Happy 5768

We celebrated the Jewish new year this week in the usual manner - big meal and get together with the family. For me it is the start of the annual retrospective: "What have I done with my life and where am I going?" which tends to last until well into the secular new year.

While I really admire and enjoy reading the soul searching of many writers on the Internet, I am acutely aware of the dangers of exposing myself to all and sundry. A casual comment from someone I only had a work relationship with about a knitting pattern I had put up on the Internet, reinforced the fact that I am not just typing into a cyber black hole.

So moving onto the safe topic of knitting... I'm about 1/4 of the way through the Dark Mark Illusion Scarf. I'm really enjoying this pattern - there is something which makes me want to knit "just one more row" or "one more pair of rows" or "one more set of four rows" every time I pick up the needles. It's not the best quality yarn - some very over-stretched reclaimed black Patons 8-ply wool and a sticky mauve Naturally NZ 8-ply wool from my stash - but this scarf is more for effect than warmth and I think it will wash up OK. And it is great to feel like I'm actually burning some of my stash.

Of course I had to immediately counter all this stash burning by sticking my head in at Sundspun which is having its winter sale (minimum 10% off all winter-weight yarns) and picking up 5 skeins of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran for the Palindrome scarf - this pattern looks like it eats yarn! The yarn is so gorgeous and I fear I will want to keep the scarf for myself. We'll see how it goes.

I've joined a couple of illusion Knitters group on both Ravelry and Yahoo but alas there seem to be very few illusion patterns out there on the web. One of the Yahoo group knitters says she is drafting up some Jewish-themed patterns which I am looking forward to trying.

I've spent way too much time in Ravelry this week; mainly reading groups in the forum and cyber-stalking other knitters (only joking). The Internet is amazing and brings home the lesson that there are many universal themes - I clicked on the profile of one of the Israeli knitters and ended up on her blog where she was agonising over whether it was ethical to use the ubiquitous green shopping bags that have obviously now infiltrated every Western country. On the one hand we all want to avoid the single-use flimsy plastic bags because of their impact on the environment; on the other hand these green bags have almost certainly been made by exploited workers in Asia using far from environmentally-sound processes. The answer, of course, is to make our own re-usable bags but most of us, including crafters, just don't get around to this.