In the Pterodactyl Claws of an Idea

If you are a fellow creative, you've probably gotten those envious remarks:

"It must be nice to be able to think things up like that and not need a pattern."

"Wow, I wish I could come up with those ideas!"

(Also known as "Where do you get your ideas?" I always want to say, "There's a store where I buy them, but if I told you where it is, I'd hafta kill ya.")

In a way, it is nice. I do come up with ideas I can't execute, mainly because they involve skills or equipment I don't have. (If you've seen my attempts at pottery, you know what I'm talking about.)

But usually when an idea seizes me, if I have the skills, I can make it happen. And those first days and even weeks, when I'm soaring on that idea's wings, wow. They're great. Wouldn't trade 'em.

That's the up side, when the idea is gripping you, and you work on it in every spare moment, forgetting meals and bedtimes and having hours zip past in the blink of an eye.

The down side is, at some point the pterodactyl drops you.

Depending on how far from the ground you are at the time, it can be quite a jolt, and a long painful crawl towards finishing. (Think Dragon Skin bag, or the purple waffle scarf, for example.)

The pterodactyl has me again.

This idea started when I took Galina Khmeleva's Orenburg lace knitting class in August. Later I saw a photo of someone's Scheherazade stole (Mystery Stole 2). Then I checked out Donna Druchunas' Arctic Lace. And then I found a photo I'd taken of a Persian carpet.

Next thing I know, I'm printing out knitting graph paper, stretching the Persian carpet, converting it to grayscale, cutting it in quarters, and printing it over the graph paper.

I haven't cast on yet. I could maybe still escape. But oh help! I'm afraid it's got me.

Windy with Proto-Incipient Fish

It was a little windy out on Lake Michigan at the Muskegon breakwater this morning. This image comes from GLERL, the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

We still don't know what the problem was with our ISP yesterday. I uploaded the Fraggle chicken, my blog profile photo, to Blogger.

We couldn't get email (in or out) until yesterday evening, and I got at least one identical message twice. But there is still nothing on their web page to say what the problem was, say they're sorry, or anything. And since they weren't answering their phone, we couldn't even ask.

I didn't knit anything yesterday, but I did wake up with an idea for a knitted fish: the tail is one of those lace patterns that draws up in the middle and droops into fishy tail-points at either edge. The base of the tail narrows and turns into a tube, then increases to a larger tube. The fins on the back and belly are flat while the body continues round -- some tricky double-knitting there, I think. I'm not sure if the eye is a bead or an eyelet. It depends on whether the fish comes out more lacy or more texture-y.

Bells, we're getting some snow, but it's not sticking, and the little snow pellets don't show up very well in the picture. Think gray, leafless, and chilly, and you'll have my weather.

Speaking of which, I seem to have let the fire die down a bit, so I need to go tend it and make it stay warm enough in here to knit!