Second Monk: And you, baldy.

The strap is really comfy. It kind of hugs you. We’ll see how well it performs as an actual load-bearing accessory, but it’s pretty enough that I’d be happy to just drape it over the shoulder of my sofa as a decoration.

The seaming was hard. I have never done any real crochet before. I keep my trusty crochet hook Stanley in my bag to pick up dropped stitches and fix minor errors. But I’ve never really crocheted anything. Well, there was that single-chain bracelet that I made for a little girl waiting at the pharmacy next to me two years ago, but that hardly counts.

My hand felt like I’d clamped it into a vise and then pulled all the fingers into different directions while I was doing this. I had no idea how to maintain the tension or to smoothly work from one stitch to the next. Oh, I guess I should mention at this point that the seaming is done by pinning the front and back to the strap and then working a single crochet along the edge. It’s a great seam, and seems pretty strong, but like I said, it was very, very hard for me to work it.

But my hands learned how to do it pretty quickly. The first half of the front took me about an hour to do. But the last quarter only took ten, maybe fifteen minutes. The back went by very quickly. I’ve now done everything I’m going to do with this bag except add the i-chord fasteners and weave in all the loose ends.

I think I might make this bag again. But if I do, I’m going to do the strap with a triple cable or pair of double cables running the length of it with a seed-stitch border. I think that would give it a slightly more elegant look, and make the strap slightly less elastic.

Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?

Luckily, the ever-handy and helpful Kaetchen is sending me a couple more skeins of the Twilight Green yarn. Yay for ‘net yarn friends!

You use 3 colors: Cavern (A), Twilight Green (B), and the long-sought-after Candy Apple (C).

Make the strap in A. About 4″ wide and 72″ long.
Make two side pockets in A. About 4″ wide and 7″ long each.
Make the front in B. About 18″ wide and 16″ long.
Make the back with a flap in B. About 18″ wide and 21″ long.

After this, you make an inside and an outside pocket in B, then you assemble the bag with a bunch of trimming done in C. However, I’m not going to be adding those last two pockets. You know why?

Because the instructions called for only 2 skeins of the B color and I’m not going to have enough of it to finish the damn back and flap piece!

If I’d had more than a third of a cup of coffee this morning, I might have enough energy to be livid. Naturally, my LYS doesn’t have anymore of the Twilight Green colorway in stock. I figure I’m pretty much screwed as far as getting more of the same dye lot.

More updates as details warrant. I’ve got to clean up my office and study for pre-calc this evening, then I’ve got class until eight tomorrow night. I will try to finish the back and flap piece as much as I can then. Expect updates Wednesday.

I just went to lunch with a bunch of guys from work. After we ate, we were sitting around the table chatting, waiting for the waiter to bring the cheque, and I pulled out the MTS. I’m working the front now, which is done in stockinette for the first foot. I had a knit row facing me, so I knit across while we talked about this and that.

When I got to the end of the row, I looked at the nice flat stitches and thought, “I don’t really like purling all the way across 77 stitches. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just . . . kind of go like . . .this . . .” As I looked at it, I put the left needle into the leftmost stitch and clumsily wrapped the yarn with my right hand. I struggled with it a little bit and then pulled it through.

I looked at it. The sequence was foreign, but I had clearly just put a knit stitch on the left hand needle. Then I saw that it was twisted. I tried it again, this time wrapping the yarn counter-clockwise around the needle, and pulling it through a little more gracefully this time.

Several minutes later, I’d worked all the way back across the work, still in stockinette stitch, without ever turning. I’ve become a bi-directional knitter! This is great. Now I can really confuse my mom.

PS
Just saw the new Knitty. I love the Hallowig.

I could ask if you could smell it, but it’s not really an olfactory sensation. It’s not really tactile either. It’s something perceived through all the senses, a combined input to your mind that can only be described by the very general word ‘feel’.

Very simply, I’m talking about a change in the seasons. I caught a hint of it last Wednesday with a group of knitters as we sat outside on the patio of Mad Hatter’s Tea. As Katie struggled through her first cast on and I cranked away on the great seed-stitch marathon that is the Monk’s Travel Satchel, I could feel summer receding a bit, uncovering the much more subtle season of autumn.

Summer is the brass section of the orchestra of the year. It’s shiny and dazzling and loud. While it can be smooth and sultry at times, it tends towards an all-out blast of coppery heat that blots out everything else.

Autumn feels more like the strings to me. It lacks summer’s energy, but it brings its own serene, dignified subtlety to the piece. When I stepped out on my balcony this morning to look out over the neighborhood, the cooler, softer morning brought to mind the patient humming of a cello.

Autumn is the season I’ve always identified with the most. Autumn is the perfect time of the year for long, solitary walks under silvery-grey skies, followed by a warm cozy cuddle under old soft blankets. In Autumn, the trees deliberately begin packing away their precious saps and oils in their broad trunks, sacrificing the leaves to the coming cold of Winter so that the whole can survive through until Spring. Autumn balances the remembrance of Summer’s joy with the certainty of Winter’s end.

Autumn, I would think, is the season for knitting. As the temperatures fade, the wool does not feel quite so oppresive in our fingers. It’s no longer a matter of just knowing that Winter is on its way and needs our attention; we can anticipate it now. We feel it coming. And all those thoughts of scarves and mittens and sweaters and socks come back to the front of our minds, insisting we pay attention to them.

I think this will be a good Autumn for my projects. I’m coming along with the satchel nicely, and now that I’ve done one full-size sweater, a second one does not seem so daunting.

Nothing escapes his amphibious clutches.

I was the only human out at the river this weekend. For company I had two burros, two very adorable dogs, and a new friend whom I call Fifi. She’s very timid, but it turns out that she’s got a real weakness for corn. I used a couple of handfuls to persuade her to let me get close enough to take this shot.

Isn’t she sweet?

When I get the candy apple yarn, I’ll do a couple rows on the end and that sucker will be done. I’ve started the side pockets, which are identical to the strap in construction only much, much shorter.

A word about froggy: I saw him in a bin of little beanbag critters at a gas station one day and fell in love with him. I have an eternal lust for cute things. And I figured he was the ideal totem for knitting. My rule is, there can only be one frog at the table. So I bust him out whenever I sit down to knit. If I’m about to make a mistake, he raises a foot and says “uh-uh!”*

* Don’t call my shrink to tell her that I’m hearing voices. She would not believe you, and besides, she’s got a restraining order against me.