It’s Furious Balancing

I would, of course, prefer to eat that Cadbury Creme Egg, but this is creative enough for me to forgive their lapse in judgment.

10. Pain issues.  It’s been very bad since I’ve gone off one of my medications.  I have more intense pain to deal with, but it’s only for a “few days a month.” Yes, that’s a euphemism.  Enough said.  I’m currently typing this while on too much extra-strength Vicodin and I have the attention span of a dog.

9. Depression. This goes hand in hand with #10 above.

8.  Lack of bloggable material. I’ve started a few posts in my head, but none of them have come to fruition.  I have one idea — using the Seven Deadly Sins to write about knitting and yarn addiction — but that’s inchoate at the moment.

7.  Facebook.  Yes, I finally got my sorry butt on Facebook.  I’m there as Laiane Wolfsong if you need to look me up.  

6.  Other Internet addictions.  Besides Ravelry, that is.  I’ve gotten most of my financial stuff up at Mint.com and I’ve been known to waste a lot of screen time with StumbleUpon.com.

5.  Worry.  I’m concerned that Emma, my 14-year-old tuxedo cat, is developing feline diabetes.  We’re going in to see the vet Thursday, and I’m doing a lot of reading up on caring for a diabetic cat.

4.  Morrowind.  I’ve said before that this game is the best computer game of all time, and the primary reason is its re-playability.  I’ve been a Morrowind fan for years, and I keep coming back to it.

3.  Knitting.  One thing I do not suffer from is Second Sock Syndrome, if only because after I try on the first sock off my needles I want the second sock ASAP so I can wear them both.  I’m cranking out the second of a pair done in this lovely Socks That Rock Lightweight from Blue Moon Fiber Arts.

This is the Haida colorway from the Raven Clan series, and it’s going to turn into a pair of Lenore socks.

2.  The Prisoner.  I hadn’t heard of this 1967 television series until The Husband mentioned it.  After Patrick McGoohan died earlier this year, he mentioned it again and we decided to order the series on DVD.  We’re more than halfway through, and I know I will need to watch it again to catch more of the subtlety (You know, foreshadowing, allusions, symbolism –  all that “literary” stuff that gets me excited).

1.  Too much cat help. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Nada. Zilch.  A big goose egg.  I don’t know if it’s my workload at the office, Daylight Saving Time, or what, but my brain is fried; my ability to write a coherent blog post has flown right out the window.

I can safely say it’s not Spring Fever.  Spring means allergies and mud and yard work.  Spring means that the horror of a Michigan Summer can’t be too far off.  It means mosquitoes, sweat, excessive daylight, and fighting the urge to wring the little feathered necks of those perky-perky-perky birds that start chirping at 4:00 in the fucking a.m.   Warm weather makes me cranky.

Welcome to my pre-Reverse-Seasonal-Affective-Disorder funk.  /sigh

I need Cadbury Creme Eggs.

I declare it LOLCat Monday.  So sue me.

The more time I spend surfing Ravelry, the more I come to realize that knitters — even though we share an obsession — are as varied and different as.. as..  Well, I don’t know what, but we sure are different from one another, especially when it comes down to What We Like to Knit or, more importantly, What We Would Never Knit. 

I admit to being anti-shawl.  Yes, they’re lovely and lacy and elaborate and challenging; I know all that.  I just see no sense in knitting one because (1) I wouldn’t wear it, and (2) “shawl” makes me think of peasant women sweeping the dirt floor of the family hovel.  Shawls are just not my cup of tea, and I can get my “lace knitting” fix by working up a scarf.  So there.

But I digress.  There’ are plenty of patterns I see in knitting books or on Ravelry that give me the Why Would I Bother? reaction; but I occasionally run across the I Must Make That Immediately pattern.

This is what I’m leading up to.  I have been knitting fruit:

Ball Knitted Like an Orange

All of that preamble was to brace you.  I can hear you now: “Laiane, why did you knit an orange?”

Because I can.  Because it was there.  Because I saw this pattern in the winter edition of Knitty and thought it was the sweetest and cutest little thing I had seen in a long time and that it would amuse me no end to knit one. Because it was a vintage pattern.  Because it was wintertime and I thought some vibrant yarn might be in order.

Pattern: Ball Knitted Like an Orange, translated by Franklin Habit from the original pattern in Wheldon’s Practical Needlework, Volume One (circa 1880).

Yarn: ShibuiKnits Sock in Lily and Berroco Comfort DK in Lovage.

Photo with flash to better show detail and color.

Needles: US Size 1.5 (2.5 mm), Hiya Hiya bamboo DPN’s

Mods: The original pattern calls for six leaves, which I thought were too many for my ideal orange.  I used an old (clean) pair of kneehighs as a liner so that the stuffing wouldn’t poke out.  The pattern suggested whipstitching the holes/seams, but I didn’t trust my whipstitching skills.  That, and since I knit this at a fairly loose gauge, there would be stuffing coming out everywhere, not just the seams.  Since I used the liner and stuffed this sucker within an inch of its life, I couldn’t do the detail work on the bottom of the orange with the green tail from the stem; the needle wouldn’t pass through.  Ah, well.

I think it’s charming and twee, and I’m just smitten with it.  I don’t believe I could say the same of a shawl.