Murphy's Laws of Knitting

Do you know what it means when a knitter/crocheter, "I'll just be 5 more minutes?" It means, "Let me finish this one thing, which I think will only take 5 minutes, but I have to finish it or it will bug me, so if I look up later and 2 1/2 hours have passed, that's what I meant." How do I know this? Over and over again, I'm working on a project and my husband says he's going up to bed. I look at the work in my lap and say I just need 5 or 10 minutes more. Lately I've been, for reasons I don't understand, obsessed with working out some amigurumi designs, and have stayed up way too late. Here are some of the results.




















Every now and then I think we need a list of knitting observations, maybe Murphy's Laws of knitting. I'll hone the above saying and get going on it--Probably while I should be working on something else.

In knitting news, I managed to get one of my teenaged sons to wear a sweater I lovingly made for him. Making a sweater for a teenaged son is a perilous undertaking; you have to have a touch skin. I chose a simple, stylish pattern from The Yarn Girls' Guide to Simple Knits, had him choose the yarn, and made it a size bigger than he was at the time. He was able to wear it once for Easter and once for the picture. It was so heavy the shoulder seams bothered him. Sigh.

As an aside, I'm fairly sure that the pattern and the shoulder picture do not match. I tried to do some short rows to make it fit better.

I have knit a few sweaters now, and they have all been pretty unsuccessful. This is not to say anything against knitting in general, but something about sweaters has eluded me. Perhaps they're just so complex, demand such good fit, and are too often made from poorly writtendesigned patterns. Or perhaps I am a knitting doofus.

My first sweater was a raglan top-down sweater for myself. I learned two things from this one: (1) raglan sweaters don't allow for much of a bust--not that I think of myself as busty, and (2) yarn that's soft in your hands for knitting may not be soft enough to wear. I admit that it was knit in a variegated Red Heart yarn. I didn't know then what I know now; it was right after I got back into knitting. I've worn it once.

I was enchanted by the inspired designs in Sally Melville's The Knitting Experience Book 1: The Knit Stitch, and decided to make the loose kid sweater at the back for my youngest son. He likes bright colors--purple, orange, etc., and they look good on him. He wanted purple, chose a maroon yarn I'd bought at an estate sale--it turned out more purple-fuschia--never has been worn in public. It looks like a girl's sweater. Lesson learned--look at the yarn color in actual daylight--something that was in short supply in Chicago. No pictures, sorry.

Note--Ms. Melville's book is a great first book to get a knitter--rather than showing 3 how-to pictures for a technique, it will show 10, if needed. And very clever.

Actually, I don't think I'm a knitting doofus. I have made some beautiful things, and altered some patterns to make new designs that are attractive. Here's one of my favorites, Clapotis, pattern from Knitty, yarn from Silk Garden by Noro.

There. I feel a little better. Now I am working on things that are like sweaters, but I won't call them that in case there's some other sweater curse I don't know about. There's not much to show yet. I'm 15 rows into the corset that topped my very first essay here, and I'm nervous every step of the way. Annie Modesitt is a genius, but not one to write her patterns in a linear, one thing at a time way, which is how one knits.

Maybe what I should do is pick a classic pattern, use classic yarn, and make it for someone who isn't still actively growing.

Or maybe I should make this manly sweater instead for my husband. The pattern is Sirdar 8313.

I don't know. I can't take too much more of Murphy's Law slamming me right now.

P.S. This may have to do for my June entry, as I'm about to start my final month on Internal Medicine, on call every 4th night. I'm mainly dreading the prospect.

Medical Information for the Month:

If you're worried about Avian Flu, see the CDC's web site, rather than getting your information off the sensationalized evening news; you'll feel better.

Could I Sell Breasts on Etsy?

One day while I was doing newborn exams in the hospital, I got to talking with one of the lactation consultants. When they're teaching new moms, most of them (all female) have gotten comfortable using their own bodies to demonstrate different techniques of breastfeeding--fully clothed, of course. But it isn't always easy for mothers to picture what they mean the first time around. This becomes even more problematic in a class--it's hard for the doctors not to laugh a little during their spiel.

While I was crocheting a little pig, I couldn't help but notice how the nose looked a lot like a nipple until I got to the rest of the pig. So I offered to make the lacation consultants some breast models. The nice thing is that they're realistic, but not too realistic, and do the job--they can even stuff them into a lab coat pocket, and hey, they're machine washable. A whole lot cheaper than what you get from scientific anatomical supplies places.

Now comes what may be even weirder. Recently we saw a DVD called Dear Francis--it's a documentary of U.S. college students going to Swaziland to teach about AIDS to high school students there. The country has been so devastated, that 1 out of 10 homes has a child for head of household--the parents have died. These kids are easily taken advantage of. What they need is a cottage industry.

I've been trying out selling different amigurumi on www.etsy.com, and wondering if that could be a venue for some of these kids. If some of these toys are very popular, for very little money they could be making money for their families while staying home. It wouldn't be the same as raising a garden where someone might steal the produce. Who would want 20 little stuffed pigs? Or even breasts? I'd bet that there are other lactation consultants who might be interested. Would I get in trouble with etsy for testing it out?

Along the lines of things for these kids to crochet, a friend of mine showed me a cross bookmark made by her aunt, probably in the 1940s. I've done a variation of it, and can't find a similar one in any books. Perhaps people would be interested in handmade lace crosses.

I'm afraid this isn't a very good picture:

There are other African countries with numerous children as heads of household, too.

I go to Saddleback Community Church, which has launched a program called the P.E.A.C.E. Plan, to attack some of the global giants that trouble our world, including poverty. We have task forces of lay members who want to address some of these needs, and I think this idea might be a good thing. I still need to talk with some business people to see whether this is viable and how to go about it. You would hate to provide an income for a short time and then have it dry up.

I'd be grateful for any opinions.