Best Quote I Heard All Day
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. --Jane Austen

Happy Valentine's Day

Jen Tocker sent me this a long time ago and I used it at that time. It bears using again. You can make your own here.

So here are some Valentine hearts. For some of my favorite people.

KnitDweebs

or possibly

The Boys from SD

Tiny Diva

What the Dog Did

Yarn Company

It's a real challenge to write something with only 8 characters.

But here's one for the Wolvies, with Merrick in mind.

I'm done now.

Is There an '80s Song for This?
Because I know Daryl Hall wrote some crappy song that might reflect my struggle to get the Melanie shawl off and running.

Finally, something on the needles.

Even though it's hard to tell from the picture what the motif looks like, I know that this time I have it down pat. Knitted lace is a hell of a lot trickier to work than lace knitting, the difference being that knitted lace is patterned on every row, lace knitting has a plain row between patterned rows. These little rosettes/medallions that border the center panel have several rows that are ballbusters and require total concentration.

That meant no Olympics-watching for me last night. However, once I get past the bottom band of these motifs, the rest is pretty easy. I was looking at the border chart last night and that's not difficult either.

The trick to knitting Sharon Miller's designs (or any lace pattern for that matter) is to break the knitting down into manageable gulps. Looking at the shawls as a whole can be somewhat intimidating. But as with other complex knitting, it's usually just a matter of cementing the symmetry into your head.

I always like to equate the things I enjoy doing, like writing and knitting, to music. When I was an aspiring music student, I found that I could sight-read easily. Same thing with translations in Latin class. It's all about sectionalizing the work.

Once you have the tune in your head, you can knit anything.

And now, it's time to go back to some rare and handy editing work that my prospective employer sent me to do. A test, as it were. Five web pages to edit and one introductory chapter of a software manual to rewrite. I did them yesterday rather than blog. We'll see if this job becomes a reality.