The Big 5-0-0

Yep, this is it: my 500th post to this blog. What a chatterbox, eh? Although it did take me nearly two years to hit 500.

And I got nothin'! But I swear, I will do a drawing for something lost-art-y: a netted bag? a fistful of fingerloop braids? a linen lace-knitted bookmark in a pattern from one of the Ladies' Knitting and Netting Books?

[Edited to add: I'm working on a black netted bag -- scroll down to the bottom for a pic. This will be a cylinder/tin can style bag, probably with fingerloop braid drawstrings.]

Drawing Details

Leave a comment on this post through which I can contact you. I'll take comments until Sunday, 16 September 2007. (After that, you can still comment but won't go in the drawing.) Monday I'll print out names & have my son randomly draw one (or maybe two).

I love to see where people are, so please tell me that, too. (One of my best friends lives in Michigan, but her ISP registers as coming out of Chicago. Gotta love the internet.) Brownie points if you put a link to a local webcam in there.

Recursive Blog Post

Otherwise known as "blogging about blogging".

I've been told for far too many years, "You're so good at writing -- you should write for publication." Yuck. I love to write stuff down, and hey! look! I know two-dollar words like "recursive", but I hate trying to write something that's going to be published.

I usually hash it over until it's a complete mish-mash in my head and I can't stand to look at it any more. Blogging, I don't overthink, re-write, or do much more than correct spelling. It's perrrrfect.

One of the most popular posts on this blog after the main page is "How to spiral-cut a t-shirt". Who would have guessed so many people wanted to cut up their clothes?

Another one is my frame-knitting translation of the "Old Shale" pattern. One of the first things I started to figure out on a knitting frame was how to knit lace patterns.

(And guess what, Orenburg patterns are super-easy on a knitting frame, because the increase/decrease pairs are all right next to each other!)

I haven't always been a lace knitter. This little piece of knitting could be described as "A knitter's progress."

I must have started it around 2004, using some old foxed thread. I was just scribbling with thread, trying to understand what was going on in lace knitting.

When I'm trying to learn something new, usually I just bash my head into it over and over until my hands (which are much smarter than I am, and basically pull me through life) figure it out, take over, and do it. Then my head just sits back and lets the hands drive, and sort of looks out the windows at the pretty scenery.

At the left, you can see several inches of slowly-less-random holes. Then a couple of repeats of one of the leaf patterns in Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns. A couple of different hearts from one of Marianne Kinzel's Modern Lace Knitting books, I think the first one. That must have been after I got it for Christmas in 2005.

Then the last section, which I've posted close-ups of recently: "Stitches for Purses" and two leaf patterns from The Ladies' Knitting and Netting Book: First Series

And now, the washer is fixed, which means I better go use it!