ok go does it again – joy all around.
remember the guys who did that great video with treadmills? check this out:
Watch the whole thing – it made me laugh out loud a number of times, and feel happy to be alive.
in which a spot on the couch gives me peace and comfort
True in real estate, true in life: location is everything. Well, not exactly everything – the knitting is really everything, but location is an important part, since it’s just as much about the process for me as the finished object. I knit in two places: my cozy corner of the couch, and on the subway. I enjoy knitting both places, but the couch is much better. It’s my corner of the couch, with my ginormous Land’s End bag (really, it’s big enough to hold part of a cord of wood, which was its intended use, I think) filled with yarn and projects and papers and notebooks. Periodically I go through that huge bag (as I did during my recent fearless knitting inventory), but just glancing down at it while I’m knitting makes me happy.
The side table has a drawer, and it’s full of all kinds of junk – random knitting tools like a cable needle, a pair of scissors, my iPod cable for syncing it to my laptop, my card reader for my camera, an external hard drive, stuff like that. On top of the table is a stack of magazines – FiberArts, Threads, Craft. My laptop on top of them. Enough space (but not more!) for a cup of coffee. The table is squeezed in between the couch and my sewing table, so when I sit on the couch, I’m kind of in the midst of my creative space, even though it’s just a tiny corner of a relatively small living room that’s crowded with other stuff. Ah, Manhattan.
Since I don’t have very much time to knit, it tends toward an exact routine: In the mornings, around 5am, I put on a pot of coffee, pour a bowl of cereal, and go to the couch. I open the laptop, and while I’m eating my cereal and waiting for the coffee, I open iTunes and download podcast updates and sync my iPod, and read a now-tiny set of sites: gmail, statcounter, and ravelry (I check the forums and look at my friends activity). Now the coffee is finished and so is my cereal, so I pour a mug, return to the couch, close the laptop, and knit in the deep quiet for about an hour, maybe less, depending on the hair situation. I’m usually wearing a pair of socks I knit, and I usually pull a blanket I knit over my legs. And I knit. Knitting in this hour is a very important experience; I don’t think I’m actually thinking about anything, and I’m not knitting anything that requires the strictest concentration and/or struggle. I do that knitting on the weekend. But in the mornings, I think I am in some kind of meditative state, where everything disappears, my mind and even my self sort of disappears, and I’m just kind of floating. My fingers are making their small repetitive movements with a gentle and even rhythm, the yarn is flowing between my fingers, and rows are finished. It’s always a bad moment when I happen to notice that it’s 6:00; it’s kind of like crashing into a brick wall in some way, now I have to leave this state and get busy, get ready, get going, get to work, get at it, don’t stop. The pleasure is primarily in the knitting, but it’s also in the spot. My cozy spot, surrounded by my creative stuff, my little safe and textured corner of the world.
To read other bloggers’ thoughts on this topic, click here: knitcroblo5
gotta learn this new thing, what’s wrong with me?!
Fear is a funny thing. It’s a good thing if there’s a bear chasing you; fear makes you run fast. But it’s a silly thing if you’re afraid of learning a new knitting skill. Really, Lori? Afraid of Judy’s Magic Cast-On? REALLY? Come. On. It’s knitting, and I am holding the sharp pointed sticks. I can just stop at any time. Nothing terrible is going to happen; the worst thing would be if I got sweaty and was nervous and not figuring it out and therefore feeling stupid.
Is that it? It makes me feel stupid, like I don’t know anything? I already know that I don’t know all that much! But I’ve become comfortable. I can knit top-down socks with no stress. I get it, I know the tricks, I don’t make mistakes. On the other hand, I also don’t have very much time to knit, so when I do get to knit, I want to be knitting, not sweating with anxiety! But on the other hand, I also want to grow, and challenge myself, and learn new tricks, so as soon as I finish the wedding shawl, I’m going to do it: Judy’s Magic Cast-On and toe-up socks.
YIKES!
two socks at once! Double yikes!
Once I’ve got the cast-on figured out, I’ll learn the little heel tricks you use for toe-up socks. Then, with all that confidence surging through me, I’ll tackle continental knitting. I see big things in my future. 
Read other bloggers talking about new skills they want to learn here: knitcroblo4
If you already watch TED Talks, you may have seen this, or you’ll at least be more willing to watch. If you don’t know about TED Talks, I hope you watch this one.
Ryan Lobo is a photographer who practices what he calls compassionate storytelling. I was listening to it on my iPod on the train home and I was so moved and choked up I cried, right in the crowd. And I didn’t even get to see the photos! For now I’m off to watch it too. It’s just 11 minutes long. I think it might be the best 11 minutes of your day.
If you already watch TED Talks, you may have seen this, or you’ll at least be more willing to watch. If you don’t know about TED Talks, I hope you watch this one.
Ryan Lobo is a photographer who practices what he calls compassionate storytelling. I was listening to it on my iPod on the train home and I was so moved and choked up I cried, right in the crowd. And I didn’t even get to see the photos! For now I’m off to watch it too. It’s just 11 minutes long. I think it might be the best 11 minutes of your day.
a couple of knitters I love, and you might too!
There are so many knitters whose work I enjoy, and whose blogs I follow (when I’m not on this blog-reading hiatus), it’s so hard to single one out for attention. In some silly way, it’s like trying to answer which one of your kids is your favorite. Even if you have one – and who does, really, but let’s assume – saying it means saying that you don’t like the others as much, and that’s just not right!
I went to my ravelry friends page and started looking through, trying to figure out how to pick just one, and I realized I was tending to focus on people who also design. I finally narrowed it to two:
#1: Lucy, of {a black pepper}. She’s zebraknits on ravelry, and she has a gorgeous blog, too. I have several of her designs either in my queue or in my faves: the beautiful jacket Adeline; Lillian, a gorgeous sweater; Coline, an elegant neckwarmer. Not only do I enjoy her designs and her own knitting, I just love her aesthetic. The photography on her blog almost always makes me feel calm and still, for some reason, and the styling is impeccable. And her writing is thoughtful and honest, which also makes me happy! If you haven’t encountered her yet, you’re welcome.
#2: six and a half stitches, a knitter/designer/blogger from Sydney. Where Lucy is lush, Alison is spare and minimal. Her designs are so clean (think Habu) and her blog is the most restful, beautiful place. She’s another one who leaves me feeling calm and still, but she also makes me want to get up and throw out all the clutter. She reminds me of another blogger and knitter I love, who also happens to be an architect. Since I’m following a strict blog-reading diet I won’t allow myself to look through my Google Reader to find her right now, but I’ll try to post about her another time, because if you like 6.5sts, you’ll love her too.
It’s so wonderful, this online world, where we can encounter each other in these ways, admire each other’s handwork and style and art and photography, be inspired by other people’s vision and world.
Click here for more posts on the 3rd day of this blogging event: knitcroblo3
all aboard – ha ha ha ha – the crazy train
Maybe New York City mothers tell their kids about days like this, people like this. It’s not like I’m unaccustomed to some of the more colorful people one runs into in this city; we have our neighborhood schizophrenic who used to do push-ups in the middle of Broadway, and who once ran up and tagged me. There’s the schizophrenic who ‘lives’ in front of my office, the poor man you can smell before you even round the corner. There are drunks in the subway, not all that uncommon to see. Oh, and the occasional weirdo who picks up 2 reciprocating saws the workmen left untended, and starts sawing people on the platform. (That last one is really rare, I mean really rare, but it did happen at my subway stop so that makes it notable to me.)
But today was a real doozy. The trains were strangely empty; as we went along, there were always empty seats throughout the car. Weird, for “rush hour” on a normal week day. I get on at Penn Station, and the next stop is Times Square. Well, a totally drunk dude got on at Times Square. I wasn’t sure he was going to be able to stand up, or to stay upright in his seat. And I was afraid he was going to lose the contents of his stomach like the last majorly drunk guy I encountered. He wobbled, he wavered, he drooped, and he kept getting up and lurching around, back and forth. And he was right in front of me.
He rode along for 3 stops and then he got off, and I felt a wave of relief. For about 10 seconds. Another guy boarded, and he was happy! Like, really really really really happy – cackling and slapping his leg. Throwing his head back with his mouth wide open so we could see all 3 of his teeth, cackling. Then he’d jump up and down, then do this weird thing where he’d kind of squat and move up and down in a squatting position. Then he’d jump up! Turn around! Windmill his arms! Cackle cackle cackle! Maybe he was doing the hoky poky for all I know. Whatever reality he was in, there was a happy party going on.
Still, there’s something frightening about insane happiness, and he was so physical and all over the place. And – like the drunk – he was right next to me. What gives, drunk and crazy dudes?!
He finally got off at the stop just before mine. Today, apparently, I was aboard the crazy train. It’s not really all that much fun.
Ysolda’s Ishbel is nearly perfect in every way!
The point of this post was to blog about a pattern or project to which I aspire – maybe because it requires skills I don’t yet have, or maybe because it takes a lot of time. Instead, I’m going to write about a pattern that inspires me for a different reason: Ishbel, created by Ysolda Teague. I’ve knit this twice, with a third one on the needles:
purple and small, with Sunday Knits Eden
greenish and pretty big, with madelinetosh wren
big and in the works, with madelinetosh lace
Why does this pattern inspire me? First, it’s great fun to knit – and lots of people seem to agree, since Ravelry lists 6400 projects and it’s in 3268 queues. (At £3.00 GBP, Ysolda has done very well with this little project! Good for her!). The main reason this pattern inspires me so much is that it’s very cleverly written while still being a LOT of fun to knit. Scientific theories that explain a phenomenon with an economy of variables are called elegant, and that describes Ysolda’s patterns. Ishbel hits all the marks, which is kind of great: it’s fun, it’s changeable (you can make the stockinette section larger or smaller, knit more or fewer repeats of each of the lace sections, etc), the end result is not just beautiful but also very practical, and it has clearly generated a very good amount of money for the designer while being inexpensive for knitters.
I’ve knit (or should I say, tried to knit) other patterns that were beautiful and ‘clever,’ but they were just fussy and kind of ridiculous in their cleverness. There’s no need to name names, because maybe I was just not a skilled enough knitter and others could easily manage the pattern, but there was one scarf that just made me so angry and you know? Who needs that in knitting! But Ysolda’s patterns are clever in the very best way, and I think Ishbel is a great example of her design philosophy. I would love to be able to do what she does; instead, I’ll just benefit from her talent. Me and thousands of other happy knitters.
Read the other posts on this topic: knitcroblo2
knitcroblo1
I come from good solid pioneer stock – old Texas women who wore pioneer bonnets, who worked hard, and all the time. Who gave birth, then got right up and finished making the biscuits. They made things because they had to, and they made them with whatever they had around, and as quickly as they could because they had to get back to work. Want to see?
my great-grandmother (2nd from the right), Lottie Ribble Askew
When my sister and brother and I were young, our mother sewed our clothes. But no one in my family did much handwork to speak of. None were artists, or very focused on a creative life. I don’t know why, but I LOVED handwork, from a very young age. I remember going to preschool, age 4 I guess, carrying my plastic fake-tortoise-shell-brown sewing box. I embroidered pillowcases, using iron-on transfers for the designs. Butterflies and spring flowers, as I recall, embroidered way too tightly. As much as I loved to embroider, I loved even more to organize my supplies.
The summer before I turned 6, I was visiting my grandparents (Mom and Big Daddy). I’m not at all clear on the relations, but I went to visit my Aunt Meecie. She must’ve lived in the neighborhood, because I think I walked. Aunt Meecie was a crocheting fool. Everything in her house was crocheted, or covered with crochet. She gave me a hook and a skein of undoubtedly ugly acrylic yarn, and showed me how to chain stitch. This story is on my About page.
When I was 21 I decided to teach myself to knit. It felt so awkward, so difficult, especially compared to the simplicity and speed of crocheting. One hook made sense, two needles were difficult. I persisted, knitted two large Christmas stockings, and one sweater, and then let knitting languish. I taught myself to sew, and made all the clothing for my 3 little kids and myself, and shirts for my husband. I taught myself to spin, to weave. I taught myself how to quilt, and how to make bobbin lace. I taught myself how to tat, and how to do smocking. I’ve always loved making things by hand.
Then a couple of decades later I found myself living in Manhattan, accommodating myself to what that means (among the list: having absolutely no room!). Knitting can easily work within this constraint; needles don’t take up any room, and stash can be tucked here and there, behind the books, under the bed, between the shelf and the wall, etc. So I picked it up again, after such a long, long time, and I haven’t been able to stop. Who knew knitting was so addictive! It’s still not as intuitive as crochet, perhaps because I learned to crochet first. But I knit almost every single day, and those days I don’t knit feel strange, like something is missing.
The blogger who organized this blogging event, Eskimimiknits, came up with a tagging system so you can easily read all these posts. Just search Google for knitcroblo1, or click here, because I’ve done it for you.
we’re going back to the other side of the world!!
First, this is a reservation. An actual, already-booked reservation. Here’s the legend:
- JFK = JFK airport in New York
- HKG = Hong Kong
- PNH = Phnom Penh, in CAMBODIA
We’ll be going to Vientiane and Luang Prabang in Laos; Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and Kep in Cambodia, and of course, Hong Kong as a transfer point. The blog is set up, and I’ll add information there as the itinerary firms up. For now, what I know for sure is that I’ll be spending Thanksgiving in Laos or Cambodia. Isn’t that amazing?
a little of this AND a little of that.
The blogger behind Eskimimi Knits came up with a fun idea:
Every day for the coming week, all participants will write about a predetermined set of topics (starting out, an inspirational pattern, one great knitter, stay tuned for the rest). I’m going to try to participate, even though (a) Monday I won’t get home until after 9, (b) Tuesday I’ll get home even later, and (c) the coming weekend, my daughter Marnie will be here for the wedding-dress-fitting etc. In fact, I may go ahead and pre-write some of them, and queue them up for automatic posting.
Anyway – my trip to the Catskills was a mix of things. I was caught in awful traffic heading upstate for some weird reason. It took as long to go 20 miles as it should’ve taken to make the whole trip. I was very distracted by details surrounding my fall vacation to Laos. And then, the thing that’s most reliable – incredible pizza at Brio’s, in Phoenicia – was bad. I ordered baked clams for an appetizer…..clam mush, very gross. My pizza came within a few minutes of ordering it, and it was lukewarm. So Friday was kind of a flop. Saturday I had a very bad headache due to allergies, but the weather was beautiful and meds knocked the headache out mostly. I piddled around, ate an ok breakfast at Brio’s, drove to Hunter and walked around the Hunter Mountain Ski Resort, drove to Woodstock and poked around my favorite little shops (but Woodstock Quilt Supply was closed, no sign of where it went! What happened?!), and then spent the rest of the afternoon lounging around. Dinner at Brio’s, not bad.
So home for the afternoon, time to relax and snooze and knit and maybe watch a good movie. I hope your weekend is giving you time for the same!
4 more years! 4 more years!
Yep – next Thursday is my wedding anniversary, but I’m beginning the celebration in about an hour. I’m heading upstate, to a little hamlet in the Catskills called Phoenicia. I love the area, and always eat at a great little restaurant called Brio’s. In fact, I celebrated my birthday there last November, and I could’ve just linked to that post but OH YEAH my blog died. Crashed. Burned. I lost all those old posts. Which just means I have a new opportunity to post about it again!
I’ll stay in the same place I stayed last November, eat at the same place I always eat, hike around in the woods as I always do, piddle around Woodstock as I always do, and just enjoy myself. As I always do. Happy anniversary to me! Photos to come.
not-doing is so much harder than doing, but doing is pretty hard, too.
Stopping all at once – from following 435 blogs to not reading any blogs at all – that is tough. Since Google Reader doesn’t provide a suspend option, I just eliminated the gadget from my iGoogle home page. The choices are either to quit following, or see all the posts. I wish they’d provide a vacation option or something, but they don’t. So I know they’re all there, accumulating, showing up in the Reader that’s there but just not on my home page. They taunt me, the posts. I know there is beautiful knitting, gorgeous quilting, interesting thoughts, amazing design, fun and happy and curious and melancholy, all there just behind my screen.
But I am not reading. It’s hard. I wonder what you’re up to. Not reading hasn’t yet transformed my mornings, although I have done more knitting. I’ve also done a bit more writing. I think I have to overcome the thing underneath, the thing that made sitting and reading all the blogs so appealing, such a good alternative to doing. Inertia, laziness, general procrastination, fear. And that last one is such a funny thing – fear. I’m afraid to try toe-up socks. WHAT? Afraid to try toe-up socks? What is there to be afraid of? Afraid I’ll sit at my table and start writing and … what? It won’t be good? Does it all have to be good, and perfect, and finished, with my first effort?
Of course the answer is no, and of course the answer is yes.
this is my brain on distraction crack
Not the corpus callosum, the crack-like division between the two brain hemispheres. Not crack cocaine and what it does to your brain. No, the ‘brain crack’ of the post’s title is a phrase my daughter the artist uses to describe the way a creative person might get so involved in figuring out everything involved with a new project and never start, preferring instead to continue planning, tweaking, thinking. That process is kind of like brain crack, it’s fun, nothing is at risk, it’s a way of doing “work” without having to face the blank canvas, or the blank page, or the raw materials, and enduring that difficult process and the potential for risk and failure. “Don’t get stuck on brain crack, mom.” Because that’s what I do. (And here I’m not talking about the actual prep work, the swatching (though that could be done in a brain crack-like way), the material testing, the sample creation, etc.)
I’ll just answer these emails that are coming in, and after that I’ll get going. I’ll just organize my knitting bag and then I’ll get going. Oh wait, I should really read this book about design before I get going, it’ll probably save me a lot of trial and error. Oh wait, let me just clean the kitchen first. I’ll just run through my Google Reader real quick and then I’ll get started. I’m sure this is very common; I’ve read all sorts of pieces by writers who describe this kind of process they wade through when they’re having trouble writing. It doesn’t feel good to do this, there’s a kind of building desperation, you know you’re stalling and the thing is waiting, waiting, getting further away rather than closer.
During the week, I get up at 5am and spend about an hour (more or less, depending on the daily situation with my hair and how tragic it looks) sitting on the couch, drinking two cups of coffee, reading my Google Reader, and knitting. Some days I don’t knit, but usually I do. I leave the house absolutely no later than 6:30, and shoot for 6:15 as an average. I relish this quiet hour all to myself, and if I don’t get it I feel cattywampus all day. The street is usually very quiet, and I don’t listen to anything, no music, no podcast. It’s precious and necessary and I love it. I have aspirations of other things to do with that hour, and I continually plan to do them but the morning comes and I think well, this morning I’ll just do my usual. What I’d like to do instead:
yoga and meditation
writing
actual work on creative projects
walk in Riverside Park
explore my neighborhood and take photographs
I really want to do these things! I really do. Obviously, I couldn’t do them all each morning, and my silly tendency would be to regulate them in some kind of rigid fashion: yoga M and W; walk on Th and Sat; write on T; etc. What stops me, as silly as this sounds, is Google Reader. I subscribe to 435 blogs. I have them categorized in ways that let me skip to specific ones (knitters, NYC, food, art, photography, entertainment, fabric, design, creative multi, etc). If I’m in a real time bind, I always just read the knitters and the fabric (which means people who work in some way with fabric, sewing or quilting or dying or weaving), and try to fit in the creative multi – the people who knit AND sew AND do photography. I tell myself that one important purpose of looking at all the blogs is inspiration, and that does happen! There are some amazingly creative people out there who not only do good work, they write about it in inspirational ways and take amazing photographs. Of course, inspiration is a two-edged sword, because it can also make me feel like I’ll never be that good at anything.
I daydream of a balanced life, where I do yoga and walk, and have time to write, and have plenty of time to make things, whatever they are. Where I am careful about my food, and eat with the seasons, healthy and yummy all together. In this fantasy, I’m also calm and content because of the balance, and those two – the calm and the balance – feed each other. And me. Those weekends where I take a little adventure somewhere, Queens or Chinatown or somewhere, and where I take a little walk in the park, and I actually do some housework and also knit, I am much happier in a strange way than I am at the end of those weekends where I have just knitted on the couch for the whole weekend and watched good movies. It’s that balance thing, obviously. Of course, I don’t live in fantasy land, I live in a life that is mostly taken up by my job, family I enjoy talking with on the telephone, unpleasant tasks to do like laundry and cleaning up after dinner, etc., and then the obvious need for sleep. Not much time is left. Still, I do have that hour five days a week, from 5 to 6.
For a while, I’m taking a blog reading break. I hope you will still read mine even if I am on a temporary hiatus and [very painfully] not reading yours, though I understand if you unsubscribe. Blogging is a community thing – we get to know each other, we comment on each other’s posts, we follow the parts of our lives that we share. I find myself wondering how Jocelyn‘s class is going, what’s going on with Kty, over in Paris, etc. We are real to each other in a funny and kind of unreal way, so I feel bad turning away from reading all the posts I enjoy. But I’ve realized that I’m reading about others’ lives at the expense of living my own. You wouldn’t want to do that for yourself, either. I will continue to write on this blog for my own pleasure and documentation, and hope you stick with me. I’ve just got to get off this brain crack and get busy.
i’ve got WAY too many projects underway! why do i do this?!
You hear it a lot on television these days, where it seems like every show has at least one scene in an AA meeting: you have to take a fearless moral inventory. Although I think it’s a good idea for everyone to take a fearless moral inventory — AA or not – today I was thinking about taking a fearless knitting bag inventory. It’s a version of WOTN Mondays, but on Tuesday.
So what’s on the needles? There’s one I can’t reveal here, the wedding shawl, but here we go:
2nd Kai-Mei, ready to work the heel
My Kai-Mei socks – I’ve been sneaking little wearings of the finished sock because it’s so dang wonderful. Madelinetosh sock, in crow – feels kind of hard when you’re knitting it, but as the fabric flows from the needles, it’s softer than you think it’ll be. And when you soak it and block it? Really so nice. The pattern is clever and fun to knit, but when I was knitting the first sock I was just going on faith (Cookie A faith) because I couldn’t see how it was going to work. I highly recommend the pattern and the yarn.
OK, next?
oh, my dearly beloved Ishbel, languishing....
I do love this Ishbel, knit with madelinetosh lace, in lettuce. It’ll be my 3rd (why do I think “she’ll be my third”?), and the pattern is fun and the color is great and I love the whole deal but it’s been set aside for so long that I struggle to pick it up again. Once I finish the wedding shawl I’ll return to this because it’s going to be fantastic.
Next?
what is wrong with me?!
Stop it, me! Stop! Why did I start this one?! I had plenty to work on, the last thing I needed to do was to start another project, but I did. This is Baktus, and I got about 1/3 of the way through it with Noro Silk Garden Sock (pictured above, the yarn cake) when I decided that I’d rather alternate the Noro with a black yarn. So even though I had no business starting this one in the first place, I frogged it and started over, alternating it with a KnitPicks Essential Kettle Dyed, in soot. [Lori, do not start another project!!]
such a 3-D blankie!
Totally Autumn, which I’m knitting with Cascade 220 Heather in chocolate, so it’ll be more like a blanket. The photo represents the length I get from one skein; since we want it to be ~6 feet in length, I’ll need 7 skeins and of course I’d bought 6. Luckily the sale is still on at Webs, so I bought additional skeins.
Next?
hanging my mondo head in shame and denial
This project, the Mondo Cardigan in madelinetosh merino (graphite) has been so painful. I had enough yarn to complete the sweater, but I foolishly didn’t look at all the skeins before I started. One of the lovely things about madelinetosh yarns is the variability in color, but this time it bit me in the butt. When I got to this point on the first sleeve, I noticed that my last two skeins were quite obviously blue. That would not work. I couldn’t find any graphite in any of the online stores, so (to use Yarn Harlot’s phrase) I threw up the Bat Signal in the rav forums, pleading and begging. Very kind raveler Glennae offered to sell me two of her skeins, which looked like a match to mine, but that would leave her with an insufficient amount of yarn to knit a sweater – the reason she bought it. I didn’t want to leave her in that spot, so I basically just went into denial and ignored the problem. Then, last weekend, I “randomly” decided to look through ravelers’ stashes to see if anyone had any of this yarn, and found Jenny – boopersin on ravelry. Jenny, O Jenny, my new BFF and savior. I wrote her asking if she’d sell, told her my sob story, and she quickly agreed. Isn’t she wonderful? Friend her immediately if you’re on rav, she’s a keeper (and Glennae too, if you don’t know her yet). So Jenny’s two skeins are winging (or brown trucking) their way to me, which means I’ll be able to finish my Mondo Cardigan. Whew.
Next?
froth and beads
Is this technically “on the needles,” given the fact that I’ve obviously pulled out the needles? Apparently not. It’s gorgeous. It’s Liquid Silver, by Rosemary Hill, with Elann Silken Kydd, a luscious and halo-ey mohair and silk blend, with glass beads. I started knitting it when I first returned to knitting a couple of years ago, and honestly, it was beyond my beginner’s skills. I struggled with the very thin yarn on the very slippery needles, with nothing on hand to thread the beads onto the yarn. So I got this far and then put it away. Apparently at some point I pulled the needles out – to use them for another project, probably? – but I don’t remember doing that. The pattern would be very easy for me now, so I hope to frog this and just start over with the same pattern. After all, I have the beads.
I know this is supposed to be a fearless inventory, but I’m not being fully honest here. There’s a sweater in progress, halfway up the back but I don’t like it so I’ll frog it and reuse the yarn, and a Christmas stocking for one of my girls, just begun and set aside.
There. Now I’ve been really fearless, I’ve confessed my excess. I feel much better. And I just noticed how many of my projects are made with madelinetosh yarn. I love her.
on accents
Although I can quash it with a great deal of focused effort, I have a pretty thick Texas accent. People in NY usually say “oh, you have such a great southern accent” which would horrify southerners and Texans, equally. But that’s ok, I can’t tell the difference between Staten Island, Long Island, Bronx, and NJ accents. I don’t blame them. People who are well-versed in Texas accents would immediately identify mine as the north Texas/west Texas/hick version. It really is awl, not oil, frah not fry, and if I’m very tarred (not tired), it can even be aint not ant (with a nod to this brilliant poster by a wonderful artist I know). But anyway, over the years I’ve loved and hated my accent, accepted it and tried to eliminate it – mainly because Yankees tend to think you’re stupid if you sound like me. My ear is so finely tuned, I can hear the residual Texas accent underneath the voices of actors who have undoubtedly trained for hours and hours to eliminate it. Ha – gotcha.
No surprise, when I’m tired or when I talk about Texas or when I talk to other Texans, my accent …. well, it expands. That’s a nice way to say it. It deepens. It gets thicker. And the muscles in my face that form words feel familiar again, and something clicks in my deepest self. Ah, I’m back to me. I actually think my very self changes a little when I talk to a Texan; when I dropped the last daughter off at college, I started talking to a Texan and the people with me kind of stood back in surprise, and told me that I’d changed while talking to her.
So today, in a desperate quest to locate my GRE scores, since ETS only keeps them for 5 years, I decided to try my former graduate program to see if they kept them as part of my application package. I emailed the generic Graduate Office Person, described my request as a likely wild goose chase, and clicked send. Within a few minutes I got a call from Chris, who said she did indeed have my scores. And she was a Texan (no surprise, since I was calling the University of Texas at Austin). And I felt happier than you can imagine, like I’d returned to the groove of my familiar. It’s such a funny thing, the way we can feel at home with sound, and smell, and the rhythm of an accent. I didn’t want to let her go, and stretched the conversation out as much as possible.
bah y’all (translation: goodbye everyone!)
listen!
flashing back to the great year of 1977 via photos
I graduated from high school in Wichita Falls, TX, in 1977. The local radio station, KTRN, did this thing where randomly, at the end of a popular song, they’d play “KTRN flash….back!” and then play the song again. I remember driving to my job at Treasure City one afternoon, listening to the Captain and Tennille singing Love Will Keep Us Together on the radio, and as the song neared the last few notes, I said out loud the KTRN flashback deal, and then that’s what happened. I was so thrilled by my anticipation, mostly because boy did I love that song.
The day after I graduated, I moved to Austin (which is really the only place to be, in Texas, if you’re a thinking person). I’d lived there a number of times before, and loved the hippie vibe, the weirdness of Austin – immortalized for the last many years in t-shirts saying “Keep Austin Weird” – and the strange characters like Leslie, the cross-dressing homeless guy who looked damn good in his bikini and high heels (from the back, anyway). When I’d lived there three years earlier at age 14, my dad would take me to the Armadillo (Armadillo World Headquarters, if you weren’t a regular) where we heard live music by Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, Willie Nelson (duh), and Linda Ronstadt. When I’d lived there even earlier, around age 9, my mother would take me to The Broken Spoke with her, a dive-y saloon where Janis Joplin got her start. Armadillo is gone, but the Broken Spoke is still there, and it still looks like the same dive-y saloon.
So this morning, when I saw this idea to search flickr for a particular year and post my favorite photo, of course I immediately thought of 1977 and Austin. I can feel it on my skin and in my bones, I can smell it, I hear it in my mind’s ear as clearly as the traffic below on Madison Ave. I couldn’t limit myself to one favorite photo, I found two that captured a couple ways of being a Texan.
This one is from a chili cookoff in San Marcos, a small town just south of Austin (now, it’s more like a far-flung suburb). What’s more Texas than a chili cook-off! This one isn’t at all self-conscious, like the fancy ones in Terlingua. The cowboy hats, those make my heart race. The very un-PC (now) “Indians,” what were they about and what did they have to do with chili? Whatever. I know just how it felt to be there, even though I wasn’t there. Thanks, Don Hudson, for sharing.
chili cook-offs should all be like this
And these, from Austin in the summer of 1977. Every year since 1963, there has been a party celebrating Eeyore’s birthday, on the last Saturday of April. It’s something of a free-for-all, a big costume party, a day to eat and drink and play silly games like sack races and egg toss (adults attend, by the way, it’s not an event for kids brought by their parents). There is a photo set on flickr of the 1977 party, courtesy of digitalmovie. I went to the party that year, but didn’t see myself.
What year would you pick?
hard yarns and fun places to go
I had a wonderful weekend – got a lot done on the wedding dress (but not too much, since Marnie is coming for a fitting at the beginning of May), had some great food, got outside a bit, and did a bit of knitting on my blanket:
love the pattern
I do love the pattern – Totally Autumn, by Anne Hanson – it’s great fun to knit, and the scrunchy dimensionality of it is fun to touch. The yarn, though, not as much. I’m using Cascade 220 for the first time, and finding it a bit hard. Ravelry lists it as the most popular yarn, and I got it on a great sale at Webs, but it’s not soft, and the hand is a bit heavy at this point. We’ll see how it goes; it’ll be just fine for what it is, but I’m not sure I’d use this yarn for anything that needed to go against my skin.
we had joy we had fun, we had blanket in the sun
And in other news, I may just be taking an exciting trip in September. I’m not sure yet, there are some impending changes in my life that make it a little uncertain, but if I do go, here’s the masthead for that blog:
I really did love Vietnam, so much, and I’ve heard that Laos is amazing. I hope I hope I hope I hope I hope……….
on the pleasures of making shit
A few days ago, I was thinking about the different names for creative people – artist, craftsman, artisan, crafter, and then the specifics, like knitter, quilter, furniture maker, etc. Today I am sewing, working on my daughter’s wedding dress, and the living room is my messy workspace. As I was stepping around papers spread on the floor, I glanced at my Shaker box on the coffee table and was just filled with pleasure, the pleasure of the colors, the yarn, the textures, the messy pile. And I saw my sunny sewing table and felt such happiness. And the dress pieces, stacked on the table waiting for me.
beautiful, beautiful projects in mid-making
such a lovely place to sew
beautiful green Italian linen, waiting to be sewn
And I didn’t care one little bit what I call myself, or what it is I do. I make shit. And that makes me happier than I can possibly say.
casting on for a new blanket…
I guess I’m in the middle of the road, in the scheme of numbers of works-in-progress. Some knitters are relatively monogamous (or so I hear), focusing on one or two projects until they are completed, before starting another. And obviously, other knitters seem kind of addicted to casting on new projects (I totally get this, and am usually trying to resist the urge). I have a few projects on the needles now, for different purposes:
- the secret wedding shawl, secret only in its final appearance
- my 2nd Kai-Mei sock, which is in my category ‘subway knitting’
- the green lace-weight Ishbel, languishing in my beautiful Shaker box until I finish the shawl
- my mondo cable cardigan, languishing because I’m afraid I won’t have enough yarn to finish it but I tell myself I’m not working on it until I finish the shawl
The shawl is my most important project, but you know how it goes. There are times when you feel kind of shaky, or kind of exhausted, and don’t have the necessary focus and calm required to knit cobweb-weight yarn on tiny needles….and yet you really want to knit and veg with some mindless tv. I could just pick up the sock and work on it, but that’s so perfect for subway knitting, I want to save it for my commute.
SO! Last night I cast on a new project. I’m sure, if you’re a knitter, you are aware of the huge yarn sale that Webs has been advertising. I bought six skeins of Cascade 220 with this project in mind; it’s a heathered yarn, in rich chocolate. It perfectly matches my brown leather sofa, so that’ll be sweet and warm in winter.
This is my first Anne Hanson pattern, and there will be many more. I always enjoy her work, and have several of her shawls, sweaters, and socks in my faves and queue. I’m knitting the Totally Autumn throw, from Knitty. In this rich, heavy, brown wool it will have a very different look than you see on the Knitty pattern page, but it will be perfect for me:
close-up
look at the dimensionality!
Now, though, I’ve piddled long enough, finished 3 cups of coffee, read all the items in my google reader, checked all my daily sites, and knitted a couple of rows on this project. I’m off to get dressed and start sewing the lovely wedding dress for Marnie. Pics to come, I hope!
New Yorkers are friendly, we really are!
Well….it’s who a great many of us are, a good deal of the time. Last night on the subway, I saw something happen that is pretty ordinary, but I’ll bet it doesn’t fit with most people’s ideas about New Yorkers. I didn’t know any of the people involved, but for the purposes of telling the story, I’m going to randomly assign names to the primary people involved. It’ll make the story much easier to follow than if they’re called “the guy” or “the other guy.” So here goes:
The train is packed, like it has been lately. People are jammed against the doors, those in the center of the aisle are reaching their hands up to touch the ceiling in order to stabilize themselves a little bit since they can’t reach a pole (though, it’s probably true that they couldn’t fall if they wanted to, given the crowd). People are mostly patient, even if someone else’s bag was poking their back, or touching their face. Mostly patient. When the train is crowded like this, it can be hard to get out at your stop if you’re not standing right by the door. So anyway, we come to one of the major stops, the doors open, and Bob, a somewhat older guy, gets up from his seat and pushes through the crowd to exit the train. Jim, who was sitting next to Bob, sees a folded piece of paper that Bob apparently dropped. Jim picks it up and starts waving it and shouting at Bob, trying to get his attention and return the paper. But Bob is already out of the train and in the crowd on the platform. The crowd in the train just relays the dropped paper, person to person, out of the car and into the crowd on the platform, where it finally makes its way to Jim, who looks surprised. I saw him smile as the doors closed and we pulled out of the station.
It’s really not unusual. When I was first visiting New York before I moved here, I was often lost or confused and I always received kind help from complete strangers. Once, a woman overheard me talking about my destination and told me that I was on the wrong train, how to get to the right one, and when we got to the appropriate stop, she got off the train and escorted me through a huge station to the right train. That one still floors me – I’m always happy to give people directions, or steer them in the right way if they’re confused, but even I wouldn’t do that, mostly because I don’t have that kind of time to spare. When a tourist asks someone for directions in the subway, other people standing around are likely to chime in and suggest different/better routes, if appropriate. What I typically see is an open willingness to give directions, but not gushy overt friendliness – after giving directions, New Yorkers immediately turn back to what they were doing, reading the paper, talking, thinking, playing a game on their iPhones, whatever. So it may not be the kind of friendliness you’ll see in the southern states, but it is just the kind you need in New York.
what does your music list say about you? Mine? I love disco.
I just finished a long run of music that made me so happy, and I realized it was a mishmash of genres, probably a lot like yours. Right?
three times a lady – the commodores
crazy train – ozzy osbourne
jesus just left chicago – zz top
let’s get it on – marvin gaye
the world at large – modest mouse
seems like old times (from annie hall) – diane keaton
sugar daddy (soundtrack to hedwig & the angry inch) – john cameron mitchell
wilkommon (sountrack to cabaret) – alan cumming
blue grass breakdown – bill monroe
keep living – jean grae
ode to billy joe – bobby gentry
believe – cher
yellow dog blues – geoff muldaur & the texas sheiks
cello suite V in c minor – rostropovich
hablame – gipsy kings
light & day – polyphonic spree
souvenirs – john prine
liquid dance – a r rahman
sing – annie lennox
bang bang – sara schiralli
boogie shoes – k c and the sunshine band
One of my friends from graduate school did a lot of research on personality and what we know about others from their “behavioral residue” – i.e., how their rooms or offices look, their amazon wishlists, their iPod music lists, etc. So you see a photo of someone’s dorm room and you have a really good sense of them, right? He’s not very neat, he has travel posters on his walls, CDs scattered on his desk, a black leather jacket hung on the chair, and a dead plant. Based on nothing more than that information, it turns out that your description of his personality would be a very good match to a description offered by his friends, by people who know him quite well.
Of course we all know this and operate on it in the world. When you go to someone’s house for the first time, don’t you look at their bookshelves? Their music collection? You probably do it to find points of connection, but you’re also looking for more information about them. You scroll through a friend’s iPod for the same reasons.
What does my recent list of music say about me? If I’d jotted down more, you’d have thought “wow, she really loves disco.”
look at kai-mei!
How do you think you pronounce that name, Kai-Mei? In my mind it’s always Ky-May. Anyway, here’s sock number 1, started and finished in subway rides:
top view of the foot
close-up of the lace detail, very neat to do!
and outside of the foot
Doing the other sock involves working in reverse – this pair has a right sock and a left sock, which is kind of fun.
news about a sunny weekend – probably similar to yours if yours involved bonnets
It was a gorgeous weekend, wasn’t it. I ate my annual box of Peeps (I am a traditionalist and don’t cotton to Halloween and Christmas peeps….the horror!). I trucked out to Astoria to have Sunday mid-afternoon lunch at my favorite Greek restaurant, only to find it closed, for Easter, I assume. Shoulda thought about that one. But who cares, it was a beautiful drive, and a very nice walk. And when I came home, I had Greek salad.
Saturday brought the annual pillow fight, in Union Square –
pillow fight with an ironic arched eyebrow and cameras everywhere
And Sunday brought the annual Easter Parade up Fifth Avenue –
so very dandy!
I got out and about, in Riverside Park and then back up Broadway – so beautiful, gauzy springy blossomy yumminess:
Riverside Park, coming back to life
tulip tree in bloom, Broadway & ~107th
And I saw this Saturday – maybe you’ve already seen it, but it was new to me. I always thought Mary Poppins was just a little bit creepy:
And I’ll leave you with a musical recommendation: Honey Honey, by Feist. Eerie and beautiful, and the video is kind of awesome. I can’t get unstuck from Telephone – Gaga strikes me again – but this song is such a different mood it does have its moments in my earworm list.
Homing in on the toe of my Kai-Mei sock, will post a pic when it’s done. I have to say, that Cookie A is one clever sock designer. Her patterns are such fun, and make you feel like a clever knitter.
spring has sprung and the air is sweet (and yeasty!)
Baking some bread
Making pizza for tonight’s dinner
pizza
Since I’ve been dying for cake: yellow cake with chocolate frosting
AND cutting out a linen dress, cleaning the floors, doing some knitting — because it’s so springy outside, and tomorrow we’re heading out to Astoria, to our favorite Greek restaurant for a leisurely afternoon.
Happy happy spring!
is it aaaaart? or craft?
Back in the years when I was sewing all the time, making my and my kids’ clothes and sewing quilts, that’s what I said. I sew. Yeah, I sew. Now, apparently, I’d refer to myself as a sewist. The first time I read that online, it hit my ear so badly I couldn’t read further. I thought, “sewist? that’s dumb.” But what’s the alternative? Sewer? oops. You’d have to put a hyphen in there so people didn’t think you were describing yourself as a receptacle for human waste. Sew-er. But that just looks dumb.
It’s not dumb, finding a way to transfer something to an identity statement. For physical health, it represents an important psychologist shift to move from “I have diabetes” to “I am a diabetic.” The American Psychological Association requires researchers to name the participants in their experiments as “people with X” so as not to reduce them to a condition. So it’s not dumb! I get it!
But sewist?
And then this morning I read a post on whipup.net that described specific people as makers. “On the front cover appears the work of three makers…” Some of those featured are called stitchers, and of course there are quilters and knitters and artists. The word crafters has something of a shoddy reputation (maybe that’s just me, part of my generation, speaking to glue guns and large plastic canvas stitched with gaudy acrylic yarn fashioned into kleenex box holders hello my dear former mother-in-law).
Which then, inexorably, leads to the debate between art and craft. And by craft, I mean very fine craft, not the plastic canvas craft. Craft as in American Craft. Craft that overlaps quite heavily with art. One of my pet phrases seems to be “overlapping Venn diagrams” — I’ve noticed I say it at least a few times a week, for one reason or another. There is clearly a category of handwork that stays on the crafty side of craft, whose practitioners like to shop at Hobby Lobby or Michael’s, and who undoubtedly get so much pleasure from their handwork….and that’s the point! And there is another clear category of work that stays on the art side of art – work that’s about expressing an idea, presenting a project. Work that can’t exist without highly skilled specific talents, but that is much more about expressing an idea. I adore that category. (And have you seen Art:21 on PBS? YOU SHOULD! Right! Away! You can watch it online, too, for free. I just stumbled upon it last night on streaming Netflix, already in its 5th season.)
And then there’s the larger category of the muddy middle. I adore that category too. The category of breathtaking skill and care. The category that encompasses very fine handwork in quilts, woodworking, needlework, glass, metalwork, printmaking. The category that would include Kellie Wulfsohn‘s quilts:
amazing - double-click to see the detail
The category that would include handmade chairs and tables made with the most incredible attention to detail – I’m blanking on the name of a man who recently died, one of the very best there was. Dang it. Getting old is the pits. The category also includes this: a toilet made of horse dung:
created by Virginia Gardiner
It’s not accidental that she uses poop to make a toilet – it’s part of her project. Is it art? No, but it sure isn’t craft(y) either.
Anyway. Names matter, even if they represent very slippery and porous categories. I have a daughter who is an artist – I’m not an artist. I aspire to Craft. BUT p.s., I am not a sewist. I sew.
To close on a different and hilarious note, this ad from the 1950s:
double-click to see it full size
Here’s what it says in the copy:
Does any man really understand you?
Who knows you as you really are? Does he?
Who knows the secret hopes that warm your heart?
Who knows the dreams you dream, the words you’ve left unspoken?
Who knows the black-lace thoughts you think while shopping in a gingham frock?
Who knows you sometimes long to sleep in pure-silk sheets?
Who knows you’d love to meet a man who’d hold your hand and listen … while you say nothing at all?
Who knows there was a morning when your orange juice sparkled like champagne? [what?]
Who knows the secret, siren side of you that’s female as a silken cat?
WOWIE.
do it anyway.
I was cleaning up my computer desktop at work and found a little text file curiously named “z.txt”. When I opened it, I found this:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
awww.
you’re really no worse than anyone else – give yourself a break, man.
I miss David Foster Wallace. A lot. I find myself thinking about him, about his way of being in the world (and of course the fact that he’s not here). There is a new book coming out titled Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, written by Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky, and this little DFW quote is used in a number of feature articles about the book:
“If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.”
It’s coming out in paper, and in Kindle, and I just preordered the Kindle edition which will release April 13.
It is hard to do that, to be as gentle and compassionate with ourselves as we are with others. (Well, for most people anyway – discounting the truly mean and sadistic.) Of course we know our own true hearts, our own sometimes cruel and mean-spirited thoughts about other people or the world. We know those things about ourselves, and I believe we would be stunned to be let in on the internal dialogue of people we know…..we’d be stunned to learn the things they think, the things they think about us, even though we know we have the same types of thoughts. But we think we are the mean-spirited one, we know that about ourselves. There is a saying in AA (I think?) that goes something like “don’t judge your insides by other peoples’ outsides.” That’s brilliant! We do that, all the time. We struggle, but it looks like other people don’t so we must be failures.
I have a friend who was trying to learn how to knit – to offer a very simple example – and she made mistakes in her first scarf. She had to rip out rows. Her work was flawed and didn’t look all that great. And she thought there was something wrong, she didn’t have the makings of a knitter. But we all make mistakes, and rip out rows, and are aware of that weird place under the arm where we had too many stitches and tried to fix it by doing some strange decreases that really don’t look all that good but if we keep our arm at our side maybe no one will notice and anyway I don’t feel like ripping back so many rows I just want to get the damned thing done.
Of course there’s a fine line between being compassionate with ourselves and excusing ourselves a little too easily. I usually err on the side of keeping myself on the hook, flaying myself with recrimination for every lazy thing, every uncaring thing, I shouldn’t be so harsh, I should’ve I could’ve I would’ve. I don’t want to fail to take responsibility for what I do and say, probably to a pathological extent. But compassion….I could think about how I try so hard, and how I mean well and struggle with my own difficult places just as others do.
All at once, spring appeared in the trees and flowers in my city – it sure helps. The pale greens and bright yellows and pinks make me feel expansive, compassionate, open – even with myself. I wish I’d had my camera with me this morning to show you, but someone else’s photo will suffice for now:
[photo courtesy of newyork808]
gee, I guess I’m really a sock knitter!
I am a social psychologist; most people think ‘psychologist’ means therapist, but clinical psychology is only one subdiscipline. There are cognitive psychologists, who do research to understand the way we think (and other stuff), developmental psychologists, who do research to understand….um…. human development across the lifespan, industrial/organizational psychologists who apply psychology to work, health psychologists who study mind-body stuff and health communication etc. Social psychologists do research on all kinds of things, but the bottom line is that humans are social animals, and our behavior is affected by that fact, whether we like it or not. Social psychologists have done some really fascinating studies – some quite controversial, like Zimbardo’s prison studies at Stanford in the 1970s, and Milgram’s obedience studies at Yale in the 1950s.
One very interesting line of research concerns how we understand and learn who we are. We observe ourselves! We don’t realize we know something, or like something, or do something, until we notice that we do it a lot. This is primarily a knitting blog, believe it or not, so let me put this all together: Apparently I’m a sock knitter! I didn’t know that, and if asked to describe myself as a knitter, I don’t think I’d ever say that I’m a sock knitter. (Note, I could also say that I’m a cowl knitter and that would be true…. maybe it’s that I’m an accessory knitter.)
I just noticed that all the posts showing on this page feature socks. And if I look at my ravelry project page – the sock edition – I see 9 pairs of socks.
Hi. My name is Lori and I’m a sock knitter. What do you know about yourself from observing?
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