Knitting, Delurking, and other Non-Literature Things

So...

This is my "literature blog". However, I don't write on it unless I have something burning about books to talk about. So I think I'm going to make more use of that prose bit of my title and write about a variety of my interests. Because my interests are many.

Take knitting for example. I've recently been caught in a wave of knitting madness: Donna is learning (yay!), and she introduced me to the Secret Knitter, who recently decided to secretly knit scarves for his family, and has since been hooked on knitting. My own knitting history began when I taught myself how to knit my junior year of college, knit a bazillion garter-stitch scarves, got bored, made my first project from a pattern, and have been tinkering ever since (I love stitch patterns). Here is one product of my tinkering:

There's a feeling that emerges from designing and creating a new thing. This didn't exist before I made it (it may have been available in other forms, but this particular manifestation emerged from the fusion of my mind and my knitting needles). And the story behind it is fun: my friend and bookbinding teacher offered to swap one iPod cozy for a bookbinding class (Japanese stab-binding, which I'll be using for a wedding guest book for two of my friends). So, I thought of a design that would be useful and cute (I own an iPod nano, so that was pretty easy), and out it popped. I like it.

Incidentally, if I have any blog lurkers, it's National Delurking Week. So leave a message and say "hi!" Thanks!