We ventured down to the street fair today to check out the misguided crafts, and to hear some very good music.

Wouldn't be a street fair without some knitters and crocheters selling their wares, would it? These hats were pretty simple, and crocheted, but made with some handspun alpaca that was very soft - go ahead, feel it on your screen.

There were a few other vendors with knit and crochet items, but I cannot in good conscience post the pictures John took of them. Women, take heed: block your garments! And weave in the ends! There were ends hanging out all over the town today.





But especially exciting was the band line-up for the afternoon: Glen Mercer from the Feelies, Health and Happiness Show and the Bongos, below.

I had to kiss so many former Hobokeners at this show that I had to run into a store to buy a new Chapstick.

Do You Think It's A Coincidence?

Today, I got my Ravelry invitation and I saw this rainbow outside my window.

Keeping it Clean

So far, I've kept to my sacred promise that I'd never knit anything for an animal or for use in a room with running water. But when I was excavating the stash this week, I found some ancient cotton from the now defunct Rag Shop and I started thinking about what I could do with it.

The obvious thing was to make something golf related. You would all agree, there is nothing weird about knitting golf accessories at all.

But I have been getting in touch with my inner domestic goddess over the past few weeks because I am so inspired by the wives on Mad Men, so I did some investigation on what I could do with this load of cotton crap besides foist it on the knitting group tomorrow night.

I've been learning how to do the dishes so that soap bubbles don't appear in your cereal the next day. This is accomplished by giving them a good scrub with a dishcloth or sponge which is certainly a knittable object. The number of dish clothrag patterns on the internet is mind boggling. So much so, that I don't think it is necessary to knit even one: it's been done to death.

Another new thing I've experienced is cleaning the floor on a regular basis. which means more than 2 times per year. I bought this Swiffer thing which is quiet, and doesn't seem to freak out the animals as much as the vacuum. I can see that shortly I will be running out of the overpriced cloths that go with it, but this girl has a great idea that is eco-friendly and stash busting to boot.

Last year we painted the bathroom but I am thinking it could use a little sprucing up, and maybe some knitted toilet paper covers would do. The kinds with the little dolls.

Do you want me to make one for your house? I thought not.

You Can Have it All, Just Not at the Same Time

I think there is a universal knitting slump going on in my blog world and for some reason, bloggers apologizing about it. Let me tell you: even I can't knit all the time!

Some bloggers are making babies, some are making art, some are making big life decisions and some are just at home on Saturday night making a mess. These people are making cupcakes (and reading this the blog is a bigger time suck than Ravelry so don't start scrolling unless you have a full day ahead of you).

Baseball Interferes with Golf, and then with Knitting

Tonite I went to see fellow golfer Derek Jeter at his day job and watched him make a really spectacular catch. The ball came straight at him, and he just stood real still, raised his glove and the ball just got sucked right in. It looked simple but you could see that it was a time-honed body memory of how to catch a ball.

I had the same experience with turning a heel on a sock last week. Usually I need to refer to a book to figure out just how to start the turn, even though I've done it dozens of times. This time I just let my hands knit and there it was, a pretty perfect turn, with no counting.

Last week when we played golf, I realized I had gotten into a bad habit with flicking my wrist on a putt so balls were going everywhere but the hole. I know the habit came from my unfortunate use of the putter off the green/in the rough to whack the ball - as if the whole world was a mini golf course. I practiced a little this week on straight wrists by putting around in the living room as I watched the final 1,000 episodes of Trapped in the Closet. It was hard to change that body memory of the little flick but after turning that heel, I know I can never be a Jeter but I can do better.

If I had only known how much there was to do when you were unemployed, I would have left the Wide World of Work world a long time ago.

Today we played golf and I tried out my new bag. It worked fine, but I plan to make a few modifications, as follows:

• Learn to play golf

• Make a large pocket for balls and snacks, using a tee for a button (cute and clever)

• Make an effort to learn to play golf

Since I didn't have to get up to go to a job, I had plenty of time to recuperate from rock and roll after seeing Patti Smith. I even had time for a little disco nap before leaving for the show. (Please note, these are different from the other naps I've been taking since becoming unemployed. These have a purpose. The show was a great tribute to her late husband, golfer Fred Smith, but it was even better to be:

• Rocking out in a comfy chair
• One of dozens of younger-ish women with gray hair in one space
• still totally in love with Lenny Kay after all these years

This week also included a trip to Modern Yarns in Montclair, and if you haven't been there, well, call me and we'll hop in the Dodge Veg-o-Matic, feel up some yarn and eat at this place.

What made Modern Yarns so good?

• The selection was really varied. They had a good stock of Rowan, including a boatload of Calmer. They had a little Frog Tree too, and Cherry Hill, and that Regia Sock Yarn in that manly Kaffee Fassett color way.

• I haven't seen any Habu Textile anywhere in New Jersey, and this place had some lace weight and novelty from them, probably made out of luncheon meat or something.

• There was quite a good selection of books in the back, and a big table to sit and look at magazines, and a couch for the mens.

The vibe was a lot like the old Handknits in Englewood without the stupendous sale room, which made me lonesome for Beth, so I looked her up and here is her new site at her new store in Vermont. She's having a sale on Manos of all things, I wish I hadn't seen that, I'm unemployed.

K2 Par 3 Bag

I found I needed a smaller golf bag for the par 3 course in Maine, since I only really use my 5 hybrid, a pitching wedge and my putter. So I designed this one, based on the concept of the yoga mat bag.

It's modeled by celebrity non-golfer Lynn.

I'll post the pattern later in the week once I get some detailed pictures and measurements, but it's pretty cool, huh?

Time To 'Fess Up

I've had a lot of unexpected free time over the past few weeks...and it looks like I will have a lot more, because I'm not working anymore. The good news: lots more time to knit and read knitting blogs. The bad news: all the golfers have jobs.

But that's not the confession. I've been reading a lot of knitting blogs, and it's time to tell you: I have a cat. I have a dog, a teenager and a husband, too, and a surprising number of episodes of Trapped in the Closet taped on the recorder, but how could I not tell you about the Cat?

Here she is, in the teenager's messy bedroom:


I might be able to find a better picture of her somewhere, or I will be taking a few after I enter this contest.

What a Feeling

I would not accompany my loved ones to visit even one Radio Shack store if our lives depended on it, yet I had the nerve to "suggest" a visit to The Custom Shop to their new location in the 'Port last week.

This place used to carry a little bit of yarn, and a lot of curtains. The new store has a lot more yarn, and curtains on the windows only. They've moved from their frankly more convenient location on Route 1 to a little strip mall on Route 35, about a mile from the center of town. I know it's a mile, because after about 10 minutes of walking to this yarn store that is just right near here I feel it I thought I heard a suggestion that maybe, just maybe, it would have been more efficient to have looked up the address instead of relying on a feeling that there is a yarn store nearby.

Do you get the Yarn Store Feeling? One where you just know a yarn store is nearby even though you might never have been in that neighborhood before? A woolly feeling, right? I get them all the time.

Just Us Folks

I gave in to the Knitting Daily blog hype today and bought that new Folk Style book. There are a lot of things in it I would knit and there are instructions for needle felting accents so go ahead, give in and get one yourself.

These girls do quite a few photo shoots in Portland, Maine and this book says the pictures were taken at KnitWits. Now, I visited KnitWits when I was in Maine last year and did not love them so this year, I didn't go back. That's how much I didn't love them.

I did take a walk across the street from them, through Eastern Cemetary, a fine place to digest that fish sandwich from Becky's.


I also visited Portland Fiber Gallery which is down the street. It was a humid day so it was hard to be around so much loose fleece and fiber, kind of like walking into a spider web. And no trip to that neighborhood is complete without a little visit to Ferdinand, which you can visit without even leaving home.

Pilgrim's Progress

Early on in the vacation, we made a pilgrimage to the Seaport Yarn store in Portland.

For those of you who have been to the NYC store, you know better than to bring a non-knitter, or someone claustrophobic, and you make sure you eat before you go because you are going to be in there for a while, and you know to bring cash because they don't take cards, and most important of all bring your own bag or else you will end up with some crappy Shop Rite bag with a six inch rip in it to cart your stuff home.

We stopped at Becky's Diner for some fortifying fried fish sammiches first. Not sure if it was the Maine-ly hungry problem we have on vacation influencing our taste buds, but this a Hall of Fame Fish Sandwich, yes indeed.

Seaport Yarns in Portland is the Internet distribution center for the store in NYC. It's waaaayyy down on Fore Street, just past the point where your husband asks if you are out of your freakin mind because there are no stores down here just that weird Red Weenie processing plant and boom, there you are. This place has parking spaces allocated somewhere, but we really couldn't find them, so we just abandoned the car near the front door.

I asked Emily to wait outside with John since I really couldn't justify subjecting him to the madness I know to be the NYC store. Imagine my surprise when I walked into this air conditioned monument to neatness:




They didn't have quite everything they stock in NYC and nothing handspun or unique, but I was quite pleased with the selection. The woman who was working there was very charming, and knew her stock and didn't make me feel like she was doing me a favor by letting me spend money in her store.

I bought some Lambs Pride for a project (which is already at FO status and will be unveiled at a later date) and this nice sock yarn with which I knit a quick pair of socks from a Knitty pattern.

Sibling Rivalry

A few months ago, my brother Little Freddy started playing golf after not playing for 15 years. He's been a golf lurker, asking me about my game and saying Gee We Should Play On Vacation but did I know he was working on his comeback like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky II?

When I talked to the golf psychiatrist about my concerns about playing golf with a family member, I was reminded that the game is between You and The Course. Well, this doctor must have forgotten he wasn't an only child, because many, many deeply seated issues get played out in a round of golf when you play with a baby brother.

Anyway, I had a personal best round and Little Freddy fished out a few balls from the slimy frog pond, so a good time was had by all.