Photo Developments

The title is a pun. Get it? Ha, ha.

I'm going through the 1,000 Knitters messages in a more organized fashion, trying to figure out how we're going to make this work. You perhaps are thinking I should have considered this before announcing the project. However, my life to this point has included far too much thinking and far too little doing. Had I imagined what my mailbox would look like stuffed with hundreds of excited messages waiting to be sorted, I would have retired, shaking, into a dim corner and sat there until the vision faded.

Until I can answer all individually, I'd like to address a few common concerns collectively.

1. Please rest assured that it is not possible to break a camera merely by sitting in front of it.
   
   
2. No, I will not need my wide-angle lens to fit you into the frame.
   
   
3. You are not the ugliest person I will ever have photographed. That honor belongs to a prominent socialite, a twig-thin product of goodness knows how many expensive spa treatments, who earned the title by continuing to call me "Manuel" after she had been introduced to me by name and reminded of my correct name several times. Ugly is as ugly does.
   
   
4. Everyone is photogenic while they're knitting.
   
   
5. Indulgence in self-deprecation during your shoot will result in my giving you That Look, which I inherited from my mother. Believe me when I say that you do not want to be on the receiving end of That Look.
   

And what will you be knitting? Well, here's what I've decided.

The image of a common thread–or yarn, in our case–is too potent to resist. So I've decided that when it's your turn to sit, you'll pick up and work on a scarf, one scarf, in which all 1,000 of you will have a hand. The first knitter will cast on 22 stitches. The final knitter will bind off. If you're in the middle, you'll knit rows, join a new ball, fix dropped stitches or do whatever happens to be needed at that point before passing the scarf along.

(Don't ask what'll happen to the scarf when it's finished. I haven't thought that far ahead yet.)

Knitting Update

So close. So close. Four more rows to the end of the center of the christening shawl, and two of those are plain.



I tried so hard, so very hard, to make this look like anything other than used cheesecloth. Perhaps, some day, the shawl will look at this pre-blocking photograph as I do my eighth-grade school portrait: a dreadful mess of acne, too-large glasses and impossible hair waiting to blossom into the sprightly, long-limbed Adonis you all know today.

Shut up.

I do have to set it aside briefly this week to finish up my final Dulaan pieces, of which there are two in progress. I will not have been the most prolific Dulaan knitter by a longshot, but I'll have met my modest goal.

Hey, Konchog–is there anything particularly Mongolian I should drink to celebrate?