Pride
don’t go dissin a Texan. That ain’t a smart move.
someone came to my blog with this dumb search!!
In case you can’t see that for whatever reason, the search that led an Android user to my site this morning was “never marry a texas women.” First, dumb searcher, I’ll go ahead and do what I never do, and that’s to deliver a verbal smackdown for your grammar. Women is plural, so you don’t use the article “a.” Dumb person. But then I already knew you weren’t too bright because you’re trying to find information about never marrying a Texas woman. We Texas women are fine, I have to say, and include this list:
- Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long, the ‘mother’ of Texas
- Emily West Morgan, the famous “Yellow Rose of Texas” who helped win the Texas Revolution
- Oveta Culp Hobby, Colonel Women’s Army Corps, first secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare
- Barbara Jordan, the magnificent
- Sandra Day O’Connor, first woman on the Supreme Court
- Ann Richards, Governor of Texas and all-round DAME OF THE FIRST ORDER can I get a hell yeah
- Cecile Richards, Ann’s daughter and President of Planned Parenthood and a dame in her own right
- Melinda Gates, philanthropist deluxe
- Ima Hogg (such an unfortunate name, must’ve given her character!), philanthropist deluxe
- Lady Bird, of course, planter of many a tree, bush, and shrub
- Lots of models, including Jerry Hall, Angie Harmon, and Kelly Emberg (and 15 Miss America winners, one of whom became Miss Universe, suck that Googler!)
- Debbie Allen, dancer/actress; Kathy Baker, actress; Barbara Barrie, actress; Joan Blondell, actress; Carol Burnett for god’s sake; Joan Crawford oh yes she was; don’t forget Farrah Fawcett; Jennifer Love Hewitt, actress; Mary Martin, and Margo Martindale, actresses; Ann Miller, what a hoofer; good god the actresses go on and on and on
- and don’t get me started on musicians: Erykah Badu, Marcia Ball, Miss Vikki Carr, Nanci Griffith, JANIS F-in JOPLIN, Beyonce, it just goes on and on
- Mary Kay Herself, queen of the pink Cadillac and businesswoman extraordinaire; writers Sarah Bird, Sandra Cisneros, Patricia Highsmith, Katherine Anne Porter, and Naomi Shihab Nye; journalist Linda Ellerbee, and God luv’er Molly Ivins, co-DAME with Ann Richards; Liz Smith, columnist and broad
- Care about science and medicine? We’ve got Angela Belcher, MIT professor and MacArthur Fellow; Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau, designed the first production plant for penicillin; and Karen Uhlenbeck, mathematician and National Medal of Science (women in traditionally male fields, notice!)
Of course we have some infamous women too, include Bonnie (as with Clyde), Belle Starr, and Andrea Yates. (head hanging). We can’t win them all.
Here’s a page of famous women in Texas history, here’s a summary of who we are (dammit!) as Texas women, but I leave you with the quintessential Texas Woman, Ms. Ann Richards. I’ve posted this video before, but it’s a good one. “Make that basket, bird legs!” Dang, I miss that woman. She was one of a kind. So whoever you were, searching for “never marry a Texas women,” perhaps you’re doing us a big favor. Nyah.
good thing she’s smaller than me, or I might not be able to give away this sweater….
Last night I did some swatching for Marnie’s sweater. The yarn is Valley Yarns Northfield, which is 70% merino, 20% alpaca, and 10% silk, and the fabric is just so beautiful. I’m going to have to buy exactly the same yarn and color to make myself a sweater, assuming I continue to love it as much. Here’s the stockinette pre-blocked swatch, followed by the rope-cable swatch:
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.
the skies aren’t sunny, but at least this project is!
I’m not knitting Christmas gifts, just as I didn’t last year. If my kids need or want something, as Marnie wanted a warm winter hat that could accommodate her braids, I’m thrilled to make it to order. But just making stuff in the hopes they’ll like it? A fool’s errand, I’ve decided. The lone exception is my youngest daughter Anna, who shockingly (to me) loves handknit socks. She’s a high-powered behavioral economics/stats major at a fancy college far away, where it’s hot (but dorm floors are always cold), and the only socks she owns are the ones I knit for her. This is a kid who snagged a prestigious summer internship at Standard & Poor’s, who gets all excited talking about economics, and she loves handknit socks. Ah, the lovely complexity of people.
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.
another one bites the dust! Two Amy Herzog sweaters in about 6 weeks’ time. Pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty good.
And….here it is! My new sweater, dubbed Laurayana, because Laura gave me the Ayana pattern for my birthday. It took me less than 3 weeks to make the sweater, from swatch to block. I really love it, though I may undo the hem facings and redo them in simple bind-off or something. I’m not sure I like the bulk there. But it’s flattering, and very comfortable, and it was a fun knit:
such great texture in that front panel
red in the sweater's hem, and in the sleeve hems, too! surprise!
really such a comfortable sweater to wear.
This is my first sweater knit in pieces, and the first time I’ve used Cascade 220 for a sweater. I’ll do both again, for sure.
Here’s my project page on ravelry, where I note a lot of details. And this leads me to a mini-rant, now that I think about it. I wish people would indicate the size they knit, and how much yarn they used! It’s also nice if they list mods, or problems they encountered, and I love to read notes about how the yarn wears with time. But at a minimum, I wish everyone would list the size they knit and how much yarn they used. This isn’t about comparing (ooh, she’s a 42!!), it’s about knowing how it’ll look in your size, and how much yarn you really need for that size. Good grief.
And with this, I suspect my long run of knitting posts will slow down. Though I’m nearly done with the deep ribbing on Audrey……
Have a wonderful Saturday, everyone!
this may signal a shift from knitting to non-knitting posts……there’s a lot of interesting stuff coming up!
I seem to post in long jags — weeks without any mention of knitting, except in passing, focusing instead on stuff I’m thinking about, seeing, and doing, and then weeks of knitting posts without much else. So if you like the knitting posts, you’ll like this one! If you don’t, hang on….there’s a lot going on in the next few weeks, so (a) little time to knit and (b) lots of other stuff to think about.
[for instance: next week I have my annual mammogram Monday and my book club holiday party Thursday, but the week after is chock-full of good stuff, including a winter concert Sunday, poetry group Tuesday, Selected Shorts performance Wednesday, the annual Winter Solstice Concert Friday, and the Nutcracker at Lincoln Center on Saturday. WHEE squared!]
For now, though, a bit o’knitting. My Laurayana is all seamed on one side, waiting for the 2nd sleeve to dry so I can sew it in. It’s a gorgeous fit — of course I tried it on, closing the open side with pins. I’m exhibiting great restraint by waiting for it to be all the way finished before showing you. I really do recommend the pattern; FO post and photos tomorrow!
Audrey is now on the needles:
a lovely bit of knitting time this morning, with my tea
That’s madelinetosh pashmina, in siltwash, which is a really beautiful brown with bits of caramel and olive. I’m enjoying the yarn, after the rougher Cascade 220. I decided not to do twisted rib for the hem, so I’m plowing ahead.
My mug has sheep on it, one of which is glazed black. I bought this mug in Fredericksburg, VA, in 1988 — it was perfect for me. Sheep. Yeah. Black sheep, me. Yeah. I moved it around, place to place, year after year. In 2004, a bunch of my stuff was in storage for a while and I hadn’t seen my mug but assumed it was just boxed up. When I moved in with my (now) husband, I opened the cabinet for a mug and there it was! I was a little bit confused, but said “Ah! There’s my mug!” He said what do you mean, that’s my mug. And it was his mug; mine had a crack at the top of the handle. What are the odds that he had the same mug (and to this day I have no idea why he’d have such a mug, he’s no sheep person!).
It’s going to be a cold weekend, high of 46 tomorrow, but no rain or snow so I plan to get out and do something. Sunday night I have an art date night with myself — either painting, writing, or making something, not quite sure what. I hope your weekend plans are as exciting to you as mine are to me! Happy Friday, y’all.
this’ll be the last WiP shot for my newest sweater: next stop, FO!
Don’t forget the giveaway in progress — see this post for details, and leave a comment there.
I’m very nearly done with my Laurayana sweater (the pattern was a birthday gift from Laura, thank you!), and I’ve been doing finishing as I’ve gone along. I pause and weave in ends as I go along, I block each piece as it’s completed, and I’ve sewn together the shoulder seams and knitted the finishing detail. I’m halfway through the 2nd sleeve (first is finished and blocked), so when I finish the second sleeve, while it’s blocking I’ll sew in the first and seam the side seams. Then, voila! Nearly ready to wear.
the neck finishing detail is 3 rows of stockinette, designed to curl and show the purled edge. It's a nice bit of texture to complement the deeply-textured front panel.
Here’s an FO shot of my cute little hat, my Berry Welty. You know it’s got a blue/purple hem facing, which is my little secret, and why I’m smiling so:
fits like a dream, and oh-so-warm. Thank you for the pattern, Kelly!
The next time I show my Laurayana, I’ll be wearing it. 
that’s right, i’m droooling….droooooooling.
them's marrow bones, friend
My husband trekked out to Queens Chinatown to buy 40 pounds of marrow bones (half the price he could get them in Manhattan, so well worth the trip!). He does this every late fall/early winter, though I don’t think he used to get 40 pounds. It’ll eventually produce the most lovely, delicate beef stock that’ll find its way into his drool-worthy french onion soup, and his hearty cabbage soup, and even a rich lentil soup studded with the leftover ham from our Thanksgiving feast.
Today, though, is the kind of smelly day, though it carries hints of the great tastes to come. He’s been roasting the bones to get them that rich mahogany color, then he’ll simmer them for lots of hours. It’s good to do this when the weather is so cold because he can set the giant pots outside overnight so the fat can solidify and then be lifted off in a huge thick disc, leaving just the delicate stock. And oh my is it good. His french onion soup has so much flavor, you’d never ever think it was nothing but this stock and caramelized onions. No other flavors, and none needed — his stock is so rich and delicious. He makes his own croutons for that soup, and he uses the best cheese of course, but the star is the stock.
It’s cold and raining, and I’m about to head out for my downtown journey. As Laura said in her last comment, I hope I at least see something fun or strange, some great NY story! At the least, I’ll leave here with daydreams of soup floating around in my head.
i don’t usually do WiP Wednesdays, but I’m in a rush and this was easy!
Happy Thanksgiving Eve! It’s gridlock alert day here in Manhattan, and we’re all encouraged to use public transport. Since I’ll be using it a lot today, I dread the crowds, but what to do. If you’re busy making pies and all that jazz, I wish I were hanging out with you.
Thanks to my old-lady-can’t-sleep deal, I’ve been up since 4am. Whee! I spent some of that time making progress on my Laurayana sweater, which is coming along beautifully. The back is finished, and I’m just a few inches from finishing the front. The sleeves will go quickly, so I should have another new sweater in a week or two!
the back (on the right) has been blocked and the change in the fabric is WONDERFUL; it doesn't really have that underarm lump as it appears, on the right side of the back. The pattern up the center of the front is fun to work, waving ribs.
I was a little worried about the hem facing; first of all, it’s odd to face a ribbed hem, but also, I was worried that the bright red would show. I wanted that to be my private treat. When I blocked the back, turning up the hem gave me a bit of relief. Even when it’s not stitched down, it’s thoroughly hidden.
As for Audrey in Silt, I haven’t cast on yet; it has a very deep ribbed section of twisted rib, and I’m trying to think about how committed I am to that twist. I’m thinking the answer is not so much.
Lots of work to get done today, and a meeting with a client this morning followed by back-to-back meetings in the afternoon. Good thing I woke up at 4am.
such a thrill to be able to knit and read at the same time!
I’m paid to read and write all day long (yay! [but sometimes ugh]), and now and then I can read and knit for pay. I know, so lucky. When I’m actually working in the manuscript, editing someone’s words, my hands are on the keyboard and that’s that. But when I’m just reading someone’s manuscript and giving them my feedback on it, I can knit at the same time. Not only are manuscript evaluations my favorite thing to do because I’m good at it, they’re also my favorite because of the knitting time. Yesterday I read a manuscript and made some headway on my Laurayana sweater. I’m about an inch away from beginning the armhole shaping on the back:
the back, with shaping darts -- of course I had to do extra shaping for my waist, as always
that hem facing is madelinetosh DK, in tart. so tarty, so pretty! It won't be visible at all, since this is a pullover, but I know it's there.
Unfortunately for me and my knitting time, the next run of work is editing, not evaluation, and I have so much it’s stressing me out, waking me up at 1am. In fact, I got up at 1 this morning to get some work done. So this rate of progress will come to a halt for now, but it sure was fun!
like Van Morrison says: Put a smile on my face, get back in the human race, on a golden autumn day.
It’s one of those gorgeous, gorgeous fall days that make me so thrilled I live in this part of the world. We went out to enjoy the weather and the foliage (and the nice New Yorkers, who are all as happy-seeming as we are!), and my sub-mission was to take some photos of my newest sweater in the wild. Also, there was a 4-block green market near the Museum of Natural History that was a likely source of apple cider and cider donuts, and to be honest, that was the primary point of the excursion for me. Unfortunately, there were no donuts….boo….you know how it is when you get your mouth set for something. After that disappointment, we walked a couple blocks to that other park — Central Park. Since Riverside Park is my backyard, I tend to forget about Central Park. I should not do that.
central park, so moody
central park, so artistic
central park, such a destination
central park, so dreamy
And now, without further ado, here it is: my version of Thea Colman’s Vodka Gimlet, which I named Ozma’s Delight (my rav project page here). The yarn is Plucky Knitter Primo Worsted, which is merino and cashmere with a soupçon of magic.
my sweet, sweet Ozma Delight. I'll be wearing this one to death.
what's that behind you? yeah, that old trick worked on me.
There isn’t one thing I’d change about the sweater. I’m very very long-waisted, so I had to add a few inches before I did the waist detail; unfortunately, the sweater grew a bit so the detail doesn’t hit me at my waist. Fortunately, I still think it’s amazing-looking. I love everything about it, including the 6″ of ribbing at the cuffs. Of course you can’t see the orange hem that’s hidden on the inside, but you’ve seen that before, a few posts ago.
I figured out the details for my Laurayana sweater, so I’ve cast on and am working away. Knitting + reading + cups of Lady Gray tea = very happy me.
nah nah nah nah nah nah — they say it’s my birthday (eve) — well happy birthday (eve) to ya (me). never mind. Eat cake!!
Birthday Eve, it ought to be a more well-known event! We have Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and birthdays also come around just once a year so the eve is a big deal.
Well, it is to me, so there. It’s my birthday eve. It’s a stunningly beautiful day, though my waking up to it wasn’t so nice. The hounds-of-hell heat dried me out so badly I woke up with a nose gushing blood. NICE. But who cares, it’s my birthday eve (see how well that works?). I’m spending the morning doing some deep housecleaning, since the floor-mopping fairies haven’t arrived in a while, and then I have some personal writing and thinking to do. After that I’ll pick up the first sleeve on my green sweater; last night I completely finished the collar and band, got it all bound off (loosely enough, go me!), and have spent the morning resisting taking a picture to show you. I lost — though I was going to take a picture of me wearing it, since it’s just the most adorable length, but I compromised and took some flat pictures. The color is kind of wonky from shot to shot — no idea how that could happen since it’s the same sweater, camera, light source, and background:
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- the whole enchilada (minus sleeves of course!)
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- detail shot of the same design element around the sweater and down the band
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- it’s a narrow little band, to give more of a vertical line to the sweater’s front
[wow those colors are all off! bizarre. the emerald green in the previous post is right on the money.] Boy, I really love this sweater. It’s just hip-length, and swingy, and the yarn is so amazing, I know I’m going to wear it all winter long. Just not in my apartment, which will be sweltering all winter long. Stupid co-op.
But birthday eve, yay! Just 12 more hours to be 52. It was an excellent year.
green is katie’s favorite color, so i think of her with every stitch (like i need a reason to think of her….)
Well, of course I should be working — I’m up against a very hard deadline, and I didn’t work nearly as much as I should’ve when I was in Austin (who would! When you get to be with your beloved daughter so rarely, who’d spend that time working! Not me apparently.). I just finished one project and before I get going on the one with the hard deadline, I thought I’d show you some of the knitting-related stuff that happened last week, on my needles. Katie is making an adorable baby set for a friend — a sleep sack and hat — that look like The Very Hungry Caterpillar; when she posts pictures I’ll share them, it’s just so adorable.
But here’s my stuff. First, my gorgeous green sweater. I decided to add a little flash of color in the turned-under hem. The slipped stitch detail was great fun to knit, and the color makes every stitch a joy to work. I’m going to love wearing this sweater.
my Vodka Gimlet -- dubbed Oz Delight for my rav project page.
This is the yarn I bought for the hem. I used so little, I need to figure out a small project that’ll allow me to use up the rest of the beautiful yarn.
Manos del Uruguay, silk blend
And two skeins of Madelinetosh, tosh merino light:
tosh merino light, in rosewood
tosh merino light, in terra. i LOVE this color!
I’m truly nuts about that orange color. I would’ve bought a lighter neutral like antler if they’d stocked it at Hill Country Weavers. I want to make a Stripe Study Shawl, and I figured these two would be good additions to my small stash of tosh merino light.
I’m knitting the collar on my Oz Delight, and since it’s a narrow collar it shouldn’t take me too long. Then I “just” have to knock out the two sleeves, but I’m highly motivated so maybe it won’t take too long. I didn’t work on my little yellow featherweight at all, just not enough time in the days. What a great problem, too many wonderful things to do!
Now: back to work, Lori! SERIOUSLY.
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. –Eleanor Roosevelt
The title of the post is one of the great lines from the movie Moonstruck, spoken by Nicolas Cage to Cher. (I love that movie so much.) This morning I was running through Google Reader while knitting the second sleeve of my sweater and drinking my morning coffee, and hit this post on the wonderful blog A Femme d’un Certain Age. Obviously, it’s about women like me, written by a woman who is around my age — which I always proudly state. Fifty-two. Yeah!
Anyway, that post I linked has photos of famous women in their 60s+ (and it’s just the most recent; she’s written a couple before this one). So you scroll past and see these older women, all made-up and hairdoed and beweled for the camera, and some have had a little work done, some have had a LOT done, and some have very scary faces, hard and plastic, like masks. The blogger said — and it’s not like I disagree — of course every woman should do what makes her feel best and acknowledged that sometimes things do go awry.
I’m of two minds. Yes, definitely, every woman should do whatever makes her feel best. Of course. And/but every time we completely deny our appearance, we just perpetuate the idea that women shouldn’t age. Every time white hair isn’t ok, every time wrinkles and smile lines aren’t ok, every time the dreaded saggy neck isn’t ok, we keep the story going. Only taut, blemish-free, wrinkle-free women allowed here.
I always suspect that one embarrassing reason I don’t mind saying my age is that people are always shocked, never expecting I’m in my 50s. Maybe if they were shocked because they didn’t know I was only in my 50s I’d feel differently. But as they say, this is what 52 looks like, people! This is what 52 looks like. I know several women in their 50s, and this is what it looks like. It looks soft, it looks alive, it looks relaxed. And every time we go out in the world looking like ourselves, we show younger women what it looks like, and that it’s good.
My 52 has a chunk of white hair in one spot with others showing up all over the place (including in my eyebrows!). My 52 has a deep pair of creases between my eyebrows, from years of frowning while I think hard (yay, I’ve spent a lifetime thinking hard!). My 52 has crinkles around my eyes (yay, lots of smiling!). My 52 has a saggy neck that I struggle to say yay about, that kind of shocks and horrifies me in certain light, but hey. My 52 has a saggy neck. I rub cream into it and let it go out as it is. Nora Ephron said that the throat is the thighs of the head, which totally cracks me up.
So….the title of the post — let me connect the dots for myself because it seemed so clear when I started. Women who want to unwrinkle, degray, well they aren’t monuments to justice! Who says women have to be gray and wrinkled just to reorient others’ ideas of what an aging woman looks like! And I get that, even though I disagree for myself. But one of the real benefits of aging is relaxing, getting it, understanding myself a little better, accepting myself a little more. And it shows in my face.
picture swiped from Marnie's facebook wall, so it's a copy of a copy of a copy. But that's me in Chicago, holding a Bitter Woman Ale and smiling at Marnie and Tom before digging into a giant sandwich. And being 52 the whole time.
there’s very little as nice as knitting that’s working out as you hoped.
A bit of housework, a chat on the phone with a daughter, a disastrous pasta-making effort, and some knitting.
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- My “Oops I did it again” featherweight cardigan, cast on and underway.
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- Sleeve #1, one full ball of yarn. Close to the sleeve cap shaping, just another 13 rows.
So two things to say, here:
- MALABRIGO LACE, y’all. Oh boy do I get it now. It’s as soft as everyone says. It’s luscious, creamy, delicious, I want to run away with it. The color is so rich; the color in the photo is true, on my monitor. Deep yellow with a hint of orange. I don’t ever want to knit with anything else, as long as I live. I think I’m going to love this one even more than my red one. Hannah Fettig, you’re a genius with the little cardigan. So simple, nothing really, but wonderful.
- A sleeve in a day, along with the rest! Kind of amazing. I always had sleeves categorized in my head as “ugh, now it’ll be weeks.” Not with this yarn and these needles, man. Speedy Gonzales (speedy ka-dah-dis, if you’re my dear Katie). The angora and silk in the yarn gives it such a luxurious hand, I really like the fabric a lot. Amy Herzog, you fit-to-flatter wizard.
Homemade lasagna for dinner, even if no homemade pasta — smells so good, happy hands, soon-to-be-happy tummy, happy day. Ah! Time for a daily gratitude. I’m so grateful to be a maker, for which I take no credit. It’s just the software I came with, and I’m very very grateful for it. Grateful for the impulse, grateful for the experiences, grateful for the pleasures, grateful for the desire, grateful for the end results, grateful for the making life.
Where did Hitler keep his armies? IN HIS SLEEVIES! hahahaha….kindergarten jokes never get old.
For reasons having to do with confusion, I decided to start on the sleeves for my new Wintry Mix sweater. The yarn makes some mighty gorgeous fabric, I must say. Berroco Blackstone Tweed is 65% wool, 25% mohair, and 10% angora, and it’s very soft and drapey, but substantial, too. I really love it; the color I picked, evergreen, is such a dark olive green it doesn’t read as green, but the tweed flecks are nice and it’ll be a solid piece in my sweater collection.
I can't make the color show up correctly in photos -- it's actually much much darker than this, and this has too much yellow. The sleeve has a 4" section of garter at the bottom, providing a wonderful textural contrast.
This is my first set-in sleeve sweater, so I’m a little anxious about that but I’m sure it’ll be just fine. I think it’s kind of genius (even though I did this out of confusion and anxiety) to do the sleeve/sleeves first, while I’m so excited, so I’m not stuck in the sleeve wasteland. Yes? Right? Good idea!
After the laceweight cardigan, this one is hauling, man. Worsted on 7s goes so fast, especially in a sleeve with a small circumference. But I think I’m going to go ahead and get my little yellow laceweight cardigan going today, too. That color is screaming at me, and I’m dying to see it as fabric.
Isn’t it great to be excited about your knitting? What are you working on that has you this excited?
wow! I’m proud all right, proud as a whitewashed pig! (~the widow Sugrue, Darby O’Gill and the Little People, 1959)
Artists toil away in poverty and obscurity, making awesome things, giving it out to the universe, and recognition can be slow. Hard to come by. There in spirit, but spirit doesn’t cover a loaf of bread. You know how proud I am of Marnie’s work, and today Chicago is hearing about it. She was featured on the Chicagoist website! She made a wonderful set of graphic prints of the prerecorded announcements on the L train, and that was the primary point of the Chicagoist post. Here’s the one they featured:
They wrote:
Few things become unwanted earworms more quickly than the automated “L” station and train announcements. People have had harrowing nightmares where “Attention customers: an INBOUND train toward the Loop will be arriving shortly” plays endlessly, with the train never arriving at the station.
Monkey-Rope Press is the brainchild of illustrator, printmaker and bookbinder Marnie Galloway. Galloway’s Etsy store is a glorious time suck of amazing prints, none more so than these letterpress posters of “L” station announcements. We also love the bicycle subculture pugilism prints.
It’s never too early to begin your Christmas shopping.
!!!!!!!!! IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO BEGIN YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING!!! Let the shopping begin!
how long has it been since I had a finished object! finally — meet my beautiful new shawl:
Traveling Woman shawl by Liz Abinante, size extra-large. Madelinetosh yarn (Tosh DK), colorway byzantine [rav project page]. I love this shawl, even though it took me forever to finish. I started it before I went to Turkey, way back in May, and thought I might finish it before/during the trip. Ha! Ha ha ha! Ha! There’s absolutely no reason it should’ve taken me this long, but it did. I’d like to get a photo of me wearing it….one of these days.
It’s my second Traveling Woman shawl (the other was with madelinetosh yarn too, actually, tosh merino light in a gorgeous silver gray color called Tern), and the biggest lesson I learned there was to use a much stretchier bind-off. I didn’t go with Judy’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off, though I kind of wish I had. Instead, I used this one and it’s better than my regular old bind-off, but probably not as stretchy as Judy’s. If I make another Traveling Woman shawl, I’ll try Judy’s.
I think one thing that helped me get this project finished was that I needed a break from stockinette sleeves in laceweight yarn. Yeah. Compared to that, this project was dreamy and oh-so-fast.
This has been a very slow year for FOs, I must say, and all of them have been primary colors — blue, yellow, and red, plus a vivid green. Time for some neutrals, I think.
Daughter! what words have pass’d thy lips unweigh’d! (Replied the Thunderer to the martial maid;)
….because I’m shouting it from every electronic rooftop! Marnie’s first chap book is completed and available now, and it’s a limited run of only 175 copies. This is the first volume of a 6-part story titled In the Sound and Seas. I already bought 5 copies, and she set some aside to send out for reviews, so if you want one you’d better hurry. It’s only $15!!
all drawn by hand. Every tiny leaf. The hatching on every tiny leaf. Thousands of tiny bunnies. Really. You will be awestruck.
Marnie’s one-a-them Arteests. She simply is an artist, it’s how she thinks, how she perceives the world. So, for instance, I look at her book and say oh, so gorgeous, it’s about three women who are building a boat! And Marnie says it’s about the difficulty of doing her work. Her – huge artistic view; me – immediate surface-level view. Her – artist; me – reader. Her formal description of this book is
This 22-page mini-comic is the first volume of a six-part, wordless narrative about obsessive creative production and failure. Volume 1 frames the future volumes, as 3 storytellers sing the tentative world of the rest of the story into existence.
Here’s a link to the flickr set so you can see the pages; here’s a link to her announcement on her professional website; and here, two ways to buy. She’s a smart cookie! You can either buy a copy of this volume, or you can subscribe and receive the additional volumes as they publish. Feel free, do one or the other.
two FOs quick as a flash!
Not “how long as it been” since I was regularly posting here; that’s a dumb thing to write about. Rather, how long has it been since I sewed (Marnie’s wedding last year, but before that….) something for me! I think it was the late 1980s, to be honest. Back then — which seems like just the other day, doesn’t it, until I do the math — I sewed all the time, since I made clothes for my kids and for myself, too.
I had such fun making these two versions of the Schoolhouse Tunic. It’s an extremely simple pattern, and I just loved the fabrics. I made the purple one first, and then decided to make some changes to the aqua one before I started. It turned out that I needed to severely bring in the seam under the bust, so I rigged paired darts on the back bodice and skirt. So I did those correctly on the aqua dress, and added pockets. I love pockets.
summery aqua
It’s meant to be a dress, but it’s a bit short for the current state of my legs. I want to get some leggings to wear under it, but it’s kinda cute this way too. POCKETS.
what is that accessory I'm holding??
So there’s the purple one — the Kaffe Fassett stripe, so lush and extremely lightweight fabric. That’s not a little spherical bag I’m holding, it’s a kettlebell. A 15-pound kettlebell that will be part of my strength training exercises beginning tomorrow. I hope my trainer doesn’t see that photo, it’s not the right way to be lifting. Sorry, trainer.
Dinner tonight with my son, after a productive sewing weekend. I hope y’all had a great weekend, too!
soft fabric and hard abs — my weekend!
This weekend, my primary making-things plans are focused on sewing a couple summer dresses for myself, both using the Schoolhouse Tunic pattern (unless the first one just looks awful, of course). It’s pretty cute, and can be cut as a shirt or a dress. I’m going for the dress; it’s worn over a little camisole, and I think it’s cute. I’m just not sure whether the cut will be flattering — I looked at the flickr pool for it, and it looks great on all sizes and shapes of women, so we’ll see. Here are the fabrics I got, from fabric.com:
the purple stripe is Kaffe Fassett, and the aqua one just makes me so happy!
It’ll be fun to sew, especially something that’s as simple and quick as this pattern. I’ll have to scrape the dust off my machines, but it’ll be nice to do something that produces such a fast FO.
Marnie is taking me up and up and up in my workout routines, and I’m so happy. I feel accomplished, and active, and great in my body, which is an entirely new feeling for me. I’m telling you, do a plank. You sure don’t have to look like this guy — when I started, I held it for 5 seconds. Just try it once. You’ve only got 5 seconds to lose. Just try it. Just once.
Happy Friday, y’all! I’ll show my FO dress(es) later!
We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
I’ve been so body-bound, but body-ignorant, all my life. I’ve tended to approach life in the way de Chardin denies: I’ve been a physical being having an occasional spiritual experience….not that I’ve chosen that in a mindful way, and not that this is the way I’d most like to be in the world. But at the same time, I have not taken care with my physical self, in any way (see the previous post, or see me in person!). Now and then I’d get focused on weight loss; I’ve lost 50 pounds so many times I could create a small army of people — or maybe an army of small people. That reminds me of the old joke about being great at stopping smoking, having done it dozens of times. So when I get it together, I know how to lose weight, but obviously that’s only a first step.
Marnie and I talked a lot about life and how to live it, as we always do. I love that about seeing and talking with her. I admire her so much, as I always have, and learn so much from her in ways she doesn’t even know. Part of one of our conversations was about our bodies, and her deep embracing of being a strong woman, and that the embodiment of that is so much more than physical strength and a groovy metaphor. She is certainly strong; she and Tom have a regular strength-training practice of weightlifting. Listening to her talk about it really inspired me, and it landed at just the right moment in my life. She’d tried in the past to encourage me to do strength training, because she was concerned about my aging bones and she knew how good it would be for me, in a whole-self way. The timing must not have been right then, because this time BAM I got it. Before she got here, I’d been thinking very hard about how much I wanted to approach my life and body differently.
One really cool thing she told me that clicked is the idea that strength training is always hard; it’s maintained at a hard level. So for one thing, it doesn’t get harder! But the other thing is that you can do more and more, it takes more to keep it hard. Right now, holding the plank pose for 6 seconds, 3 reps, is HARD, man. I quiver, and on the 3rd one I’m a little sweaty. And I’m right proud of being able to hold it for 6 seconds! But one of these days, to keep it at the same level of hard, I’ll be holding it for a minute. My dear friends, I wish this for you, I wish this for your health and well-being, and for your aging process.
I’ve only done the training workout two days, Sunday and Monday, and I’m very keenly aware of my stomach muscles, the muscles that wrap around my sides, my butt muscles and leg muscles, my arm muscles, my upper back muscles. Keenly aware. I woke up this morning thinking about this, and looking forward to the next time I do it — tomorrow, because today I’m doing yoga. I look forward to seeing if next time I can hold plank for 7. If next time I can replace one set of modified squats with regular squats. Maybe to plank, probably not yet to squats, but it’s just a matter of time. If you put in the time and don’t cheat yourself while you’re doing it, muscles get stronger. Period.
I’m not becoming a proselytizer, and I’m not going to keep writing about the joy of this change; I’ll do that on my fitness blog. Tonight Marnie’s going to send me the photos she took while she was here, so when I get them I’ll write a proper post about her wonderful visit. It was huge, and one of the best times I’ve ever spent with her. As Katie reminded me, 2011 has been magnificent where my children are concerned, because I’ve been so lucky to spend good face-to-face time with each of them. My next goal is to spend good face-to-face time with all of them at once.
Well I quit those days and my redneck ways / And oh the change is gonna do me good
STYLE: I’m 52 — that’s young, or at least, I’m young. I’ve never had money, ever, and frequently had an astonishing lack of money and resources. As a young mother, I had so little money and no health insurance, and babies need things, so of course the little money we had went to seeing that they had what they needed. My “style” was old jeans and old shirts — often my husband’s old shirts. In college and graduate school, it was the same story about money but somehow there was even less of it, and my “style” was still old jeans and older shirts.
Before Marnie arrived, I started thinking about wanting to develop some style, wanting not to look like a bag lady all the time; of course it’s kind of tricky, since I work at home and can stay in jammies (and do). Do I dress up to sit around the house all day? What does that even mean, “dress up?” Just before she arrived, I’d come across a wonderful blog, Une Femme d’un Certain Age (this post in particular), so I was ready. There are lots of blogs like this and I’ve started collecting them — I’ll write about them later.
So we spent Saturday out shopping — a normally-dreadful chore, done as quickly and thoughtlessly as possible — but with a mind to helping me get a bit of style going. I just want to be comfortable and put-together, and look appropriate and nice. She also showed me some freaking adorable ways to do my hair; the next outfit I show you later this week is my favorite, and includes the cutest hair you’ll ever see. For now, here’s what I’m wearing today:
skirt: old, I’ve had it at least 10 years and can’t remember where I got it
black camisole: H&M, $6
green cardigan: H&M, $30
black tights, Duane Reade
flat black shoes, Aerosole, $40 on sale
black meditation beads worn as bracelet
FITNESS: I’ve also never had a very healthy approach to life — a lot of one thing at a time, usually, imbalanced, emotional eating, I can’t see how I really look, recriminating inner voice, you know, all that jazz. So another reason Marnie’s arrival came at a great time is that she is also a dedicated weight trainer and she pays attention to her food, and lives a very conscious life. She spent a good bit of time coming up with a strength-training routine for me to do at home, involving squats and plank and push-ups and hip and leg lifts.
My goals are much more about strength and fitness, and getting some regular activity into my life in a mindful way, i.e., not just a little random walking in the park now and then. There’s a button in the menu bar up top to my fitness blog, where I plan to track and record progress in this whole new part of my life.
So much more to say about Marnie’s visit, which I’ll do separately.
Would ya like to buy an o? No? Then could I interest you in a 9?
Every time I do something like this — shh….wanna peek? — I think of this:
Ah. The little kids years, such fond fond memories, to the soundtrack of Sesame Street and Mister Rogers, and Raffi. Baby beluga in the deep blue sea….
OH YEAH. Here’s why I stopped by. Want to see my progress?
so lush! it's going to be so big and blankie-ey
love the horseshoes, such fun to create
My Traveling Woman obviously, madelinetosh obviously, colorway byzantine (maybe not so obviously). But now I have the song in my head:
would ya like to buy an O? circular and sweet? looks just like a donut, really good enough to eat….it’ll cost you just a nickel (a nickel!) a nickel, shhh, a nickel right, so buy the O and take it home tonight don’t ask any questions…
Maybe that’s not really a good lesson for little kids to learn, now that I think about it.
angie, you’re beautiful, but ain’t it time we said goodbye?
I finished Katie’s socks — the pattern is Angee, by Cookie A, and the yarn is the ultrasoft and super washable KnitPicks Felici (colorway: green vegetables, in the most obviously-named color ever). Katie picked the pattern when she was here, and it was fun, like all Cookie A socks.
angee, in knitpicks felici
I did round 1 swatching for my Mothed sweater and didn’t like the fabric; I need to swatch again, going down a needle size. It was just too thin and kind of gauzy, and not what I’m going for, really. I persist, like a real grown-up knitter!
Other parts of the NE got snow, and we were supposed to but mercifully we didn’t. It is gray and drizzly, though, so it’s that kind of April Fool’s Day. I hope you aren’t fooled today (unless you want to be)!
oh happy, sunny day. oh how i’ve missed you.
I had breakfast with Will this morning, which made me so so happy. We see each other every week (he only lives a couple blocks away from me), and it’s usually over a meal or a beer. Starting my day with him was especially wonderful. And you mothers out there, you’ll get this: he still smells like my boy.
Will refuses to have a straight photo made; I have literally hundreds of photos he took at arm’s length with every possible facial expression you could imagine. Plus extreme close-ups, some of which freak me out if I accidentally run across them, like his nostril. So I asked him if I could take his picture, and at the very last second he copped this sneer. Too bad, because his smile is gorgeous.
bagels & lox, a cafe au lait, and my son. sneering. c'mon, will, show me your beautiful smile.
And then, not to make so damn much out of the simplest hat in the whole world, here’s the finished hat, on my head. It’s the dreaded “shot in the bathroom mirror” pose. And this will officially end my discussion of Marnie’s hat.
so slouchy! i love it. marnie wanted it because she has long hair and often wears braids, pinned up like katie davies (needled) does. this should cover her.
adorable, fast, fun, and well, adorable. not me, the hat. though i am fun.
I have loads of work to do so this is quick. I decided not to do the Knit Crochet Blog week, though i did it last year and had a blast with it. I don’t know, I’m just not feeling it this year. But I do look forward to reading everyone else’s posts!
Happy Monday y’all. I hope it’s as sunny where you are as it is in NYC today. Glory. Bliss. Sun.
Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away / On my way to where the air is sweet, can you tell me how to get, how to get to, wait. This has nothing to do with Sesame Street.
I was all ready to swatch my new sweater yesterday morning when I had my wonderful weekly phone call from Marnie, who reminded me that I was going to make her a hat — she’d already picked the pattern and the yarn, and in the way things work with a 52-year old mind, I’d been excited about it and then forgot. This happens to me at least three or four times a day. Marnie’s coming to visit me for a long weekend (and to see Will) in a couple of weeks, so I’ll get to give it to her personally. Check it out, it’s the “My Striped & Slouchy hat” (rav link here), knit in Cascade 220:
such a sunny hat!
and with such a wide ribbing -- two stripes wide, great for covering her ears
It reminds me of eggs, eggs and cream, butter and cream, daffodils. I get such delight from knitting the stripes — nothing is cheerier than stripes, in the first place, and anything with white is just wonderful. Red and white (my fave), yellow and white (my new fave), blue and white, black and white, gray and white, all really great.
I have one more set of stripes — it’s very slouchy — and then the decrease section, which decreases very very quickly. It’s cute, and couldn’t be simpler to make. I am watching the old HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers (I’d never seen it before), and this hat is so simple I don’t have to look at it at all while I’m knitting, which is good because the show is entirely absorbing. There are scenes I have to look away, so when legs are blown off, or guts are visible, I just check my knitting until it passes. It’s an amazing program, you’ve probably already seen it. It got into my dreams last night.
Here’s my very last attempt to get the colors photographed in my Saroyan, and it failed. I really wish you could see it, because it’s the most wonderful shade of olive green. Sigh.
IT'S NOT BROWN!!! grrrrrr!!
I hope you have a great spring Sunday, and your colors are true!
the first FO of 2011 that isn’t blue! WHEE!!
Well! What in the world happened (besides everything that’s happening in the world). It was just one of those weeks, no need to say more because everyone has them. I owe so many people emails — lots going on and not nearly enough time. In the midst of it all, during some middle-of-the-night wide-awake hours, I finished my shawl:
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- close-up of the body-to-edge transition, very nice! click to enlarge this one, for sure.
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- here’s the top edge
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- and here’s the tip of the shawl
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- it’s such a vibrant color, and a very nice length!
The pattern (LaReine, by Angela Tong) is simple and straightforward, but somehow I never could wrap my mind around how she came up with it. The alternating lacey bits are really lovely, and easy to do but not boring — just a very nice combination. Despite everything this week threw at me, and despite my state as a result, I was able to work on the shawl and not be bored but not be too challenged. I went up a needle size and always run out of yarn, so I stopped short 12 rows and went straight to the border.
And the yarn — Okay Knits Sena — was wonderful. The very subtle shifts in color were never jarring and give the color such life; there were bits of light pink, bits of orange, a couple of dark almost purple flecks, but no long runs of shading. The end result is such a lively and brilliant color. This colorway is sweetie-pie, but to me it’s like a cherry lifesaver. I highly recommend the yarn, and hope to score some more (I love the bubblegum colorway she has in the shop right now).
I won the pattern and the yarn in a giveaway on the pattern designer’s blog; she’s a new designer, and the yarn is dyed in Brooklyn by a young woman who is in medical school. Support them if you’re in the market for a shawl pattern or yummy yarn.
Spring seems to have arrived in Manhattan, though I worry that I’m tempting the gods with such hubris in making such a crazy claim. It’s only mid-March, there’s certainly at least one more winter blast to come. Back to it for me — I hope you’re having a good weekend!
i’m exotic, are you exotic? exotic exotic exotic. what a bizarre word.
When I was younger, I was always envious of nearly everyone else — it seemed like other people had interesting heritage (not me), interesting cultures (not me), or interesting places of origin (not me). I felt like the antithesis of exotic: a plain old white girl from Texas, mutt heritage, store brand white bread and bologna. With Miracle Whip.
But every place is exotic to someone from another place; it’s just hard to see one’s own exotic context, because kind of by definition exotic means otherness. When you’re the default – a plain old white girl – very little feels otherly. Some time in my last decade, I realized that I may not be Moroccan (pick your exotic other of exotic choice), but I do actually have an interesting heritage that’s exotic to other people. Meet Molly.
molly lisle ribble, my great-great grandmother
Her name was Molly, but of course she was just known as Mrs. Sam Ribble. Anyway. This photo accompanied her obituary, and you notice how she seems to be wearing a nightgown? I’ll get to that.
Molly was one of Young County’s oldest pioneer citizens, according to her obituary in the Graham Leader. She was the daughter of a pioneer family, born June 9, 1866 in Nebraska. She married Sam Ribble when she was 16, in a small church in Gooseneck, just outside Graham. They rented land for several years before Sam bought 160 acres of school land, and acquired 160 more that he traded for a wagon and horse and a six-shooter. They built a log cabin on the land — the lumber came by wagon train. When she died, she was survived by 4 daughters, 4 sons, 23 grandchildren, 39 great grandchildren, and 13 great great grandchildren.
So here’s the funny thing about the nightgown. Sam always wanted to have a baby in the house (as you see, they had 8 kids). I don’t think Molly was as keen on always having a baby in the house, but I also don’t think she had much say-so. The last baby, Etheline, had down’s syndrome (that’s how I’m referring to it; the family always just called her a mongoloid). So Molly delivered Etheline, handed her to Sam, and said “there you go, now you’ll always have a baby in the house. I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”
Molly stayed in bed for 50 years. She was just fine, perfect health (she lived to be 94, after all), I think she was just making a point and boy she stuck with it. She’d sit up if a visitor would take her picture — “a polaroid,” as she’d say — but otherwise she couldn’t be bothered. If any little thing happened to fluster her, she’d pat her chest over her heart, in a kind of circle, and say “get me an aspereen I’m having a heart attack.” She never did have a heart attack, of course, and she finally just died in her sleep of being 94 years old.
My mother’s real mother was a full Cherokee who gave her up because she was a girl; she’d only wanted a boy, to live with her in the woods. My great-aunt shot her husband as he was crawling through the kitchen window to kill her. My other great-aunt’s husband went to the store for smokes and never came home. I have a relative named Homer who was a hermit who lived in a hollow near the river outside of town; he’d be spotted now and then, skulking around the edges. That’s all pretty exotic.
fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again. (*smack*)
Katie’s favorite color is green — at least theoretically, if not in actuality (though maybe in actuality too…). She’s a pretty Irish girl, she has green eyes, people do associate green with her, and she’s very proud of her Irish heritage. The name she was born with – Katherine Kennedy Galloway – pretty dang Irish, right? Her maternal grandmother suggested the name Katie because she loved the Disney movie Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Which my kids adored when they were little, too.
Anyway. Sidetracked. When Katie was here, we went through my stash and I sent her home with some pretty yarns to get her own stash going. She saw this green KnitPicks Felici, which I’d bought when I got the pink Felici for Marnie’s socks. Actually, I’d bought the green specifically to make socks for Katie, but then it got buried in my stash — you know how that goes — and newer yarn, newer projects, life, time, all intruded and I forgot all about the green yarn until we saw it. She’s knitting her first pair of socks, so I cast on this new green pair for her, hoping that we’d both hit the heels around the same time so I could walk her through it before she went home. Here’s the current status of the pair I’m making for her….and boy, does that springy green lift my winter-laden spirits. I’m dying for lack of color in the city, so I just glance at the socks and imagine the spring:
soft to touch, happy to look at, GREEN.
This is a Cookie A pattern, Angee, so it fits my sock-knitting mind. Top down, fun, and attractive. The Felici colorway is called ‘green vegetables’ and I really like the particular shades of green. Katie should be wearing these by St Patrick’s Day, to be sure. After all, I finished Anna’s birthday socks in one week, so I can certainly get these knocked out, despite everything that’s going on in my life.
We’re looking at a sunny, mild weekend (40s! Whee!), and I may be going shopping with Will on Saturday. The boy needs a winter coat in the worst possible way, and I’m not fooled by this temporary respite from winter. Oh no, not me. I’ve fallen for that before, thinking winter was over in April. Ha. As our former president said, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
I just like to pretend he was a comedian, and he meant to say the things he said (now that he’s out of office and can’t hurt us any more).
look at what Katie did! (said her exceedingly proud mother…)
I think my hosting service is having a bit of trouble; if you’ve noticed that my blog is taking forever to load (as I have), I do suspect it’s host/server issues rather than something on my end. I don’t usually have a problem, but it does seem to be kind of wonky right now, so my apologies if it’s happening to you!
I have too much work to do to knit or tend to blogs (either as a reader or a writer), but I wanted to show you something. When I was lucky enough to visit my daughter Katie in Austin, last October, I taught her how to knit. She took to it immediately — a natural knitter, she is. We bought her some beautiful apple green yarn, and she launched into a great scarf. When I left her, she was a few sections into it, and going strong. Then her little dog grabbed it one afternoon and ate a chunk out of it, which kind of took the wind out of Katie’s sails. She frogged it back to before the chomp, and tried to get going again. Then she decided she might like to have another project underway too, so she picked the Habitat hat, by Jared Flood. Kinda intense for a brand new knitter! Especially since I live too far away to just pop over for a quick here’s-how-to-do-that session. WELL! Look what she did, her very first-ever FO:
Katie's husband Trey, wearing his new hat
I’m completely blown away! Here’s her project page on rav, if you want to see more pictures. This time I am bragging. Mama’s rights.
Back to trying to teach stats to people who don’t like stats. And editing manuscripts by people whose imaginations exceed their writing grasp. It’s one of those days, friends.
i know i’ve said this before, but this time I REALLY MEAN IT.
Even though, as they say,
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Screw it. I’m making plans anyway. For once in my life, I’m going to just take my time and do it right. (Mister Rogers has a song about that — I like to take my time, I mean that when I want to do a thing, I like to take my time and do it right. I mean I just might make mistakes if I should have to hurry up, and so I like to take my time. That came entirely out of my memory, by the way.) I’m making plans, I’m taking my time, I’m going to do math (gasp! No! Not math!), I’m going to measure myself (get the smelling salts, gussie, ma’s fainted), and this time, I’m making a perfect sweater.
Geez, what a long-winded way to get here. In the wake of my gorgeous-but-large Dark & Stormy (which I will get into shape this weekend), I want to be thoughtful and slow and careful with the next one. I’ve now made three sweaters — my mondo cable cardi, my Peasy, and my Dark & Stormy. I adore them, they’re all gorgeous, but I did them my usual way, getting a wild hair, willy-nilly ordering some yarn and yes, making a little swatch, but then plowing ahead blindly. It’s a wonder they’re as good as they are.
Next up: Gudrun Johnson’s gorgeous Laar sweater, in dragon’s blood red. Here’s hers:
so beautiful!
One lesson I learned on Dark & Stormy: use needles you enjoy working with, even if it means you have to go buy new ones. I absolutely hated every minute of using the Denise needles, and believe it took me much longer to make that sweater, in part because of the needles. The constant difficult scootching, ugh.
So I’m making a substantial swatch, I’m measuring all the critical areas of my body for fitting this sweater, I’m making adjustments to the pattern so it fits ME (especially since I look absolutely nothing like the gorgeous model), and if I goof, I’m ripping. If it’s ok but meh it’s not quite right, I’m ripping.
I’m making a public vow. Promising myself. Yeah.
i think i’ve milked this for all it’s worth. time to move on.
Well this was quick and easy, even including my brain-damaged goofiness that required a bit of frogging and starting over. Sheesh. It’s been a rough new year for finished objects. (Speaking of, I’m going to deal with my too-big Dark & Stormy this weekend, believe me you’ll know how that goes. ) So anyway, this is my new project, officially known as “a very braidy cowl” (pattern here, rav page here, my rav project page here, ta-dah!) and designed by Maryse Roudier. Mine is named Oh, Marcia. Enough — here it is:
Marcia, Marcia Marcia - a very braidy cowl
The color’s not quite right; it’s more aqua than that, but I don’t have my laptop and I’m lost without all my junk. So this is just the raw shot out of the camera, unadjusted to righten-up the colors. The yarn was lovely to work with (SweetGeorgia superwash worsted, colorway summer skin….shoulda been summer sky if you ask me but she didn’t), and this pattern used .8 of a skein. I haven’t blocked it yet, I just finished kitchenering it together and wanted to throw this up before I head downtown. Will I be wearing it, on this dismal gray day? Why yes I will.
If you ever need a very quick gift that looks much more difficult than it is, this would be your project. Size 8 needles, less than a skein, a few hours’ knitting, and organic braidy yummy soft warmth is yours (or theirs!). Of course, if you make it, you’ll read the whole thing before you start, unlike me this time, so you’ll see the “cast on provisionally” before you start. You’re just so good that way, maybe one of these days I will be, too.
oh, and p.s.: when i pulled it off my head after trying it on, it rested for a second on my head, covering my ears, so i can tell you with authority that it’d make a damn fine earwarmer, too. or hair thing to hold your hair off your face when it’s driving you up the WALL man, and those scissors would just take care of it but then the husband wouldn’t like that because he likes long hair but today it’s driving me NUTS…oops.
this book represents my proudest moment of my years in publishing, and my greatest contribution to my field.
…and have no one to share my on-the-spot joys and woes with, no co-workers I can grab in the hallway, no colleagues’ offices to dash into, my blog has to handle all that weight.
I am a social psychologist. When I worked as an acquiring editor for Oxford University Press, I acquired books in social psychology, which was an honor and a thrill, and quite unusual. Usually, a new editor just inherits a subject and a list and you develop your knowledge of that area. But in a stroke of luck, I came a-calling just as they needed a social psychology editor.
An acquiring editor thinks of book ideas and finds people to write them. Or, people have ideas and come to the acquiring editor to see if the publisher is interested. The acquiring editor is the gatekeeper for what does and doesn’t get published; it’s a powerful position, actually. Since I did not go into academia after graduate school, this was an amazing opportunity to make a real contribution to my field. Just the right book at just the right time can have an enormous impact. It was a responsibility I cherished and never took lightly.
There is one book I signed that just brought me to my knees. The concept was that the 50 most prominent social psychologists would, in a casual tone, write about their work that was misunderstood, ignored, or that didn’t get the attention they thought it would get. Sometimes, your article comes out just as a more provocative paper is published, so yours gets lost in the shuffle. Or you just gave it a terrible title. Or you just didn’t write it in a compelling way, etc. And sometimes, the article is misunderstood and takes on a life of its own.
The book’s editor succeeded in getting the superstars of our field. I was completely blown away by the roster. The names wouldn’t mean anything to you, but if you knew my field you’d be as gobsmacked as I was. And the essays were charming, and humble, and funny, and surprising. It was a peek behind the curtain, a chance to think “wow, even HE was ignored?”, a chance to learn lessons from people whose opinions you should trust. It was a wonderful concept, a shocking roster, and full of great stories.
But then something went terribly, terribly wrong, and it looked like the book was not going to make it. I had most of the essays in, but the book crashed and burned. I was heartbroken and devastated, and I’m not being melodramatic about that. After several bleak months with many people working behind the scenes trying to revive the book, the best and right thing happened and the book came in. One year late, but the book came in.
Today I received my copy. When I pulled it out of the envelope, I started crying. This book is me, in such a real way I gave birth to it, and it was a huge-headed baby whose birth nearly killed me. I wish I could express all the feelings I have, but I can’t tease them apart. I am so proud, so honored, so thrilled, so many things, to have brought this book into existence, and to be forever connected with it. My dissertation advisor is in the book, and the article he cited (as a success, not a disappointment!) was one on which I was a co-author…..I know he did that just for me.
In the acknowledgment, the editor of the book wrote about me in the 2nd paragraph. I put it here not to brag, but to have it here for my own future reference and to convey a bit about how involved I was, to help explain why I am sitting here with shaking hands:
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Lori XXX, Senior Editor at Oxford University Press, who saw the value in this project from the start. her advice and counsel at every stage, start to finish, and her willingness to field incessant questions and lend her critical eye to all made her the best sounding board anyone could hope to have. Lori is not only a gifted thinker and writer generally, but her PhD in social psychology meant she knew all the “usual suspects” and she understands the field intimately, and I ultimately adopted the salutation Jedi Lori when writing her (as in “Dear JL”).
In some ways that captures it and in some ways it really doesn’t, but it is a reminder to me of the book’s often-terrible journey, and its ultimate birth. My heart is still pounding, 20 minutes after seeing it for the first time, my hands are shaking, and I’m crying. It really is a lot like giving birth.
Well! This was really the year of sweater knitting; I finished five sweaters this year. Last year I made two, so this was a dramatic increase. It was nice to start the year off with a sweater, even if 90% of it was completed last year. My first FO of 2011 was the Dark & Stormy cardigan, designed by Thea Colman, knit in Madelinetosh vintage (colorway baltic). The pattern was a birthday gift from my friend Kelly, and I absolutely adore the sweater. This’ll stand in until I get a nice shot of me wearing it:
Continue Reading–248 words totally
Well! This was really the year of sweater knitting; I finished five sweaters this year. Last year I made two, so this was a dramatic increase. It was nice to start the year off with a sweater, even if 90% of it was completed last year. My first FO of 2011 was the Dark & Stormy cardigan, designed by Thea Colman, knit in Madelinetosh vintage (colorway baltic). The pattern was a birthday gift from my friend Kelly, and I absolutely adore the sweater. This’ll stand in until I get a nice shot of me wearing it:
just gorgeous, in every way
It seems to be a blue year, this year; while I was waiting for some yarn to arrive, I knocked out a quick braidy cowl, which I named Oh, Marcia. So corny. It’s the Very Braidy Cowl, in Sweet Georgia worsted (colorway summer skin):
Marcia, Marcia Marcia - a very braidy cowl
In exactly the same colorway, but sock weight (which had been my intention when I mistakenly bought the worsted, above), here’s a pair of socks I made for my youngest daughter Anna’s 20th birthday. She really loves handknit socks, much to my real surprise, which makes it such fun to make them for her. This pattern is Komet:
the komet pattern (free on rav), in Sweetgeorgia tough sock, colorway summer skin
SO MUCH BLUE. Something very different was called for……red. Here’s my “I need something red shawl” (aka LaReine Shawl, by Angela Tong, in OkayKnits Sena, colorway sweetie-pie). I absolutely adore this piece, and wear it all the time:
it's such a vibrant color, and a very nice length!
I had this absolutely gorgeous colorway of madelinetosh’s Tosh Merino Light called filigree, so I used one skein of it to make a Saroyan. I loved the pattern, and loved the yarn, but for some reason it won’t photograph correctly, no matter what I do, what kind of light, etc. So trust me, it’s a gorgeous olive green, not so brown:
IT'S NOT BROWN!!! grrrrrr!!
If this wasn’t the quickest and simplest hat pattern in the world, I don’t know what is, but the yellow and white combo really lifts it into “Wow! Where’d you get that hat!” status. Made for Marnie, the pattern is “My Striped & Slouchy Hat“, knit in Cascade 220.
adorable, right?!
These socks — Angee, by Cookie A, knit in KnitPicks Felici (colorway: green vegetables) — are for my oldest daughter Katie, who (a) loves green and (b) picked the pattern. I love knitting for my kids. Knitting the hat above and the socks below was a great antidote to winter.
angee, in knitpicks felici
It took forever, but I made a second Traveling Woman shawl in tosh DK, colorway byzantine. It’s gorgeous, drapy, squishy, and warm:
Traveling Woman Shawl, by Liz Abinante, in tosh DK
A very very quick little knit, I cranked out the Fetching mitts in a couple hours. The yarn is so soft, Cascade Eco Duo (70% alpaca, 30% merino), in the vanilla colorway. It’s a fun knit, and I know the mitts will be luscious to wear but I don’t know how they’ll hold up, given how soft they are (and the yarn is loosely-spun singles). Still, look:
you wouldn't believe how soft these are!
I love this hot little number: Hannah Fettig’s featherweight cardigan, in Spirit Trail Fiberworks’ “clotho,” colorway deliciously called dragon’s blood. This is a wonderful little sweater, I see why everyone has made it.
the color is dragon's blood
This was without a doubt the fastest sweater I’ve ever knit; it really just took 13 days, even though there was a 15-day break in the middle while I was gone to Vietnam and didn’t work on it at all. This is my Wintry Mix sweater, designed by Amy Herzog, knit in the recommended yarn (Berroco Blackstone Tweed).
Wintry Mix, by Amy Herzog (yarn: berroco blackstone tweed, in evergreen)
A second Thea Colman design, this one the Vodka Gimlet — but since my colorway was Oz (Plucky Knitter Primo Worsted), I named my sweater Ozma’s Delight. I can’t express how much I adore this sweater, I’ll probably wear it every day:
sweater LOVE
When the weather started smelling cold, I realized I don’t have a warm hat, so I knocked out A Hat for Eudora, designed by Alexandra Tinsley. The pattern was a birthday gift from Kelly, and the yarn is Cascade 220. I call it my Berry Welty hat.
the hem facing is blue and purple, but only I get to know that!
Here’s my Laurayana sweater — Ayana by Amy Herzog, pattern gifted by my friend Laura. This was knit in Cascade 220 Heathers (color, montmartre, which is much more dusty lavender than it looks here).
really such a comfortable sweater to wear.
For my youngest daughter Anna, a pair of handknit socks — the only kind of socks she wears, which cracks me up given who she is, otherwise. Not a handknit anything kind of person!
Kai-Mei (pattern by Cookie A), in KnitPicks Stroll Tonal (golden glow)
Her foot is at least a couple sizes smaller than mine, so that sock is stretched pretty far to fit over my foot!
it’s about time! i’m pleased to introduce you to……
excuse everything about this photo please!
There’s nothing good to say about this picture — my hair is its morning mess, there’s nothing styled here, the sweater is just off the needles and so not yet blocked, and it’s pinned together with yellow-headed pins — but LOOK! My Dark & Stormy sweater [rav link] is a fait accompli! (and p.s., that’s not really a muffin top around my waist, it’s the unblocked sweater pooching out. i swear. )
And do I love it? With the heat of a thousand burning suns. With the calories of a thousand triple-decker chocolate cakes. With the winds of a thousand level 5 tornadoes. With the spit of a thousand tobacco-chewing cowboys. With the seeds of a thousand watermelons. I’d say I do.
Janna, I think you were on to something. I needed to finish something. I haven’t had an FO in months, and finishing this has re-lit the fire in mah belly. Now I just want to grab Eve’s Rib and finish her off. I’m in a tough spot since I came to be crazy about sweater knitting; knitting small things doesn’t thrill me like it used to, but it takes me a long time to finish a sweater so the FOs are fewer and farther between. I’ll have to figure this out.
Au revoir, ennui! Hasta luego, malaise! Hello, new sweater!
i’m tantalized, are you tantalized? we’re so tantalized! what a weird word.
ooh! that looks suspiciously like a finished sleeve!
mmm hmm. yep. that’s right. i did it. uh huh. me go girl. all riiiiiiight.
dunh dunh dunh! the return of knitting content!
I promised that knitting content would return, since this is after all (ostensibly) a knitting blog. The truth is that I haven’t felt much like knitting lately, and I haven’t had much time, either. But I have been making steady progress on my birthday sweater, pattern courtesy of my friend Kelly (dark and stormy cardigan, by thea colman, yarn is madelinetosh vintage, in baltic). Knitting the 3″ wide front band takes a long time, since it goes continuously up one side, around the collar (with a big section of short rows to make the wide cardigan collar) and back down the other side, in 1×1 ribbing. Maybe it’s just me, but 1×1 ribbing is the slowest thing to do. ANYWAY. Last night I finished the collar and bands, so I just have the sleeves to do.
cables and twists, so beautiful! and the way the cables drift into the ribbing at the bottom, really great.
look at that great collar - loose bindoff is critical here
the front of my beautiful birthday sweater -- unblocked, obviously!
So that’s been fun. I know I always get bored with sleeves, which seem interminable, but I hope they feel relatively fast, after the long slog of the collar and bands. Stockinette will be welcomed again.
And here are a few obligatory shots out my window, since we’re in Blizzardgeddon, as they call it. Silly.
snow out the back window
view from my front window. in the windowsill: two brass horney toads, a tibetan singing bowl, and a porcelain star-shaped box full of pins. my stuff.
see that van? its alarm went off most of the evening. i really hope their battery died.
The wind is gusting like mad, and I’m watching pedestrians being blown around, or trying to walk forward but being blown backwards. And once again, I’m glad to be working at home.
it’s amazing how our kids can transform the tiny gifts we give them, isn’t it.
I’ve been thinking about this for such a long time. We give our kids whatever gifts we have, passing them along from those who gave them to us, and sometimes passing along some that are ours alone to give. Once I was on a bus in Austin – must’ve been the University Shuttle Bus, the only bus I ever took in Austin – and I saw a mother and her grown daughter sitting across from me. It was clear the younger woman was the daughter of the older, she carried a ghost of her mother’s expression underneath her own. And I loved that, seeing the echo.
I didn’t really grow up with my father, but when I met him when I was an adult, I realized all kinds of tiny ways I was just like him, things I couldn’t have picked up from seeing him. Like the way I wipe both corners of my mouth unconsciously, the way I used to search the personals section of the newspaper (back when that wasn’t code for porn), looking for something someone might’ve written for me – he did both those things too. OK, big deal, so do many people, but to see that we did both things in the exact same way, it was a little eerie. Gifts, characteristics, invisible threads connecting us across time.
So all my children received many things from their father and from me, and I think about them, and am struck by them now and then. There’s a very clear example in my daughter Marnie. Marnie’s dad draws these little cartoons – always has, as long as I’ve known him. He draws a waving guy, and a dog, and they have not changed over all these years. The only variation is that now and then the waving guy has a palm tree behind him, or something like that. Here’s a new example, he signs all his letters to his kids like this:
he's been drawing this since i met him in 1978
He and Marnie used to spend hours drawing together, filling up page after page with cartoon line drawings, fantastic creatures, all kinds of things. (I can hardly draw a breath, or a straight line with a ruler, so Marnie’s visual art talent didn’t come from me, that’s for sure!) So Marnie took this very small gift from her dad, and some other small gifts from me, and turned them into this GIANT thing. She’s creating a graphic novel now, and it’s staggering and will be staggeringly beautiful. Here’s a seed of it:
something marnie describes as a "sketch"
The link to her professional site is there to the right –> do check it out.
Life is really wonderful in this way, these tiny invisible threads and bonds gathering and growing over time, and changing by the aggregation. I love this stuff.
i’m fixing to start, get the hell outta my way. put the kids on a baptist pallet, and throw that food out, it’d stink a dog off a gut wagon.
WHAT??????
I think it’s possible that people from the South, and from Texas, have a particularly strong love of language. My uncle was an uneducated man, a truck driver, and I watched his eye twinkle a little bit as he described another guy at the bar: “….mouth the size of a dime, 5 teeth, none the same size shape or color…” My beloved grandfather (Big Daddy, and he called me Pete) described my Aint Meecie: “watch out Pete, she’ll talk your right arm off and whisper in the hole.” When my grandmother was in a nasty mood, Big Daddy would say, “c’mone Pete, Ma’s bitter.” Something that smelled bad would “stink a dog off a gut wagon” or “gag a maggot.” When we went to Big Daddy’s small house, we kids would sleep on a Baptist pallet….which meant sleeping on a quilt on the floor.
It’s not as if all these were all well-known phrases (although former Texas governor Ann Richards also slept on Baptist pallets) – people just have a colorful and creative way of describing the world, either drawing on old familiar sayings or making them up on the fly. Every year, Fresh Air assembles a week of programs focusing on country western music, apparently; I listened to the whole string of programs at once….Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Doc Watson….and felt my cells relax. It wasn’t just the accents that felt so comfortable to me, it was the sensibility behind the stories. There is a distinct regional way of viewing the world, of organizing a story, of incorporating some details and ignoring others.
The Dictionary of American Regional English is such a wonderful project. Thank heavens for this living documentation of language! One thing that always breaks my heart about traveling around the world is seeing Pizza Huts and McDonalds everywhere……NO!! When I go to a little Mayan village in the Yucatan, I want to eat whatever they eat there. I do NOT want a McMayan burger. I don’t want us all to be the same! I don’t want us all to speak the same, to sound the same. I don’t want to be comfortable everywhere I go, but I do want there to be a place where I am comfortable. Linguistically, that’s Texas for me, of course.
Anyway, if you like this kind of thing, you might enjoy taking a glance at the most recent DARE newsletter, where a writer explores regional differences in describing meanness. Here’s an excerpt:
we have the wonderfully complex “mean enough to steal a blind chicken’s breakfast,” which, when you think about it, probably had to come from New York. For muscle, “mean enough to choke his own horse to death” (Minnesota) is very impressive. But the palm for downright meanness goes to Texas for “mean enough to push a widder woman’s dog in the well.” … “Mean enough to sell his grandmother to the glue works” (Minnesota) seems to combine business with pleasure. The disturbingly specific “kill his grammaw downstairs” is from California.
“Disturbingly specific” cracked me up. But aren’t those great? And so much better than a bland “she’s very mean?”
Linguists have jargon for describing these details, of course (hi Jocelyn) – but my linguistic style is to say pin for pen, tin for ten, awl for oil, raht for right. Rainch for ranch. If it costs a dime, it’s tin cints.
listen to a texan (not me, but sounds like my people)
A very particular weather system – a blue norther. A kiss is a Yankee dime. Cattle are watered at the tank, which other folks might call a pond. I reckon I’m fixing to do something. (One of my favorite jokes: Texas women don’t get PMS, they get FTS: fixing to start. I never knew there was any other way to say that!)
Still, I’ve moved around a LOT, so I know that people have their own regional ways of saying things, and I want to speak their language too. When I moved from Texas to Connecticut, I kept asking people, “so what do y’all call X here?” In Connecticut, it’s a grinder…..really? A grinder? Cool! Not a hoagie or a sub, it’s a grinder. That’s so cool.
Ever since I was in junior high, I’ve been trying to squash my accent. I once overheard someone else in band saying something mean about my “thick” accent, so I’ve been trying to get rid of it since then. For heaven’s sake. It doesn’t help that people equate my accent with ignorance – especially in the north. (although it’s also true that people here sometimes tell me I have such a “cute southern accent.”) When I work very hard at it, and exert myself, I can reduce it pretty substantially. But lately I’ve decided to stop that, to quit trying to be something/someone else. This way of talking, it’s me. It’s always been me, and actually I like it. I lahk it.
make that basket, bird legs! GOD I LOVED HER.
other texans just a-talkin
pbs on the texas drawl
And, for the record, there’s not just one Texas accent. East Texas is very different from West Texas. North Texas is different still, and they’re all different from the Valley accent. I’m going to put that Ann Richards video on loop.
well cut off my legs and call me shorty. whoo-wee.
Not to be all braggy-mama or anything, but here’s the photo Katie sent me this morning of her scarf in progress:
katie's scarf, in progress
Wouldja friend her on Ravelry? She’s klowery678. That way she can see all the beautiful things you’re making and fave-ing and queue-ing.
And this ends my braggy-mama posting. I promise. For now.
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