I've Moved

Yes, my new blog is up and you can find it here.

Le Fin

Gentle Reader: farewell for now.

After almost 4 years and almost 400 posts I'm closing the virtual book on Knit 2 Par 3. I think I've said just about everything that can be said about these two things in the same sentence, and I'm ready to move on.

I will be taking a little break, but I'll be back with another blog about knitting and something else.

If you have this site bookmarked, don't delete it and if you have one of those feeds, just leave it where it is. I will post the address of the new site once I get it up and running.

Thank you from the bottom of my stash basket for your readership.

Denise

Sweater Weather

The fall is my favorite time of year: walking out the door on the way to work and thinking: hmm, I could use a sweater today. Or a pair of woolly socks. Or a decent place to get a cup of coffee by my office, or car service to work every day. But I digress.

There has been a lot of knitting going on here, and a lot of thinking about knitting when I am not actually knitting. Does that surprise you? In just the last week I've finished my Totoro mittens, a Faux Isle hat and cast on this lovely Kernel scarf. I also frogged a Ribbi Shell made with a Rowan Cashmere blend that looked great but raised my body temperature 3 degrees the one time I wore it, as well as undoing an ill-conceived Noro version of Mr. Greenjeans.

I've been thinking about fashion, too. Fall fashion! I saw The September Issue over the weekend, and enjoyed it a lot. Throughout the movie Anna Wintour wore a lot of fur, but I didn't see her wearing any handknits. Why? She was pretty skinny and skinny people are so often cold, I am told. She was drinking a lot of Starbucks coffee probably from a place right near her office, maybe that was keeping her warm. Plus she got driven everywhere, and I bet she had the car service driver put the heat on in the car.

Looking around for some couture handknit inspiration after the movie I came upon this dress. For some reason this dress speaks to me, and it's not saying "Ouch!".

I read something somewhere about fashion being about the ambivalence of urges and taboos, and this dress really underlined that for me. Crochet gives me the heebie jeebies but I just love a crocheted granny square. I think it could use another sleeve, though, and I suspect they may have used a lot of acrylic yarn judging by the colors.

回転日本語

私はこのパターンでこの映画を、私投げなければならなかった今日そんなに楽しんだ。

すばらしい日を過しなさい

Back to Business

As far as I am concerned, Labor Day is the end of summer. We got home late last night from a quick trip to Maine and I packed up my white patent leather purse and dug out my most serious back to school shoes. It's over, and while it was fun while it lasted, it's time to move on.

Because, as we knitters know, Fall is our High Holy Season. There is Stitches, which I am thinking about attending. There is this Yarn Crawl thing, which might be fun. There is, of course, Sheep N Wool, the highest holy day of them all.

The dark secret (well, maybe not such a secret) about this season is, of course, that it presents many opportunities for buying more yarn. Yarn that you can't get any other time of the year! Yarn that you can't get enough of in one dye lot for any kind of meaningful project! Yarn that stays with you for the rest of your life like a sad misspelled tattoo.

My plan of action is to whittle down what's already in my yarn-lined Fallout Shelter by knitting my 20 top "wow that looks cute and quick" picks from my Rav queue. I'm already mostly through Project 1: Haruha, using up every inch of some Cascade Heritage sock yarn. Project 2, to be cast on shortly as I catch up on my Mad Men episodes, will be the Scrappy Flap Hat. I think every child I know needs one.

How does golf fit in here? Over the weekend I met a guy who has a problem maintaining employment because working interferes with his golf game. Here was a person who just laid it all out on the line: you can't have everything, so you might as well make a choice. I'm hoping I can get in a game or two in over the next few weeks AND get to work on these projects AND make all those yarn pilgrimages and maybe even stay employed.

August 31st and All Finished Up

Here we are, back from vacation. Overall it was a great time, a little short on golf and a little long on clam chowder. I played only one game of golf but I ate chowder here, here and here. As someone pointed out to me today, Maine vacations seem to be all about where the next soup is coming from and that is exactly right.

Knitting Friend Jeanne declared August to be a good month for finishing up those unfinished objects and that seemed like a good idea to me. Why should April stand alone as the cruelest month? Self-declaration is good, it gives a person purpose. So I finished up quite a few things:

First, and foremost, I finished up the Poetry Mittens and boy do they look swell. As I was weaving in the many, many ends I realized that I had made some big leaps forward in knitting technique since casting them on which resulted in a much easier, faster knit for the second mitt, including:

• Magic Loop replacing 5 dpns
• Two handed strand knitting
• Turkish cast on
• A great big Gin and Tonic to facilitate weaving in loose ends, replacing the traditional red wine in a jelly glass
  

No picture yet, but as soon as I do I'll post them. Really, you'll swoon.

I do have a picture of this cute Grace Lace Beret that I finished up for Em just before she left for Maine at the beginning of August. I did not love this pattern while I was making it - it was a nice knit, fun and easy, but the colors pooled together in unappetizing clumps and the hat looked small. Once I blocked it, though, I loved it:


I also finished up that Mr. Greenjeans sweater for my sister. In any other month, I would have neglected this once I got to the sleeves, but in the spirit of UFO August, cruel months, etc. I forged on on through. Could not find a suitable button, though, so does this mean it's not an actual finished object?


I self declare it to be finished.

Okay About Those Onions

I knew I had reached vacation relaxation nirvana (or a serious drop in estrogen) when I saw some onions that were so beautiful they brought tears to my eyes.


A large part of the Maine vacation is the discussion of What To Eat Next. We spent a lot of time these past two weeks exploring the local farmer's markets where I came upon these spectacular onions. So round! So white! So perfectly oniony!

The side-by-side cukes and beans made me want to knit a striped scarf:


Root vegetables were like edible Noro Kuryeon:


I plan to make a hat in the colors of these cabbages, and call it "Cabbage Head":

See what I mean? I was swooning. There was some yarn at the market in Kennebunk, but I passed on it. It was alpaca, and while the colors were lovely and heathery, smelled and felt way too close to the animal for my tastes. And really no more yarn can come into this house until Rhinebeck in October. Really, no more.

None, I swear.

Cowabunga

I started out to play golf a few times today but something put the kibosh on it every time: I got up too early to play (you don't want to know how early); weather, an urgent need for shoe shopping; a change in the weather; the lure of a big breakfast, and more weather.

We are having a lot of weather here over the past few days. You know what they say about the weather in New England: if you aren't happy with it, wait 15 minutes and it will be something else. I would have played if it had merely been as hot an humid as a Queens bound subway station, but there were little crackles of lightening all day, and no one wants to end the vacation as a science experiment in electricity on the golf course.

In between the running out into the street and staring up at the sky, Emily and I ran over to the beach to play in the unusually rough surf due to offshore hurricanes:


It helps if you click on this link while you look at this picture to really get the full experience.

Vacationland

We loaded up the car with knitting last week and headed up to Maine and I haven't looked back. Or looked up from my needles until today, the first cloudy day we've had all week.

Normally a sentence with "cloudy day" and "Maine" also includes the words "yet again" or "quick run to the store for wine" or "divorce". The little bit of beach fog means a break from beach knitting and a little bit of blogging.

It hasn't been all knitting and beach and boxes of wine. My sister Mrs. Sacco came up for a few days, her first trip ever to visit us on vacation. Why'd she wait so long? She stayed at this fancy schmancy hotel:

Through all the many years I've been coming here, we never even tried to sneak into the ladies rooms at this hotel. It cost about the same to stay here as it would cost to knit a men's sweater in cashmere, for one thing. I am pretty sure they don't put any paper umbrellas in the G&T's at cocktail hour either. They do have - of all things! - a teeny tiny putting green.

Here I am doing some private putting. Don't my arms look straight? Like a pendulum, no wimpy wrists I assure you:


As I write this I am shocked to realize that this is the only golf I've done so far. It's all about the knitting this vacation. What's on the needles, you may ask? In honor of UFO August, I am finishing up the Poetry Mittens I started a way long time ago on another visit to Maine. They require concentration and really good light and a comfy chair, and the time to ponder the the poem and person for whom they are being knitted. They were started in Maine, and they will be finished up in Maine, I hope.

I also casted on and got most of the way through a Mr. Greenjeans cardigan, for Mrs. Sacco. Not only is she apparently rich, she is the size of a 10 year old, so it's been a very quick knit. I just have one more sleeve to go, then the ribbing, and then a three year search for the one single button I need.

Before I left for Maine, I made a quick trip to Brooklyn General for no reason at all other than to see what they had going on there. I fell in love with 3 ply Morehouse Merino in a beautiful green color. I bought so much of it I got a little sick and sweaty when I saw it at home, but the color is divine and the heart wants what it wants, right? I brought it with me to Maine to see what it will turn into.

Well, sun is out and all the fog has burned away, so I am off to the beach for a bit. I will be back soon to tell you about some beautiful onions.

A Whole Lotta Dreams Come True

I have a big list of things in my head that I hope will happen someday. Some of them take planning skill and practice and a little bit of luck: I would like to break 100 in golf one day, and I'd like to knit a pair of socks where both socks that are the same size. But I got to cross three things off the list on Saturday, with a Little Luck.

Here they are, not in order of occurrence or importance:

Olive Bobble Love: in the time before Ravelry you really had to work that Internet to find anybody talking about the kind of knitting that I (and I'm presuming you) wanted to do. Mass market yarn manufacturers had free patterns for garter stitch scarves made out of their petroleum products, but I needed something else.

One of the very first knitting/sewing blogs I found was Redlipstick, and the Olive Bobble Hat, which I have made for many folks over the years. I have maybe even made it for you! Here is Emily wearing the last one I made:



Dontcha know on Saturday afternoon I found myself in Brooklyn shaking hands with Stacyjoy, the very designer of this fine pattern? How exciting was that? It was like meeting one of the Founding Mothers of Knit.


Victorian Mourning Jewelry. Although I've read about it in countless novels and history books, never have I had the opportunity to touch actual Victorian mourning jewelry until this weekend. Although it was for sale in a store I really felt like I was at a museum show because I learned a lot about the manufacture and customs around it, and it was just as creepy to handle as I had hoped it would be.


Love on a Stick, Dipped in Chocolate. Anything is improved if you put it on a stick, and dip it in really rich dark chocolate. (Well, maybe not meat). But everything else works, including key lime pie. Because I've never been and have long wanted to go, we went here and got this. You should too, just take my word for it, even if your dreams are made of something else.