Shock Treatment

News of snow not 50 miles to the west of my fair town has caused me to snap out of the knitting funk. I got crackalackin on some warm mittens using the simple cable in this nice sock pattern.

I need to get the loved ones covered in wool quick.

Seasonal Knitting Disorder

I find myself suffering that particular kind of ennui that comes from buying too much yarn in too short a time. I call it PREDIKT: Post-Rhinebeck Extreme Disinterest In Knitting Things.

I know it will pass, so in the meantime I will help myself to yet another piece of Nancy's pecan pie and watch The Hills.

A Brush With Fame

I was not-so-secretly hoping to meet the Mason-Dixon gals at Sheep and Wool and I had prepared oh so many witty things to say to them while traveling to and from work on the subway. Clever things! Deep, thought provoking knitting ideas. Tips! A display of my Mile Square Yarn Splicing technique, even. If they asked.

I was even hoping for an autograph and some of those little stamps of their heads on the title page. But sadly I left their book at home in the bathroom, where it has been on the Best Seller Shelf since it came out, replacing The Bad Popes and occupying a place of honor right next to ancient copy of the Sub-Treasury of American Humor.

When I got to the barn where they were keeping the authors penned up, all that was left of them were their wigs:



P.S., we did come back to see if they were there, and I did get to talk to them, and it was way cool and they were super nice. I have a picture of me talking to them, but I look insane and they look like they are talking to the 1,000th insane knitter of the day at S'nW.

Political Intarsia

When I finally stopped talking to that guy in the Utilikilt, I saw this great hat. Sorry I did not get the knitters name, though!

So Much More Than Yarn: Rhinebeck 2008

Let's get it out of the way: Did I buy yarn? Yes. Here I am buying some of the same yarn I bought last year from Twist of Fate Spinnery.

I was hellbent on getting myself a lot of this yarn, but they only had 3 skeins left. So, I got some, not a lot. I also got some nice sock yarn from Brooks Farm, and some beautiful chunky yarn at Briar Rose, here:


And that concludes the yarn portion of our show.

What was new at Rhinebeck? Rug hooking seemed to be the new lace. There were three or four hookers scattered 'round the barns, using both rug wool and wool strip techniques. There were angora rabbits, and romney sheep.

There were Utilikilts! I saw one guy go by and I was amused; I spent some time talking to the second guy I saw (Dave) about his Utilikilt:



It was a pretty well crafted garment, made of a heavy twill. There were two sets of pockets with lots of sewn in sections. There were a lot of deep pleats and it had a nice swing to it. Most importantly, it comes with a little "Modesty Strap" for when, said Dave, you want to get on your motorcycle.

Are you getting the idea I spent a lot of time asking this guy questions? Then you are getting the right idea.

Behold Some More

This sheep farm is down the road from the house in Maine and I guess we have driven by it a thousand times. On Sunday morning we hiked down there and walked around. If you have a few minutes, click on the pictures to enlarge them.

On these Maine trips, you are either the driver or the passenger. The driver misses almost everything looking for the right turn and managing the CD player. The passenger is often asleep. Here is your chance to be an awake passenger.

There is a barn studio:


Overlooking a pond:





And a sheep pen:




And some sheep that had some messages for me to pass on this Sunday at Sheep n Wool:

Behold

Spent the weekend in Maine with the folks and our niece, Liz, who is a senior in college and taking a class on the Art of Beholding. Sounds like a fun class: students pick a work of art for the semester, learn about it and then go see it. But really see it: "seize it without touching", Liz said. It seemed to all of us that beholding the things we see all the time would be a good way to spend the weekend.

The picture she picked was Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth. Since we were not too far from Cushing, Maine, the site of the house in the picture, we took a drive up there, and Emily obliged us with a tableau vivant:


I'm pretty sure Christina Olsen wasn't wearing RayBans when Wyeth painted the picture, but you get the idea.

Visiting that house was a real surprise. It's not furnished, but the perspectives from the windows were stunning and elemental and it really made me feel like I was in a timeless Maine.

During the ride up, I made good progress on a sweater in a pattern that I was making up as I went along. Nobody minded when I used the kitchen at the museum for some pictures. It was as if the sweater belonged in that house:




It was truly amazing to behold the grown up Liz. I've known her all her life but this weekend we got a chance to behold the fun, sassy and independent woman she is becoming. Thanks for embiggening our weekend Liz!

Columbus-ish

We started the long Columbus Day weekend a little early, staying out late on Thursday (well, late for us: crochet-tolerant Trouble dropped us off at 11:30) because we went to see Times New Viking, a band from Columbus, Ohio.

Columbus! What's happening there? This band had a great sound and they were fronted by a cute and hard working girl. There she is in that picture above.

They have a lot of yarn stores in Columbus. They have their own craft fair. If I lived there, I could move out of the 1938 Museum into a big house.

I've heard from a Reliable Source that Columbus has it's good and bad points, and the insurmountable bad point is that Columbus Ohio is not a neighborhood of New York City. I think next year I'd like to take a trip there on this long weekend and see for myself.

Can Some One Help Me Here?

I got this email today from LPGA:


" LPGA Tour player Natalie Gulbis will be in New York City today, October 7th, selling cupcakes to raise money for charity. If you are in the area between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. ET, be sure to stop by Rockefeller Center at 57th and 5th to support Gulbis and her great cause. "


First, of course, if she was at that particular intersection, she'd be at Tiffany, not Rockefeller Center. And for what cause would you sell cupcakes at that intersection? Billionaires for Bush? Does anyone know why?

Anyway, I couldn't make it to find out why myself, what with being a working person and being too busy palling around with terrorists.

Get the Hook: Unloveable Crochet

Crochet was the topic of the day today: the problems knitters have when Muggles don't know the difference between knitting and crochet; the inexplicable and maybe psychotic dislike of the idea of a treble crochet; the plight of the few, brave artists using crochet as a medium, and worst of all, crocheted dishcloths.

Being a social services professional, I realize there are always two sides to a story. Even such an obvious story like the many, many problems with crochet has two sides. It takes them 9 minutes to tell the story, though, so get a cup of coffee and get your knitting.

Sunday on Sleeve Island

I was a little under the weather and out of sorts this weekend and I spent a lot of time finishing up the sleeve on my top-down, seat-of-my-pants Noro Taiyo cardigan. There's nothing like a sleeve to make you question why you took up knitting in the first place.

The Duchess of Hudson Street

There's a nip in the air this week and the bathroom floor was freezing when I got up this morning, signaling the official start of the knitting season.

I have a lot of knitting planned for everyone, but I started out by casting on my own version of the Lady Eleanor Entrelac stole for my very own self and I'm calling it the Duchess of Hudson Street. Here 'tis, almost done:



I used 3 skeins of that divine Noro I got last week at Brooklyn General. I don't have the Scarf Style book from whence this pattern comes, but I did have a great tutorial from the Spring 2007 Interweave Knits magazine. If somehow you mixed up that issue with your old Popular Mechanics mags and can't locate it just this minute, here is an easy to follow entrelac tutorial.

Here's another picture, taken right on Hudson Street, because the yarn is just so beautiful:


What makes my scarf a Duchess and not a Lady? Well, a Duchess is grander than a Lady, as all readers of Jane Austen know. Many patterns call for entrelac squares between 4 and 8 stitches, but for this one, I used 10 stitches on size 10 needles giving me really big color blocks. And because a duchess is clever, I casted on lengthwise (140 stitches) to maximize the Noro stripes.

And the whole thing took just a presidential debate or two to complete.