Friday, December 02, 2011

Writing and shawl

Non-Knit

I find this quote from Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda really interesting. He is, for those who weren't wildly geeky net denziens in the mid-late 90's, the founder of Slashdot. It was (and is) sort of a collection of stories, commentary and so on for the hardcore computer geek crowd. A bit of news, a lot of nerdery, forums and social media before anyone knew about social media. I still own a /. shirt, even though I admit, I don't read it much anymore. Anyhow, on to the quote. (Full interview here.)

"I still shun the term Blogging just as I shun the term Tweeting. It’s all just writing. It’s like trying to subdivide Novelist, Columnist, Blogger, Tweeter. Words are words. It’s not really interesting to keep slicing and dicing and sub-categorizing to me. I just write some stuff or share some stuff. Distinguishing between “Journalist” and “Blogger” is a waste of time. I’m all of those things and none of them."

I find it fascinating as I regularly refer to myself as 'not a writer'. Yet I journal (750words.com for the win, even if I haven't in a while), I do online text based gaming (Yes, I'm a MUSHer. Have been for coming up on 17 yrs this coming Jan.), I even took a stab at NaNoWriMo this year. (First time. Failed horribly. 8K words is nowhere near 50K)

But yet I maintain I'm not a writer. It's interesting how we put such stock in labels. I am a knitter. I'm not a writer. I am a larper. I am a gamer. I'm not a whole lot of other things.

Anyhow, you're not here for the writing (or at least I hope not, or we're both in trouble), you're here for the knitting.

Neverending Shawl

It's probably unfair to stick such a label on this shawl just yet. I've only barely started it (Nov 22 says my notes) and it /is/ a laceweight shawl designed to be somewhere between huge and ginormous. The smaller size is a mere 177 rows, and the larger size is 237 rows. I'm not a small person, and why yes, I am selfish enough to make it for me, so I expect I'll be going the 237 rows. Which makes the excitement of having done 72 rows.. well a little flat.


Gwen shawl row 61
Gwendolyn by Stefanie Bold
The relevant details are that it's Gwendolyn (rav link), by Stefanie Bold. I'm working it in random 'had it forever' blue laceweight on a cone that is probably some flavour of poly-cotton and I'll worry about blocking later. 3.0 mm needles, and I think that photo is from row 61, not row 71. Imagine another 10 rows of the same thing. I only manage to work a pattern row or two a day, so it will look much like this kinda forever.


At least I'll always have something to blog about.