Vacation

I'm on vacation, back after Labor Day, with many tales of golf and yarn.

Golf = Easy, Knitting = Hard

Saturday prooved it: Golf is Easy. We played golf at Anchor Golf Land demonstrating not only mastery of our Par 3 golf skills but extraordinary family management: golfing with children. Okay, the children were not mine (mine is in Maine) but Clementine and Lou Lou kept themselves entertained on the mini golf course while we played our short game.

Yes, golf is easy. I must say, though, in a few short months - and even though I'm not very good -I've outgrown the par 3 business. I had several bad holes on Saturday and only one par; Nancy had any number of pars but was only pursuaded to keep score at the end; Brendan even had a birdie. We are ready to move on.

Knitting is hard, though. Sunday night I attended one of the most liberating knitting sessions we've had at our Jersey City group, and we talked about the "wrong" way to knit. I took reasonably priced lessons when I learned to play golf, but my grandmother taught me how to knit and I've never had a professional class or teacher. I've been knitting, on and off, for about 40 years - and let me tell you, old habits die hard. Lynn - a bold self taught knitter and artist - told us while trying to identify why her knitting warped to the right all the time, she sat down with the Stitch and Bitch book and learned that she was twisting knit stitches when doing stockinette stitch and that she was in fact knitting the wrong way. It looked like Continental stitch, but it was really just twisted rib.

Is it possible, we thought, to knit the wrong way? Isn't this contrary to every feminist notion we 40 something women have about art, craft, orgasms, child rearing? Coming of age in the early 80's, weren't we indoctrinated that there is no such thing as one right way, just our way? We spent a few minutes watching each other knit. Everyone was different - the way we held our needles, kept yarn tension, cast on. I confessed that even I learned recently that I did YO differently than anything I had seen in a book, and that it was holding me back from success with lace patterns.

If you start to learn something like golf when you are older, something you can sometimes wonder if you have the time to invest to learn how to get good at it. And I do have to say it's important to me to be good at it. It's humbling to know that even after doing something for 40 years, though, that you still have something to learn.

Not a Good Golfer, either

He said he was not a crook. But careful research for this week's special Tribute to Presidential Golfers and Knitters prooves that Richard Nixon was a mediocre duffer as well.


Nixon resigned 32 years ago on August 8th, and he only gave one day of notice because his last day was August 9th. In my agency he wouldn't get paid for his accrued but unused vacation time upon termination because that's just not enough notice according to our HR policy. Although sometimes you are glad to see someone go, particularly when that person wasn't good at his job. Or wasn't a good golfer.

Plus, he was jealous of other golfers. On the Nixon Enemies List you'll find several people with better handicaps than Nixon: Bill Cosby (a 10); Paul Newman (a 7!). In his best years, Nixon maybe had a handicap of 12, but as this video shows, his swing is not good. Can you diagnose the problem here?

Since you probably have to be at work anyway today, and can't get out to play golf, I suggest you spend as much time as you can looking at this super Nixon site and remember: “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got”

You could have it all!

Alas, none of the top five finishers for the women's British Open are knitters. I would imagine there would be a lot of waiting time between tournaments that you could fill up with knitting, even if you worked at golf like your day job. Hey, I have a day job, and I play golf, and I knit. Plus, with all that traveling around, you would get to go to a lot more yarn stores than the average knitter.

I was surprised to see that the earnings for this tournament were actually kind of low. Sherri Steinhauer, the winner, earned about $315,000 for the tournament but that is actually her year to date earnings for 2006. Michele Wie, who came in way down on the list, took home about $18K but I imagine a lot of that goes to expenses, and leg waxing. Certainly everyone earns a lot more with endorsements, but the winner of the men's British Open got over a million dollars for the same job. Hmm.

Today we squandered a perfectly good golf day going to the lake picnicing and lolling around on the grass. I didn't even bring any knitting, although I did have both golf and knitting magazines in my bag. Emily's heading off to Maine for the rest of the summer, I will need to console myself so hopefully we can play this weekend.

Double Yuck

I bought some Weetabix this morning to eat in honor of the golf game this weekend. I will eat it when I watch the game highlights today but I don't think it will taste any better washed down with a beer. Some websites suggested putting hot milk on Weetabix and mashing it up. It also comes in a frosted flake type variety hence the double yuck.

As of right now, Inkster is second, Wie is way down there and the golf terrorist Patti Hurst is out of the game. Someone needs to get back to work overthrowing the government! Annika, pin-up girl of choice among my colleagues at work, is like in 10th place.

Weetabix, yuck.

The Women's British Open is this weekend, sponsored by Weetabix, is this weekend. So far as of tonite, Julie Inkster, who is my age, is winning.

But have you ever eaten Weetabix? It could be the worst cereal on earth. It has ten grams of fiber per serving. That's probably more fiber than eating yarn.

It's hard to even find an appetizing picture of it.

Some Like It Hot (just not me)

If you spent any time on the East Coast this week you would know that it was pretty hot outside. Normally it doesn't bother me too much; I can usually count on myself to remember it's consistently hotter in other places, like Venus. We didn't even have an air conditioner until yesterday, we got one out of the cellar after the dog drank all the water out of the toilet bowl in a desperate cry for help. Although we are confined to the one room in the house with enough electricity to support an AC, we are comfortable.

Comfortable, but kind of feeling hunkered down in the bunker for the duration, in need of distraction. I've made all the progress I can make on the Pardigan - knitted through all 18 holes and with that 158 score, let me tell you, I finished most of the body and halfway up one sleeve.

Here is the new project: last week, John found a set of women's golf clubs in the trash. Most of a whole set anyway; upon examination, there are a number of clubs I already have and a few that looked like they were used in homicides. I took two of the six irons and some handspun I did with strips of crushed velvet fabric and Noro yarn and did this:



And after a few rows it looked like this: