Saturday, December 15, 2007

Google Alerts and Knitting

I have a Google Alert set on a few items of interest to me. Two of them are my name - both Andy Baker and Andrew Baker. It's amazing to me how many people have my name. There are writers, sports figures and even a financial expert. It's interesting to scan it. Reminds me of a show on BBC a few years ago. Who is Dave Gorman? (Thanks, Lou.) Like who are all these people walking around with my name? I just hope there aren't any real creeps out there. (And they're probably saying, "I just hope there's not any gay, blogging knitters out there.")

Of course this blog never comes up because my name here is Andy B. It's not about anonymity so much. It was sort of a throw back to elementary school when everyone was first name and first initial. Jennifer T., Alice L., Andy B., etc. Then, when I was living in NYC, I was in one of those groups where you only used your first name and my friend, Todd G. would call me "Andy B," which I liked. So that's what that's about.

Anyway, the other Google Alerts I have are "Andy in Amsterdam" and "andyinamsterdam." It's usually me having just posted, so it's not that interesting, just confirmation that I didn't dream posting. But today, I got a Google Alert for andyinamsterdam and it was a post by Astrid on Getcrafty.com. A woman calling herself Miss Crafty had asked about male crafters because she's starting a new website called He's Crafty (She already has a website called She's Crafty) and Miss Crafty wanted names of male crafters. So Astrid wrote, "There's also a blogger in Amsterdam that I know of..." and a little later, she gave the address to this blog. However, she qualified it with, "Andy only occasionally blogs about his knitting, but check out his links list. There you'll find some more male knitters."

My first reaction was, "Wha...!" But then I said, "Yeah, I guess she's kind of right." Anyway, I was a resource for finding more obsessed male crafters. Glad I could be of service.

So that was the lead-in to my occasional blog post about knitting. I'm knitting socks for a good friend. This is just a Regia yarn, but I am completely mesmerized by the striping. (And, really, just Regia sounds like it's crap yarn. I actually like it a lot. It's just not hand-spun, hand-dyed yarn. So the wanna-be yarn snob in me said that, not the real me.) I knit on them last night while watching The Graduate for the first time and I got about another inch or so done. Keep in mind that I'm doing two at a time and that they're on 2,5 mm needles and the yarn is pretty thin. Still, I like the pattern a lot. I'd tried it before on 3,5 mm needles and it was very loose. This is really nice looking and it feels great. This is the K2 P2, knit a row pattern. It's really great looking, very handsome.

Here's close up of one of them. This is one repeat of the striping. I hope he likes striping. I think he will. He's been know to wear really loud pants. Fred thinks they're a little "too." But Fred didn't really like The Graduate either. He said, "That was a comedy?" I just shrugged. If you don't gets it, you don't gets it. You know?


I'm sort of obsessed with these socks for now. It's not that they're so interesting, it's just that I want to get them finished. I won't make his birthday, but maybe I can get them to him in time for the celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. We'll see.

Now let's see if my Google Alert finally picks up this blog.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Andy! When you knit 2 socks at the same time I guess you have 2 balls of yarn going. Did you start with 2 skeins of yarn? Just wondering how you keep the striping the same for both socks, as I've never done that before.
I'm still struggling to get my mom's socks finally done. Man I'll be glad to seen the back of those!
Alex

Littlelou said...

I remember that particular BBC show, it was by comedian Dave Gorman and facinated me somewhat that I looked up everyone with my name on Friends Reunited (dire website!!). Just when I thought I was unique up pops 20 odd people bearing my 'birthright'..probably hoping they don't get mistaken for me..haha.

Tamara said...

Ironically enough, I found your site today through my Google alerts (I actually did a double-take at the title.) I'm making socks for my Gran out of the Regia striping yarn as well and am enjoying it, but for the next pair, I think I'll try your K2P2, knit a row pattern. I really like the way it looks. I hope they go over well.

Anonymous said...

Ahhh the wonder of the internet! I found your blog because you posted about hescrafty.co.uk and someone clicked your link. Thanks for bothering to mention it :)

Tammie Nolte said...

http://veganyumyum.com/2007/06/knit-night-cupcakes

You probably already seen 'em, but these are the cutest damn "knitted" cupcakes I'd ever saw.