarf. (Which meant people would be nice and ask me, “What are you working on?” and I would say, “A garter stitch scarf,” which is tantamount to saying I am the most boring person in the entire world.) It was slower going than I expected, because of the floof factor of the yarn. Although I was knitting slowly, I was not making any mistakes, which thrilled me to no end. It’s very hard to see the stitches with yarn that floofy. I was also carefully counting the stitches after every row. I was sure I’d have too few or too many stitches, but I never did. Whee, no glaring mistakes. But I decided the scarf was wider than I wanted it to be, so I ripped it all out and started over. I started over just before the time that everyone started heading out and ended up with three rows of the scarf at its new width.

This means that in two hours, I had managed to sew a button halfway onto a little strip of knitting and knit three rows of a garter stitch scarf. That was all my tangible progress.

I had a good time, though, listening to other people talk, looking at what other people were knitting, and cursing myself for being so.damn.shy. I’ll go back next week, barring any unforseen events that might keep me away.

Also, today I made the Pocket Purse my bitch. I bought some more sewing needles and sewed the button on firmly, using a needle with a bigger eye. (Translation: I used a goddamn tapestry needle. When I say I can’t thread a needle, I really mean it.) The button is now sewn on too high, but it looks better that way than it did when it was too low. The possibility exists that I’ll rip it off again and sew it on a third time, neither too high nor too low, but I probably don’t care that much. I can’t picture myself ever actually using the Pocket Purse to carry stuff in. I seamed it up, and it’s as finished as it’s gonna be for now.

I never thought I’d say anything this stupid, but I swear this looks better in real life than it does in the picture. Its imperfections still exist in real life, but they’re not so obvious. See that freaky light blue bulge on the right side? That’s not nearly as obvious on the actual purse, but it’s really prominent in the picture. It also isn’t even my fault in real life — that particular imperfection is entirely a result of this yarn’s propensity for splitting. Plenty of the other Pocket Purse Problems are my fault, but not that one. Maybe someday I’ll make another pocket purse after I’m better at decreasing (and seaming), preferably in a yarn other than Splitty McSplitsplit here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Cool Stuff, Finished Objects, Frustrations, WIPs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.