And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

Resurrection and Renaissance

Hey! Look! Two posts from me in two days! I'd like to keep up the momentum. It helps that one of my best friends was inspired to call me after my last post. It's nice to know that someone still wants to read what I write.

I've been spending a lot of time pondering the intent of this blog. My blog reading has shifted quite a bit recently, lining up with my favorite obsession -- knitting. The deeper I get into that, the more I want to contribute to the world of knitting blogs out there. What a great way to keep track of my progress and growth as a knitter, and to share with others the artistic work I am most proud of these days. Not to mention, it's a good way to hold myself accountable about the number of projects I'm working on at one time.

Yet I still like to write about my kids and funny anecdotes from my life. I can keep in touch with my friends and family this way, as well as document things from Ian and Katie's childhood. I don't think I'm prolific enough to support two blogs, so I'm afraid I'm going to integrate both types of content and hope that whoever finds/reads this blog enjoys whatever I have to say. We'll just have to see how it goes.

So keeping in mind the goal of adding a bit more knitting content to the blog, I'll add a few pictures of recent FOs (finished objects -- unfinished objects are UFOs, you know):

Sarah's socks -- yarn: Cherry Tree Hill (can't remember the colorway), needles: size 1 (eeks, size 1 needles take a long time), pattern: from Sensational Knitted Socks, my sock bible. My sister-in-law's favorite color is maroon, and my mom and I hunted all over the New York Sheep and Wool Festival to find maroon yarn. This is as close as we got. I like how they turned out, but was surprised that the two socks came out with different stripe widths and slightly different color balances (all the yarn came from one skein).






Dad's socks -- yarn: wool, can't remember the name right now, but came from Jo-Ann, pattern: boring, normal sock pattern -- Dad's request -- but I added a little bit of self-designed monogram (D squared) to them. He likes them, even though it took forever for me to get them to him.











Jason's sweater -- I have a new(ish) baby nephew (3 weeks old now), and I was so excited to knit this sweater for him from Oh My! yarn. It's incredibly soft and gorgeous, as well as machine washable. And I was really pleased with how it turned out. Baby sweaters are the most fun to knit -- lots of different things to keep your interest, and they're finished quickly!




Katie's sweater -- yarn: Plymouth Fantasy (100% mercerized cotton), pink -- her choice, pattern: Very Berry T-shirt from MagKnits.com. A nice spring/summer knit, and she loves it. I think it will be easy to adapt the pattern to a size for an American Girl doll, and I may try to do that with the leftover yarn. I wish I could have found a little bit lighter weight yarn at my LYS, but they really didn't have anything else that would have worked.

There. Hope that wasn't too boring. Stay tuned for more current work, and I'll try to throw in interesting thoughts here and there too.

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 2:23 PM | 5 comment(s)

Must . . . Fight . . . Instincts . . .

(Yeah, yeah, I know I haven't posted in forever. More meta blog talk another time. The following was too good not to blog it.)

So. My family of origin has a little . . . quirk, if you will. We all like to be right. All the time. And if we think we're right, and someone else is not, we find correcting that someone completely irresistible. They don't even actually have to be in the room -- we have been known to correct people on TV, writers in the newspaper, etc. Of course, we mostly correct each other. And to a non-Dockstader, that can get a little, well, irritating when the nitpicking really gets going.

Ever since I married the unflappable, nonconfrontational Dave, I have been pulling away a little bit from the need to prove that I am 100% right all the time. (Dave would say, a very little bit.) I try to let things slide a little bit more. And with distance, I am able to see the irritating side of this trait. Really, I am. It doesn't always stop me from engaging, but I do try.

So I've been frustrated lately that Katie and Ian are beginning to correct each other (and us) to an extreme, about things that just. Don't. Matter. It flows mostly from Katie to Ian, or Katie to us, but they are both taking part, and it leads to pointless bickering that grates on me to no end. The other morning, I had a serious talk with them about the need to learn to let things go, to not correct every single, little, niggling thing that anyone else says or does. I suggested that we should make a chart and hang it on the refrigerator, and mark it down every time someone in the family corrects someone else needlessly -- the point being that I want them to recognize how often the behavior happens, so that they'll understand what I'm trying to say.

This afternoon, I found that Katie has already taken it upon herself to draw up the chart. Here is a picture of it:



10 points for anyone who can fully grasp the existential dilemma I am currently facing.

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 3:22 PM | 0 comment(s)