BLOG: For some weird reason, my blog has suddenly become a destination for people from all over the world, I have no idea what that’s about:

visitors in the last 24 hours

The searches that bring people to my blog are varied; ~50% are about knitting, and the rest are about such a mish-mash I wonder what the searchers think when they get to my blog and see that perhaps I used one word in their search somewhere in my whole site.  Anyway, it’s new, this global deal. I have a reliable cluster of visitors from the UK and from Paris, and then usually just a random one here and there. Late last week I had a flurry from Africa, which was particularly startling because I never have African visitors and I’ve wondered why.

KNITTING: I finally finished the body of Marnie’s sweater and have started a sleeve, which is going pretty quickly:

whee! starting sleeve #1

I think today I’m going to go ahead and soak and block the body of the sweater, so I can seam the shoulders and do the turtleneck. I worry about hitting a slump with the second sleeve, so I want to have something else to do, and I also want to see it so close to finished that it pulls me forward. It’s been such a mild winter I really hope she gets to wear it.

READING: If you’re the same kind of nerd as me, you might like the book I read yesterday (Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, by Mark Garvey). It’s a loving look at The Elements of Style, at E. B. White and Harold Ross and The New Yorker, and the world of people who are passionate about this little book including a host of famous writers who talk about their relationship with the little book. It’s a quick read (about as quick as The Elements of Style, for that matter), and you may — like me — read it with a silly grin on your face. Since I didn’t go online yesterday, I read that book, I read this week’s issue of The New York Review of Books, I pulled everything off my bookshelves and reorganized (and found of bunch of surprises, wowie), I cleaned the bathroom top to bottom, I did some shopping, and I spent a lot of time keeping my husband company. We watched Thirteen Days, that 2000 movie about the Cuban missile crisis — much more his kind of movie than mine, and I was only 3 when it happened. But when the spy planes flew low over the Cuban stockpiles, my heart raced and that surprised me.

HELP: A friend here in Manhattan is heading up a project called Legal Aid Society Trafficking Victims Legal Defense & Advocacy Project (she’s a lawyer for Legal Aid). Victims of sex trafficking are removed from their circumstances and hidden away in safety; she has organized a number of small knitting groups for them and is seeking donations of yarn and needles. Many of these women are from other countries, but some are US citizens. Their larger needs are more urgent, of course, but the knitting efforts are designed to help their spirits, and we know how well this works. The women have nothing and the woman at Legal Aid who is organizing this for them has no specific wish list. Just think about what any new knitter might need/want — yarn, needles/hooks, a nice project bag maybe, notions, anything at all. Others are organizing clothing and coat drives for the women, so we’re the lucky ones who get to give them this kind of joy. If you have any interest in helping, just let me know and I’ll give you the mailing address for the woman at Legal Aid. I posted a note in a couple of Ravelry forums and several knitters are sending boxes, but [unfortunately] there’s a steady stream of women so the need doesn’t stop.

Have a wonderful Sunday, whatever you’re up to! I’m looking forward to spending a few hours with a certain humpbacked wicked king.

Remember how I had to frog Marnie’s Moby sweater? I frogged it completely and just started over, and I’m finally back at the point I was in the first edition (I’ve decided to refer to them as editions, like books). So here I am:

Ambergris, by Ann Weaver (2nd edition)

I do note with satisfaction that the cable ropes are all done correctly in this edition; there was one error in the first version that would’ve bugged me forever, so you know, you take what comfort you can from a situation like this. I’ve already divided at the sleeves, so now I’m doing the front up to the neck, and then I’ll do the back. Then two sleeves, each with cable ropes up the center, assembly, and a turtleneck. I hope I can finish this while Marnie still has time to wear it this winter; since she lives in Chicago, the odds are pretty good.

Tonight I’m having a date with Will, which I’m really looking forward to. We’re going to a cool little independent bookstore on Prince St. (McNally Jackson) and then over to an Indian food restaurant he loves, for dosas. It’s been such a warm and dry winter, it doesn’t feel like January at all — but I’m not complaining, especially for this evening, as we tramp around that great little neighborhood. One truly wonderful thing about all three of my kids is that we share a love of words and books. It manifests itself differently in the three of them, but I do share something special with each one of them around books, and that makes me happier than you can imagine. I like to think it’s my gift to them.

* * *

Here’s the next writing prompt — a 600-word story (a narrative describing a shared experience) told from the “we” perspective. No first person pronouns allowed! My first thought was to put the couple in therapy and have them telling competing narratives about something, but I got this idea and ran with it instead. It’s a piece of fiction, again, but again it uses bits of real experience for texture. My husband and I did go to Luang Prabang, which means the details of place are true, but the rest is entirely made up:

We woke up very early that morning because we wanted to witness the monks’ morning alms ritual; since we were staying at a hotel on the other side of the Mekong River, we had to get up early enough to walk across that long scary bridge – remember, honey? – and it made us nervous because of the traffic, especially in the dark. We felt so exhausted when the alarm went off, but we both knew how much you wanted to see it so off we went.

Right – it really wasn’t the kind of thing you like to do sugar plum, you’d rather visit the markets and the food stalls, but you were such a good sport about it. We just had no idea how it was going to turn out, did we? We thought we’d go to the main street, kneel at the curb, and watch the Lao women putting little clumps of rice in each of the monks’ baskets, and then get some breakfast on the way back to our hotel – remember how much we loved the breakfast at that one place? But it didn’t turn out like that at all. And you’re usually such a quiet guy, avoiding trouble. Sure, you’ll speak up if you feel you’re getting ripped off, but you never get involved in violence. You just never do that.

So there we were, walking across that bridge, in the dark. Remember how there weren’t any lights of any kind? Not even headlights, since cars weren’t allowed on the bridge? And remember how tiny the walkway was for pedestrians, with broken boards and loose nails? And how quiet the morning was – we heard the river, the cyclists passing on the bridge, the early morning fishermen, and the birds? You were commenting on the birds just as we left the bridge and crossed onto the sidewalk. We had to stop because your long skirt got caught in the clasp of your sandal, and you were kneeling down to untangle it. We were both a little bit on edge – do you remember why, now? It’s hard to imagine why we felt so unsettled, in Luang Prabang. We’d had such a great time, and felt safer there than anywhere else we’d been in Southeast Asia. Maybe it was just the very early hour, combined with the darkness that we’re not used to, since we’re from Manhattan where it’s never dark. Maybe we were just kind of punchy from exhaustion.

Well sugar, you say “we” were punchy, but “we” weren’t really punchy – you were. Remember?

You’re right – you were singing and laughing and commenting on how beautiful the river was in the dark, and how many stars you saw. OK, “we” weren’t punchy, point taken. But we were both a little anxious in the utter darkness, that’s definitely true. And neither of us expected someone to grab you – you have to agree with that!

No, we certainly never expected something like that to happen, that’s true.  Did you see him coming?

No, remember how we were both bending over – you were squatting – trying to get your skirt free? The guy just came out of nowhere, it seemed, and leaned over you, saying something we couldn’t understand.

You did overreact just a little bit honey, you have to admit. If it hadn’t been so dark we might’ve noticed that he was wearing orange robes, and had shaved his head. You didn’t have to punch the poor guy, he was just offering to help us! Granted, it was dark and you were trying to protect me, but come on. You punched a monk.

Over the years, my subscribing habits have reflected ongoing passions. A few years ago, when I was a very-involved food blogger, I rabidly consumed other food blogs; now, if I don’t have much time, I just mark everything as read in the food blog folder and don’t bother. Now, if I don’t have much time, I limit my reading to the personal blogs, followed by the knitting blogs, followed by the reading blogs. Actually, it depends on my mood, the specific order, but I generally try to make time to at least scan through those categories.

Today I thought I’d share the reading sites with you, in case you find something of interest. In some cases the site offers criticism, in other cases it provides longform reading. At any rate, these are sites I really love for one reason or another, and share them gladly:

A.V. Club — this site is run by the people behind The Onion, but there’s nothing fake or jokey about it. I particularly love the tv and film criticism (here’s a post about the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad), which is always thoughtful, even if I don’t always [necessarily] agree.

Big Think — this site focuses on a range of topics including arts and culture, belief, ethics, history, identity, life and death, and a bunch of others. It’s not my favorite site in the list, but there are gems now and then, like this interview with Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist who talks about the mysteries of her own brain, and making it as a lady scientist (my words, not hers!).

Brain Pickings — I mentioned this site at the end of last year as my favorite (new to me) website. The posts are always interesting, and the blogger seems to have an endless supply of ideas and topics to explore. I’m very eager to read this post recommending 9 books on reading and writing. In addition to great information, I love the site design, which is fresh and clean.

Gangrey — the site’s subtitle is “prolonging the slow death of newspapers,” which makes me smile. Each post presents a newspaper article the blogger appreciates for one reason or another; s/he provides the link and a small bit of context, so it’s really a curated set of links but I often really enjoy the pieces and might not have found them, otherwise. For instance, this piece titled Salt is “a tale of Texas justice and mysterious salt poisoning.” Well, I want to read that one!

McNalley Jackson Bookmongers — this is a book shop’s tumblr, so the posts are very brief….often just a literary quote, or a link to a post from another site, but I enjoy it often enough to keep it in my list.

Melville House — the Moby Lives site, if you know it by that name. I can’t wait to check out the books on the Man Asia Prize shortlist. The site offers literary criticism, insider-publishing posts, interviews with authors, everything you might expect from a smart publisher.

Pageviews — the books blog on the NY Daily News website. The Daily News isn’t a hotbed of intellectual rigor, but this blog is consistently thoughtful and takes on interesting books and writers.

This Recording — very new to me, so I don’t know much about the site except that I tend to love it. You can just follow the posts on books if you like, but the posts on tv and film have been quite good, so I just follow the whole site.

The New York Review of Ideas – a digital magazine of NYU’s graduate ‘Journalism of Ideas’ class of 2011. Another new-to-me site, but I’ve enjoyed it so far.

To Be Shelved – with the subtitle “judging books by their covers since 2010″, this blog is written by a woman who really loves books, and who works in news design. I bookmarked this post she wrote last November about John Updike, and just haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

Longreads — along with Brain Pickings, my favorite site in this collection. With word counts greater than 1,500 words, these are the articles you want to read when you have a bit of time. It’s another curated collection of writing found around the web, and I count on this site to collect stuff I want to read. They never let me down.

Obit Magazine — bear with me on this one. It’s about death, yeah, so it’s really about life, of course. There are book reviews and a blog, and I consistently enjoy the pieces that grab my attention.

If I’m in a rush, I just focus my attention on Brain Pickings and Longreads and let the rest go, but they’re all worth a look!

***

Just a couple more things to share and then I’ve got to get busy; this Gandhi manuscript isn’t going to edit itself!

it snowed our last night in Atlantic City, making the sad, worn-out place seem even sadder and worner-outer.

the lobby of Caesar's -- a little something for everyone! Fake Roman ruins, a Chinese New Year tree of lanterns, and a giant snowflake hanging just off to the left. They're taking no chances.

for Veera Välimäki's new shawl, Color Affection, I just received these three skeins from The Plucky Knitter (MC Fingering -- top to bottom: elegant elephant, Sammy Samerson, and flannel). Too much knitting, too little time, man!

And on that note, I say ta-ta! (for now, of course)

1540 yards of fingering weight -- for the perfect sweater if only I could remember

I know it wasn’t a pattern I’d made before, and I think it was a cardigan. I think I actually wrote it down on a little notepad file but didn’t save it. Curses! Foiled again! Dadgummit! If you have a favorite cardigan knit with fingering, please let me know!

It’s c.o.l.d here this morning; it’s risen to 14 degrees and heading up to 29. Perhaps its because of my flu, but I just cannot get warm. I’m wearing a long-sleeved thin undershirt, a turtleneck, a cardigan, and a fleece jacket on top of it all, and I have a scarf around my neck and thick socks on my feet. I’m covered with a hand-knit blanket, and another blanket, and I’m still cold. I had a big bowl of very hot oatmeal and cups of steaming tea, and I’m still cold. I think the flu must be ramping up the chill.

On that shivery note, back under the covers for me. Don’t forget to suggest sweater patterns if you have a fave! Stay well y’all.

This weekend I did a lot of knitting, as I mentioned, and just shared the pictures with Marnie so I thought I’d put them here, too. This is the Ambergris sweater designed by Ann Weaver, which she [obviously] based on Moby Dick:

here's the front -- see how the design elements extend down into the ribbing?

close-up view of the flukes and ropes -- i really love both those elements

the side seam, a kind of whalebone inset

It’s great fun to knit, but it requires attention because there’s a lot going on at once — several charts, shaping, and the addition of a side chart in one small section (not shown here). I made a large Excel spreadsheet — oh how I love Excel spreadsheets — plotting out each row on the whole body. It makes it much simpler and so far I haven’t needed to frog anything….good, because the yarn is sticky and has long alpaca fibers here and there, which would make frogging a slow process. I’m really enjoying working on it, and love to imagine Marnie wearing it. The pleasures of knitting something special for someone you love, when they’ve had a part in the project so you know they’ll enjoy it.

*cough* *shiver* Back under the covers for me. Happy knitting, y’all.

Last night we went to the Concert for Peace at St John the Divine. The primary reason I wanted to go was that Judy Collins was on the program, and I’ve loved her beautiful voice since I first encountered it back in 1978. She’s had quite a difficult life, losing her son to drug addiction and suicide, and anyone whose child commits suicide awes me with their strength and courage to go on. When we walked the block and a half to the cathedral, I was struck anew by how dazzling it is that I live so close to such a place; imagine if I lived a block away from Notre Dame de Paris, or the stunning cathedral at Chartres. If I lived so close, and could walk over there on a whim….but I do live so close to a similarly-magnificent place, even if it doesn’t have the same kind of history.

the always-gorgeous St John the Divine

It was beautifully decorated, and packed with people. The concert started at 7 and we left our apartment at 6:30 for the 5-minute walk; by the time we arrived, the only empty seats were in the very back rows. I took the shot above relatively close to the front, in the paid section — $60/ticket. We were there for the free seats, and from where we sat in the very back, we couldn’t see anything at all but there were giant speakers placed in our back section so we’d be able to hear. And THEN this woman standing in the aisle next to us asked if we’d like to take two extra ticketed seats she had, because her friends didn’t show up. Why yes please, we’d love to do that. So we sat in the 5th row from the performers. Unbelievable. Unfortunately, our seats were in the middle of the row, so if we wanted to leave we really couldn’t — and I’d have wanted to leave. Ah well.

Judy Collins and Jessye Norman, a couple of feet from me. Judy was performing, Jessye was just there like the rest of us lucky schlubs, to listen.

After opening remarks by the Dean of the Cathedral, Harry Smith spoke briefly, and then introduced Judy Collins. She talked for a bit, sang a bit of a song she’d written after attending Duke Ellington’s funeral there at the cathedral, and then launched into an a capella version of Both Sides Now. She sounded absolutely amazing, but she started wandering around with the lyrics; in the second stanza, she was just pulling lines randomly from different stanzas and I saw this fleeting expression on her face where she realized she was off, but she plowed forward anyway. That stanza didn’t make sense and it didn’t rhyme, but it didn’t matter. She sang the rest perfectly, and I cried, a lot. Her sweet quavery voice, lifting and breaking so high, reaching the notes….the lyrics themselves….it was just lovely.

there she stood, singing clear-voiced and beautifully

We came home and had a beautiful meal my husband made, tandoori chicken, and chicken with green curry. Broccoli in curry and ginger. Rice. It was mouthwatering, mouth-stinging, and oh-so-good. Just before midnight we walked down to Riverside Drive, which is always surprisingly empty at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and stood in the middle of the street and kissed each other. Here’s to a new and improved year, with hope for something especially good to happen to my husband.

If you’re from the south, I know you’re eating something with blackeyed peas today, for good luck. I made sure that the first thing I put in my mouth this morning was sweet, so sweet things would come out of my mouth this year. And I’ve paid attention to what I’ve been doing today, because whatever you do on New Year’s Day is what you’ll do a lot of in the coming year. So I cooked and knitted:

two blueberry cobblers ready to pop into the oven, for my husband -- Pioneer Woman's blackberry cobbler recipe, quite luscious and simple!

eaten with tortilla chips, Texas Caviar so good it'll make you slap your mama

getting going! got marnie's measurements, so i'm knitting away; 8 more rows to the waist shaping!

button bands and icord edging done -- one sleeve underway!

I imagine we’ll take a walk on this beautiful sunny day — it’s 51 degrees, very unwinter-like! I hope the first day of your new year is as happy and lovely as mine, filled with great food and enjoyable activities, and someone to love. What else do you need.

….family thing that happened this year was the reunion between my son and our entire family, back in February. Thank you Katie, for your hardheadedness.

….website I found is Brain Pickings, which I happily recommend to you!

….place I traveled this year — oh, what a terribly hard decision, given my travels to Turkey, Vietnam, Borneo, Malaysia, Chicago, and Austin — but if I want to choose the most forever-memorable, it’d have to be the Mekong River Delta.

….hard thing that happened this year was saying a final difficult goodbye to my dad.

***

There was a lot of knitting this year — mostly sweaters, which surprises the hell out of me! The best of my 2011 FOs, given how much I wear it, is my Wintry Mix, but Ozma’s Delight is close behind. Most people liked my Ozma’s Delight.

my ravelry page for this year's FO's, organized by favorites.

I also returned to sewing this year (well, I did make Marnie’s wedding dress last year…), making two dresses/tops for myself:

summery aqua -- the other one is purple. I need to wear them a bit more!

On my birthday November 6, I did a nice recap of my just-passed year, so I’ll link to it here to remind myself of all the stuff that happened — mostly good, but when it was bad it was bad, man. In fact, the hard parts were so hard that despite the fact that quantitatively there was so much more good, I kick 2011 in the pants on its way out the door. Sayonara, 2011! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

But I want to close on a note of gratitude instead of the sourness of the bad, because the truth is I have more than my fair share of things to be grateful about. All my children, all 6 of them, are healthy and happy and living good lives. They struggle as we all do, but they achieve and succeed and they’re such good human beings. I’m in very good health and spent another year freelancing, which is much better for me. My husband and I traveled a lot, which is one of the things we do best together. I get to see the world more than I ever dreamed I would, which never fails to amaze me. I have wonderful friends here in New York, and sprinkled around the country and the world, and all of you enrich my life in very real ways. I have intellectual outlets that feed me — my book club and poetry group, for instance — and I live in Manhattan, where there are so many exciting and wonderful things to do, every single day. I have more than enough to eat. WAY more than enough to eat. I am happy.

So happy new year’s eve, y’all. Be safe, and here’s to 2012.

so beautiful -- this is what the back of the sweater will look like, since it's the only area that's not cabled in some way

and here's one of the cable swatches; it's very neat, the way the rope emerges.

I’m actually a little bit afraid of knitting this sweater, just as I was afraid to read Moby Dick (which is the craziest idea in the whole world…really? afraid to read a book?). Just as with the book, I’m afraid it’s beyond me, too complicated for my feeble mind to manage. With the sweater, there are multiple patterns and cables going on simultaneously plus shaping. It’s knit in the round, bottom-up, and splits at the arms. So all the busy business happens simultaneously, and since I knit at night, while watching tv with my husband, when I’m kind of tired, well…..I worry. But I want to do it perfectly, so I’m just going to take my time, take each row for itself and make it right, and it’ll all work out. And perhaps I’ll love the FO as much as I love the book. Probably not, but maybe.

Here’s a funny thing about Christmas songs I found on the NPR music page. I especially love #6, though they’re all funny.

so funny!

Tonight’s the Winter Solstice Concert at St John the Divine, and if I love it half as much as I did last year, it’ll be overwhelming. Happy Friday, y’all! I hope you’re able to enjoy the holiday season and not feel too stressed.

p.s. OH — one more. There are a couple of Ryan Gosling tumblrs, and this is my favorite picture so far:

hey girl.

So when I saw this sweater of course I thought immediately of Marnie:

Ambergris, designed by Ann Weaver

Those whale flukes up the center, the beautiful knots and ropes up the sides, it’s Moby Dick in wool. I have been wanting to knit sweaters for someone other than myself, but Katie lives in Texas and I wasn’t sure Marnie would want one; inspired by this sweater, I sent her the picture this morning, hoping she’d like it. A few emails very quickly exchanged later, and the yarn is on its way and I own the pattern. I’ll be using Valley Yarns Northfield, in charcoal:

Valley Yarns Northfield, in charcoal -- the color of the depths!

I’ll be loathe to set Audrey aside, but so very eager to make this sweater, and for Marnie, I won’t mind a bit. It should be loads of fun to make; I’m changing the neck, to give her a slouchy turtleneck instead of the kind of odd neck it currently has. I can’t wait!! If it’s as great as it seems, I may have to make one for myself, too. I loved Moby Dick so much, it nearly ruined me for reading anything else because nothing compares.

Just sharing my intense enthusiasm……knitters, I know you know what this is like.

So the only Christmas knitting I’m doing (for her, it would actually be Hanukkah knitting!) is a pair of socks for Anna. She’s still a college student, so I have to use superwash yarn that’s tough enough to withstand college machines; this is KnitPicks Stroll Tonal (golden yellow), and it’s the Kai-Mei pattern by Cookie A, which I knit once before. I’m telling you, it’s an absolute blast to knit, and how often do you end up with socks that have a right sock and a left sock?

i really ADORE this pattern

I finished the first sock in a day and a half, and I’ll cast on the second sock tonight. When I finish it, I’ll get back to my beautiful Audrey in Silt.

Happy Wednesday y’all, and if you’re in NYC, stay dry! I have to be out and about all afternoon, and am starting to hate the weather gods, who give us reliably rainy weather on Wednesdays. Come on. Shift it over a day to Tuesdays or Thursdays, at least once in a while.