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Bring Out Your Blog...

"But I ain't dead yet..."

My husband told me that my blog is officially dead, since I haven't posted for two months. But dude, I ain't dead yet, and while I have indeed been rethinking everything from what goes on the blog to what goes in my mouth, I'm still here in the blogosphere...I've just been reading silently, biding my time, thinking about what I want to do and say next, and thinking about whether it's worth it to post about it. I'm also overwhelmed with a variety of life-related things, such as completely retooling my attitude, schedule, wardrobe, and general running-of-household to accommodate the wearin' of the work pants, but I am alive nonetheless.

I have often thought of things I'd love to post about, but I've kept the blog posts in my head. You see, over the past few months, I've had a bunch of people, mostly family, say that it's not okay to talk about the personal on a knitting blog, and that I talk way too much about my life and not enough about knitting. So I've been thinking a lot about how I want to represent myself in this blog...in fact, I've been sort of forced to think about IF I want to represent myself at all apart from the knitting, or if I simply want to show my knitting and talk about the craft.

All this came to a head over the holidays when I had a family member tell me that a friend who conducts orchestras but is not a knitter stopped reading me because the blog was far too personal. O RLY? What I find absolutely hilarious about that is the logical conclusion that he might have continued reading on a regular basis, just for the knitting, but because I got personal, it's over. Uh huh. Right. Just think...if I had only shut up about myself and my kid and my desire to have less of a belly and my total panic at having to speak human, stop talking to myself, and find a pair of pants that fits, we might have converted another non-knitter, folks. Ah, missed opportunities....

But seriously, as a writer, first and foremost, I can't say to myself, "This is a knitting blog, I can only talk about knitting, I'm here to show I can do it and prove it with pictures, and I should be teaching someone something about my craft." If that happens, great, but dude, I write about what's on my mind, and what my craft does for me, and how the two are related. Creativity involves life, by necessity. My knitting is simply a part of a bigger picture. Sure, I have to strike a balance between the personal and the knitting on my blog, but I would feel inauthentic if I squelched my voice and forced myself to talk about what's on my needles and nothing else.

In fact, here's a nice balance of the personal
and the knitting for you: I finished Lacy Waves.
Dude, it makes my boobs look like I suddenly developed pecs of steel
or stuffed my bra. Since the family has stopped reading me,
I figure I can post a Not For Prime Time Sweater Boob Warning.

Oh, look! Knitting content! Except that now that I've finished Lacy Waves, I'm debating the wisdom of knitting a sweater with lace sleeves. I can't remember who posted about that very issue, but whomever it was took the very smart route of knitting plain sleeves. I, alas, did not. Also, when I put it on, my husband told me it made me look "athletic." Anyone who knows French men knows that this is not a compliment. But I've got biceps, dude. Shoulders, too. I can't help it. And under lace sleeves, which in theory should look elegant, it merely looks like I'm trying to squeeze sausages into blue silky wool nets. Here's a wee word of warning to any of you out there with arms bigger than sticks: you might want to switch to solid sleeves if you knit this sweater. The blogger whose name I forget was absolutely right to go solid. I might reknit the sleeves to do exactly that.

The picture quality here sucks big rocks.
The only time I could get a photographer other than kid
to take a picture, it was in the hallway at night.

So, yeah, I'm thinking that my next sweater for myself is not going to involve form-fitting lace arms. However, the waist-shaping was a good idea. And the detail right above the boobs? Really pretty, but on me, like a neon sign saying "Hormones do this after forty, baby." Still, the biggest problem with this sweater on me is that I can't wear a bra with it without the bra straps showing, no matter what I do, because the shoulders are made for people who...how can I say this...don't have shoulders. The shoulder strips and caps barely cover me. Which exposes whatever over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder I'm wearing that day, unless I hold my arms up like I'm about to belt out an aria. And I am SO not going braless in public just to make this sweater work. Also, I try to keep my arias to myself. My family will be very happy about this decision, I'm sure. Oh, wait. They've stopped reading me. Nevermind.

I love this sweater, but I'm not comfortable in it, and that's a shame. So I will put this in my drawer and come back to it later when I have the courage to reknit the sleeves or when my arms become sticks. But since I have discovered that it takes a freaking long time to slim down now that I'm forty, I am of Dutch and Irish heritage, and I'm also on to the next sweater for someone who really deserves it, this sweater could be in time-out for a long, long time. We'll see.

(Personal (!) note: Muscle weighs more than fat. This is NOT fair. It makes impatient people like me feel like we're making no progress whatsoever. Also, Gin Miller's interval workout is HARD, but at least she has an ass. Also, she does not wear leg warmers or tell me I'm SO hot, OH yeah, we're WORKIN' IT. Thank you, Gin Miller. You make exercise tolerable.)

Back to the topic of what I should and should not say: my final feeling is that, in order for me to continue this blog, I need to remember that it's MINE. While I try to keep out the personal details that will identify people in my family in ways they don't wish to be identified, I am, above all, a writer, and I write this blog for myself and for a particular community of people. That would be YOU, knitters. And you all have lives that involve things other than fibre (you just fit the furniture around the yarn rather than the other way round...).

If a nonknitter comes here and wonders why in hell I'm talking about something other than knitting (dear GOD, she said BOOBS), well, that person clearly hasn't been hanging around the knitting blogs for very long. Life enters in, dude, and I'm a far better person for being priveleged to share other knitters' lives with them through their blogs. I've been given a lot of love and assistance at times when I felt very much alone with difficult patches, whether they involved wool or people or the explosion of laundry that is currently masquerading as my livingroom. I'm grateful for the responses I received each time I opened the door, regardless of which door that may have been. (The door on the stash, she will not close. I tried. Maybe I should just leave that one open....)

There are plenty of far more talented knitters than I who can teach you all how to turn a heel nine thousand ways to Sunday or how to perfectly shape your sweater regardless of how much beer you drank last night. Me, I'm here to tell you about my entire process. Which may involve complaints about body parts and illogical thinking and painful lessons learned for the next exercise in outfitting oneself properly, whether it be reshaping one's knitting or reshaping one's life. Both involve changes, mistakes, utter silliness, things thrown across the room in frustration, mundane steps you wish you could skip, wicked high learning curves you're afraid to scale, and more frequently than not, moments of sheer joy. I can hope that a nonknitter will get something from that process, but if they don't, and if they feel that my personal life has no place in this blog, well...they need to look elsewhere for their entertainment, or they need to start their own damned blogs.

I'm happy you're here, whomever "you" are. And while you're here, you can try and guess, knowing what you do about my beautifully balanced personal/knitting life, if this sweater part for the next sweater, which is for Spiff, is a sleeve or a back. Hah. Bonus points if you can guess which sweater I'm making for him. Hint: the answer to the first question directly affects your answer to the second question.

I am hoping that alpaca blooms,
because this "aran" weight yarn
is knitting up as if it were DK.
Also, it's not this red. I blame Canada. (Winter dark
and snow are totally kicking our asses here, folks. Also, our arses.)

Speaking of the personal (again! gasp!), last week marked six years since the very first time I saw Spiff walking down the street toward me, the very first time I threw my arms around him, and the very first time I realised what it was to truly love someone. So I think it's about damned time I knit him a sweater. The personal and the knitting? You bet your sweet bippy, baby. They are irrevocably intertwined, and I, for one, wouldn't have it any other way.

February 24, 2008 10:33 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (80)  | Print