1. What's your worst habit relating to your knitting?
Starting projects for me and never finishing them. How evil is it to use knitting to neglect myself? ;)
2. In what specific ways does your knitting make you a better person?
I don’t really feel like it makes me a better person, but I suppose it does give me more ways to give things to other people, especially through charity knitting. That doesn’t really make me a better person, but it does give me another way to express the person I am.
3. How might you or your life be different if you were suddenly unable to knit?
I’d probably weave a lot more. (I have to use up that yarn stash somehow! ;))
4. If money were no object, what one yarn, and what one tool or gadget would you run out and buy first?
Hmmm. I’d probably buy either an alpaca yarn or an organic colored cotton yarn. As for tools and gadgets, I’d probably buy either a drum carder or a spinning wheel, neither of which is a knitting gadget, but phooey on that. ;)
5. What knitting technique or project type are you most afraid of (if any)? What, specifically, do you fear will happen when you try it?
I laugh in the face of danger -- ha, ha, ha! But I haven’t done Fair Isle yet, anyway. It seems like it’ll take too much concentration. I’m sure that someday I’ll just randomly pick it up.
6. Who is/are your knitting hero(es), and why?
...I don’t really have any? I don’t usually make heroes out of hobbies, myself. ;)
7. Do you consider knitting, for you personally, a mostly social activity, or a mostly solitary activity?
Mostly solitary, in that I seem to knit mostly for the finished product and not because I enjoy knitting. I do generally enjoy sewing and spinning much more, but I’m the kind of freak who insists on doing the difficult and less pleasant things first. ;) I also mostly knit as a “waiting activity,” not so much as something I have to fit in to my day or feel deprived.
8. Is there a particular regional tradition in knitting that you feel strongly drawn toward (e.g., Fair Isle, Scandinavian, Celtic, Orenburg lace)? Any theories as to why it calls to you?
Er ... not yet.
9. If you were a yarn, which yarn would you be?
Probably a funky but beautiful and useable art yarn in green and blue, with some sparkle or beads or sequins.
10. Some statistics:
(a) How many years have passed since you FIRST learned to knit?
Uh. Er. Uh. Probably something like ten, give or take a couple years.
(b) How many total years have you been actively, regularly knitting (i.e., they don't have to have been in a row)?
I think about four or five years, but who counts? I started knitting to distract myself, so I sure don’t remember. ;)
(c) how many people have you taught to knit?
One, if you count Paisley, which I don’t really since she kind of knew how to knit before I got to her. ;)
(d) Roughly what percentage of your FOs do you give away (to anyone besides yourself, i.e., including your immediate family)
Dunno, say 80% at the moment, although at the beginning it was more like 40% because I knit myself all the funky screw-ups first. ;) I’m working on knitting more things for me again this year.
11. How often do you KIP (knit in public)? i.e., once a week, once a month, etc. Where do you do it?
Not that often, but I do most of my waiting not in public.
12. If a genie granted you one hour to stitch-n-bitch with any one knitter, living or dead, who would you choose and why?
Errrm. Dunno. Probably not Elizabeth Zimmermann, even though tons of other people would probably say it. Maybe Maggie Righetti?
13. What aspect or task in knitting makes you most impatient?
Seed stitch and other simple, repetitive patterns that slow me down. It used to be weaving in tails, but I seem to have gotten over that one. Oh, and gauge swatches tend to stress me out, not because I dislike them, but because I always end up doing like five since I usually knit way off the gauge of the pattern or I’m using a completely different yarn. Pattern development is sort of the same way with me, since I don’t know all the formulas for angles and I don’t have a handy reference book for it yet.
14. What is it about knitting that never lets you get bored with it?
Who says I never get bored with it? ;) I think I must get bored with everything from time to time. Except maybe sewing. Sometimes I’m too lazy to sew, but not necessarily bored with it. The things that keep me from getting bored too frequently, though, are that I love fiber and color, and I like to learn about the design of knit objects.
15. Describe how and where you most often do your knitting - where do you sit, what is going on around you, what tools do you use and how are they (dis)organized?
I’m usually either on the floor or in a chair of some kind, with the pattern somewhere I can write on it, plus pencil and row counter and scissors somewhere nearby, and the yarn somewhere off to my right and below me, usually in a bag of some kind, often my knitting bag, which keeps me from having to get up constantly to get stitch markers, stitch holders, yarn needles, etc. Usually I’m either talking to someone (...who’s having a smoke? ;)), sitting with someone who’s doing something else (like playing video games), or sitting by myself waiting for something else to happen. Occasionally I knit from my knitting bag slung over my shoulder while standing in some kind of line.
16. Which one person is the recipient of more of your knitting than any other?
At the moment I have the most planned for Brian, my Significant Other, but I haven’t actually knit him more objects than anyone else and it does tend to even out.
17. What's the oddest thing about your knitting, or yourself as a knitter?
Probably the fact that I don’t enjoy knitting in itself as much as everyone else seems to. I really did pick it up as an easily portable distraction that didn’t take too much space or tools and that produced finished objects that I enjoyed, while using materials I enjoy, including fiber and color. I mostly do it now because it’s been added to the range of skills I wield for gift-giving and creative expression, and it still takes up less space and is more easily portable than most of my other creative hobbies.
18. What do you see yourself knitting - if anything - twenty years from now?
Hmmm. Interesting question. ;D Lots of gifts for other people, as usual, and probably also lots of unique objects for myself, probably in a higher proportion of organic and handspun yarns.
19. If you were stranded on a deserted island and could have only ONE SKEIN of yarn, which yarn would it be and what would you do with it?
I can’t have a skein of yarn that I can knit into Jack Aubrey, can I? ;)
20. If you were allowed to own only one knitting-related book, which would it be? (you'd be free to browse others, but you couldn't keep them)
Uhhhh. Ummm. Errrr. Probably a design book, or one of those giant encyclopedia books with tons and tons of reference information plus patterns.
21. Is knitting the new yoga? Why or why not?
In the sense that both have been annoyingly sensationalized, trend-ified, and shallowly pimped to people who want to look cool and unique but still to be told what to do, then yes. ;) In every other sense: no, yoga and knitting being, aside from their commercialization in America, two mostly unrelated practices which are nonetheless cool and which have long, neat histories.
