The best knitting quote ever

"No, [France] arrived accompanied simply by the guest I am going to present to you."

..."Ah, this gentleman is a Hercules-killing Cacus! A Perseus-freeing Andromeda!"

"No, he is a man about my own size."

"Armed to the teeth?"

"He had not even a knitting needle.... Why, he is the count of Monte Cristo."

--Alexandre Dumas

Fruit Party!

I am not what you would necessarily call a healthy eater. I like a good meal as good, if not better, than the rest of them. But I work a lot, and when I'm not working, I usually have homework to do for grad school, or I'm on the train on my hour-and-a-half-each-way commute. It's a busy lifestyle. And when I get home, cooking a fancy meal, and usually, cooking at all, is not really how I want to spend my free time. So I eat out a lot.

Japan is notoriously short on vegetables. The bulk of them are imported, and especially with a good deal of the farmland near Tokyo ruined post-nuclear disaster, the prices have gone up to boot. Getting your greens when eating out is usually insufficient.

When I was home in the States this summer, my sister-in-law got me on a huge smoothie kick. The two of us would make smoothies nearly every day we were home together, and the habit stuck back here in Japan. They're like a fruit festival! And to boot, they're always a splash of color on the mornings when I leave for work when the sun is still rising behind the buildings.

So what kind of smoothies do you like to make, you might ask? Anything and everything! The more interesting the mixture, the more fun they are to drink!

So today, in front of me, I have a honeydew-pear-peach smoothie. It's a little on the watery side, but that's what you get for having the juiciest pears you could wish for (Thanks to my awesome in-laws who send bags of fruit home with my lovely man.)

But the combinations are pretty much endless. Banana-kiwi-pineapple, anyone? Or banana-peach-strawberry-blueberry? Why not peach-banana-canteloupe? And of course cucumber-melon-banana.

It's a hit of vitamins that always picks me up for my morning classes, a splash of color that brightens my mood, and a kick in the pants to make sure I'm eating healthier.

I'm okay.

Okay. Alright. I'm fine. Really, I'm fine. I'm just...going a little crazy, that's all. I'm just not getting along with my project, that's all.

So, I've just started Eunny Jang's Bayerische Socks. They are beautiful socks. Precise. Decorative. Elegant. Impossible.

Okay, not impossible, but difficult to the brink of insanity. Maybe I'm exaggerating. Just a little.

I don't know if it's the combination of the difficulty of the pattern, or my (now) hatred of size O Knit Picks Harmony needles, or the fact that I'm not getting along with my yarn.

Cascade Heritage is beautiful. The stitch definition is incredible, the sheen is lovely, the color is rich and vibrant. But am I the only one in the world who has had a splitting issue? That yarn just fans when you try to stick your needle through it, and inevitably there's one ply that just won't comply. Brat!

The fact is, maybe it's me. Maybe I just don't know how to get along. Am I having trouble listening to the project? Does it just not like me?

I think (sob, sob) what I'll have to do is frog and start on a size 1 needle. It's just that those size 0 needles bend. I don't think they're supposed to bend, but they do. And I constantly have the feeling that one is going to snap in my hand. And I wouldn't like that. I already have a splinter in my hand and can't get it out, and I don't need another one.

So maybe size 1s will do the trick. They're just nicer. And they don't bend. And they are pointier, which will hopefully stop the yarn from practically fraying as soon as I touch it.

And in the meantime, maybe I'll cast on another sock to keep me sane. So I can feel like I actually know what I'm doing as I knit, so as not to go loopy. At least not too loopy.

Well, anyway. See how far I got? How am I going to continue if it's hardly even started and I'm already despising the thought of working on it? It was really the increase row that got me. Eunny, you're so smart. And amazing. And awesomely cool. But where in the world did you come up with "k tbl, m1 knitwise, purl front and back, m1 purlwise, purl 1"? 6 stitches out of 3? Brilliant! But horrible! I'm dreading doing it again. And I'll have to. There are two socks!

Hisashiburi

For those of you who don't speak Japanese, hisashiburi means "It's been a long time since I've seen you", basically. And yet again, time passes. But with it, knitting. And buying yarn. I have plenty to say, but I'm going to try and be smart about it, and break it up into multiple segments. So let's start with my summer yarn binge. Oh, and there was so much of it!