April Fools

James' says "All hail foolish people!"

How I Came to Knitting

This is an essay I wrote for something or other and felt it would be nice to print it here too. It's a bit long so go get some coffee.

How I Came to Knitting

An essay by Robin Jacobson

Every one learns in a different way. It’s what makes us unique.

Every one learns to knit in a different way. It’s what makes us unique knitters. There are even so many ways to knit that many of them have names. Pickers, Flingers, Combination Knitters, all unique a fabulous individuals that have found their perfect way to interact with yarn. I think that the way we knit is just as interesting as what we knit. But even more interesting than that is how we learned to knit.

Everyone has a story. Some are short, “My Mom taught me.” Some are long and take days or even whole books to tell. Mine is a short essay, not an epic saga, but hopefully interesting.

I first learned to knit from my Mom when I was in Jr. High. It was the ‘80’s and I had a very short attention span. The ‘80’s were not great for girls who were less superficial and liked to create things. If you liked to make stuff and sew and cook you were either Amish or super weird. I was a freak show, in a very punk, proto-goth kind of way. I even had purple hair. Well, knitting didn’t take and I ended up starting my love affair with sewing and painting, both of which have kept me fed and clothed at various points in my life. I think my knitting produced one 8” square for the whole decade.

The second time I learned to knit was in the ‘90’s, again from my Mom. This produced a second 8” square. I may have been trying to make a hat.

The third time I learned to knit was in 2002. My Mom had just made a batch of hats for the kids for Christmas the year before, 2001, and I wanted to make my daughter a matching scarf. It was January and she really needed it. My Mom gave me the leftover yarn from the hat; it was a horrible fluffy pink acrylic. I had never touched wool yarn. Mom always knit with acrylic. Cheap acrylic. Then Mom gave me the aluminum needles she had used. They were old and dinged all to hell, so the yarn kept snagging. She showed me how to do a long-tail cast-on. The only one she knew. I knit the whole 60” scarf in stockinette stitch. I had no idea it would curl up like that and end up looking like a plushy pink boa constrictor. I would not have wished this on some one I don’t like as a first knitting project. I would not wish this on an enemy as knitting penance.

My daughter loved it. She still wears it, with the hat.

After the big pink snake scarf I needed to feed my creative soul. I had stopped painting. I wasn’t currently sewing or designing so I needed an outlet. I got some acrylic eyelash yarn my daughter had picked out and made her another scarf. My friend, now adopted sister, Shelley took me under her wing. She helped me figure out the while my purl stitches were perfect and I had wonderful gauge every single one of my knit stitches were crossed.

And then she took me to a real yarn shop. Before that all my yarn had come from Rite-aid. She bought me my very first set of Denise needles. She bought me a $37.00 skein of hand painted rayon eyelash yarn in a deep chocolate/coffee because I liked it. I made a scarf, for myself, on size 17 Lantern Moon ebony needles. She thought I was nuts for knitting something so slippery, so easy to drop a stitch, on such big needles. But the needles were pretty and I didn’t know any better, and it was way easier than the squeaky acrylic on evil aluminum needles.

These three scarves are the only scarves I have ever knit. My next project was a queen sized afghan knit in the round, and then came socks.

I learned some very interesting things from Shelley, my second knitting teacher. I learned that Mom was left handed and therefore knit weird. She had never really learned a standard way and no one could show her how to knit left handed. She would hold her working needle between her knees and then her other needle in her left hand and only ever worked on straits. Long straits. She was also a flinger.

This seemed like a lot of extra arm movement to me. I’m ambidextrous so I figured I could figure out a way to use both hands. I became a picker completely by accident. That’s not how the 1953 book my Mom gave me showed to do it. Shelley’s a flinger. I just grabbed the needles on that first scarf and went about knitting continental. I still have no idea why my hands thought that was just the proper way. Thank goodness no one was there to stop me.

Every single person I have taught to knit since I have taught English. That’s just the way they liked to learn. It felt right in their hands.

That is the best gift I can think of to give to some one.

The gift of knitting.

To make it feel right.

In there hands.

So this is my life...

After the Holidays I had to move. And then I got pneumonia. And then I had to move while I had pneumonia. From this I learned 2 really amazing things. Hiring movers is very smart. Not having health insurance is very scary when you have a life threatening illness.

Did I mention that I had to pack my whole house, that's husband, 3 kids and 4 cats, unpack my whole house and coordinate the move with pneumonia!

I love my husband but he so screwed the pooch on helping with the move. I still have boxes of stuff in the garage, and I'm the kind of person who as everything unpacked and put away in less than a week. Two weeks at the most. The thing they don't tell you about pneumonia is it takes forever to get better. Even after the antibiotics are done it was still 2 weeks before stairs weren't a big obstacle.

While I was sick I knit socks.
One pair of ankle socks in Collinette Jitterbug - Tapis. Which reaffirms why I love Jitterbug.

I also read.

And then I went back to work and have been running ever since. Which is still not a very good excuse to stop blogging but there it is.



Bowling birthday party's have also become very popular with the 8 year old set. I started a new sock pattern (I write patterns in my spare time. Stop that laughing!) and the whole experience was so novel that I have to take some sock pictures of it.




Then it all goes Disco.













At least my cats like my new room.

Robin's Holiday Survival Guide

Merry New Year!

Wow was 2007 a fun ride. It's always nice to ring in the new year with a bang but I find having all the holidays piled up at the end to be a bit stressful, like finals. So here are few things I do to get me through with all my hair still on my head.

1. Drink responsibly. Take time to sit down with a cuppa with friends and family. There's nothing more sad than having a cup of hot cocoa alone at 1 am to take the edge off.

2. Decorating is a team sport. Have the kids help out, they like it, and when you go to put everything away after the holidays they can help with that too.

3. Wrapping gifts is a team sport too. I like wrapping presents, really I do. But when you haven't gotten anything wrapped at all and it's 2 days til Christmas Eve it's time to call in the troops. Thank you Shelley!

4. It's not all about the food. I love to cook. I love to feed people. I love baking for the holidays. I had no time this year. Believe it or not this is the first year I have ever worked full time for the holidays. I didn't do any baking this year and I felt deprived until I realized I also did not gain any weight either. That's 5 less pounds to shed this year. Go me.

5. Knit responsibly. Never take on more knitting projects than you can finish.

6. Be careful what you promise to knit when giving knit certificates. On the card I said hat, mittens or a scarf. Len wants a hat, no problem. Lisa wants a Doctor Who scarf. Have you seen how long those things are? Next year it's going to be a one skein limit.

7. Pick a day to just sleep in. This one is a life saver. You will have to do some pre-planning to make sure you get your day but it's so worth it.

8. Christmas ornaments are not eternal. You are going to lose or break at least one every year. This year Jarret broke one of the good blown glass ones and the kitten got a pear, a teddy bear, a fish and an apple. At least I can fix the kitten's ornamental depredations.

9. Play games. This one is self explanatory. We really like Munchkin Blender.

And I finished Quinn's sweater in time for it to be a Christmas present. Mom's sending me a picture of it soon.

So happy to have a minute to blog

Can you believe its almost Yule!

And to start the Holiday season my daughter and her choir class got to sing for us. She's the curly headed one in the middle top row. They were very good. The orchestra was painful but the choirs rocked.


In my house we have a bunch of different Winter Holidays. My ex and my son James do Hanukkah, sometimes he takes the other kids out to his Mom's too. Then my husbands family does Christmas Day. My family has always done Christmas Eve and Yule. But this year... no Hanukkah because Great Grandma and Grandpa are both in the hospital, and I can't find Jamie's menorah. No Christmas day with my husband's family because of health issues with his Mom, see the above mention of hospitals again. And my husband is working Yule and Christmas Eve. Time for plan B.

We are doing Yule, without the Husband, on Saturday. Sad, but still, he never does ritual with us anyway.

My Mom works Christmas Eve and just found out that her daycare is closed, so we will have Quinn all day. Not a worry but all the prep needs to be done before hand. Chasing toddlers and doing last minute present wrapping don't mix. Pass the eggnog!

Christmas Day, which Husband does have off, we are going to my soon to be new home Shelley's. There we will play games like Munchkin Cthulu and Zombie Flux. We will eat and talk and see what happens if you mix the Stoner Flux deck with the Zombie Flux deck. We will also play Last Day On Earth and Haunted House 1, 2, 3 and 4, Illuminati and Empire Builder. Ok, so we're gamer geeks....

As for Yule knitting, some of the fabulous people on my list are getting Knitting Promissory Notes. This is basically a card and a box with yarn in it an a promise to make the knitted object in question. My Husband is getting a Hat Promise. Hat promises are also going to a couple of friends. My kids (who do read this blog) are getting surprise promises.

Quinn's sweater is still not finished. I sewed the sleeves on and found that despite measuring twice, and counting the exact number of stitches, twice, that I had arsed it up completely and had to rip out the whole sleeve and start again. I had to do this on one of her previous sweaters to. So the sleeves are still not sewn on and the whole thing is waiting for me to be less irritated at it.

Ryan's socks are, but the pic for them is at home.

I cast on for a new pair of gloves. I gave the last pair I knit to my Mom.
I'm making Deborah Newton's Twisted Stitch Gauntlet's out of Interweave Knits Holiday issue. These will be for me. If I ever get enough knitting time to finish them.


That's my holiday wish to every knitter.

May your days be filled with love and joy, and more time to Knit!

It's the Most Busiest Time of the Year... come on, you know the words

Shopping and Wrapping and snow on car, it's the most Busiest time of the Year!

I've also been making ornaments and trying to finish UFO's to round out the Yule gifts. The sheep ornaments are to cute for words, and came out so well that later I'm going to put up a step-by-step tutorial.

Sheeps in Space. It's a sheepy constellation.













Baa, a whole sheepy galaxy.

Ok, so the light from the chandelier doesn't help a whole lot.

But aren't they cute with there little roving faces and their little roving tails and their wild arse colors.

I like me some Bright colors in the winter. For those of you unfamiliar with the great Pacific North West, especially the Puget Sound region, we don't actually get to see the sun for six months of the year. I doesn't rain the whole time, despite popular media myth, but it's overcast and gray. From October to April the Puget Sound is a big bowl of storm clouds, drizzle and fog. The only color we get out of nature is the green from the trees, if you can see them. It also gets dark at about 4:00 pm and doesn't get light until 8:00 am. I drive to work in the dark. I drive home in the dark. I combat this with bright screaming color.

And chocolate. And wool. And technocolor sheeps.

Tomorrow, or later today, the Saga of Quinn's Sweater...

I want to be Stephanie Pearl-McPhee when I grow up.

She's my hero. She's funny and fiber addicted and can manage to blog almost every day. I want to be able to dedicate my life to knitterly pursuits like that. I just love her and she makes me laugh.

I, like many of you knitters out there, have taken to having poor helpless people hold my knitting to have their picture taken. We can mostly all blame this idea on Stephanie. But the cake must be taken by this fabulous knitter, Tracy, who got Barack Obama to hold her sock in progress for pictures. She has way more balls than I do.

Yarn Balls! I meant yarn balls. Really. :)

As for me, I'm back to teaching knitting at Michael's. As if I needed more to do with my Saturdays, but I figure teaching knitting is a public service. If everyone knew how to knit just imagine how much better the world would be. Everyone would be a lot warmer for one thing.

If every one in the world knew how to knit...
... no one would freeze to death because they did not have hats, scarves, sweaters, gloves, mittens or blankets.
... you could get yarn at your local stockists and there would be more yarn shops than 7-11's.
... no one would question your need for alpaca.
... no one would ever walk up to you and ask if that's knitting or crochet.
... no one would just assume that you could whip them out a sweater in a couple hours and that it was reasonable to offer you $20.00 for it.
... no one would be offended if you said 'could you wait until I finish this row' or 'just a second I'm counting stitches'.
... there would be knitting contests and knitting awards and more knitting shows on TV.
... you could get more yarn in more fibers in more colors.
... kids would pay attention to math in school and stop asking the teacher 'am I ever going to need to know this?'
... it would solve world hunger, improve the world economy, end illiteracy and promote world trade.
... there would be peace on earth and good will towards men because everybody would be to busy knitting to go out and kill each other. It would damage your needles and mess up your yarn, not to mention seriously cutting in to your knitting time.

So some day the world will be a better place because more people know how to knit. And I'm helping.