Knitting Along With EZ & Julia Child

I've been away from the blog lately with good reason. I've been knitting a lot more. There's a long story behind it all that has to do with joining a group...but I'll spare you all the details. Needless to say, there's been a big uptick in my knitting productivity lately.
Well, let me rephrase that. There will be.

See, I've got two blankets in production, a pair of mitts that really need to get finished, a pair of socks...you get the idea. Once it all gets done, it'll be great! Right now, it's a bunch of well-intentioned yarn. But I'll be able to share pictures with you later today!

While I've been knitting, I've been planning ahead. Even though I already have a large throw on the needles, I've been considering a winter project. Have you read the book, Julie & Julia? Or perhaps seen the movie? In a nutshell, a young woman decides to break up the boredom of her life by cooking every recipe of 524 recipes in Julia Child's book, "Mastering The Art of French Cooking", and blogs about it as she cooks her way through the book. Lately, I've been toying with the idea of giving the concept a knitterly twist. Could it be done? What would the best approach? The knitters out there will know the Julia Child of knitting is the brilliant Elizabeth Zimmerman, author of numerous knitting books, patterns, and more. So I've decided to knit along with EZ, as best I can, and blog about the process, the experience, and the patterns once considered ground-breaking. Mrs. Zimmerman was as well known for her wit, pithy commentary and no-holds-barred approach to knitting, and seems like someone I might have enjoyed knowing. So I'll get to know her as best I can through her books and patterns, some of which are as hard to procure as unicorn hair.

The first pattern will be her Mocassin Socks.

Stay tuned for more details and forthcoming pictures of my WIP-pile!

Meet Hootie

Thankfully, I have no new crisis to report so I'll share a small accomplishment today.
See the little owl over there to the left? That's Hootie. He was born from a need for something challenging, because my knitting has gotten mindless and easy. He is my first piece knitted from a chart, and the first really successful two-colour piece I've made. I have been trying to cut down on my knitted UFO's (that's Un Finished Objects to you non-knitters) recently, and to that end, I try not to start something that I'm unsure might ever be finished. On my needles lately, as you know is

• an Irish Hiking Scarf for a friend's birthday, 
• the fuzzy baby blanket
• A Dr. Who scarf

A writer/geek friend and I were chatting online one day when she asked me how my knitting has been progressing. She lives out in Los Angeles, not where I would think one would need knitwear, but when she asked me for a Dr. Who Scarf, how could I say no? A few hours later, I researched the scarf, because all I knew at that point was that it was made of a variety of yarns and colours and that it was very long. I discovered to my horror that depending on the year represented, the scarf can be anywhere from 12' to 18' long! Out of concern for my friend's safety, I won't be knitting "to canon" as they say in Hollywood. I'll make hers as close to the colors of season 12 as I can, but likely not 12' long!

So why all this knitting on a blog that started out focused on sustainability and self reliance?

Knitting is not just a large part of what keeps me sane, it's also a handy skill to have. Think about it for a moment, when you can take sticks and string and make clothing from it, damn, you got skillz !(as they say) Serious skills that are not only for one gender or the other, either. Some of the most intense knitters I've heard of are guys! On a forum I follow, the question was raised about clothing manufacture and creation if the world as we knew ended. There was a lot of discussion about "making do" with clothes and putting up supplies of fabric, zippers and thread, hand-me-downs and so on, but of course, the conversation drifted back to knitting. Whether a zombie apocalypse or just a really cold morning at the bus stop, warm feet and hands will make the difference between happy, free-thinking folks or cold, miserable sheeple.
Or on the other hand, maybe it just all comes down to enjoying keeping people warm because I can.

Something to distract me from the always-green tomatoes out in the garden is good too. It keeps me from obsessing over the zucchini that flowered but never produced fruit, or the tomatillos that should not have lived, but did.

What about you? If you could pull off any fashion, any look, with any body type...no restrictions, what knitted clothing would you wear?