What knitting emmybear has been up to

(When my mom called me "emmybear" as a child, she'd use it in the third person)

I've been on a casting-on kick. My wips at one point were up to 15. I'm out of control! So since then I have casted on minimally and finished maximally... not really a word but what the hell... Here are some of the projects I have recently finished, both knitting and non-knitting:

Cookie A's Kai Mei socks
A mixed-media canvas of yarn leftovers in whites and grays:
Something I cannot show you yet because it was made for my biggest blog fan:


Some charity baby hats:

The variances in size don't matter...for a sad reason.

Some alpaca handwarmers from a kit I got at MSWF:
And last but not least, I cut my Blooming Cotton Scarf! I promised many SSKers to show this fringe-cutting process. It was knit in the round horizontally (all 400 stitches). This was post-cast-off and pre-cut:
Cutting time. Eek! Not as bad, though. The stitches don't unravel like you'd think.And...all cut. I realized here that I hadn't inhaled for a while.

The cut edge.It doesn't come all undone. You actually have to undo the previous row to undo the next row. And once you establish how far to pull, it's impossible because of the magic interlocking nature of knitted stitches, for the row to unravel anymore. Just look, because I'm a horrible explainer:
Then you just tie those two ends together. Here is some fringe already done:And one side all done. Notice the lighting change. Flash was required because day had turned to night since I had started cutting.And then there was blocking.

On the third day all of that curliness & stickiness of wet cotton turned to straightness and smoothness of dry cotton:
I love all the varying lengths and random knots from when I changed colors. I almost kept it this way.

And then more cutting.Yeah so there are tons more projects but I'm charging my camera battery right now so just hold your horses!

I'll be back...hopefully sooner than 3 months from now.

Advocacy

I'd like to address the Stephanie Pearl-McPhee issue.

I've been too lazy to blog since May, so you know this is important to me to write. (But as long as I'm here I might as well share my projects with you. See next post.)

If you live under a rock or are a non-knitter I will tell you that my favorite knitting philosopher was attacked by a woman who found SPM's Canada Day post offensive to her as an American (although it seems SPM made fun of Canada more often than America. I myself love both countries. I'm on a Canada kick right now though. I'm rambling.) Here is the post in which SPM addressed this woman's behavior.

Now, this woman is very mean and harassed my friend SPM, but there is another side to the story that I feel like sharing with you. Keep in mind as you read on that I just came from a training on Mental Health First Aid, the final part of which addressed the stigma socieity holds against those with mental disorders.

So I read this woman's blog--because hey, I like drama--to see what she is all about. In it she divulges in a non-socially-appropriate way that she has mental issues and takes meds and even calls herself crazy. She appears to have pretty severe issues with socialization and/or interpreting others' statements, otherwise she maybe wouldn't have written such verbally aggressive comments (on SPM's blog, twitter, personal email, etc). This is not to say that people with these issues are allowed to behave in such a way, but to give us insight on herself and her struggles with mental health.

I myself work with teens who have similar problems (e.g. cursing out 15 male gang members=not a good idea). We teach them how to be socially appropriate. Hopefully someone is working on that with this woman as well.

Also, you only know what you learn and this woman is from Texas and likes George Bush.