Seriously, who thinks of these things?

Okay folks, lets ponder the whole textiles concept for a moment. Weaving I can wrap my brain around. I mean, if someone gave me a pile of string and needed some cloth, I think I might have come up with the weaving together thing. The whole over-and-under thing is kind of intuitive. Crocheting makes some sense too...you use the hook to make loopy things that make the fabric get bigger. When you get to knitting, I start getting nervous if I think too hard about how someone came up with the two sticks and string thing. Once you know how, it's pretty cool and occasionally magical, but if I think too hard about how someone could have come up with it in the first place, I get a little woozy.

Now, inspired by Ms. Knitingale's and Knottykitty's entrelac adventures, I decided to try it out myself. Eunny Jang's step-by-step instructions in the Spring IK make it quite clear and easy to follow, but my head needs to explode if I think too hard about the fact that someone had to do this the first time. I would really like to know who was the first person to think, "Hmmm, I want to knit a basket weave all in one piece," and then actually sat down and did it. There is absolutely nothing intuitive about it and the way it kind of bunches up on the needles, you can't really see where it's coming from...you just need to kind of slog along and do it and then marvel at the end result!

This particular specimen will, with a fair amount of luck, hopefully become a new purse for me. I am using up the leftovers from the kids' felted clogs (hence, the lovely color combination). The part shown is the flap. On the blue block row, I joined it in the round and will be trucking away on the purse part. The plan is to felt it a bit and then line it. So somewhere down the road we can either be amazed that I flew by the seat of my pants and ended up with an actual purse or we can all have a good laugh at whatever I end up with.

From the same IK issue, I have been working on Roza's socks in KnitPicks's Gloss yarn. It is really lovely yarn to work with (though I will admit I haven't had the privilege of working with some of the reputedly "really nice" sock yarns) and after a few false starts, I am absolutely taken by the brioche rib pattern. Plus with the nice weather, we are spending more time playing at the park, so I actually get a little knitting time on my purse project!

I tried to take a picture of the brioche rib, but they didn't turn out. If you would like to see how it looks, the original picture from the pattern is here.

The other factor that has contributed to knitting progress is that, as a concession to Kitty Daddy since we don't have cable any more, we joined Blockbuster Online. They have a bunch of TV shows on DVD, so we can watch some of the shows we don't get to see on TV anymore. Obviously, the DVDs aren't up-to-date with the series, but it has been kind of fun to go back to the beginning and see them in order. We have started with Battlestar Galactica (2003 version) and have seen the mini-series and are through a good chunk of season one. We have season two next in the queue, then we will have to hold off until season three is available. While it isn't nearly as spontaneous as cable, it is a heck of a lot cheaper!