The Sweatshop of Lovers Blog

I mentioned before that my brother Adam and his girlfriend Emily were having a baby. I knit the DinoSweater for Nolan, who is due in June.

Well they decided last week to get married today! So I’m jetting off to Michigan to be there. And by jetting I mean renting a car and driving.

While I’m on the topic of relationships, PT is moving to New York City at the end of the month for work, which spells disaster for our relationship.

If someone told me a year ago that I would be sitting here writing a blog about how PT and I broke up and my brother is getting married/having a child, I would have lost my shit. I really hope that I can look back at this a year from now much happier than I am at this moment.

I keep thinking about the story that Ethan Hawk tells in Before Sunset or Before Sunrise, one of them, about the happy people who win the lottery or are paralyzed. After that initial shock they go back to being happy people; either happy in a wheel chair or happy with millions of dollars. And angry people who win the lottery or are paralyzed go back to being angry once they get over the change, too.

I know I’m a happy person. I’m a happy person who has just been getting kicked in the face a lot lately.

I’m rolling with it pretty well, I think, since that is the only option. I’m going to put on a pretty dress and watch my brother get married and drive back to Chicago and teach some knitting Sunday morning. And then that would have happened.

I can’t wait for baseball season to start.

I get comments all the time from students and friends about the frequency of my blog posts. I usually just shrug and giggle and say that it’s part of my job! I know some people struggle with keeping up with their blogs and ask me how I do it.

Here are 10 tricks I use to keep blogging:

1. LOVE What You are Writing About

I love knitting. I love teaching knitting. I love writing patterns and planning classes and talking to other people who love knitting. It is easy for me to sit down every day and write about something I love so much. But if you aren’t passionate about your blog theme you won’t keep up with it. Find something to write about that you love and that permeates your every day life.

2. Take Pictures

When I have pictures on my camera I instantly have blog posts. Write about your pictures! I take pictures of my projects, my food, my kitties. Pictures are great catalysts for writing.

3. Read More

Other blogs, books, magazines, news online. People are always saying ridiculous things, taking ridiculous studies, publishing ridiculous books, wearing ridiculous things; all of which can be turned into fun blog posts. Like my Jersey Shore post, and my Ode to  Joseph Gordon Levitt.

4. Don’t Write Yourself Out

I have an unhealthy love for Ernest Hemingway and would do absolutely anything he told me to do. One of this biggest writing techniques was to not write himself out. Always stop writing knowing what happens next. This helps motivate you to both make time to write again soon and to think about your writing when you aren’t writing. It’s easy to translate this tip into the knitting world – I try to make my project posts extend over the course of many blog posts. I knit more and write about that project again.

5. Sit and Do It

I went to school for writing and had to do a ton of it for multiple writing classes. I would think I had absolutely nothing to write about until I made myself sit down in front of my computer and start typing. Sometimes I would type nonsense until words formed, then sentences, and before I knew it I’d have fully flushed out stories. Some days I sit down with a blank blog page in front of me with no idea where it’s going, but I start typing anyway and usually funny, publishable nonsense comes out. Win!

6. Take Risks and Do Things

I’m not a naturally just-do-it kind of person. I have to force myself to leave my house, to do things, to take risks, and find people to play with. I do it because it’s good for my life and good for my blog. If you don’t do anything you won’t have anything to write about! If you don’t do anything you won’t have anything to talk about with strangers and you will be boring. I run around acting crazy to make my life better and make my blog better.

7. Carry a Notebook/Keep a Google Doc Open

This is another left over writing school tip. Sometimes sentences just pop into my head that can be turned into great blog posts when I have a chance. I keep a Google Doc at the ready for these sentences and blog ideas so that when I have time to come back to that idea I don’t have to rack my brain trying to remember it. In writing school we called this a ‘notebook’. The idea was to carry said ‘notebook’ around with you, along with a ‘pen’ so you can write these ideas or observances into the ‘notebook’ and look back on them later. You know, like a Google Doc!

8. Establish Relationships with Your Readers

I like you guys. I like talking to you! I like your comments. I get sad when blogs I like don’t update. Like Eat Me Daily. What the hell, Eat Me Daily? I like to think that we have a pretty good thing here. I would hate to let you down. I like being a part of your life! We’ve got a good thing going! Holla!

I make it sound pretty easy, don’t I? Because it is for me. And when it isn’t easy I come back to these tricks.

No need to go get that writing degree now! I just saved you $100,000.

Every woman, at some point in her life, should take a pair of scissors to her own head.

I Start at the Top

I’ve never gotten my hair professionally cut. I went from having my mom cut my hair to just doing it myself.

How's it Looking Back There?

I use to have really long, curly hair. Three summers ago I just cut it all off myself. It was one of the most liberating things I’ve ever done. I wasn’t hiding behind my hair anymore. I couldn’t hide behind anything! It was just me and my face.

Oh God.

It is terrifying, though, every time I do it. My brain is saying, ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!’ But I keep telling myself, ‘It’s just hair! Nothing bad can happen!’

CLEAN!

When I’m done cutting it always looks terrible. It’s greasy from touching it so much and flat and I feel like I look like a boy. I think about how people won’t be able to tell that I’m a girl.

Short and Cute

And then it dries.

Real Cute.

And I look like a girl.

Right?

A cute girl. Who didn’t just spend $60 on a hair cut. Who just balls-ed out on her OWN HAIR! Crazy/scary/amazing/stupid/kinda hot.

You know when someone asks you how you are and you answer, ‘Imgoodhowareyou?’ without thinking? Because it’s annoying when you ask a stranger how they are, just to be polite, and they give you a long list of things wrong with them.

But you know when someone asks you how you are and you stop to think about it awkwardly without meaning to?

How am I? God. I’m… well, I’m… Things could for sure be better.

It’s a hard balance to strike here between knitting and me. Most of you are reading this for the knitting. But I’m knitting the knitting, but that doesn’t necessarily give me license to talk willy nilly about the nuances of my life.

Papa's Obit

I have been pretty business oriented lately. It’s been easy, what with the launch of the knit kits and all my classes and the crazy amount of knitting I’ve been doing these last few weeks. I haven’t been searching for things to write about.

But how am I?

See? I was doing good before this. I was spelling words wrong on purpose for effect (MAD SKILLZ! HOTT!) and talking to y’all with a fake southern accent for person-ability’s sake.

But I kind of just want to be laying down on the floor most of the time. I didn’t really want to watch the Super Bowl. My last conversation with my grandpa was calling the winner (we both said Saints) and hoping it would be a good game (which it was). He would have loved that game. High scoring and lots of crazy plays.

I’ve been wanting to talk to him about it since it ended. It’s the first big football game we haven’t talked about since I started really liking football. Eight years?

And here I am, crying and crying and typing and crying.

I’m sad. But when your whole body focuses on one feeling it kinda clears the way for clearer focus other places, too. But then you don’t really have energy to do anything about how you just figured out you need to cut some people out of your life, or rearrange your closet to make it easier to find the clothes you wear all the time instead of needing to dig around the clothes you wish you would wear all the time to get to them.

Or how all you really want is to be taken away by a stranger who doesn’t know about how sad you are. Somewhere you would never go, like Cancun. With just a bikini, huge sunglasses, and a big hat. And your knitting bag.

Thank you all for entering my Madison Cowl and Hand Warmers kit giveaway! I say this every time I have a giveaway, but this was our biggest response yet!

The winner of the Madison Cowl Knit Kit is Katie! Who said: “Red, Gray, Blue ahhh decisions, I LOVE them ALL!! I think red is my favorite. The cowl would go wonderfully with my black coats!!!”

And the winner of the Madison Hand Warmers Knit Kit is Beth! Who said: “Happy Blogversary! It is one of my favs and I already have it in my RSS google reader. I like the hand warmers, my self.”

I’ll be emailing both of you right now to get your info.

Thanks again to all who entered and stay tuned for more fun Madison Knitting Kit info soon!

I’ve been working like a crazy person this weekend to:

1) Finish knitting my Dollar and a Half Cardi, my February sweater, before the Ravelympics start and I have to knit all those projects. On Friday. *shakes head*

2) Put together all of the Madison Knit Kits so I can start dishing them out!

When I’m explaining all the stuff I do on my weekends to my grandma she always says, ‘No rest for the wicked! or, for you!’ The wicked, or knitters, I think she means. I’m ok with it.

Be sure you enter my Kit Giveaway! You have until tonight to enter! The winners will be announced tomorrow.

1. I have to buy my own peanut butter now. 12 jars at a time.

2. I have to find a new financial adviser. That I might actually have to pay.

3. Waking up is terrible. My brain goes: “It’s light out. Hi kitties. What time is it? Oh, my grandpa died. That really sucks.”

4. Sneaky tears. I saw a bag of Brazil Nuts in the store and lost it. His handwriting is suddenly on all of my possessions, and his picture on all of my walls.

5. Despite how I am about weddings, I always kinda thought he would walk me down the aisle.

6. I needed directions yesterday and it took three people to answer my question. Thus taking three people to fill Papa’s shoes.

7. Yesterday my grandma says to me, ‘You can still call and talk about sports. I always tried to keep up with you two.’ I will never recover from that.

8. He was the only man in my family to take any interest in me and to take me seriously.

9. He was the only person to be constantly impressed by all the parties I went to. Like two a month.

10. My kids will never get to hear the good morning song sung by the inventor of the good morning song. “Good morning! Good morning! It’s time to rise and shine! Good morning! Good morning! It’s time to rise and shine!” And being annoyed and giggling at the same time.

Last night my friend Jamie hosted a Jersey Shore party. I, along with most of the people at the party, had never seen Jersey Shore. Apparently it is the most amazing show on television and I’ve totally been missing out.

I mean, I know my reality TV and the trashier the better. If I can string together 12 episodes of The Real Housewives of New York I’m happy for… well about 12 hours. What can MTV teach me that Bravo can’t?

1. Muscles are HOTT.

The Situation

I had no idea. I’ve been living my life thinking skinny white boys who don’t even know what a gym is were cute. Clearly, I have been way wrong forever. Pictured above is ‘The Situation’. He has so many muscles that his stomach looks like… well, kind of like 6 cartoon hearts dancing around a hot hole.

2. Boys Should Tan and Wax. A Lot.

Jersey Boys

Again, this is probably the Midwestern thing, but I’ve been dating boys with beards and pasty white skin WHEN I COULD HAVE been dating boys who wax their eyebrows and tan three times a week. Even Vinny is tanner  than any boy I’ve ever talked to and he looks albino compared to the rest of them.

3. I Don’t Know How to Dance.

Here I’ve been bouncing around adorably to cute hipster pop when I could have been rubbing my vag on people and doing back flips to show off my thong, attracting boys left and right!

4. I Get This People of Walmart Reference!

I haven’t seen her fist pump, but I bet her Jersey shore name is “Cindy Lou Who”. New Jersey

5. And This Slaughterhouse 90210 Reference!

“The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

6. I Don’t Know How to Dress Myself.

Jersey Girls

I do silly things like wear pants, specifically pants with no holes in them, when I leave the house. I also like to wear shirts with fronts and backs to them. And a bra. And I wear that bra as underwear and not as an accessory.

7. My Shore Nickname? McBoring.

When I go out I grab a couple beers with friends, go home, and in the morning I remember everything that happened. I go to work on time. I don’t bring strangers home, or sit naked in a hot tub with them. I don’t have screaming fights because a boy I’ve known for 3 days is talking to a different girl. I don’t threaten to leave the premises if no one is paying attention to me. I don’t make out with girls. I knit. I knit a lot. And read. It’s almost embarrassing.

So, thank you, Jersey Shore. Watching you is like watching the National Geographic Channel when they profile animals that no one knew existed before being discovered by a special rain forest explorer.

People go through unimaginably hard things every day. I’ve been staring blankly at the tv screen with everyone at the pictures coming out of Haiti, like I did after Katrina, the tsunami in Indonesia, 911. I can’t imagine how anyone makes it out of any of that.

So after all of that, one life doesn’t seem like it should matter. If people can make it through those things, I should be able to make it through one dying Papa.

My grandfather, who has been known to make an appearance here every once in a while (we went on a hot trip to the casino last summer!), has lots of cancer and the one kidney he has got left is almost completely dead. He is sick of the all the treatment, and no one can blame him.

And I’m saying sentences like, ‘Hospice is covered by medicare!’ and ‘kidney failure is just a natural shutting down of the system, where if it were the cancer that were going to get him first that would be a lot more painful!’ and ‘they can just bring a hospital bed right into their house!’

I’m very lucky to have grandparents for as long as I’ve had them and to be as close to them as I have been. My grandpa is much more like a father to me than my actual dad, and is the reason I don’t have serious daddy issues. I’m thrifty because of him. I’m naughty/funny because of him. He has always been supportive of my decisions while making me really think about them practically. He is my financial adviser. He lovingly pointed out that I was fat when I was and noticed every pound I lost. He always wanted to know how I was going to do my hair for special occasions when I was a little girl. He bought me fun school outfits my mom would never buy me.

We talk sports and he listens to me like I know what I’m talking about and is interested in my opinions; something no other man in my family does. He knows the names of all my friends. He knows about all of my jobs. He knows about all of my knitting classes. He loves to hear about all the parties I’m going to each weekend. He knows about all of my boy problems. No other man in my family knows anything about any of these things.

We are still talking about the Tigers like he is going to be around when the season starts. That kills me.

But it doesn’t kill me. I’m here. Healthy and staring into what will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. And I’ll do it because I don’t have a choice, like everyone faced with hard things. You wake up every day and you eat and work and try to be normal because that is the only option.

So I’m eating and working and trying to be normal because that is my only option.

Because my birthday is on New Years Eve (today, y’all!), I put a lot of pressure on establishing goals for myself based on both starting the next year of my life and starting the next calendar year. It is so easy for me to keep track of my goals this way that I can’t even imagine having any other birthday. Plus, even if New Years Eve is on a Thursday, there is still a ridiculously huge party on every street corner all over the world.

Partying Like It's 1999

When the clock struck 2000 I was turning 16. I had a sleep over with all my friends in my basement. I spent hours cutting my own confetti. We had hats and noise makers and fake champagne.

Yikes!

I remember only one 16 year old Allyson goal, and that was to get out of Allendale. Two years after this party I was off to college and away from home forever. Mission accomplished.

So here I am, 10 years later, acne free and 50 pounds thinner, thank you very much. It is almost 2010, and I’m turning 26. I wonder what 16 year old Allyson thought she would be doing at 26. I’m pretty sure she would be pumped about the way things turned out. Soon to be 26 year old Allyson is far away from a basement in Allendale, MI. 16 year old Allyson didn’t even know how to knit.

Hopefully on the brink of 2020 I’m not looking back on pictures to be taken tonight, my 26th birthday, with the same cringe I’m feeling looking at these!

In 2010 I want to learn to spin. I want to get a pattern I write published somewhere other than on this blog (No disrespect, blog. You know I love you.) I want to not need a part time job to support me, but be able to survive off The Sweatshop alone. That last one might be a lofty goal. But that is the point, right? We look on a new year as a clean slate. 2010, my 26th year, could hold anything.

And based on what I’ve accomplished since 2000, we are on a fast train to seriously awesome. So hey, 2010. I’m excited to meet you!