Knit a little, read a little, watch a little

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Time for a fine whine...

First, note the new addition to the sidebar - a flickr badge of finished objects. I think I'm going to continue to use photobucket for the blog, but flickr allows for a fuller description of the finished objects. I've posted a bunch of FOs, and will add as I get around to it. The flickr photos give pattern and yarn information.

Why'd I do this? Well, I joined the Summer of Lace Yahoo group. I thought I might get some helpful hints for my upcoming foray into lace. I read the archives. I frequently wanted to reach out and throttletouch someone. Someone would post that a picture of Shawl X from Source Y knit in Yarn Z was now posted on their blog. Three posts later, someone else would post something along the lines of "Oooh, that's pretty? What is it? Where can I buy it? What yarn did you use?" The number of people seemingly incapable of a simple Google search (or, of reading a freaking e-mail, for that matter) astonishes me. I won't be an active participant in the group, but I hope for a few more helpful tips. Not on lifelines, however, which have been discussed past ad nauseum. Hello, there's an archive? You might find interesting information in there. Plus the "Search" function has been improved (it's still not fabulous, but at least you see the progress you're making.) It only took a couple of days for me to read through the entire thing. (I read fast, but I was also knitting sleeves for the denim pullover - nearly ready to join everything together for the yoke!)

This whole inability to do any research independently is a large contributing factor to why I resigned as a Knittyboard moderator. The boards have gotten to the point where I read maybe 5% of what's posted, and most of that is snarky entertainment value than actual useful information. Before February, I pretty much read everything that was posted, and was going rapidly insane. I quit reading General Chatty and Supernewbie, which cut some of the stress, but not enough. I basically got fed up with the fact that people wouldn't bother to run a simple search to see if their question might have come up before. Even if the question had been asked the day before and was clearly visible at the top, it seemingly had to be asked again. I don't get it.

I know this is me. I seem to function in a manner very different from the rest of the universe. If I have a question, I try to answer it myself before I ask for help. For example, when I knit Opale, the neck instructions wanted me to use "mailles coulees." WTF? I pull out my handy French-English dictionary (kept on my bedside table, since I watch some sports and videos in French, and it comes in handy). "Couler" is to flow, to run. Still not really helping. So I head online and check Wiseneedle.com, which has a glossary, but it doesn't contain the necessary term. So I Google for more french knitting/crochet glossaries. Eventually, I figure out that it wants me to do a slip-stitch crochet edging. Took maybe half an hour total (and I'm probably really overestimating the time involved.) Big freaking deal.

Can I change the world? No. I just have to live with it. Sucky, but true.