i'm a cowboy who never saw a cow never roped a steer 'cause i don't know how and i sure ain't fixin' to start it now

Clearly, we are all missing out on The Next Great Knitalong, and honestly, I can't believe nobody thought of it before. I'm ashamed in all of you. You have been neglecting this incredible entry in the Great American Afghan Contest.

There, now that you've seen it, do you see what I mean?

Really, I'm sure Frieda Harris worked really hard on her contest entry. When I think of the sacrifices she made, designing and working with all of that Red Heart Super Saver, well, seriously. I am sure her family sat around and oohed and aahed over the final results, and the kids are going to fight over it in her will, and the obituary in the local paper will include a line that "she once took first place in the cross stitch category a national afghan design contest." There's likely a local color piece about her now, and a picture of her sitting at her kitchen table, coffee cup in front of her (decaf, because she can't have the regular stuff since her heart troubles, you know), pointing to the letter she received from Herrschner's telling her she won and the check for her winnings. Scattered among the piece are images of her other cross stitch/crochet hybrids and a picture of the winning afghan, with the caption, "The winning afghan. Mrs. Harris received a $50 gift certificate to the sponsoring craft company as a prize." And at bingo night at the Elks Club, the numbers caller will even announce it for everyone to hear, and she'll get a round of applause. And boy she showed that nosy Mabel Summers, who always takes first place at the county fair in both the crochet division and the apple pie division, and everyone knows Mabel doesn't put any lemon juice in her apple pie, and that's why people always tell Frieda her apple pies are so much better.

Come on, tell me you didn't think exactly that when you saw that afghan.

give to me your leather take from me my lace

I've joined exactly two knitalongs in my life, not counting my current Sugarplum Sweater one with Karida (because that's just between the two of us, really). One was Smiling Tiger's Candy Along. This went the way of the wind when Smiling Tiger did. Unfortunately. The socks I was making for them? The lacy fuschia ones I forgot the pattern for and still haven't quite figured out. The other was Sandy's Charlotte woman KAL. Status? I have never even begun my Charlotte.

I think this is why I've been so slow to sign up for the Knitting Olympics. I'm all talk, no follow-through. However, now that I'm on day four of a massive migraine, I've had quite a bit of time to contemplate my knitting. I knit so much on Saturday on the second sock of a pair I began in November that I rubbed the inside of my finger raw from the dpns. I had to switch to a project with bigger needles, when I could deal with knitting at all. So I took a nap in the guest bedroom, where much of my stash is.

Over a year ago, Colette sent me some laceweight mohair, needles, and a pattern for a lace scarf. Nothing along the lines of what she makes, of course, but wonderful, nonetheless. I've been savoring it for the right moment. I saw it yesterday and thought, this might be the thing. A project that isn't too big to overwhelm me, but is going to be challenging because I always manage to screw up lace the first thousand tmes around. And my previous two downfalls were, you might notice, also lace. My only problem is Colette's mohair is quite a bit (like 550+ yards), and I want to be able to show it off with the right pattern.

So I'm going to commit (if it isn't too late to enter, that is) to entering the USA Swearing at Lace Team (although really, it'll be more like the Drunken Lack Team for me. Damn Canadians. Take all the good teams.). I may do the scarf pattern Colette sent me, I may do Branching Out, I may do something else entirely. I may use Kidsilk Haze, I may use what Colette sent me, I may use the laceweight mohair for Melody's Shawl that I don't understand how anyone else has been able to knit because oh my fucking FSM it's so horrible and boring and I can't do it, I just cannot see myself knitting a ginormous ball of laceweight mohair in stockinette stitch in the round forfuckingever, I can't.

I'm open to suggestions but there you have it.

we know you they know me extrasensory synchronicity

So yesterday I got this card in the mail from my Fiber GodmotherAND I got a package from kpixie, also from my Fiber Godmother, containing thisSo great! Hemp for Knitting in avocado. I love odd shades of green. Thank you! Now I have to plan what to do with my hemp...

I don't know about the crochet sweater. I think I'll fuck it up massively. And then I'll be stuck with way too much ribbon/tape stuff. And I'm getting to the end of my rope on the silk camisole from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Six to eight hours? Hah! I've been working on it for twenty and I don't even have my required 14" for the decreases for the armholes yet. Stockinette stitch in the round. Usually I'll have had a few pairs of socks completed by now. And I am NOT a slow knitter.

it's a great big universe and we're all really puny we're just tiny little specks about the size of mickey rooney

I'm contemplating the sweater. Thanks for the yarn substitution suggestions and info on the Crochet Olympics and everything. I'm still kinda thinking that it would make my ginormous ass look even worse, sorta like those long sweater coat things from a few years back and I refused to get or make a single one because hey! giant blanket-type thing on my ass!

So, while I think, I put on my thinking socks.Did I make them? No. Target. $1.99. Happy Bunny pajamas? Also Target. $5.78.

Why do the toes of my toe socks always wear out so quickly? Is it my huge, erm, toes?

Hopefully, by tomorrow I'll have wrested some Costa Rica pics from The Man Who Lives in the House so I can show them off.

tempted by the fruit of another

So, I'm pretty much a shitty crocheter, but I tend to want to crochet items that are way over my head crochet-wise because, you know, why couldn't I manage that? So, having made barely any articles of clothing in crochet, and certainly never anything resembling a sweater, I was thinking about if I were to join the Knitting Olympics, what would I do that would be a challenge to me? And this is what mine eye spied from the latest Interweave Crochet:The Pirate's Jacket by Teva Durham. Now, here's what's so wrong about me making this.

1. I suck at crochet.
2. I have never made a sweater in crochet, and this one appears to be more difficult than most.
3. I suck at crochet.
4. I don't even know what Trendsetter Dolcino is.
5. It appears to be a ribbon. Ick. This would make crocheting it even more difficult.
6. I suck at crochet.
7. That jacket would hit my hips right, yep, where it would emphasize my ginormous ass. This would not be a good look for me.
8. There appears to be no crochet allowed in the Knitting Olympics.
9. I suck at crochet.

Therefore, I feel compelled to make this item. Does anyone know where I can buy Dolcino or an adequate sub?

To prove my crochet skillz, I give you an afghan I crocheted five years ago.and for a closeup of those mad stitchesI know, you can all bow before my skillz now.

A mixed bag of comments on my new color. I liked the previous color as well, a bit limier than the jade Melissa went into detail (ad nauseum) about, but on my (fairly new) work computer (the dreaded PC), it was just plain fug. I'm leaving it like this for now and may change it again in the next few days.

the change will do you good i always knew it would

I am bored with the purple, and I am too lazy and don't have enough time to create buttons or logos or pithy little things like that, so I can only come up with changing the colors, here. Feel free to throw darts at it.

And if anyone wants to do a redesign, contact me. We'll discuss it.

Edited to add:
OK, after lunch I came back and wow, that was bright. So I toned down the garishness a bit.

Edited again to add:
Good fucking FSM, you PC users have got to get better monitors. It's soooo much paler green on my iBook. I've toned it down even further.

this monkey's gone to heaven

I've said it before and I'll say it again: monkeys are just plain scary.

Yet somehow I managed to go to a country that is riddled by monkeys. In my area, it was black howler monkeys. These are the largest and the creepiest and scariest of all monkeys, ever. They emit a sound that is like King Kong on steroids. It sounds like your worst horror movie come to life. And they're like, twenty feet away from you, and throwing their shit at you, and you're walking through it, and it's nasty, and holy fuck, WHY THE FUCK ARE WE STOPPING TO LOOK AT THESE THINGS?

And here is where I put in my picture, only it's dark and fuzzy and now I need to search to see if I got any decent (hah!) pictures of the howlers monkeys. That ran across the roof at night keeping me up. All night.

Monkeys are not cute.

it's always better on holiday so much better on holiday that's why we only work when we need the money

Yeah. Fucking RIGHT.

Did I mention that this trip to Costa Rica was, like the last trip to Costa Rica, with my in-laws? Have you ever taken a vacation with your in-laws? Mind you, we're not talking about, say, my immediate in-laws. There were thirteen of us. The Man Who Lives in the House and I were SO ready to leave on Thursday morning. This was my first vacation in three years. They're already planning the next family vacation.

Say it loud and say it proud, along with me: "No fucking way in hell am I going on that trip."

And what was the one thing I wanted to do? Go to Nicaragua. It's a day trip. It's safe to go. Would anyone else go? No. "They kidnap Americans there." Fuck you assmelons and read the goddamned papers you rightwingRushandNewtlovingreligiousfanaticalfreaks. Clint Eastwood fought in Grenada twenty years ago.

So, I white-trashily rode ATVs, and I tried to snorkel but I swam through a school of jellyfish and got bit to hell, and so I stopped early and got sunburned, all of which I was criticized for, and I watched everyone else drink to extreme excess (and note that while I did drink, I was never even the slightest bit buzzed during the entire trip). And I knit, for which I was criticized. I tried to get along with everyone, and the harder I tried, the more I a) offended people and b) was offended by people. And never ONCE did The Man even defend me or take my side. Later on, he would criticize me more for everything I did, because his family is always fucking right.

And I made socks for someone else, and they were confiscated ("I want those!") by one relative, who decided a few days later that they were too small for her and she gave them to someone else. Meanwhile, the one for whom I made the socks is still sockless.

And the Delta counter at the airport in Liberia opened two hours after it was supposed to and I think my ankle is rebroken from standing in line all that time.

I will post some good pictures I took in the next few days. Because, you know, I'm sure you care.

And I came back to find everyone excited about the Knitting Olympics and I don't even know what that is and it's probably too late to sign up and what would I do anyway?

Had a great time, wish you were there instead of me.

Socks Rears Its Ugly Head

Hey! It's me, the sock.

Bet you thought I'd been killed in some sort of horrible but pre-planned felting accident or something. No such luck, kiddies. I'm still here.

I would post a newer photo, but we've had a bit of an incident and I've banned all photod until after the surgery. Yeah, seems that some klutz followed the pattern exactly and believed them when they said that when she turned my heel and decreased down to 20 stitches that the next row should be a knit row, even though that made no sense.

Fortunately someone with more brains had a look at the sock and let a certain ditz know that even though the pattern says one thing, sometimes you should listen to your sock.

Whatzerface will get to spend all of her knitting time tonight un-knitting me back down to the heel, adding a row of purl, and then starting on the knit row that the stupid pattern told her to do.

Feh.

If only they'd listen to the sock now and again ...

i left my body lying somewhere in the sands of time

Hey, it's me again. The sock.




Do I look the same? Yeah. It's because some people are too lazy to take pictures. Nice. I really appreciate it. Thanks.

So I think you all deserve to know where ItGirl really went on her "vacation". Not Puerto Vallarta, not the Dominican Repubic, not Costa Rica, not Abercrombie and Fitch or any of those other double-barrelled places she'd like you to think she's hanging out in.

Bitch is in jail, where she richly deserves to be for trying to keep me apart from my girl. There she is, isn't she pretty?




Of course the po-leese won't arrest someone for socknapping, but they sure as hell got her for something else, after a little call from yours truly.

Look at the title. Then tell me, has anyone actually SEEN The Man Who Lived In The House lately? Oh sure, she's posted pictures, but he seems to look the same in all of them. I think ALL of those pictures may well be about five years old.

Just ... think about it.

that's me in the corner

Yeah, that's me all right. Right in the fucking corner. No spotlight for me, thanks.

While some fancy bitches are busy churning out lace like a gang of Irish nuns on meth, guess who decides to knit a sock?

Yeah, Miss Imagination herself.

So here I am:




And I quote "a happy little sock", doing all of her dirty work for her, because she's too drunk, lazy and old to write one blog, nevermind two, and has come up with the cute idea of having a "guest" guest blogger, and I got the short straw.

Contrary to popular opinion, rather than being "a happy little sock" I would like to note that I'm actually 2-1/2 inches of seething hostility. (Yeah, two and a half inches. Want to make something of it? I'm a sock for FSM's sake -- what'd you expect, Ron Jeremy?)

So seeing I'm in charge around here, there are gonna be a few changes. To start with, this place could use a little excitement. Therefore, we are today introducing a brand new feature called "Roadkill or Fashion Statement?"

Our first entry:


is that a possum on your head or are you just pleased to see me?

As you can see, her last haircut (which she's wearing at this very moment) wasn't quite as successful as she would have liked. I'm thinking in some countries people are shot for cutting hair like this, but she paid them and even TIPPED the hairdresser, even though they didn't do what she asked and now she looks like her head exploded.

Sad, hmm? She'd probably prefer that picture not be published, but that's the sort of thing that happens to you when you knit socks instead of lace.

Consider yourselves warned.

i've walked these streets in a carnival of sights to see

Okay, I thought that post I just put up a little while ago would be my last before I left y'all for a week, but I felt the need to play along with The Sixth Carnival Of Knitting and I'll still be out of the country by the 20th.

Beans likes to play with the fun yarn.He also likes to play with the moving knitting needles. And when I used to go out of town for the weekend when I lived in Vermont and I was showing dogs, he would take my yarn and create a giant cat's cradle of every ball by rolling it around the legs of every piece of furniture in my apartment so when I came home it was a giant un-untangleable mess o' yarn and I had to cut it up and throw it out and of course he only did this with my good yarn, not that Red Heart cheapshit.

Here's hoping he finds no yarn at Trixie's house this coming week.

Submitted to The Carnival Of Knitting

i don't know just what it's all about but put on your red silk charmers and find out

So, I thought about trying to interpret for everyone last night's unspellcorrected paragraph, but I think the mystery is better.

And Christ on a broomstick, I have no clue what the mother fucking hell I was trying to say.

I did take the advice in the comments and after a nauseating bus and Metro ride to work, I grabbed a bottle of Gatorade and some hashbrowns and hash and I instantly felt better. I don't think I would have been as drunk or as hungover if I had any food or drink in my apartment or if I had, say, eaten last night. But non, je ne regrette rien.

I am the super-winningest chick ever today! So I won The King of All Remote Controls' contest with a work of short fiction I wrote at 1 AM (you'll have to go to his site to read it, and see my super-duper awesome prize that you all wish you had). And then I found out I was a runner-up in crazycatladymel's contest for worst gift ever for my entry on my entire Hannukah gift from my father when I was nine (a box of garbage bags and a jar of gerkhins). Hey, my brother got a box of Knorr's Hollandaise sauce, and he hates Hollandaise. And he was eleven.

I will not show off everything I purchased last night, but I will show one item.Four skeins of Fiesta La Luz, 100% silk, in American Beauty. I will knit this next week.

Why next week?

Because, next week I shall be recreating this scene from three years ago next week:Just replace the book with some yarn and knitting needles. I will likely not have Internet access, but I will have a guest blogger. You all need to be nice to her, and really, I'm doing this as a favor to her, letting her guest blog for me, because her birthday is on January 21st, and she's getting old and decrepit and one can't help but feel sorry for her, you know? My birthday gift to you, Rabbitch, is control of my blog for a week.

May you get drunk and have some rants.

you can all just kiss off into the air behind my back i can see them stare

So yuou know when you're really drunk off your ass and you still try to blog anyway? No? Well, that's why I won the award at #52 on JenLa. Ummm. So I left work and I wenbt to StitchDC and weird things happened and Jess and I went to a bar where the guy it turns out works summers in my hometown and knows people I know and just like my friend Janetta says, knowing me makes it only two degrees of separation.

So drunk I can't spell right. I'll do the next sentence uncluttered (unspellcorrected).

It was wa wild a nad wolly nigh for us aND i biugh afcuk load of yarn and bdrankj a lot of berr and jess made me do a sot of jimnbeam and i fell asleep in the sab on bthe way home while talking on the phone the the man who obe in the gouse vabd he thinksbi an dissing hin bow bna din not i am jusy tired ginna serioul pass out now hi everybe.

white riot i wanna riot white riot a riot of my own

So Rambo sent me a skein of Lamb's Pride Bulky in snow white and requested a skull cap because he's too manly for Inky so I asked him if he wanted it just like Inky and he said no and he wanted it all "regular knit" with no ribbing whatsoever and I asked him if he wanted a rolled brim then and he said no and I tried to explain that I had to pick one or the other or another edging because Bulky is too thick to hem and he didn't get it so I finally said well I'm gonna do ribbing and this is what I came up withI didn't know what to do at the top with my last few stitches so I kitchenered them like I do socks, does that sound super dicky or what? But I think it's okay.

lazy bones sleepin' in the sun how you 'spect to get your day's work done

Yeah, well I had two hours of sleep last night and I flew to DC this morning and I am wiped out. And I haven't talked about meeting Melissa at all, really. So read her report and see pictures of my new bee tape measure and the awesome stitch markers she made me.

on this our wedding day i do love you with all my heart

I do love The Man Who Lives in the House. He needs some help and I need to make some changes, which I am not ready to make (due to issues I have not discussed here, I need less stress in my life). But five years ago today, on Elvis' birthday, at sunset, under a full moon, on a beach, inside the Bermuda Triangle...Look how young we both look.

you're an ugly dog there's nothing to gain you couldn't shut up got a bad bad brain

I finished the sweater for Herself.

So I left work a tad early and went to an appointment right by the Hobby Lobby and I was cold and needed to wear a cardigan and I have to bring that cardi anyway so I killed two birds with one stone and wore the cardi and went to the store and shopped for buttons and FSM do they have some fug buttons at that store and none of them are the right size but I got some anyway and I was leaving and looked down at the sweater I was wearing, said sweater in question, and lo and behold, I DID only make six buttonholes, I am so fucking stupid.

Back to plan A and the original buttons, and I sewed them on but not before trying to figure out how to a) get the jumbo Chibi through the tiny hole and b) how to thread the tiny needle with yarn before, OH! I can sew the buttons on with THREAD! And a SMALL needle!

And I repeat, I am so fucking stupid.

It wasn't a stellar day anyway, so I guess this made it. Finishing the sweater and seeing the complete fugness of my bad design from eight years ago. I'll post pics after I send it out, lest I chicken out and cry off and buy Rabbitch a cardigan which really defeats the purpose.

Doesn't it?

Yes. Yes, it does.

I think.

No, really. It does.

Right?

monsters having fun happy happy see them jump and run happy happy

So my Fiber Fairygodmother sent me an eCard with this picture on itand isn't it the cutest and also simultaneously disturbing in the "I'm going to come to life at night and knife you to death in your bed!" thing you've ever seen? I am now compelled to have an army of knitted monsters marching about my desk in DC. Perhaps in different colors. What better way to use up scrap yarn? I see no pattern for it on the GGH website but I figure I can come up with something. They have more, too, here, but this is definitely the best one. His name is Fritz.

Thanks to my new inspiration to finish the eight year old plum cardigan for Rabbitch, I actually, er, finished it tonight while playing Paper Mario. Here's a close-up, pre-shitbuttsnatchugly seaming job:And then I ran into a bit of a problem.

There are only six buttons.

There are seven buttonholes.

Considering I knit this between eight and six years ago, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if this were entirely my fuckup. It likely is. But I doubt this store, if I even remember what store it was, has these really pretty Italian crystal buttons I bought for this sweater anymore. And I don't have enough of those extra buttons that come on my suits that match to make those work. I foresee a trip to Hobby Lobby in my future (as in tonight). Rabbitch? Now's the time to make any special requests for the buttons for your sweater. Non-Rabbitchs? Now's the time to make any suggestions for the buttons for Rabbitch's sweater.

(musical interlude)

I only know of one song called "Avatar" and it's by Earth, Wind and Fire and it's a musical interlude without lyrics. Okay, JenLa, I think I have this figured out. My avatar isn't so much "ugly" as it is pathetic. This is Fred.Fred's real name is John, but he wants to be called Fred, because he idolizes Fred from Scooby-Doo. He is at the county fair because it's the closest thing that passes for an amusement park, and he wants to find the ghosts painted in phosphorescent paint so he can rip of the mask for the reveal that it's Mr. Withers, the owner of the haunted amusement park, and he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids. His dog isn't a Great Dane, it's a lab, because Fred/John can't even get the breed of dog correct.

Poor Fred/John doesn't quite understand that Scooby-Doo is not a reality show.

I actually did ugly, but everyone else had so similar ideas as I did, I felt a retread wasn't quite worth it. And I'm a better writer, anyway.

our wheels in slush and orange crush in pocket and all this here county

So on Monday I met Melissa at the best evil empire store ever to knit and talk. And we had a marvelous time. And we might have done a little yarn crawling. And I finished Crazy Lady's socks!and now the one sock reeks of coffee just when I got the smell out of the other one, but screw it, I sent them out anyway. So for a couple of closeups:You can see on the second sock the color pooled but it spiraled, it didn't zigzag. Weird.

So, here is the cocksucking intarsia baby fish sweaterand no I don't know why the Thermacare was in there. Behold! The puckering of the fish!Note that the red fair isle is not puckering.Because I can do fair isle. Fair isle does not suck cocks.

So. What do I do with this rainbow assortment of yarn now?

if your sink is in trouble you can call us on the double we're faster than the others you'll be hooked on the brothers

A mixed bag of comments from yesterday. Let me say, I need no (more) enablers in my life. You were supposed to not point out that it was only "a little" intarsia. You were supposed to tell me that I was a wuss for dropping my resolutions so quickly. You who did not know who you are.

So in the comments yesterday, Jane suggested that instead of doing the Space Invaders bag in the cocksucking intarsia I could do the asselopecious duplicate stitch instead. Thanks for that, Jane. Because then I ran across this Super Mario 3 scarf done in the asselopecious duplicate stitch.

Although I played Super Mario 3 when it came out (I was in high school), it wasn't until college that we started a marathon of trying to win it. We were determined to win it before graduation (we started playing it halfway through the last semester of senior year). We stayed up all night the night before graduation to ensure that we would win that fucking game before we graduated.

So, on the one hand, I have the cocksucking intarsia, and on the other, I have the asselopecious duplicate stitch.

It's a nostalgic knitting nightmare.

space invaders in the air in a flying saucer you can take me there

My brother and I played Space Invaders the entire summer my parents announced they were getting divorced, when we weren't badgering my parents to take us to see the best movie that came out in my childhood, over and over again, or the best World War II soccer movie starring Sylvester Stallone ever made, over and over again.

I just saw this Space Invaders knitted tote bag and I totally want to make one.

Note that this is made in the cocksucking intarsia.

The evilness of the cocksucking intarsia is not winning out over the compelling nature of this pattern.

Please, remind me of my resolutions. Specifically numbers 1, 3, 5, 9 and 12. It's only January 3rd.

the piano has been drinking not me not me not me not me not me

First, I'd like to thank (I think) JenLa for giving me an excuse to quote that Tom Waits song. I still can't believe I beat Rabbitch in the "Assdrunk Post" category, though.

Speaking of Rabbitch, apparently, when I was, uh, drunk, I offered to send Herself a cardigan. I read about this today in her post taking me up on my offer. Hunh. Well, I never say anything I don't mean, and I know exactly which cardigan I am going to send her. And thank you, Rabbitch, for giving me the motivation to actually finish sewing up that fucking cardigan that has been sitting completed and un-sewn-up for eight years. I hope you like Filatura di Crosa 501 in purpley-plum.

Now for my resolutions:

1. I'm going to throw out the intarsia fish baby sweater that's almost done. Fuck intarsia.

2. I'm going to use the word "fuck" a bit less in my posts. I shall replace it sometimes with something more fitting, such as words with the prefix of "cocksuck-".

3. I'm going to refuse to do any intarsia work this year. Fuck intarsia.

4. I'm going to get another tattoo, and I'm going to repierce my navel. (This one is really apropos of nothing related to knitting. It's just a resolution.)

5. No matter how appealing or how small the project, I will remember that intarsia was created by demons from hell and I shall not succumb. Fuck intarsia.

6. I'm going to try to find all of my stash. I don't think I'll succeed, because, I don't know where it all is. I am not going to be all geeky and librarianesque and catalogue it (even though I could). I will however...

7. Catalogue my increasing ginormous collection of knitting and crochet books and magazines. Or at least organize them in one space in my library. And maybe apply the Dewey Decimal System to them. It's perfect for small collections such as mine.

8. I will practice my piano more.

9. I will find the three sweaters I started to make for my late father and throw them out or offer them up here on the blog for frogging, along with any associated yarn. I can't think about them. And one of them has intarsia. Fuck intarsia.

10. I will send the stuff out to people I've been meaning to send for months. This includes what I bought Rabbitch, with Beth and Colette's kind assistance, at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Orgy, as well as Dani's comtest winnings from April.

11. I'll attempt to be better at addressing comments, because I suck ass at it now, even though I read them all, and I won't be freaked out by people who don't comment telling me when they meet me in person that they know who I am from my blog.

12. I shall not make the one pillow pattern that would go perfectly in my bedroom, because it has intarsia. Cocksucking intarsia.

There, that's one resolution for each month. I give myself a week before I start a new intarsia project without having sent out the swag amid my pile of unshelved knitting books.