slowknitter

Lullaby
by W. H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's carnal ecstasy. Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough; Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.

Whew.

That’s me breathing a sigh of relief that the holidays are over.

Actually, the boy and I had a very nice Christmas and NewYear. By implementing our ingenious plan of having 2 out of 4 sets of parents here for Thanksgiving we got a pass on traveling anywhere for Christmas this year. We totally made that pass up, and we are trying to figure out how we can do it next year too. Neither of our mothers were particularly pleased with this plan, however the boy and I really enjoyed creating some of our own Christmas traditions that didn’t involve pharmaceutical intervention other than the voluntary recreational kind.

Luckily we have 11 months to think up some really good excuses.

Christmas day we got up very very late (we stayed up late playing Pir@tes of the C@rribean Online game in lieu of paying our respects to the baby Jeebus) had some breakfast and didn’t open packages until 2pm. We had friends over for dinner, and it was all very low key and lovely.

A few weeks before we had a beg for ornaments Tree Decorating Party. My ornaments, few that I had for my 4 foot tree, went MIA in the move so we needed some help. Then I got the idea that if I told people we were donating $10 for every ornament to Knitters Without Borders that my guests wouldn’t think we were so cheap would get into the spirit of giving to people less fortunate than us. (we’re both still unemployed).

It worked.

The party was really fun, people brought gorgeous or funny ornaments, and along the way we raised $260 for Knitters Without Borders. Everyone’s generosity made me proud (though it did hurt a little bit. We are kinda broke right now). I also signed up for the monthly give to KWB. Because, no matter how broke ass I am, there is always someone out there that the term ‘dire poverty’ would be a step up. And I can afford 10$ a month.

Here’s two (of five!) from Madge and her husband. The one on the left is vintage

I didn’t take photos of all 26. I am busy with another project right now- one that you’ll see at the end of this post. But here’s some more:

Also the tree gave something back to me too. Pain. Apparently it was upset that I took it down. I blame the tree, and not my own ass-tarded insistence at moving something too bulky.

I did an insane amount of knitting for Christmas, though in the rush to get things out the door and in the mail in time I didn’t take pictures. So just imagine that these got done:

I gave my mom the monkey socks

I made a pair of the fibertrends clogs in blue and black and a pair on knitspot 2 needle mittens for my dad. And I made the Boy and I some felted stockings.

Pre-felted:

Made with Patons Classic Merino and Cascade 220 (the green yarn). Toe up, standard sock recipe with a Sherman heel. The red one was my first one and came out the right size. Since I brilliantly did not write down what the hell I was doing as I was doing it (really this standard operating procedure around the slowknitter house) The green one came out much much bigger. And took about twice as long to knit. Which severely cut into my knitting time for presents. But here they are done:

They still need names and decoration, but I’ll save that for cutting into my Christmas knitting time next year. God, I do love tradition.

OK, so the other project I am working on right now? A stash sale. I spent the day yesterday culling the herd ( I just wrote ‘culling the nerd’ which is way more appropriate) and photographing it all. Today I’m going to edit photos, price, and put up on flickr. Eventually it’s going to go up on Ravelry, but I thought I’d give the three of you who read this first shot, cause I’m nice like that.

So watch this space in the next few days.

Oh, and I signed up for some sort of stash busting thing on Ravelry. For me, the thing I had already decided to do was to finish up the things already on the needles. Selling the yarn and needles and books is really all about bringing some cash in to the house and making some room.