Headed South

I'm sorry I haven't been writing very much lately. Some of you already know that my Granna has gotten quite sick in the last few weeks, and it's been difficult for me to manage my time well between work, calling home, and taking a moment for a deep breath alone.
This morning I'm headed off to the southern state of Chiapas for my spring break trip. I'll be spending two weeks visiting ruins, learning about traditional medicine, and breathing mountain air with Anneli. I'm excited for the trip, although it comes at a difficult time. I'll have lots of stories and pictures when I get back, I'm sure.
Speaking of pictures, I posted a lot of new ones over at my flickr this week, especially of Ari's quince in San Luis Potosi. If you've got a moment to head on over there, I encourage you to. This blog gets a good amount of traffic, but my pictures feel a little lonely.

I also wanted to link to the English version of Javier Sicilia's open letter to the Mexican government and drug cartels. I referenced these events in my last newsletter, but the letter is so much more poignant than anything I could ever say. I hope you'll take a few minutes to read it. Here's just one paragraph...

There is no life, Albert Camus wrote, without persuasion and without peace, and the history of Mexico today only knows intimidation, suffering, distrust and the fear that one day another son or daughter of another family will be debased and massacred. You only know what you are ask us, that death, as is already happening today, becomes an affair of statistics and administration and which we should all get used to it.

Be well, and Happy Easter, if I don't "talk" with you before then.

Newsletter

My March newsletter is now posted here.

The boy smelled of salt,
and was silent.
Even when he talked,
he didn't make any noise at all.

He just looked at me
as if he suspected me
of something he hadn't yet learned
how to fear.

Earlier, I picked up a
black plastic comb
and put it in my back pocket.
All he owns is in a thin plastic bag at my feet.

I ask if he will try again, and
his honey eyes turn to dirty spoons.
He is young, but handsome.
The coffee tastes like it has whiskey in it.

Maybe he left a girlfriend at home.
Maybe she is walking with him,
breathing his prayers for luck and for water,
or she makes him wish he could turn back.

His nails are black,
caked under with dirt,
bitten ragged.
My eyes are full of desert sand.

Knitting & Crochet Blog Week: Something to aspire to.

PROMPT: Is there a pattern or skill that you don’t yet feel ready to tackle but which you hope to (or think you can only dream of) tackling in the future, near or distant? Is there a skill or project that makes your mind boggle at the sheer time, dedication and mastery of the craft? Maybe the skill or pattern is one that you don’t even personally want to make but can stand back and admire those that do. Maybe it is something you think you will never be bothered to actually make bu can admire the result of those that have.

Oh, yeah. Intrelac, baby. I've been wanting to try this skill since I first saw the Danica Scarf.

Isn't she pretty?

I'm not sure why I'm so intimidated by this. According to ravelry, a lot of people have made this scarf, and so it can't possibly be as impossible as it looks. But I hate the idea of seams, and so a whole scarf based on the idea of picking up stitches from the sides of knit sections over and over and over and.... yikes.
Currently trying to stash bust, and I don't have anything appropriate for knitting it currently, but I've decided that as soon as I get back to the point when I am buying yarn, I intend to buy yarn for specific projects instead of on a whim, and this is the first thing I'm buying for. So yeah. Soon.

2KCBWDAY6

Knitting & Crochet Blog Week: Your knitting and crochet time

PROMPT: Write about your typical crafting time.

I am an easily distracted crafter. I only rarely sit quietly and knit without any other kind of entertainment. I listen to music and podcasts, watch tv and movies, sometimes I even read, if I'm knitting pure stockinette or garter stitch. My current favorites are these:

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

Snap Judgement

Community

and whatever's on Universal Channel, so I don't have to think about what's going on in a foreign language.

2KCBWDAY5

Knitting & Crochet Blog Week: Where Are They Now?

Whatever happened to your __________? Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity.

These are the first socks I ever knit, back when they were first finished, and the only hand-knit socks I brought with me to Mexico. The yarn I bought when I was living in Eisleben, and it looked fantastic in the skein, but I kind of didn't like it once it was knitted up, to be honest. All the same, they're warm, and I packed them in an attempt to capitalize the twofer value as both warm footware and a comfort item. I don't so much need them for their warmth anymore, but even up to last week their coziness has continued to make them a good choice on the list of 100.
These socks also mark the passage of my time in Mexico more than anything else. When I got here, they were a little worn, but still looked nice. The fit was never fantastic (does anyone do well in that department with their first pair of socks?), but they were passable. The tops were still as stretchy as they ever were (again--not the best they could've been). The fabric was in good shape.
Now, the heels have felted together and gotten really too tight to be comfortable when I walk. The big toe of the right foot is wearing out, and you can see part of my toenail poking through. The ribbing is completely stretched out, and the tops fall down and bunch around my ankles like they don't know this isn't the early-90s anymore. They're unfortunate-looking and embarrassing, and no, you can't see a photo, because I don't even wear them out into the living room anymore. They have been quarantined to my bedroom, and the internet is a much larger, more public space than that.

I love those socks.

2KCBWDAY4

Knitting & Crochet Blog Week: Tidy Mind, Tidy Stitches

PROMPT: How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? 

My knitting organization style is different right now than it normally is, since I've only got part of my stash here with me in Mexico. However, I think I've grown to love this system more than my old one, and I think I'm going to keep it up when I go home. I've got a couple different systems working in glorious harmony with each other, but I'll just talk here about the big one.

The Stash

The hardest thing for me to organize is my stash. The idea is that I put yarn in zipper bags and store it in a box that fits on the shelf of my desk. But I ran out of zipper bags before I ran out of yarn, and so I had to put more than one kind of yarn in each bag. It was hard to decide how to organize that. Right now, my physical stash is organized by yarn weight, mostly for the convenience of having similarly sized skeins packaged together (I tend to buy several colorways of the same brand of yarn at the same time. Right now I'm trying to work through my Artyarns Ultramerino 4 stash.). But sometimes that doesn't make sense to me.
Because I change my mind about every week about what categorizations make the most sense, I'm really glad I have ravelry's stash page to help me out. I first put pictures with [most of] my yarns thinking that I would need something to reference when I asked my parents to mail me more yarn during the course of this year (no way I can ever carry enough yarn with me to last that long!). But it's helpful now, as I think more carefully about the exact specifications of a yarn I'm trying to match with a project. I like being able to quickly change sorting by color, by weight, by yardage, without actually having to dump my whole stash out on the bed and start over.

2KCBWDAY3

Knitting & Crochet Blog Week: Skill +1UP

PROMPT: Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet?

I'd have to honestly say that I've grown in confidence more than skill. But if I have learned anything new in the last year, it's lace.

The first lace chart I tackled was at Christmas 2009, when I knit this Ulmus shawl for Granna. I really struggled to understand what was going on, and had to restart this scarf about five times before I figured it out. I probably knit more from the sample photos and trial and error than I did by being able to read the chart.

Fast forward to last month, when I knit this Moonlight Sonata shawlette for my mom. I think it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. And I'm particularly proud of how quickly I memorized the chart. I know that's not something I can exactly point to and say "SEE?! I did it!" so you'll just have to believe me, I guess. ;)
For me, the process of learning lace was more about experimentation than skill development. As time goes on, I've learned a little bit about which way certain types of increases and decreases lean (not that I don't constantly get them mixed up), where holes will actually end up in the grand scheme of things, even though they look out of place when the yarn over first gets mentioned, and how to best control tension so that blocking isn't quite such a chore (Does anyone else have this problem? It doesn't seem to make sense to me that my tension is different when I knit lace than when I'm working in st st...). It's a little like a science experiment. It's a lot like fun.

2KCBWDAY2