A skein of promise

Sandi Wiseheart of Knitting Daily has challenged us all to make 2008 the Year of Knitting Fearlessly. To whit, I signed up for Make 1 Yarn Studio's Year of Lace.

Which terrifies me.

But, kind of like a rollercoaster ride gets the jimmys jammin', this fear is propelling me towards heretofore Undiscovered Country - Knitting Lace.

I used to associate it with doilies, and doilies with frilly frimpy stuff you can't touch for fear of breakage and someone's wrath, and so I have eschewed this realm of the Fibre Universe.

And now I realize I'm really missing out on some good fun.

And at the Stich 'n Bitch last night, I suddenly spied some (naturally, gorgeous and expensive) beautiful, lovely Claudia Handpainted Silk laceweight in Exactly My Colours.

And me, who needs very little justification to purchase nearly anything that sets my heart aflutter (which this did, mightily, and nearly displacing my newly-loved Sanctuary on sale stash) decided to plunge in and buy my very first Laceweight yarn.

It holds a lot of promise, and in so committing my weekly Yarn Allowance. Promise, in more ways than one. It means I'm promising myself to be Fearless. And do more than pet this lovely skein of silkenness.

Damn. That means I'm gonna have to go get some decent lace needles. I don't dare put anything less than satiny smooth next to this gossamer goodness...

Which then might mean I will have to do Something With Them. Fear, begone!

My name is Michael Finnigan..Begin Again

Yep, like the kid's song my 8-year old's been singing.

There's hyperbole, and then there's understatement. To say I'm a sporadic blogger would be, most likely, understatement.

Pretty much 20 months of blogging inactivity is relatively shameful in today's techno-savvy world. But then, I'm a digital immigrant, among other things.

Like...busy working to keep my yarn habit a habit of choice. Oh, and providing food and (sometimes clean) shelter, too, but those are secondary to yarn accrual and playing in my most honest of private thoughts.

And busy parenting. And wifing. (is that a verb...?)

And knitting, and spinning, and dreaming.

But now, with new pretty iMac (yeah, it's six months old and it took me this long but who's counting), and new membership on Ravelry, and a new year, I'm recommitting to do this. Maybe once a week for starters...

And because not doing blogging feels like a perpetual UFO chiding, calling, nagging from the proverbial basket, now I feel more accomplished. There. Another blog post.

Yay me!

And so it begins

Oh so tentatively, I begin.

After months of googling and ogling, it seems that in all walks, including the knitting world, Everyone Else is doing it. And if it's the thing to do, who am I to stand in the way of the ultimate yawning cavern of vulnerability open to Everyone Else armed with sticks, string, a computer and modem.

And so, I will begin to share (is this like group counselling, my lovely and stable husband wants to know?) my work, play, agony, triumphs, moments of inspiration and desperation, and other minutae with Everyone Else out there in cyberland. I just need to figure out how this works.

Yarn metaphor: this is something like getting a new ball of yarn and squishing your fingers straight into the middle to try and luck out and find that ever-elusive inside end, closing your eyes the whole time. You know you're likely to pull out a garbled ball that's far more than you need to begin, but that, once straightened out, has the starting place. And once finding the damnable starting point you need, after draping everyone you know within sitting distance (husband, kid, cat and dog included) with the lengths of yarn you don't need at the moment but know you will in the very near future (so don't move!), you just know you'll figure it out as it goes on the sticks and finds some semblance of order.

And so, eyes firmly squeezed open (peeking all the time), I am planting my fingers on this keyboard, finding the beginning (thank you Blogspot!), grabbing anyone around me who knows about blogging and I am making them stand and tell me (don't move!) what I need to know to get to the beginning so I can figure this out and hope like hell it gets me somewhere I want to be.

Order out of the snagged ball, that sort of thing. The snags will not win. I'll be back, and next time, I'm bringing sticks.