Trying not to stray

K,

Blocking is not hard. Throw the thing in water for a bit. Warm water. Take it out. Put it in a towel and roll up the towel to take most of the water out. Put a dry towel on the carpet of the floor, and then shove a bunch of pins around the peice while stretching it to the correct size.

You wimp. Come on! You've done this with much larger and more intricate projects before. This is easy peasy for you. You could do this concurrently with boiling water for supper.

I love the idea of a quilt. But, honey, shouldn't you have a sewing machine before you start quilting? I mean, some people quilt by hand. The artists who charge thousands for their quilts. And the Amish. You are neither of those. I think. Are you borrowing your mom's machine, or what here? I'm sure it'll be great, anyhow. I love that you are sewing a dress by hand and it goes faster than knitting. You also have an extraordinary amount of experience in sewing things...creatures...by hand. One sleeps in bed with me at night. I'd love to see it when it's done.

I had to make a list of reasons not to buy tencel yarn. Because I was about to whip out my debit card:

1) Turquoise Lace Cardigan
2) Blue Merino U-neck Pullover
3)Handspun Rambouillet Handknit gloves in Pomegrante
4) New Blue Chunky Scarf and hat for fall
5) Chunky Blue Mittens and Hat for mom for Christmas
6) Lilac Cashmere mittens or gloves for sister for Christmas
7) Black Hat for Aaron for Christmas
8) Cotton Washrags
9) Log Cabin Cotton Bathrug from Mason Dixon
10)Ginormous Doctor Who Scarf
11) Gloves and Mittens for Kris's Parents for Christmas

Not in any particular order, but a bit frightening. I mean...

Wow.

These aren't small projects. Well, some are. Some might take a month each. Plus spinning is happening, too.

YARN DIET! Let's see if we can do it. If the tencel goes on super sale, I'll buy it. If not, maybe I can try and control my desires. Because the more money I don't spend on yarn, the more I have for the spinning wheel fund. I really think I can do this.

Oh crap.

12) Super nice alpaca and cashmere blue yarn for pretty sweater that Kris bought me for my Birthday. Really want to knit with it. Man, I forgot about that. It's just sitting there, and I haven't even given it a design yet. I'd love to do that. Work on a design.

Even one a month and I'm set for the next year...

Oh my word. The Dr. Who scarf could take a year in itself.

Unless it's a super sale, I really don't need any more yarn right now...I have medical school, too. Which means no thinking projects for about the next 4 years...except for riding the bus.

Perhaps the bus will save me. Half an hour of knitting time a day. That is really a lot. We'll see. Keep reminding me of all these things when I want to go buy new yarn. Really. Because these are only the things most upcoming on the docket or already being worked on that need finishing. They don't include the various UFOs (Un-Finished Objects, not the kind in Roswell) that are mucking about, taking up my needles and such. There are a myriad of socks and mittens and gloves I could knit...and a baby sweater I really want to but just haven't dyed the yarn yet. I'm trying not to. But it's so hard.

Did you know that some part of addiction is genetic? Epigenetic, actually. Which means that even though it's not going to come out in that wonderful gene sequence that we finished of all 23,000 genes, it's still heritable. There are environmental factors that are passed both in the womb and outside of it in a growing-up environment that cause certain psychiatric and other medical conditions, like schizophrenia, panic attacks, depression, and the like. They rest in the DNA, even though they aren't the little letters that make up the wonderful sequence. Methylations and histone proteins and such. Epigenetics is likely a great part of the reason why we can't clone large animals that live very long or healthily. It's might be responsible for a great deal of diseases that are heritable but that we can't find in the DNA sequence, like Alzheimer's and psychiatric diseases, many cancers, and such. I listened to the guy who patented a test for looking for the markers of epigenetics. He told us that if we could choose between smart and lucky, go for lucky, because he's met a lot of smart people, but he was the lucky one who got this project and was able to get ways to make it go his way. But, oh my word, the man is smart, too. It's like Watson and Crick, who, when they talked about discovering the structure of DNA, said, "It's true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold.''

Anyway, I was just thinking, what do you think my yarn addiction is doing to my DNA? Are there markers that knitters have that weavers don't? That yarn horders have? That One-project-at-a-time people like you have? That Knitting-attention-deficit-disordered people like me have?

And are we going to pass this on?

Smooches,
A