And so it begins...

Dear Reader,

It seems as if every fiber artist in the *known universe* has a blog going these days, but nevertheless for a long time I have stoutly resisted the idea of starting one myself, despite the many hours that I habitually spend musing over various yarn projects or talking about them with fellow enthusiasts.

You would think that blogging would have come more naturally to me, since that sort of meditative reflection and sharing has always been part of my world. A big part, in fact. Yet I worried about either (a) becoming a slave to the blogger’s journalistic task, with potentially disastrous consequences for other activities that have a higher claim on my attention, or else (b) getting so caught up with and distracted by those same other things that I simply could not do justice to the blog.

After all, in my spare time I'd rather be KNITTING, right? That is kinda' the whole point...

Yet here I am, for all that, with a shiny new blog to my name. What changed?

The biggest thing is that I joined Ravelry a few days ago, again after dragging my feet for what seems like forever (never mind why — it's just silly), and it doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure out that having a blog will make things a whole lot easier there, and more enriching too. In addition, I happen to find myself at an interesting crossroads with my knitting right now, looking both backwards and forwards at once, like Janus, the Roman god of thresholds (who was depicted as a man with two faces centuries before Voldemort).

For I recently completed a truly MONUMENTAL lace project (i.e. the Princess shawl by Sharon Miller, of which there will naturally be more to say shortly), and then lately, with the blissful arrival of the summer holidays, I have also begun steeling my nerves for a whole new great yarn adventure: Fair Isle knitting. For decades (can I really be that *old*?!) I have thought about trying to design my own complex colorways like the ones seen in so many richly illustrated knitting books, but I have never made much progress beyond the first few tentative baby steps, because for some strange reason I find the whole business deeply intimidating. Weird, eh? I mean, learning new knitting techniques has never frightened me a bit, but designing with a dozen or more colors is a whole different story. Hence the decision to join Ravelry at last and to launch this blog as well, in search of inspiration and support. My plan for starting out here is going to be quite simple: first introduce myself a bit, then post some material related to the Princess project by way of laying the groundwork and establishing my profile as a knitter. From there I will gradually move off into other areas as the journey goes on. Quod felix faustumque sit (in the old Latin formula, “Let it be fortunate and auspicious”). Or, as the Eastern Orthodox say, “May it be blessed...”