Sometimes an idea has to be blinkety before I notice it.

I want to give knitted things to people who will love them.

I want to not give knitted things to people who are supposed to love me but who really do not love knitted things. 

I am considering knitting hats for the librarians who always ask me about my knitting. They saw me checking out book after book and trying to figure things out. They saw some of the failures and praised my successes. 

I am hoping to do it discreetly since not all the librarians are “my librarians” and worry a little about the implementation since I am now too old to remember names of people without serious effort, so I cannot ask them to be left for specific people. (It would be hard to write on the tag, “the black haired lady who likes Japanese food” because the tags are so small.) 

Lately I have been thinking about these things and have decided that I should be more generous with people I actually know (at least tangentially). Charity is usually done remotely, like afghans for Afghans or hats for soldiers or mailing a check. And there are many many charities begging on behalf of children. Sometimes it seems like charities only help children and I just cannot put any effort into that kind of thing. Not that it is bad that other people help children, but with so many people devoting all their energy to helping children, it sometimes seems like society only loves things which are “still cute” and everyone else is disposable.  It did not cost these librarians monetarily to be happy for my success but it was still very generous of them not to treat me as though I did not matter.

I really should have thought of this earlier. Ah, well, New Year presents will be just as good.

hand-wringing, not yarn-wringing

For some reason, I have not been spinning lately. I think it makes me irritable.

That might explain the blog policies I have ended up with. First. A commenter must have an approved comment to avoid moderation. It seems to judge based on email address (which I do see, but no one else does. I would like the comment form to state that.)  Second. I do not appear to actually link things. I really hate it when other blogs do not bother to give links, but it is a pain to look everything up. It must be worse for other people who do not have it bookmarked or noted somewhere in the maze which is Ravelry. I would promise to do better, but it seems like a common failing. I will, however, add the patterns I am considering to the sidebar whenever I remember.

Yesterday’s fiber efforts included finding the end of the yarn ball for the new yarn I bought for the “Endpaper Mitts” and putting my ever-ongoing socks onto holder-needles to clear them for the mitts.

If I get around to it, I will add pictures to this post, showing off the new yarn. The new yarn is cotton, in baby blue and hot pink (separate balls). It looks like just the ticket for high contrast colorwork.

I did get a ball of something beautiful, but I need a solid color coordinating yarn before I could use it in something like this. Still, jewelry does not need to have a specific outfit in order to be pretty. Sometimes you just need something to have in your collection.

When I was spinning every day, I had a lot more to say. The knitting feels more like an obligation now. I have spun all this yarn, what am I planning to do with it?

I do have a project in mind. I want to make the “More Stripes” vest by Amy King. I think the “Mahogany” colorway fiber I bought from Amy will spin up into something that could approximate the Noro striping effect. I bought a lot of that fiber, a half-pound in BFL and a braid of matching silk. I think I could spin toward that size project.

When I saw that vest, I had mentally designated the new Lorna’s Laces for it, but it occurs to me that I could make two of them.

No real progress on the shawl pattern. I was allowed to page through the Victorian Lace  Today  book (by Jane Sowerby and Alexis Xenakis) and they have one pattern which was sort of what I wanted.