Fair Warning Knit Fans

So I figured it was only fair to give you a warning that things might be changing a little here at the Knit One Stitch Too blog - we might be a little light on the knitting content for a while. As most of you know, we are buying a house! This is both a super exciting and completely terrifying move. The down payment check alone almost killed me. But it will be a good thing for us in many ways. Not only will we be moving off of the ridiculously busy exit ramp we live on, we'll be getting rid of the world's most annoying landlords and we'll finally be able to hang pictures on the walls! That's right - for almost 4 years we have not been allowed to hang anything on the walls (see annoying landlords, above). My dad actually rigged up a picture and a clock with some wire from the moldings in the living room, but that was it. Oh, and we just taped stuff to Marley's walls. I figured if they wouldn't let us use nails, ruining the paint was the least we could do.

Because we will finally be able to put stuff on the walls, I decided to dig out some of my very old cross stitch WIP's. Now I know that counted cross stitch is not for everyone, and that's fine. I very much subscribe to the "whatever floats your boat" school of thought when it comes to crafting. (You want to make dead muppet scarves? You go right ahead - and don't let anyone tell you it's not really knitting). I've spent the last few years visiting in the knitting world which has been loads of fun, but I have to admit that cross stitch is my true love. There are a few reasons why this is so. Probably one of the biggest is that cross stitch DOESN'T WEAR OUT! Maybe it's because I've had 2 pairs of socks develop fatal holes in the past few months and my new super cute noro mitts are about to pill themselves into oblivion, but I just have a major problem spending all that time (and money) making something that will eventually wear out. Or not fit right. Or just not turn out the way you wanted. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. I still love my clapotis, and my mom's socks seem to be wearing well. But cross stitch? After you're done you frame it (which unfortunately can cost a fortune), hang it on the wall and baring any type of natural catastrophe you enjoy it forever. And I have to say that there's just something, well, magical about watching a picture develop on a blank piece of fabric. I remember hearing the Yarn Harlot for the first time talk about trying to figure out why people knit. It has nothing to do with the cost or time factor - buying a garment certainly works better on both of those fronts. But it's the magical art of transforming a pile of yarn into something else. And that's especially true with cross stitch I think. Also, cross stitching really lets my true analness shine. I'm a "rotation" stitcher, which means I have a whole schedule with a little notebook, and a bunch of self-imposed rules and ways of doing things. I really don't tell people about this too much, for fear of being laughed out of whatever conversation I'm in. Back in the hayday of my cross stitching (2003/2004) there were a lot of stitching bulletin boards (this was before everyone switched to blogs). Imagine my delight when I found the Rotation Stitchers Bulletin Board! Filled with people just as anal as me, some even worse! Them I could talk to death about my schedule, focus piece, blah, blah, blah. "Normal" people? Not so much.

Now there are some definite drawbacks to cross stitch as well. It's definitely not as portable. Nothing beats throwing socks or a scarf into your bag to bring somewhere to work on. It's also much messier. There's all sorts of little floss snippets all over the place. You can't watch TV as well while doing it, since you 're looking down for most of it (although watching a movie you mostly know by heart helps with this one.) But the biggest thing knitting has over cross stitch is the friends I've made. I've often said that if it wasn't for the knitting friends I've made I might not have kept up with it for as long as I have. So for mainly that reason alone (plus that whole portable thing - that's very big for me) I'll keep knitting as well, just maybe not as much. Oh, yeah, and my mom says she wants more socks.

I realize that a focus on cross stitch might not be so interesting to most of my readers (maybe 2 out of 3? The third being my mom who will read anything I write, although her eyes start to glaze over a bit with all the techni-craft talk). But since most of the bulletin boards seem to be pretty much disbanded in favor of blogs, it's the only way I have to document anything (and I love to do that, as long as I'm not too lazy to take the pictures). There might even me some knitting here and there - like a certain second sock I need to finish ASAP.

Since this is already a ridiculously long post, I figured I'd leave my first XS update till the next one. So for my mom, who is probably the only one who lasted all the way through this post, I give you this...

A couple of days ago Marley and I went to Friendly's for lunch. As I was eating my free dessert that came with my ridiculously overpriced sandwich, I noticed that the sundaes there really are shrinking. You get waaaaaaaay less icecream than you used to. The problem is they still have those crazy long spoons. Remember those? So you could reach the bottom when the sundaes where big? I wonder if they realize that the long spoons only draw more attention to the miniature sundaues now. Anyways, Marley was really enamored of the long spoon, and she said at one point that she really wished we had a camera to take a picture of it. And voila! I whipped out my super-duper teeny-tiny new for-christmas camera that I can now carry with me at all times and was able to take a picture...