I'm Dreaming

I had a dream last night that Barak Obama called me to say how awsome my Bandidt looked, and that he has had so much to do over the past few months he has made hardly any progress on his Pomotomus sock that he cast on while on the campaign trail. Here he is, left, holding up that Pomotomus and showing some knitter how good it looked.

Mr President! I totally understand. Sometimes we have such difficult decisions to make. For example: this weekend I had to decide between watching Tiger Woods win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the low talking mumbling version of Little Dorrit on PBS, or the first episode of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I picked the Dickens, taped the other and peeked at the leaderboard from time to time.

We can do it all, but not at the same time.

And thanks for the call: yes, the Bandit is awesome, worthy of a Presidential shout out. I will post pix this week.

Falling Hard for the Bandit

Everything has fallen to pieces here because I've spent every waking hour this week with this Bandit shawl, left (thank you to Rav'er Illanna for the picture of her Bandit, I am too wrapped up in knitting to get my own pictures done).

No laundry has been laundered; peanut butter sandwiches have been offered in lieu of meals; a large stack of hard-core vampire books go unread, LPGA unwatched - all because of my devotion to this project.

There is no accounting for what I will hard fall for, and I try hard to stick to the least damaging of the available distractions. But my heart wants what my heart wants, and mysteriously it seems to want a great big lace shawl with 3 two-part patterns. This is a lot of knitting for a what really is a large scarf, although pretty easy to memorize. I'm using size 8 needles, and some other Brooks Farm that I bought a long time ago and was "saving". Saving for what?

For a pattern to come and sweep me off my feet.

The Adventures of Three Girls and One Boy

Lynn and I loaded up the kids in the car and headed out for an adventure on Saturday, enough of an adventure to fill a slim volume.

Chapter 1: Return of the Death Row Handknits

With the fear of another freak spring snow storm on our minds this Saturday morning, we headed out to a surprisingly fruitful estate sale. I scored a much needed enamel compost pail, with a lid no less, for $2. Upstairs, though, we found Victim 2 in the Death Row Handknits series:


The soft focus treatment Lynn gives it here might lead you to believe this piece could be salvaged, but don't be fooled. I'd place this knitting at about 1975, made with a startling tangerine colored acrylic. It was hard to walk away from the nice garter stitch pattern but Emily's screams of horror could be heard throughout the neighborhood so I just left it up there.

Chapter 2: Google Directions: Just a Pack of Lies

After putting more junk in our trunk yet spending less than $13, and armed with our Google Map print outs, we headed over several rivers to the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. Those of you familiar with this blog might wonder if I had a choice between sticking a pin in my eye or going to LIC on the weekend, but I assure you there was a knitting related purpose.

Things went pretty smoothly until we got to the part of the directions that said: "Make a left at 11th Street, then a right on to 53rd Avenue, which veers slightly and turns into Vernon Avenue". Truth be told, you do that and you will veer right into the Newtown Creek. And even if you go back to 11th Street and follow those directions three, four or even five times, and even if you wish hard, and drive on some sidewalks by accident, you end up in the Newtown Creek.

Luckily, Emily secretely texted an SOS to her father from the back seat and he used a real map to get us there in time to photograph this lovely shrug made from only two skeins of Noro.


I used this pattern as a starting point, but also used two different Noro color groups as you would for this scarf. As always, the knitting looked at home surrounded by all that japanese-osity.

One note on the Google: don't believe everything you print out. Huh.

Chapter 3: $7 Bar of Migraine

All that getting lost required some expensive hand made chocolate and we found just the ticket at Mast Brothers chocolate. The youthful yet bewhiskered brothers were happy to show our little party where they roasted the cacao beans and slapped on the pretty labels right there in the store. I was able to purchase and mostly consume a tasty tidbit with most of my migraine triggers built right in: nuts and chocolate, sprinkled with salt. All I needed was a piece of hard cheese and I'dve been knocked out cold for a week.

Sometimes I Feel I've Got To

do other things besides knit and watch golf on TV.

Last night, for example, I made my debut as a back up singer for Trouble's performance at the WFMU fundraiser finale at Maxwells.

Here we are, wo-wo-wo'ing along to Tainted Love by Soft Cell.


And yes, those are our own, everyday clothes.

Death Row Handknits

My sister, Mrs. Sacco, does a lot of volunteer work looking for homes for shelter dogs that are scheduled for euthanasia because of their behavior problems or because they have only three legs or one eye or some such tragic thing. I admire this, as most of these dogs would bite you as hard as they could if they got a chance. She is concerned about the misfit unloved, and does something about it.

I was thinking about her today in the Salivation Army when I came upon this handmade vest in the Yellow section, which comes after Pink but is before Blue:



The workmanship on this was pretty good, considering it was made out of a 100% petroleum product yarn , among the squeakiest and unpleasant I've ever touched. And yes, it was crocheted but you could see it was done with skill and care. It looked like a thousand yellow eyes but they were all uniform with nice seaming and no loose ends. Somebody cared to make it, but then somebody gave it away.

It was on the final sale rack which meant that after the markdowns, it would have cost me about $1.50 to take it home. But I took a picture instead, and left it hanging there, and I have been feeling bad about it all day. Where will it end up?

I should have gotten it and given it to Mrs. Sacco. She would understand.

Where is the Love?

My goodness where has the time gone? Sometimes the days just fly by.

I have been in need of a little knitsperation lately, so we took a road trip in our new car to the George Nakashima studio on Saturday. I had finished the Secret Garden sweater for Lou Lou's birthday in record time and to tell you the truth, I loved knitting it so much I considered never knitting anything else but that again. Even with a Rav queue of 415 projects I couldn't get anything going knit wise.

Before we left I went to the stash cabinet and picked out a few skeins to take with me. I was hoping that a change of venue would help me figure out what to knit next.

This is some beautiful Brooks Farm I got at Rhinebeck, sitting pretty on a stone table off the main showroom.



What's nice about this yarn is that it's not so tightly spun as other Brooks Farm yarn, and there is a lot of it. What might be not so nice about it is that it looks like it pools unless you knit it from both sides.

And it wouldn't be right to go to the studio of a Japanese artist without - you guessed it!


The other visitors to the studio did not seem alarmed at a woman beholding skeins of yarn on various pieces of furniture, or the floor, and then stuffing them back in her purse. This went on for a long time too.

Still, though, I am in the dumps about what to knit next. I think part of it has to do with trying to slog my way through the stash before buying too much new yarn and finding it very uninspiring. I have half-heartedly cast on a pair of socks, and a modified version of the Aleita shell (Rav link) but I am not feeling the love. Not even Noro love.

Ah well. Soon it will be spring, and maybe you little birdies can tell me what to cast on.

When it's Thursday, It's Trouble

Our dear knitting friend DJ Trouble (pictured left) writes:

"It is that time of year when WFMU opens its phones to receive all the well wishes of commercial free love that only you can give. We are looking for more donations this year from more people, which hopefully will equal out to more money to run our bastion of freedom and excellent radio. You get where you fit in here, don't you? We are a most wonderful explosion of artistic endeavor, with no corporate relationship, never has, never will! Be part of the magic! Yours sincerely, DJ Trouble."

In between knitting and golfing and reading Jane Austen novels I always find time on Thursday morning to listen to Trouble on freeform WFMU, where she is often talking about knitting and Jane Austen novels but alas, never golfing. And why is that, Trouble?

Please show your support for our freeform friend on Thursday, March 5th from 9am to 12 pm by calling 1-800-989-9368 to pledge. I know she would be glad to hear from you! Especially if you ask her some golf questions! If you are shy, or if don't like to talk on the phone, you can pledge on line at https://www.wfmu.org/marathon/pledge.php

First in My Lifetime

And you may find your child behind the wheel of a large automobile.

And you may ask yourself: my god, what have I done?