Coffee Klatch

No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
-Sheik Abd-al-Kadir

On Blogging
You may recall that the beau has been asking all sorts of questions about blogging, and that earlier this week I promised some brilliant insights from that conversation. In trying to explain to him how I know or "know" the bloggers I read and who read mine, and how my dad, my best friend from middle school, and a woman in Iceland whom I may never meet all constitute my audience and all comment on the same post, it struck me that the blogosphere is like a coffee shop. We have our knitterly gathering on the couches, right up there near the front windows. Maybe we're even sitting outside under the awning in nice weather. And as we knit and drink our coffee, our conversation gets loud, the laughter raucous, and we are keenly aware that all the passersby can overhear us discussing zippers, two-handed fair-isle, and different heel stitches. Intermixed, they can also overhear the parts of our personal lives that intersect: the babies due receiving sweaters, the wedding shawls, the boyfriends we won't knit for. The man walking his dog down the block is not our intended or primary audience, but we know that we're knitting and blogging in a public space.

I'm loving the idea of the blogosphere as a coffee shop right now, because it hits just the right balance of public and private. . . which is just a great balance for blogging in my life. As you may or may not have noticed, I'm adapting to my new city, new job, new schedule (and, yes, new beau). The new plan for Knitting Underway is to post every other day. I find that if I wait more than that, I lose my momentum and sense of the community. I have a bunch of knitting to catch you up on, so I'm optimistic that it'll be a good pace for the blog. And speaking of that balance, Grumperina wants us to dig deep into our knitterly selves and bare our souls. About knitting. Go figure.

Ten Knitterly Things You Didn't Know About Me
Slowly but surely Grumperina's meme is making it's way around blogland. I can't promise that all of these are shocking revelations, but at least they all fit the qualification - they are all about knitting.

1. I taught myself to knit from photos on the internet one night in December my junior year of undergrad. The reason? I was looking for something to do OTHER than studying for biostatistics. The thought came to my head, "well, I've always wanted to learn to knit. . ."
2. My grandmother had tried to teach me when I was younger, maybe about 10, but I could never remember how when we got home.
3. My first project was a garter stitch scarf for my mom out of Lion Brand Thick and Quick Chenille. I quickly realized that it was going to be too wide and take too long, so I spontaneously decreased about 20 stitches on one row, thinking no one would ever notice. (They did.)
4. The entire first year I knit, I made nothing but scarves. Ninety percent of them were garter stitch scarves in Lion Brand Homespun. Then I hit a point where everyone I knew had a scarf. I had to branch out.
5. I'm thinking of giving up on the whole swatching concept. Seriously, I start over as much after I swatch as I do if I don't. Swatches lie.
6. In college, people I'd never met used to refer to me as "That Girl Who Knits." It was discussed at parties.
7. I often choose my reading material based on its ability to lie flat so that I can knit while reading it. Hey - works for The New England Journal of Medicine!
8. In general, I prefer solid colored yarn to variagated. (Some sock yarns are an excpetion. But only socks.)
9. I knit. I don't dye. I don't spin. I don't even design. And while I admire those who do, I think it would only distract me from doing the things I want to do.
10. Knitting is community. It is blogging, knitting groups, and friendly chats in the halls of the hospital with those who have their knitting. I would knit half as much as twice as poorly if I wasn't daily inspired by everything I see on your pages. Thank you.