Knitting: Dragonslayer

Waaaay back in January I made this dragon from Knitty. The pattern calls her Norberta, but I made her in purple with green spines and I thought she looked more like a Hortense, so that's what I called her. Unfortunately, she turned out too loose -- so loose that her stuffing stuck out of the holes in her head. Trouble is, I'm an arch-anthropomorphizer, so I can neither destroy nor discard anything with which I have endowed a personality. And I had already named her Hortense. So she sat in the corner with no face for months, waiting for me to either come to terms with her flaws or harden my heart sufficiently to do what needed to be done.

Last weekend, I decided my heart was hard enough. Sort of. I took out Hortense, stood her up on the sofa with my yarn cutter, and explained that she had no quality of life there in the corner with no face, and it was time to undergo surgery that would make things better for both of us. I had to reassure her very emphatically that I would knit her again even better in order to make the first cut. At least she couldn't look at me reproachfully because she had no face.

So I took her apart. It was awful. There was a point of black despair when I thought I was going to end up with a bunch of two-inch scraps of yarn. My husband, seeing how het up I was, thought he would make me feel better by telling me I was a dragonslayer now. It made me cry instead. But in the end, all was well. I managed to salvage most of the yarn and now that I'm using 4s instead of 6s, I don't need as much anyway. I've got her back, belly and spines done, and now I just have to work on the legs and wings.

But it was a very eventful time.

Knitting: Uh Oh

I can go on for months deluding myself that I merely dabble in knitting until something occurs to warn me that I will swiftly become a Knitter with a capital Kn if I don't watch out.

Yesterday on the subway I earned my Knitting Scout Obsessive's Badge when a small girl of about three got on the uptown F train with her dad. She was riding one of those little pedal-cars that turn into strollers by the addition of a long pole manipulated by the aforementioned dad; she had a tangle of blonde curls on her head and a pair of amusing sunglasses on her face; around her neck was a handknitted scarf like autumn itself spun into gossamer silk.

I looked at this picture of precious, whimsical youth, tended with loving care, and I thought: "Well, if it isn't Crystal Palace Splash in the Turning Leaves colorway. I wonder how long it took to knit?"

Misc: 2007 Goals

Since my keynote 2006 accomplishments were quitting my novel, losing my cat and gaining eight unneeded pounds, my substantive goal for the coming year is the modest one of not doing anything worse.

On a separate but related note, of the seven things I either knit or attempted to knit for Christmas presents, only one turned out exactly as I had planned. I'm told that's part of the fascination of knitting, but I have my own opinion about that.

I will say for the Christmas knitting, however, that I knit about ten miles of alpaca and I'm still not sick of it. Mohair did not stand up to this test, so I think I've found my new pet fiber.