Clever
“O strengthen me, enlighten me! / I faint in this obscurity, / Thou dewy dawn of memory.” (Ode to Memory, Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Maybe it’s because I’ve been under a lot of stress, or because I don’t get uninterrupted sleep (not to mention not enough sleep), or maybe it’s just because I’m getting older, but my memory is not what it once was. I used to love experiencing my mind working; it was fast, zipping zipping crackling with blue light. I could remember details, texture, nuance, and not only that, it was reliably pretty accurate.
But that was then, and now I just don’t remember — and luckily(?) I also don’t even remember that I don’t remember. It’s not awful, it’s not like I have Alzheimer’s or anything, I’m just forgetful now. Because I hope to age with grace and acceptance, I’ve decided to see this as charming. Isn’t that charming, I have to write everything down. That does just beg the next problem of remembering that (and where) I wrote it down, but you can’t have everything.
my memory bank
I have moleskines stashed everywhere, and going through them can be hilarious. I just thumbed through one, looking for the next clear space, and read this:
“remember the ironing, everything damp & rolled up, stacked in a basket. Huge coke bottle with a metal ‘shower head’ for sprinkling.”
I have no idea. But isn’t that charming? 
Today I’m grateful for moleskines, and a sense of humor.
Never EVER underestimate the power of a nice apology. You’ll win friends and admirers.
DANG IT. I just got an email from The Plucky Knitter — providers of the yarn for my forthcoming Vodka Gimlet — letting me know that due to circumstances beyond her control, my yarn won’t be shipping next week, as promised, but instead mid-October.
Now first, you’d think that since I have three other sweaters ready to cast on, plus a scarf underway, plus a blanket mid-way, this could not come as bad news. You’d be wrong. The color of the yarn I chose (Oz) is just this gorgeous emerald green as you’d expect. Oh so beautiful, breathtaking, I can’t wait to see it. So I was all geared up to be bitter. Indignant. Self-righteous. Mad. Peeved. Pissed off. And all the other synonyms. But her email was just so upset and sorry, and genuine, and filled with remorse from someone who doesn’t usually have to write emails like that, that I couldn’t even be mildly bitter. It’s OK, Sarah. It’s OK. I somehow like you even more, after receiving that email.
It doesn’t hurt that she’s going to include a skein of a new yarn she’ll be stocking in November (Plucky Rustic, an aran-weight wool), and that I get to participate in a private shopping event in her online store, just for those of us who were impacted. You know? That’s what I call customer service. Yay for Sarah, leaving me a bigger fan just as she tells me my yarn will be one month late.
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- Berroco Blackstone Tweed in Evergreen, for my Wintry Mix (Amy Herzog)
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- Cascade 220 Heathers in Montmartre, for my Flux (Signe S. Simonsen)
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- Malabrigo Lace in Sauterne, for another Featherweight Cardigan (Hannah Fettig)
Yeah. I’ve got enough to do. Kelly is helping me work my way through figuring out what size Wintry Mix to knit, given my slightly-different gauge. I have a reliable way of understanding gauge backwards; mine was 19, should’ve been 18, so I thought I was knitting bigger and looser. I teach stats to undergrads, but this is beyond me. And then when you add in ease, well…..boggle. I just can’t figure it out.
And on this post, I log off for the day. A few more hours of work, then some dinner and knitting…..something. Whee!!
just don’t get me started on this, i’m trying to get over it.
I either need to hit someone, have a drink, or take some drugs after reading this article, in which the Tea Party co-founder says that the Tea Party is a victim of the Arizona shooting, and it’s partly Giffords’ fault that she got shot. I don’t talk about politics on this blog — not because I don’t have political opinions, ’cause I do — but because I don’t know, it’s not the place, given that it’s alleged to be a knitting blog.
So imagine my delight to see this on the Serious Eats blog:
you'll want to click to enlarge this, as much as you can! 3 clicks'll get you to huge.
New York is represented by pizza; Texas by steak. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Some may be dicey, I don’t know how you feel about how well it represents your state, but it cleansed my mental palate after that previous thing that I can’t mention again or I’ll get all pissed off and…dang. Maybe wine.
have you seen KW’s ridiculous tweets? Do you like soft pop? this one’s for you.
Hey, just this one more from me. I adore Alan Cumming (I got to see him perform the role of Emcee in Cabaret on Broadway, and I was right by the stage, close enough to see the glitter on his nipples. I KNOW!) and follow his blog. This morning he posted this, and it cracked me up, man:
did you know that God’s favorite book is Frankenstein? IT IS!
radiolab
Do you listen to Radiolab? It’s an NPR program, hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. They take a topic and present interviews, stories, and musical bits about that topic. I’ve mentioned it before when I wrote about how weird my own thinking is, and if you’re on the home page of this blog (and not just a page with a single post), there’s a widget — the “favorite things” widget — presenting the most recent program. I have small potatoes complaints about the program now and then, but I have enjoyed every single program they’ve produced so far. I highly recommend it — get the podcast.
A program they did that stuck with me, actually a series of programs they did in July 2009, was about the afterlife. That program comprised 11 brief stories about death and what comes after, from an individual’s death to the death of the universe. And most points in between. They interviewed a biologist, a paleontologist, a geologist, a neurological psychologist, a man who survived a suicide attempt, a man who lost his partner, and they present readings of very tiny stories. None of it is about the “white light” at the end of a tunnel. It’s smart, and moving, and fascinating. A couple of the stories were written by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist and writer and all-around Smart Dude. The stories were taken from his most recent book, Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives.
This book doesn’t need me to help sell copies; the reviews are amazing (it’s even been turned into a performance at the Sydney Opera House, music by Brian Eno). For the most part the book is so strong, and I wanted to share a couple of things with you. (Out of 40 short stories, you can’t like them all, of course, but they’re mostly wonderful. It also reminds me of Alan Lightman’s great little book Einstein’s Dreams.)
The story that was read on Radiolab that left me thinking the most was called “Metamorphosis.” The concept: we have three deaths. The first is when our body dies, the second is when our body is buried, and the third is in the future, when our name is spoken for the last time.
And that’s the part that really left me thinking. I have no great aspirations to make my mark on something (other than the lives of the people I love, I hope I mean something important to them). I don’t need my name on a building (good thing, it’s a little late to start now!), or to be immortalized in some way. And actually, if you read that story, you’ll find out that that’s a path to misery. But to think about the moment when the last person alive who remembers me dies or never mentions me again, that’s stirring in some way. Isn’t it? I was thinking about this regarding my dad last month. I don’t think he had any friends, but aside from any he may have had, I’m the last person alive who knew him, really. He only exists in my memory, now, and when I’m gone it’s as if he never existed. (Not sure that’s altogether a bad thing.)
But the stories are definitely not all heavy. Some are funny, and some just have hilarious lines, like the opener of the story “Mary:”
When you arrive in the afterlife, you find that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sits on a throne. She is cared for and protected by a covey of angels.
After some questioning, you discover that God’s favorite book is Shelley’s Frankenstein. He sits up at night with a worn copy of the book clutched in His mighty hands, alternately reading the book and staring reflectively into the night sky.
Well, that just completely and totally cracked me up. What a starting point. Not all the stories are about God, and some are about what that means, the idea of God.
I grew up in the Church of Christ (you know, “the only ones going to heaven”); fire and brimstone, we’re all worthless worms, not a lot of grace. And no stained glass or cushions on the pews or musicians, for heaven’s sake! Those things aren’t mentioned in the Bible!! (I always wanted to point out that neither is air conditioning, but we had that.) In high school I completely lost my faith, and any belief in God. Then I lived a few years as a Quaker and that meant something to me. Now, though, I just don’t know what I believe. Of course I have no idea what will happen after I die; I definitely don’t have that heaven, St. Peter, and God on His Heavenly Throne idea. I’d like to think that it’s about energy, that my energy will just become part of the universe in some way, but hell, I don’t know if I’d really like to think that or not. It’s a story to hang on to.
here’s a how-to for weekend’s best. anything to help you play along!
OK, so you know how you have all these different friends, and it’s just kind of nice when they know and like each other? That’s how I feel about y’all. You’re scattered all over the place, from France to the U.K. to the east coast across to the west coast. And I think you’re all just so wonderful, and I like it when you encounter each other because I think you’d like each other.
Sure, when you leave a comment you have the option (and usually take it) to include the URL of your own blog, if you keep one, and other people could click that link to go check you out. But I wanted to bring you out into the open a little bit, and create a situation that might encourage people who read my blog to click over to yours a bit more readily.
So I got this idea for a weekly thing I call ‘weekend’s best.’ Every Monday morning, a recurring meme. It’s very easy to play along! There are [at least] two ways to do this (here’s a link to this week’s post):
- If you wrote a post over the weekend that really sums up your weekend in some way, include that url in the linky thing.
- OR, if you’d rather, just make a new post with a photo; here’s a wonderful example from my friend Kelli. She’ll be able to pull up all her posts with her weekend’s best tag and see a summary of the year, or whatever.
So if you happen to read my weekend’s best post, at the bottom of the post in plain sight will be the URLs of some of my friends’ blogs. Easy. Click them and check them out, I really think you’ll like them. They’re as great as you are, I promise.
we are the world, we are the linguists. we make theories.
I LOVE THIS!!! And Marnie – I see something in here for The Sociologists. Drag Tom over to watch this.
Totally, totally amazing.
keep those dogies movin. and clean up your blogroll, for goodness’ sake! here, i’ll show you how.
Gee, I may be the only one here old enough to get the reference of the post title. Or maybe I’m the only one western enough to get it. Here – I’ll start the morning with a bit of cultural education for you, before moving on to the Public Service Announcement of the post:
Rawhide! A blast from my mid-century childhood, which also included a lot of Bonanza (i love you Hoss) and Gunsmoke.
ANYWAY. Rolling. Blogrolling. I got a really nice note from Sara over at Wool Durham, about my blogroll widget. If you don’t know her site, click over and subscribe now! I’ll wait. I don’t know what y’all do with your blogrolls, or with others’ blogrolls. When I visit someone’s blog, if I really like it I’ll check out their blogroll because I figure I might find another one I like a lot. Usually like follows like – if your aesthetic is spare and minimal I figure you tend to like spare and minimal aesthetics (me too, believe it or not), so I just may find a new delight.
Well! I think most people don’t pay any attention to their blogrolls. Maybe when they set up their blog, way back in aught-7, they put together a blogroll because it’s what you do, and then they haven’t looked at it since. Usually, I find a large number of abandoned blogs and some that have been deleted. When there hasn’t been a post made in 2 years, I know that blogger hasn’t looked at her blogroll in a while! I get kind of small-potatoes irritated.
Enter the google reader thing that I use; it’s just a feed from my blogroll, so new posts come up. You don’t see the ginormous list of blogs I subscribe to, only new posts. Blogger must give you a similar option (no surprise there, since they’re Google, and all), as you see on Tammy’s blogroll.
If you have a WordPress blog (or other….) and want to get rid of your straight list of blogs — btw, what a pain to maintain! — it’s very simple. Well, it’s very simple, assuming you use Google Reader to manage the blogs you subscribe to. Just go to the bottom of your blog lists, where it says Manage Your Subscriptions. Click that, and you’ll see:
I made folders for the different kind of blogs I read, so I just made my knitting set public, then clicked “add a clip to your site.” You can fiddle with the design, then just copy a little bit of html and paste it in a text widget in your sidebar. Presto. And changeo.
And thus concludes our public service announcement. Don’t feel bad if you’re one of those with a dusty old blogroll, I still love ya.
Rawhide.
conan, rocking India and Hindi and weaving, all at once.
Hi Conan. You are so so funny, I’d be glad to have your grandchildren. (what?!) (and p.s., I’ve been to all the cities in the video! I recognize Jaipur and probably Udaipur…. double cool!)
katie’s a knitter! she really, really is.
Maybe it’s because I think knitting is hard to learn; I learned to crochet when I was 5 and it was so very simple, but knitting was awkward and scary. Took me a long time to learn how to relax with it. Or maybe it’s because I’m a really crappy teacher-of-knitting, who knows. Whichever, I haven’t had a lot of success teaching people to knit – although Marnie picked it up very easily, as she does with all creative endeavors.
So I was a little anxious about teaching Katie to knit, since I’m not historically very good at it, or something. But y’all? She picked it up from the get-go. I should’ve had more confidence in the fact that (a) she’s very creative, (b) she’s my kid, and (c) her paternal grandmother was a great knitter, and Katie’s a lot like her Mama G.
doesn't she look like an old pro????
the yarn is Bearfoot, by Mountain Colors, apple green (Katie's color!)
garter and stockinette - her first-ever knitting!
I’m just blown away by her speed of picking it up. We got the yarn at Hill Country Weavers – Bearfoot, by Mountain Colors. It’s her learning swatch, so she’s getting her knitting and purling down, and I’m about to teach her how to kfb and bind off, and then she’ll start her first project, the Gathered Scarf. I’m just amazed at her; I came out of the shower this morning and looked down into the living room and saw her sitting in a chair with her feet up, just knitting away like an old pro.
I’ll have a huge wrap-up post when I get home, full of pictures and stuff. For now though, I’ll close with a picture of one of my dear ravelry friends, Kelly. We met for coffee yesterday morning and it was just wonderful. Only the first meeting of many to come, that’s my plan:
me and Kelly - look at her fantastic cardigan!!! she wore it because she knew how much i love it. hi kelly!
We’re making bread and chili today, and hanging out and knitting. Tonight, handing out candy to little tricksters, and tomorrow morning, I fly home. It sure went by too fast.
if i’d just stick with it and quit stopping every little whipstitch, i could get somewhere.
New York City is too slow for me. I never understand when people complain about how speedy everything is in Manhattan; it doesn’t feel that way to me. People poke-ass along the sidewalks (come on, pick up the speed y’all!), stop right in the middle to have a little chat, piddle up and down the subway stairs. Geez! Get going! This is supposed to be a speedy city, didn’t you get the memo?!
I eat way too fast. I don’t think I used to do that, but during the baby/toddler years, when moms grab bites whenever they can because someone somewhere is about to wake up, or start screaming, or need something, I got in the speedy eating habit and have never gone back. At each meal, I begin with a little lecture to myself, and I put my fork down between bites, and it starts so well….but then the pace quickens and suddenly I’m finished.
I read very quickly, and grasp a page of material with a glance. I write quickly. A friend of mine once said that I have a certain thrashing quality. My internal pace is fast fast fast go go quick.
But I don’t knit very quickly, and it’s not just because I knit English style. Actually, last night I tried knitting Continental and it was just as easy, for some reason. I haven’t wrapped my head around purling Continental, but anyway, none of that is my point. My point is that I am not a fast knitter, and it has nothing to do with which hand holds the yarn. No, the reason I’m so slow is that I knit a stitch or two and then stop to admire the work. REALLY? After all this time, the fact of yarn looping through itself holds my fascination to this degree?
endlessly fascinating
YES, yes it does. Sure, there’s the part where I think, “wow, I did that?” but mainly it’s just wonder at such a humble process, something people have done for centuries, a process born out of hard need, a process now driven by pleasure.
Wow. I did that. My fingers, a handful of sticks, some yarn, a bit of time. And, for the concrete thinkers, a probable dopaminergic addiction cycle.
sweater #2 finished!!! Fait accompli!!! 
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone
And another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I’m gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust
I finished my Mondo Cable Cardigan y’all! It’s soaking right now, so it’ll be a little while before I have my F.O. pictures, but I’m telling you, it’s a beautiful sweater. The madelinetosh merino is thick and lofty and will probably pill like mad, but I don’t care. When I had to bind off the collar (1×1 ribbing), I started with a regular old bind-off but it was wavy and hideous so (being the newly mature knitter that I am) I ripped it out and investigated my options.
Tubular bind-off seemed like the best approach, but all the tutorials I found were confusing. I started, got several stitches in, and ripped it out. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Minor despair started to build. Then I found this great little video and *presto changeo* it was easy and obvious. And my bindoff is amazing, if I do say so. You’ll see, I’ll be sure to point it out in the inevitable pictures.
“Video tutorial courtesy of Liat Gat of KNITFreedom.blogspot.com, the site that teaches people how to knit over the Internet using high-resolution video e-books.”
So two sweaters are done, and I’m really ready to get my new yarn this week to start the Eve’s Ribs Shrug project. Byzantine, y’all. Byzantine.
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i made you, and i can take you OUT!
So it’s cool, overcast, and breezy today – 67 degrees right now, and our curtains are blowing with the constant breeze – and I needed to walk over to the library to pick a book. Peasy! I’ll wear Peasy, awesome. So I put on my handknit Kai-Mei socks under my black high-tops, and Peasy over a black tank top (with jeans in between of course) and headed out.
And as I’m walking down the sidewalk, I’m being very bothered by the fact that the right sleeve is considerably too long. Much longer than the left, but beyond that, it’s just too too long. It hits the middle of my palm (how did THAT happen?!). And I’m thinking ‘eh, I’ll just live with it.’
Then I thought I don’t have to live with it! I AM A KNITTER! And the maker of this sweater! After all the time and pleasure of making it, I want a lot of time and pleasure in wearing it. Mission #1 tonight: frog all those extraneous rows, reknit and bind off. Oh so easy. Peasy, even.
EDIT!!!!! ADDENDUM!!!!!! I just got the shipping notice from madelinetosh, telling me that my tosh merino DK (byzantine y’all!!) shipped. That means I’ll get it next week and can finally start the gorgeous Eve’s Ribs Shrug pattern (here’s the link to my post that shows the yarn and the pattern). This weekend I’m clearing the decks. Finishing my Mondo Cable Cardigan. Getting things done so I can cast on the moment that luscious yarn arrives. OH how hard it is to wait….
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my name is the scarecrow, and i’m making a sock without a pattern. WHAT?!
When I was a little girl – back when there were just 4 channels, kids, and “remote control” meant the children (as in “hey kids, go change the channel for me”) – The Wizard of Oz came on tv once a year, around Easter, if I recall correctly. It was such a big deal, so exciting. I watched it every year.
During those later teen years, of course, I was too busy/cool/bored to watch that kids’ show. But when my kids came along and I watched it again, I noticed hey! That’s “Night on Bald Mountain”! The music choices were interesting! I realized I could say whole passages by memory (oh what a world, what a world, who would’ve thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness….). And I realized that I didn’t identify with Dorothy, at all. For me, it was all about the Scarecrow.
The Scarecrow was really smart, right from the beginning, but he didn’t understand or believe that until he was awarded a dumb piece of paper by the wizard. Yeah, that’s the part I identified with. I’m not discounting everything I learned when I was in college (ages 36-40) or graduate school (40-45) – not at all. I did learn how to think more carefully, how to test my thoughts and be more skeptical. I did learn a lot of stuff too….the importance of the year 1066, the quadratic equation, how to do structural equation modeling, a bunch of stuff about psychology, etc. But like the Scarecrow, I didn’t really think I was smart, and getting that PhD kind of meant that I was. [note: what it actually means is that you are willing to endure years of hardship and difficulty, and that you are willing to bend over and take it. a few other things, too, but that's the gist.]
Even though I taught myself how to weave and spin and knit and sew and make quilts, I didn’t think I really knew how to make a quilt until after I took a little class. OK, now I have some kind of official stamp: I know how to make a quilt. Never mind that I’d been making them before.
I listen to knitters describe how they completely changed this, modified that, didn’t like anything about this sweater so they tweaked this and that, how they decided to design X or Y, and I think wow, I need to take a class. Maybe I don’t.
Anyway. What the hell does this rambling have to do with the price of tea in China?! And when am I getting to the topic that relates to the title of this post?! OK, now.
I’m knitting a sock without a pattern. (Go me! and geez Louise. Big deal.) You know, I’ve kind of been in a knitting funk, or something. I’ve got several projects going, and I faithfully knit knit knit knit (or knit purl knit purl, all that damned stockinette) and just don’t seem to get anywhere. Blah. But then I got the new madelinetosh yarn yesterday, and it’s just so squishy (her hallmark adjective!) and all, and I cast on last night.
Wowie, knitting sport weight yarn on 3.5mm needles? Fabric flows off the needles. This yarn knits up beautifully, I now think I need to buy a sweater quantity (and find a sweater that’s not just miles of stockinette). It’s not like knitting a plain old ordinary plain vanilla sock requires any brain power – it doesn’t – but I’m knitting without a pattern. Maybe after this I can start fancying-up my own sock patterns. Socks are the easiest thing in the world to knit…..a standard canvas, set and defined sections to play with, easy breezy.
Since this colorway is called tweed, I’m calling them tweedie-pie socks. I know.
your basic sock - but wowie, the yarn
the yarn! the fabric! delicious!
The combination of the yarn, the speed, and the project seem to have cured my funk. Maybe I should just accept that I’m a sock knitter. I love knitting socks. Farewell, funk! Be gone!
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footloose, kick off your sunday shoes…
I put these things in my blog to save them for myself — but you might really like this, too. If you like dancing in the movies (I don’t mean YOU getting up and dancing at the movie theater, you goof), look at this wonderful mashup. Travolta! Bacon! Uma! Flashdance! Ewan and Nicole! PENGUINS, for Pete’s sake!! I was smiling when it started, but busted out laughing pretty fast.
living in manhattan – hard times, man. your car gets towed and you might get bedbugs. enter: roscoe, the famous bedbug sniffing dog.
Two things happened today that are just so particular to living in NYC, so I thought I’d share. Each requires a tiny bit of background.
1 – If you have a car in NYC, as I do, you either have to pay an exorbitant monthly fee for a space in a parking garage (I’ve paid less for big apartments in other places than you might pay for a parking space in a garage), or you park on the street. That’s risky, parking on the street; I’ve had my tires and wheels stolen a couple of times. Someone smashed a window and stole all the airbags (yes, really!). Someone scratched the word “Niger” in the side of the car. Really? Niger? What’s that about. If you park on the street, you also have to deal with alternate side parking, which involves moving your car every other day. I won’t go into all those details, just know that you have to move your car every other day.
OK. Living in NYC means living on a movie set, on top of everything else. So many tv shows and movies are filmed here, which is great and awful. You just get used to watching for your neighborhood, when watching a movie or tv show. You get used to seeing all the movie trucks and gear set up everywhere. You hate it, but you deal with it when something is being filmed in your neighborhood and all the damned parking is taken up for days. So what happens is that the production company posts signs ahead of time informing you of the filming period. The signs are everywhere, and they’re posted AHEAD OF TIME. They’re supposed to be, anyway. This morning, I went out to move the car and it was gone. There were signs posted that hadn’t been there yesterday, and the car had been towed by the production company. When this happens, they do not tell you where they’ve towed the car. You just have to hang around and hope you see a tow truck, so you can ask them, and hope they know. Your alternative is just to walk blocks and block and blocks in all possible directions looking for the needle that is your car, in the haystack that is your neighborhood. Luckily, a couple of hours later I found a tow truck and was told where to find my car.
2 – Animal life. Each place in this world has its own kinds of infestation. For NYC, you’ve probably heard about our cockroaches and mice/rats. You can’t stand on a subway platform for long without having your attention drawn down to the tracks, to watch rats scurrying back and forth. You may find “evidence” that mice have been in your apartment. I’ve never had cockroaches in my place, but they’re a classic accompaniment to many apartments here in NYC.
Recently, NYC has been grand central for bedbugs. That’s a horrifying infestation, because they’re extremely hard to get rid of. Adult bed bugs can travel over 16 feet in 5 minutes. I’d heard about friends’ buildings getting infested, and I’ve been grateful it hasn’t happened in my building. Until recently. First one guy’s apartment got bedbugs. Even though we are all relatively well-educated and “sophisticated,” it was an uncomfortable experience discovering that I viewed him differently now. We all did; when he’d leave the laundry room, no one would want to use the dryer he’d just used. I’m sure he felt it, even though we all tried not to act that way.
On Monday, we all received a notice under our doors from the coop Board of Directors informing us that 4 apartments are now infested with bedbugs in our building. OK, that’s pretty frightening – and I just bought a brand new mattress, I’d hate to have to get rid of it, if it came to that. But our Board of Directors hired
Roscoe! The Famous Bedbug Dog Expert!
Roscoe at work - not in my place
He started working at 9 this morning, sniffing in all the apartments in our building. While he was in my place, I watched him work, sniffing corners and countertops and baseboard edges and anything covered in fabric – I watched a little anxiously….what would Roscoe do? Would he certify me as clean? Would he find a bedbug?
I have to say that Roscoe was adorable. You’d never find a cuter bedbug authority, anywhere. And I also have to say that I’m clean. WHEW.
What a day, man. What a day. We know what the remedy is, don’t we? KNITTING!
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paging paul simon
The back page of each issue of New York magazine has a feature called The Approval Matrix; the square has a line in the middle horizontally, and another vertically. The vertical dimension is highbrow to lowbrow, and the horizontal dimension is brilliant to despicable. So there are quadrants for things that are highbrow and despicable, highbrow and brilliant, lowbrow and despicable, and lowbrow and brilliant. (If you want to see one, click the link in the first sentence.)
It’s fun to read. Even though I always read magazines back to front anyway, no idea why, I turn to the back page of New York magazine first specifically to see The Approval Matrix, when I happen to pick up the magazine. Today I found something that was highbrow and brilliant (but just barely above the line between highbrow and lowbrow): dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com.
You know how there can be a single word that’s just so good, it says a whole phrase? Like schadenfreude – taking pleasure in someone else’s trouble. Don’t say you’ve never felt it, everyone has even if they don’t like to admit it, even to themselves. So schadenfreude [say SHAH-den-froi-duh], a simple word for a rich idea. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows gives us the same kind of deal, with made-up words. For example:
I was definitely of the swamp creature genus when I was a teenager. I don’t have many pictures of those years, but when I see any one of them, I do experience kodachronos. Such an obscure sorrow.
I have an appointment at 2, and then drinks with friends at 6, so three hours in between those for some time-whiling-away. And guess what I’ll be doing? One word: Peasy.
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what do you call a dealie-bobber?
I don’t know what this is actually called; my dad was a draftsman for an architectural firm and I remember seeing him sitting at a table, with blueprints spread in front of him and a carmine pencil in his right hand, counting electrical outlets. With each touch of the red pencil on an outlet symbol, he’d click the thing.
here's how you use it
I keep it in the drawer with my other miscellaneous stuff next to the couch; now and then I see it and think “maybe I’ll use that to count rows” but of course I don’t. My dad died in 1982, and this is one of 2 things I have, of his. If you know what this is called, let me know! It’s probably just called a counter. But I like old things like this, old machines.
For a bit of knitted content, since that’s the ostensible reason for this blog, I set aside my circle socks to finish (or at least almost finish) Marnie’s wedding shawl. Here’s how it looks now, with the heel flap. I just adore the color changes.
heel flap done, ready to pick up gusset stitches
And finally, since I’ve mentioned that Marnie’s wedding is handmade, I thought I’d show you a bit of her invitation. She is a print-maker and artist and book artist, so she put it all together for a truly unique wedding invitation. Guests received a giant mailing tube in the mail; inside was a large woodblock print of the wedding cabin, done in the style of the old WPA National Parks posters. It’s amazing. She carved the blocks by hand, of course, and printed them all one at a time.
Also in the tube was a small handmade book providing all the details – the when, where, how, what else to see, etc. It’s so charming I wanted to show you a couple of things from it:
adorable, right? this is the front cover of the book.
When you open the book, you get the charming story of the beginning of Tom and Marnie’s life together. She handset the type:
the top of the page (click to enlarge, and you can read it)
the bottom of the page
Then there are a few pages of specific information, followed by the schedule of events for the wedding day. I draw your attention to one part of that page:
look in the red box. are they cute? YES.
I love this. I was never clever enough, or self-confident enough, to think about any options beyond the norm. It worked, and that was good enough!
But isn’t that adorable? Really? It’s not just me, right? She also included unique postcards in each tube for the RSVPs. Each postcard featured a great old woodblock print of the WPA National Parks. Ever the artist, she created a flickr set to show all the responses. They’re often quite wonderful; click here to see them.
We’re dying here in NYC; today it hit 102 in Central Park. Lest you southerners or westerners scoff “102, big deal!” keep in mind that people here don’t have central air, for the most part. They have little window units, if they have anything at all. Back in the 70s, people used to leave their apartments and sleep in Central Park when it was too hot, but then it became too dangerous to do that.
Stay cool, yo.
Eddie Izzard + legos = brilliance.
Oh, Eddie Izzard, you make me so happy.
Cooking with the anal-retentive chef was always a clean experience.
Do you remember this? I always loved the character. I tried to post it on Luscious, but it’s a wordpress.com account so this doesn’t work. I’ll just share it here:
So funny! It was so sad when and how he died. My day will be full of thinking about my daughter Marnie, because I’m trying to finish her wedding dress, and work on her shawl. But that doesn’t mean I’m not also thinking about my other daughter Katie, my other daughter Anna, and my darling son Will. Hi y’all.
This is funny, coming on the heels of my last post, I know. But really, just get yourself ready because you’re about to be very very happy. I found this through Roger Ebert’s wonderful twitter feed (follow him, you’ll be happy about that too!):
Continue Reading–1 words totally
This is funny, coming on the heels of my last post, I know. But really, just get yourself ready because you’re about to be very very happy. I found this through Roger Ebert’s wonderful twitter feed (follow him, you’ll be happy about that too!):
You’re welcome.
oh yeah? then how would YOU define it?
I go around thinking I know a thing or two, especially where words are concerned. I was one of those funny little kids who spent all her free time reading the World Book from A to Z, the Child Craft from beginning to end, the dictionary from AA to Zygyzy….read and repeat. Read and repeat. Then embroider a little pillowcase. Then back to the obsessive reading. I still love to read, and love dictionaries and reference books. My graduate research – and my dissertation – were all about the psychological import of the specific words people use. I love words and think about them a lot.
So imagine my surprise to listen to a great little TED Talk, by Alain de Botton, in which he defined the word snob in a way I’d never heard: a snob is someone who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. At first, I kind of jumped back a little and did some sassy back talk to Senor de Botton: IS NOT! That’s too simple, and anyway, that’s the definition of stereotype, so there. Ha. You’re wrong and I’m right.
But he’s right. That’s exactly what a snob is, isn’t it. It’s a topic of conversation on Ravelry, here and there – people self-identify as ‘yarn snobs’ and if someone talks about having used acrylic yarn, the yarn snobs sometimes come out of their dark corners to say unkind things. So those who don’t want to use acrylic yarn have decided that people who do use acrylic yarn are … well, a whole bunch of things. It’s very interesting to think about the word snob in this way, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I listened to the podcast in line at Starbucks 2 hours ago. Here’s the talk – it’s very nice, and is more about success and failure than about snobbery, though snobbery does have its place in the mix:
Today has been a really shitty day, there’s no other way to say it. One of my authors has decided that I personally betrayed him because of the way we had to price his book, and he has spent an awful lot of energy and pixels writing me the same email a dozen ways, emphasizing the personal nature of the betrayal. To soothe myself a little, since I am working at home today, I cast on 15 stitches and knit a few rows of stockinette in this luscious madelinetosh pastoral, colorway terrarium. I have to say, it did make me feel better:
such pleasure
And I’m nearly finished with one sock, will knock out the toe tonight and cast on for the other one, so I can work on it in the subway tomorrow:
at the toe now, sock #1 will be finished tonight
I’ve decided to name this pair of socks “minkeys” – a play on pink monkeys, and also I hear it in my mind in the Inspector Clouseau voice and that just makes me giggle.
I hope you’re having a better day than I am!
pink is making me strangely happy today
I guess I read a little too much Elizabeth Barrett Browning when I was an impressionable young teenager, because “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” came to mind when I was looking at the beginnings of these socks, No Purl Monkeys in KnitPicks Felici (colorway positively pink, as if they had to say that). So let me go ahead, then, and count the ways:
I love thee for thy bright pinkness
p!i!n!k!
I love thee for the pleasure of dpns and clever-feeling fingers
I love thee for thy springy feeling
I love thee for the one who will wear these when I finish
Pretty Marnie, in her senior year at Smith
PLUS: I bought a new mattress! Yippee! Hallelujah! Boy did I need one, that’s all I’m saying about that.
you know what they say about women.
I saw this come up in someone’s twitter feed today – Roger Ebert, maybe? I can’t remember. Anyway, there’s a site called Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet [hey!!], and it’s a collection of international proverbs about women. You really get a sense of a culture’s take on women by looking at their proverbs, I must say, for example:
She who offers a half-cooked meal is better than she who offers her buttocks.
— Rwanda [not quite sure I get this one, but I think they really like food?]
The thicker the veil, the less it’s worth lifting.
— Turkish [a universal truth in some ways, certainly not just about women, although it's not true at all about Truth]
A woman’s beauty makes fish sink and wild geese fall from the sky.
— Chinese [the Chinese are now my favorites, unless I've totally misunderstood the meaning]
Every woman is beautiful in the dark, from a distance, and under an umbrella.
— Japanese [hey! that's a jerk thing to say!]
A woman who knows Latin will never find a husband nor come to a good end.
— all over Europe [oh, you wacky Europeans]
I personally like proverbs that I’ve learned from women – especially old women – and more especially, from old Texas women like my grandmother, who taught me “Don’t worry about the blind mule, honey, just load up the wagon.” Or one from my grandfather Big Daddy, about some female relative: “She’d talk your right arm off and whisper in the hole.”
I love those colorful old proverbs. Personally, I try to work in the one about the blind mule at every opportunity. Do you have a favorite?
i ain’t afraid of no ghosts
The 1984 movie Ghostbusters opened in the NY Public Library, so Improv Everywhere made this move:
I wish I’d participated!
According to one dictionary definition, a thrum is “The fringe of warp threads left on a loom after the cloth has been cut off.” So thrums are the leftover, what’s left after using up the bulk of it.
And that’s what my creative time is like. I create things in the thrums of my time, after the bulk is cut off for work. A little thrum some evenings before bed, a little thrum early in the morning, before work, and a bit of thrum on the weekend. Tiny thrums in the subway commute to work – a stitch here, a row there. You can get a lot of stuff done that way, and of course you can make beautiful things with thrums.
Continue Reading–1 words totally
According to one dictionary definition, a thrum is “The fringe of warp threads left on a loom after the cloth has been cut off.” So thrums are the leftover, what’s left after using up the bulk of it.
And that’s what my creative time is like. I create things in the thrums of my time, after the bulk is cut off for work. A little thrum some evenings before bed, a little thrum early in the morning, before work, and a bit of thrum on the weekend. Tiny thrums in the subway commute to work – a stitch here, a row there. You can get a lot of stuff done that way, and of course you can make beautiful things with thrums.
Welcome to Thrums – my life with needles and thread. If you go back to the first post thinking you’ll find some kind of “well howdy-do here I am” you’ll be disappointed. It’s not that I didn’t do that…..I did. And a few months in, my blog crashed and burned and I couldn’t get any of it back. So it kind of starts in midstream, alas.
That Carolyn Kellogg is clever!
I’ve experienced this myself, and I always feel disappointment when I read another blogger say something like “I’m done, I’ve said all there is to say and I’m retiring my blog.” Maybe you’ve felt either or both sides of this, too. So I just saw a wonderful revision of a poem speaking to this issue, on the LATimes blog (and click to read the post, because it’s actually about the closing of a great blog):
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Internet Fog
by Dylan Thomas
remixed by Carolyn Kellogg
Do not go gentle into that internet fog,
Writing should burn and rage complete
Rage, rage against the dying of the blog.
Unwise men think sentences do bog,
But what can be said in just a Tweet?
Do not go gentle into that internet fog.
Good men at laptops watch agog,
Their words sucked into a Facebook data sheet
Rage, rage against the dying of the blog.
A wild man who drinks the German grog
Leaves updates, a 4G phone — he’s indiscreet!
Do not go gentle into that internet fog.
Grave men crave followers and flog
And flog for more with desperate heat
Rage, rage against the dying of blog.
And you, dear poets, know writing is no slog
The ebb and flow of words is sweet
Do not go gentle into that internet fog,
Rage, rage against the dying of the blog.
– Carolyn Kellogg
in which organizing gets me out of cleaning
So here was the deal. My mission for the day was to completely redo my bedroom, which is a MESS. It’s cluttered, I have zero storage, no closet, too-large pieces of furniture, stuff stacked on every flat surface, wedged into every little space, and since I live in Manhattan (on the street level), there’s a general coating of grime that creeps in no matter what I do. There’s one large armoire, one large chest, two desks, a queen-sized bed, a built-in bookcase. And a little bit of floorspace. My desk has a bookcase above it, and there’s stuff stacked on the desk, on top of the bookcase. It’s awful.
On my desk were my newest yarn purchases, and I paused to fondle them for a bit — like you do, you know. I looked around at the leftover balls of yarn stuffed in between books, and got my brilliant idea: I know! I can’t really start working on our bedroom until I do something with all. this. yarn. Right?
So I pulled it all out, photographed many of the surprises I found, updated 
my stash page on ravelry, organized, weighed the partial skeins, numbered the plastic bins where I store all the yarn, and noted the specific bin on each ravelry stash page. OH DON’T I FEEL ALL RIGHTEOUS! If you’re a raveler, you can see my stash page here. You know how wonderful it feels to get everything all organized. Especially when it allows you to avoid doing something you really don’t want to do. On that note, I think I’d better go clean the kitchen, you know, it’s a mess and I’ll be able to focus on our bedroom once that kitchen is cleaned.
Sushi tonight with DD#3. Tulips delivered at work from DD#1. Nice phone chat with DD#2 this afternoon, with a promise of another chat tomorrow – and a phone chat with DD#1, too. It’s a lovely Mother’s Day weekend.
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
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.
a sneaky little idea just came to me
a funny little giveaway!
I was just on my wordpress dashboard, deleting the inevitable spam comments, when I noticed that I have 401 comments so far. I had such fun with the 100th post giveaway, so it hit me. I’ll do another giveaway for my 500th comment! This one’s a little trickier, since you won’t know when it happens, but this is what I’ll give the person who leaves the 500th comment: a gorgeous little ball of Noro Bonbori, which a friend of mine brought me from Tokyo:
squishy and soft, blues and purples, enough for a hat
Just between you and me, I hope you are the one who gets it. Shhh…
I put a little widget at the very top of the sidebar – it lists the current comment count, so you’ll know when we’re getting close to 500.