"If you care for your own children, you must take an interest in all, for your children must go on living in the world made by all children." Eleanor Roosevelt

One of my Mother's Days gifts was Volume 2 of Blanche Wiesen Cook's biography of ER. My daughter remembered that I had said how much I liked Vol. 1 (borrowed from the stack of college books still in her room). So I'm set with bedtime reading for a while. One of the things I'm enjoying is learning more about so many politically and socially active, progressive women in the '20s and '30s. (Although part of my response is "Wait a minute, what the hell happened? Why aren't we any farther along in 2007?) And I'm starting to think that Eleanor R was the only truly interesting First Lady we have ever had, or at any rate the only one I would want to take or hold up as a role model. My other lovely gift was a small silk painting by daughter herself, that she had framed by her good buddy Arlo. I love the colors, I love that she made it. (No picture here, though, because my camera batteries are dead,) And the best gift was brunch with my daughter and my mother, both truly interesting women (as well as Mr. S, who is a truly interesting guy, but hey, his day isn't until June.)

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There's kind of a fun meme going around (that every one's probably already seen), listing 100 different knitting activities. The idea is to put the list up with the things you have done in Bold, and the things you plan to do in italic, and the things you never plan to do get left plain. (If you haven't seen it, CatBookMom has nicely put it in alphabetical order.) Somehow dealing with the whole list at once seems too overwhelming, so I decided to do it in chunks.

So one of the things I have done is Free Form Knitting. At least, I think this counts



I started with the smallest pinkish square (upper right) and did the log cabin thing with a little short row color changes, then picked up for the stripes at the top, then knit the side panels. For sizing, I just kept laying the WIP up against an existing sweater.



The procedure for the back was pretty much the same, with some mitering and more short rowing. By that time there was plenty of "swatch" to calculate the number of stitches for the sleeves. Don't know if it's art, but it was awfully fun to knit.

I've improvised a lot of hat's, "designing on the needles", but this is the only full sized garment (so far).

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There were really very few things that I never intend to do, but I think these would qualify:

Knitting with wire. I've seen lovely/interesting items, but it looks like it would make my hands hurt too much.

Knitting on a loom: I assume this means knitting on one of those frames that are like a large version of a knitting spool. I think that would be way slower than using needles.

Knitting with dog/cat hair: mostly because I don't have a source (see below)

Knitting with my own handspun yarn: I love watching people spin. I can believe that it is soothing and engrossing. I admire spinners and their handiwork. And the couple of times I've tried spinning I was a total klutz. Plus I don't have time to knit everything I want to knit, even if someone else has already made the yarn for me. (Does this sound defensive? Is there a little nagging voice saying "Real Fiber Artists spin their own yarn"? Probably.)

Earn a living by knitting: I'm a designer/designer wannabe. I love it when I get paid for my work. But actually being able to earn enough to live on? Realistically, it's not likely to happen in this lifetime.

Then there are a few things that I doubt I will be doing, (but you never know)
These would include: knitting a rug, dying with plant colors (nice, just not a priority), knitting hair accessories.

I'll get to the "I really want to do" and at least some of the "Been there/done that" items in another post (probably, depending, we'll see how things go).