I love snow.

Okay, B, sorry about the further snow porn. I can't help myself. Because you know what? Half the people I work with, and most of my friends think I'm insane but seeing this?

Which was, until about two hours ago, my car? You know what? It gets me a little bit hot and bothered. Not quite as squeemish as knowing that two skeins of this are on their way to me, but yeah.

Pics like this?


They make me feel all...well. I shouldn't go visit Grammy in this mood, that's all I'm sayin'.

Alison -- I threw a snowball for you.


I also really confused the down-the-street-neighbors. It was so fun on multiple levels.

Okay, okay, knitting and life, knitting and life.

Yesterday being Valentine's Day, Robb and I sat down for the obligatory cuddle-and-a-movie. Neither of our hearts was in it, though; he was stressed because he was blatantly ignoring the fact that his phone rang twice from his boss trying to call him in to work (I'd've killed him for trying to walk out the door, so he felt better just ignoring the phone, got a hard time for it today, but hell, it was Valentine's Day) and I was just fidgety. Couldn't sit still, but couldn't figure out what I wanted to do when I started to move. Fidget. Fidget, fidget. Eventually, we had the sense to call off the movie before we annoyed each other to hell and gone; we'll have Valentine's Day next week. He went off to bury his head in World of Warcraft until he stopped being mad at his boss, and I poked at Nancy Bush's sock books, looking for inspiration.

Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road + Lisa Souza's Sock! Merino Black Purple =


Want to get closer?


I'm really just showing off what my camera can do now.

Anyway, these socks called out to me. The pattern is simple enough to execute that I'm watching X-Files season 8 (I bailed on the show after Mulder "disappeared," I've only recently gained interest in watching the last couple of seasons again without any major kerfluffles. The Sock! Merino is finer than plain Sock!, which is making these socks lacy and delicate and every so soft and ladylike. And mournful and full of grief.

And then I realized. I'm knitting the socks that I'll wear to my last grandmother's funeral. It made me ache all inside to realize it, but it felt...right, somehow as well. It added to the peace, and so I kept at it.

I've been reading Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, an exquisite book about the year after Joan's husband died of a sudden heart attack, and it's so gorgeous and wonderous. And I thought to myself, she would approve of this moment. I don't know if she'd get the sock knitting, but I think she'd understand the grief of that moment -- and perhaps the peace that followed it? Who knows.

I've also had an interesting realization about myself as a knitter.

I'm not a sweater knitter.

Most of the half-finished projects around here, the really half finished ones, the ones I know I'll have to force myself to pick up and finish? Sweaters.

The ones I stare at in magazines but never settle on a yarn that will really work?

Sweaters.

The ones I daydream about creating but never really care enough to put pen to paper?

Sweaters.

You know what I do play with and knit and experiment? Socks. All the time, socks. Since I gave in to the magic of socks, I love them more than anything. Socks socks socks. I could knit nothing but socks all the rest of my life, and I think I'd be happy.

And my second favorite thing to knit? Rapidly becoming shawls, and the lacier the better. My heart almost stopped when I saw this, and when Melanie replied to my comment and said that it was knit out of only two skeins of KP alpaca...my heart just about fell. I could knit that shawl out of my Mulberry. Oh. My. God.

I plotzed. I completely plotzed.

So, I'm a shawl and socks knitter. I think I might cross the line for Alice Starmore, or a really extraordinary Dale, but mostly, I think I'm a shawl and socks knitter.

And I'm okay.

Now, Xfiles, then dinner, then more Xfiles. And socks all around.