Integrity

While editing a work article in a coffee shop, I overheard a conversation between a man and another patron seated a few tables away from me.  The patron - let's call him Tom - a few tables down had found a phone in the bathroom and turned it into the cashier, and the man - let's call him Henry - had come in looking for it.  Apparently, Henry had forgotten it and drove halfway across the island before realizing it was gone. He was frantic.

When Henry came into the coffee shop and retrieved his phone from the cashier, he was so relieved.  He asked the cashier if the person who found it was still in the shop, and the cashier directed him to Tom.  Henry approached Tom and expressed how thankful and grateful he was; Henry's life was on that phone and he had retraced all of his steps in the last hour trying to locate the phone.  Henry pressed Tom for a way to repay his honesty, but Tom assured him that he was just doing the right thing.  Henry was truly beside himself.  I thought he was going to bow at Tom's feet and hug him in thanks if he couldn't repay Tom.  At Henry's insistence, Tom finally gave Henry his business card and reassured him that it was really no trouble at all.  Henry left the store visibly happier.  He even took a moment to wave to Tom before pulling out of the driveway.

I couldn't help eavesdropping and smiling through this whole exchange.  Very rarely do we witness acts of kindness and good in the world.  But whenever I do, I feel like I need to share it with the world.  Don't you?

Makana Socks

I've been knitting and blogging on and off for a really long time.  And as we get older, I think it becomes more critical to live out our dreams.  A long held dream of mine was to design and publish a knitting pattern.  The motivation hit me a time or two, but you know what they say: Don't rely on motivation for anything.  It is fleeting and unreliable.  Discipline, however, is unyielding.  Force yourself to follow through.  When I was a knit blogger, I tried and failed miserably to come up with something.  Fast forward to about a decade later and I rediscovered this dream when motivation hit me in the form of Ravelry and knitters on Instagram.  This time, I capitalized on the motivation to get me started and coupled it with discipline to finish the job!

Makana Socks

I present the Makana Socks.  In Hawaiian, Makana means "gift."  My legacy as a knitter is characterized by knitting things for other people.  Very few of the things I knitted have ever been for myself; I had a tendency to give them away.  But this brings me such great joy.  I love sharing my knitting with my loved ones and letting them know how special they are by giving them something I made especially for them.  My greatest hope is that others share this joy when they make these socks - either for themselves, or their loved ones. 

These socks combine everything I personally love about socks.  I make socks more than I make anything else, and my preferred construction methods are top down with a heel flap.  I recently discovered how to make a rounded toe which suited this textured pattern a lot better than the typical square toe.  The texture pattern itself is stretchy but structured.  Laid flat, it looks like a geometric waffle pattern but reveals mini cables when on the foot.  These socks hold their shape well; I dislike when socks start to slouch after wearing them around the house a bit.  The texture also goes well with a lot of sock yarns: variegated, speckled, solid, self-striping.  I look forward to seeing what people make with this pattern.

This is the first pattern I've ever written for publication.  The process has been so eye-opening.  From the design, to test knitting, note-taking, reknitting with adjustments, photographing, pattern writing, calculating, editing, and actually publishing...!  Whew!  To be able to do all of this truly is a labor of love and I'm more than a little excited to see it go up on Ravelry! 

I hope knitters enjoy knitting this pattern as much as I do.  I've already started another pair in a really fun rainbow colorway, and will probably be working on Christmas socks for my family in this pattern.

Aloha!

March Madness

I've been so very absent from blogging.  I am almost compelled to wonder who even blogs these days?  With social media at your fingertips via Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. who really wants to park in front of a blog and read paragraphs of type any more when you can have the immediate satisfaction of status updates, tweets, and photos to tell your life story?

Well, I'm attempting the improbable. Blog, I will see you a lot more often.  World, you will have the unfortunate opportunity of knowing what I'm thinking as the stream of consciousness flows out the tips of my fingers.  Sorry in advance.

I'm knitting again.  It's not sporadic, either.  I'm talking marathon, binge-knitting of the most epic scale.  I don't know what happened.  It started with a baby blanket for a friend's newborn baby and the next thing I know, I'm digging out old projects and plowing through new ones.  I finished two hats, three socks, and one baby blanket in the span of three weeks.  That would seem absurd if not for the fact that a couple of those socks were already halfway finished.  I've also got another blanket, two pairs of socks, a hat, and a shawl in progress...fingers itching to cast on some new socks now that a few sets of needles have been freshly emancipated.

I'm not entirely sure where this power surge motivating my knitting has come from, but it doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon.  Fueled by new stash acquisitions, Ravelry (gosh, how I missed Ravelry), and the accessibility of everyone else's projects by social media like Instagram, I am plowing forward. 

I don't promise to be ready by the end of the year when Christmas rolls around given my compulsion to give away the things I finish.  Somebody somewhere needs it!  (That somebody is usually my mother because I intend to wrap her in yarn-made hugs and bury her in my hand knit love. She is also super lucky our feet are the same size.) I do think I will be better prepared for the onslaught of birthdays and improvised gifts.  I envy those with piles of shawls.  Those industrious folks whose closets are filled with colorful and cabled sweaters are the source of my low self esteem as a knitter. The jealousy is almost unbearable at the sight of hand knit socks crammed neatly into drawers and overflowing out of cupboards.  I am compelled to vow that every single moment my hands could possibly be idle, I'll be working toward that dream of having knit so many socks for myself and my family that I never need to buy another pair again. I'd be living the dream of having a pair of socks on hand to gift away should the occasion arise at any moment.  I hope I'm not the only person with that dream.

How did people do it?  Not decades ago when store-bought clothing wasn't so readily available, how did people get by with making their own attire?  I don't know.  But here I am.  I am mad with the need to knit more.  KNIT MORE!  Whether it be yarn in my stash or newly bought, I will knit it.  There are tubs of colorful yarn for blankets.  I have piles of yarn intended for socks or shawls.  I have drawers top full of yarn for sweaters.  I intend to go through it all and make a sizeable dent by the end of this year - enough of one so that my husband doesn't keep pestering me about the space in the extra room where it is all kept.  He'll be marveling at all the finished knits instead.

Perhaps I'm being delusional.  Or maybe I'm being too ambitious.  Seriously, how much can I ever hope to achieve without garnering my husband's resentment for neglecting the dog, housework, and children?  I'm sure if I make some money by selling hand knits (finished objects, not yarn, mind you), he won't have much to argue about. Right?

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I intend to knit it out.