I've been knitting the wrong way this whole time.

ahmg. It's like finding out I've been adding instead of subtracting. Or turning right when I thought I was turning left. In other words, my universe has just shattered.

I've been knitting through the back loops of everything this whole time. I am thoroughly ashamed. Ashamed! :(

Hm. I was halfway through the hat already. Halfway! Probably the fasted I've knitted anything, really. Probably on account of the fact that I was so excited about making cables :P

But I didn't like how it turned out. It's a bit too slouchy already, which is perfect for me, but for stylish Italian Ahmad?? Who buys his stylish glasses expressly from stylish Lebanon? This must needs be tailored. So I frogged the bitch. Fucking Vanna's Choice. I was talking to Patty how after a while you get pickier and pickier with yarn. Maybe not exclusively cashmere or anything, but that super saver shit isn't going to cut it anymore. Vanna's Choice is joining the list.

After much hemming and hawing I signed up on Ravelry, and have been trawling its fibrous depths like a spiny lobster, absorbing patterns into my gooey crustacean innards.

Sometimes I want to skip all this youthful ambition crap and just retire to a mountainside cottage in Switzerland with a quiet, industrious Swiss husband and just knit all day with my seven cats and lumbering Newfoundland dog. 

Though most days I just dream about being Elizabeth Zimmermann.

It's like my ultimate dream to make an adult surprise jacket with long sleeves gathered at the wrists like the picture in The Opinionated Knitter.

Thick cream or mottled heather grey. Alpaca or cashmere or both. Or... sigh.

And one of those fair isle sweaters! Mmph! I've never really balked at any kind of knitting--except maybe Estonian lace :O--but the kind of intricate colour changes of fair isle kind of maybe scare me a little bit. 

I've been talking about knitting an awful lot since school has ended only because i've been trying to find things to talk about. :P Things will begin to happen on Friday. I want to make an effort to write things down coherently, since it's not a habit of mine to be especially coherent. 

I think my mind has suffered for laying fallow so long, so that hard work feels like hard work instead of the kind of mental adventure it once was when I was younger. 

I remember watching Serge at work, cleaning his brushes and putting away the sponges. It was as if every movement was calculated and considered. Everything was put back into its right place. He folded the paper towels we use to wipe down our paintbrushes into careful fourths and methodically wiped down the counters. And yet it wasn't a painstaking process. Every motion was determined and quick, executed with surety and peace of mind. I like being around Serge because he knows himself and he knows what he's doing. Maybe because he's older, he's stopped wasting time. 

Or maybe it's all the weed and the LSD. Maybe he burned out all the useless shit in his brain, leaving nothing but peace and efficiency, like watching a starving tortoise eating mash.

Those things can go.

Anyway, that's the kind of thing I want to go for this year. 

Off to the yarn shop :P

cable needle.

UGH I just got a cable needle. I've been going through all these cable beanie patterns and it's like being dipped in chocolate and gold flakes. MMMMM i'm in heaven.

That might actually be pretty unpleasant, but I'm crazy excited. 

Ahmad just asked me to make him a beanie for his DC trip.  While initially I was going to say no, I realized that Saturday would be the last time I'd probably ever see his sexy Lebanese face again, so I told him yess.

I'm thinkin' about just making him a plain old knit beanie. I do have all day tomorrow, though, and a shiny new cable needle. Hmmm. :( o the possibilities.

i'm beginning to feel my backfat.

BACKFAT. Like hairless moles furrowing together down my spine. MMMMM.

I blame the holiday food. I ate lobster twice yesterday, along with heapfuls of greasy Cantonese food. The day before that I had bacon, and also Korean bbq from Freshia.

Oh man when that stuff explodes into your mouth with grease and fat mamdfnadkfja; MMMM some more.

Hopefully I'll be making more healthful use of mum's electric grill pan thing. We tried grilling green beans and though it took a while for them to caramelize they were so sweet and lovely after they did. Maybe I ought to blanch them first. Mmm.

Oh but then my aunt made this chocolate cake with flan on top and caramel all dripping down its sides. 

i feel uncomfortably pillowed in my own fat. Ugh gross. and yet so deliciously cushioned.

i've actually always wanted to try barding a chicken. that involves wrapping the chicken breast in bacon before roasting it, since the breast is always in desperate need of some kind of juicy greasy fatness. 

of course i saw julie and julia today, and there was so much butter oh my goodness. butter, oh thou churned milk solids, thou sweet and creamy delectation. they were slathering the hens with herbed beurre. mmmmm. 

i got a 4.0 this semester, which is surprising, seeing as I struggled so hard and procrastinated so much. That I got a better grade in International Social Conflicts and Valentina didn't has got to be proof of devilry. I wrote our biggest research paper the night of, three hours before, on hasty research, and I aced the thing. :( 

I'm cowed by how hard she works, and how frustrated she gets when she doesn't get the grade she deserved, simply because English is like a second language to her. 

To me writing well is second nature, and I feel I coast on it, depend on my prose when I don't really have the kind of insight and understanding she has on any given subject. Just because she doesn't have the words to say it, she gets the worse grade. bleh.

I finished two hats today! It took me like three hours to finish Valentina's hat. I really like these seashell crochet beret patterns I came up with. I kept ripping up the one I made for Casey because I couldn't get the shaping right, but now it seems like they shape themselves. I hardly had to decrease the stitches at all near the end. 

I really want to try knitting a cabled hat. There was this cloche hat that had one thick cable braid down the side and looked so lovely and easy, I'd like to try it. Only the pattern's in a magazine in a bookstore far far away from here. And it cost like 20 bucks. For one pattern out of a dozen lousy dowdy tams and pom pom fucking beanies. Bleh.