Monday, October 20, 2008

Late Blooming

Yesterday while I was, erm, finishing off the yoke of The Sweater, I listened to podcasts from The New Yorker, including this one with Malcolm Gladwell about late blooming. Knitting feels like a guilty pleasure when I have writing to do, so it was comforting to hear there's a guy older than me who came out with his first short story collection, and it's truly inspired, and widely appreciated.

Okay, I've been writing longer than this guy even though he's older. But still. It gave me hope that I'll write a publishable novel someday, and also that if I don't, and I turn out to be a short story writer after all, that's just fine too.

If only my sweater story had such a positive ending. Yes, there is good news: the knitting is done, and the sizing is perfect. The bad: I still have to weave in about 15 tails of yarn, and scrape goo off my iron if I do the quick steam-press blocking method, and I don't seem to have a button that looks right for it, and it's going to rain much of the week so I can't show it off anyway.

1 comment:

Karen said...

Tip re. avoiding cleaning goo off your iron: dampen a towel, place it over the thing you're blocking, and press gently on that with the iron. Keep the heat on low, as I remember there's a fair bit of acrylic in the fibre you're using, and that stuff wilts when it's heated too much. Actually, the towel should protect against that effect somewhat, so it's a double bonus! Now, go git yerself a button -- I demand pictures!