Pride
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.
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.
it doesn’t have to take long – just a note, that’s all you have to do.
Write your old high school principal. Please. It can take just a couple of minutes.
write your high school principal – even if it’s no longer national coming out day – write and ask what they’re doing to make the school safe for the gay kids. please.
Today is National Coming Out Day. After a month of heartbreaking stories of LGBTQ youth committing suicide after cruel bullying, please take a few minutes for collective action. Write your high school principal and ask what he/she is doing to stop bullying of LGBTQ kids. Even if (like me) you graduated from high school a geologic era ago, as long as your school still exists it has a principal who should hear from you.
http://www.writeyourprincipal.com
When I wrote the letter to my old principal, I just cc’ed the blog’s email address (writeyourprincipal@gmail.com). I graduated high school in 1977, in Wichita Falls, TX. Wichita Falls is not (nor was it then) one of the more progressive places in Texas. OK, I imagine you’re thinking ‘well, what place in Texas is progressive anyway?’ which only means you don’t know about Austin. Wichita Falls ain’t Austin, that’s for sure. It’s dominated by Christian churches and a military base, and it’s blue, not red. [note: of course that doesn't mean that there are no open-minded people who live there!]
My daughter Marnie posted about this event on her facebook wall, which is how I learned about it. The organizers are two of her friends from Smith College. Marnie’s letter mentioned her brother – my son – and his experience at a progressive high school in progressive Austin. My beloved son is gay, and she describes his experience so eloquently, I’ll let her words speak since they’re posted on another public site:
Even though my memory of Westlake academically is positive, I am writing you today hoping to hear that administrative support for LGBTQ youth has changed. Two years younger than me, my brother Will entered Westlake as an openly gay young teen. In the face of bullying and teasing by his peers, Will tried to start a Gay-Straight Alliance. He gathered all the signatures he needed, got a faculty sponsor, and—in spite of following all the administrative steps to start a club—his application was denied. This was a huge blow: not only did he face teasing and bullying by his classmates, but he also faced discrimination by high school administration. I see that a GSA is now an active club at Westlake, which is a positive first step that I wish Will had been able to see.
Reading those words took me back and my stomach feels punched and it makes me cry and remember the extraordinary courage my son displayed. High school is pretty awful for most people, I think, and everyone feels like an outsider or different (well, almost everyone….maybe the jocks and cheerleaders don’t, I have no idea). Will’s courage and willingness to so publicly work for what he believed in still touches me and fills me with enormous pride.
Marnie and Will in a photo booth in Northampton, MA
Will came out during junior high — first to me and his sisters. Of course we’d been crazy about him the day before, so we continued to be crazy about him. Who wouldn’t be? He’s handsome, and funny, and charming, and smart as a whip, and he’s my precious boy. But the entire year before he came out, he had been angry, and grumpy, and foul. He was just in a bad mood all the time, and it wasn’t like him. No matter how many times I asked, he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. When he finally came out, during a late-night car ride (FYI, my kids talked most easily during late-night car rides — that dark, and safe, and removed space seemed to help them talk), he said he’d been desperately not wanting it to be true, for all of the previous year. He did NOT want to be gay, he didn’t want it to be true. After all, who would want to be gay, since that’s the word people use with contempt to describe things they disparage? “That’s so gay.” Who wants to be that? Who wants to be something that can get you killed? Or bullied and tortured?
marnie and will in brooklyn, 2005 or 6
Talking to you is probably preaching to the choir – you who read my little blog tend to be mothers, or aunts. You tend to be compassionate, caring people (most knitters are!). I assume you share my views, or at least hold similar views. But even if you already do, don’t forget to teach others, your kids, your nieces and nephews, friends, friends of friends, children of friends. Don’t let anyone speak in your presence in a way that makes it acceptable to make the world any less safe for the gay kids.
always with their heads together - they called themselves looney margaret (marnie) and little cricket (will)
I am so thankful for Will, for exactly who he is, and I’m glad he had the courage to come out. I wish the world wasn’t such that courage was required to simply be who you are, but it is. And don’t ever get all satisfied and think “oh, that’s a problem over there…in the South, in Texas, wherever.” No, that’s a problem where you are too. I promise.
Please write your old principal. It’s easy to find the names and email addresses these days, and the letter needn’t take you a long time. That website gives you some details you can include. Just do it. An overflowing inbox of even short emails will say a lot. Please write.
i love him, i love him, i love him, and where he goes he wears handknit socks, handknit socks, handknit socks (ok, so the rhythm is off for that song, sue me).
Remember Richard Simmons? Yeah. That’s NOT what I’m talking about with the title of this post. Instead, I am the oldie, and I’ve been sweating it this morning. Since I have the old-lady-inability-to-sleep, I finished my socks this morning. It was close, whether I’d be able to get both socks out of the skein of Tosh Sport, and I mean VERY VERY CLOSE. As in, here’s what’s left:
this is it. a yard and a half.
With each row, I went through this pair of thoughts: “Oh, no problem, I’m definitely going to have enough yarn.” “OH NO, problem, there’s no way it’s going to last.” But it did last, obviously, and now he owns a pair of socks knit with madelinetosh (tosh sport, colorway tweed) and my love.
his tweedie-pie socks
I still can’t quite believe he let me knit something for him. He’s not (like, at all) a guy who wears sweaters or scarves, so maybe this is just the first of many pairs of socks I can sneak into his drawer.
check out the Haunted Library – my girl has a piece in the exhibition!
I don’t mean to brag, but check out this handmade book created by my daughter Marnie. If you’re in the Chicago area, you can see it in person at Ragdale, 1260 N Green Bay Rd in Lake Forest, where it is being exhibited in a show called “House, Dreaming.” Marnie’s piece is a lighthearted take on death and presidential history:
Happy Friday, y’all.
i have been my own worst enemy on this project, and we nearly came to blows. read what a little perseverence’ll do for ya.
ICK and YUCK. As lovely as Saturday’s weather was, today’s is that awful. It’s cold, gray, and drizzly, but not in a let’s-get-together-in-trench-coats-in-Casablanca kind of way. Just in that ick kind of way. The kind that makes the annual GYN trip just that much more pleasant. Yeah.
Here’s the transitional thing that straddles the awful-to-wonderful divide: my shrug. OK, so you would not believe the hell I’ve been through with this thing. First there was the whole oops I did it wrong debacle, resulting in frogging a whole skein’s worth of knitting. OK. Figured it out, cast on, got to the 2nd repeat (where we last left our cheerless heroine) and I made some kind of mistake. Shoulda just looked closely to figure out where I goofed, but I was getting a global sense of despair with this one so I just frogged.
Decided I’d better just try to figure out the stitch pattern before casting on again, so I cast on for 3 pattern repeats plus the edge stitches, and knit through three repeats. GENIUS!! IT WORKED!!! I must have just made an easy mistake the last time, I’m on it. Cast on again – 324 stitches, by the way, screwed up the first row. Frogged. Cast on agai…oh no, too short a tail, by ~5 stitches. Cast on again, got to the end of the row and still had ~30 stitches on the needle. Frogged. Cast on aga….too short a tail, by ~12 stitches (and p.s., how did THAT happen, because I kept the starting point the same as it had been the previous time, when I’d cast on way too many!!!).
Tried again, maybe 2 or 3 more times. It almost became funny. Almost. Maybe later it’ll be like, hysterical. I started thinking it was a sign; my friend Preeti used to see signs in everything, maybe I was just being dense about it. Maybe the universe was screaming at me “RUN AWAY LORI” and I was just sitting there like a dolt, trying again and again. After a couple more times, I finally gave up for the night.
I decided to try one. more. time. And if it didn’t work this time, I was going to cry uncle and decide that me and Carol Sunday, we’re one of those sad couples, the ones who love each other but it’s never going to work, and it’s no one’s fault. I cast on, put a stitch marker down every 10 stitches. Counted again. Counted by the 10s. Counted individually. Counted three more times, just to be sure.
Row 1, WHEW. Row 2, stopped after each 16-stitch repeat and checked obsessively. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16, ok. Next. I knew if I could just get past the first couple of rows, I’d be in like Flinn. AND I AM!
that baby hugs the curve just beautifully!
and look at that dimensionality!
it's right! it's right! it's right!
I know I said I wouldn’t blast you with more photos and stories about this project until I finished the collar and was working on the body, but you can appreciate the sense of triumph I have at persevering to this point. MAN. The good news is that it’s pretty fast knitting, and I know the pattern by heart (and it’s really very simple, despite me).
it really sucks to frog, but there’s a delicious feeling of self-righteousness when you do.
A quick photo just to mark the new beginning, and the next photo I’ll post won’t be until I finish the collar and start the widest portion, the sleeves and back. But here, it’s finally right:
look at those beautiful unbroken ribs
I’ve already begun the repeat for the 2nd time, so the fact that the ribs continue along is the important part. It’s really very very simple, the pattern, and if I had been writing the instructions I never would’ve said that “repeat rows 1-7 beginning on opposite side” line. Because without that (unnecessary) sentence, you’d just finish row 7 of the pattern and go back to row 1 and presto. Perfect. Easy. Not at all confusing.
So if you’re casting on (ahem, to a certain linguist), have fun! If you decided to frog (ahem, to a certain birthday girl in Taos), or if it’s in your queue (ahem to a lot of you), here’s how it goes when it’s done correctly.
For now, I’ve eaten a few too many M&Ms this morning and am feeling a bit hyper from the unaccustomed dose of sugar. Think I’ll sign off and do a bit of breathing and knitting. Isn’t that always the cure for anything that ails you?
love has no pride. but i do.
My internet connection has gone on and off all morning – idiotic elevator men started sawing and making a horrendous racket at 6:45am. OK, I was already up, but for the love of PETE!! I guess they’re turning our cable on and off. I really hates them.
So very quickly, while I’m online:
My Mondo Cable Cardigan – it’s not a great picture, I want to go to the park for a little photoshoot, but I have too much work to get done. This weekend, maybe. Can I just say that I absolutely totally 110% adore this sweater!! It’s so comfortable, and warm, and well, perfect. I’ll be wearing it a lot, I can tell. My idea to use the shawl pin didn’t work, though, so I’ll be doing some button (and giant snap) shopping as soon as I can.
The yarn. Madelinetosh’s tosh merino DK, in colorway Byzantine. The colors are deeper and richer than this photo suggests – I just haven’t had time to try to capture it yet. But you can see that it’s going to be gorgeous in the Eve’s Rib Shrug (which I’m calling Eve Shrugged, in honor of my teenage fandom of Atlas Shrugged, which I thankfully outgrew). This yarn is … well, it leaves me without words.
My handknit sweaters……so far. I’ll be adding to this mini-stack, and I thank the sweater knitters among you who tolerate my silliness over something that is old hat to you. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s like being a labor & delivery nurse; even though you’ve done it many, many times, each time is still magical. Anyway, thanks for indulging my excitement.
I’m in a new round of new authors writing me enthusiastically about their manuscripts; for some reason, it seems to come in waves. When they hear the price, many decide to forego editing, but enough seem to be OK with it so that’s great for me. Off to work – happy last day of summer, y’all.
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stupid workmen – today i hates them.
Early this morning, it appears that the workmen in our building somehow disconnected the telephone and internet cable. So all day long, I have been without the internet and y’all? I HAVE A LOT TO DO!!! It couldn’t have come on a worse day.
grrr.
The sweater is taking its own sweet time to dry, but while I’m watching it dry, I’m playing around with fasteners. The pattern has you sew large buttons on – 3 of them – and put large snaps underneath; the buttons are just for decoration. Well, I’m not sure how I feel about that, but of course there aren’t buttonholes. So I got an idea to use a large silver shawl pin, like this – what do you think, really?
Of course, I haven’t had a chance to try it on so I don’t know if the pin will work.
Anyway. So there I was with no sweater to work on, waiting for my new yarn to arrive, when I thought “hmm, well? Maybe I’ll just cast on the Austin Hoodie with my tosh merino light (in porcelain, the palest pink). If you’ve used TML, you probably know that the skeins are the biggest tangliest mess ever. After handwinding the ball for 70 minutes, my doorbell rang and the mailman delivered MY BYZANTINE!!! The color is even more amazing than I thought. Unfortunately, I have to leave for a meeting tonight but tomorrow, you’ll see.
Kelli, I cast-on and am on row 3. It’s really fun! I swatched and hit it on the money, first rattle out of the box, so Eve’s Rib Shrug, I’m a-coming.
this one was nearly heartbreaking.
So it’s been quite a journey with my Mondo Cable Cardi. (digression: is anyone else sick to death of hearing people talk about their “journeys”? I sure am….) I had a sweater’s worth of beautiful madelinetosh’s tosh merino in this soft collection of colors called graphite. It’s really just gorgeous, perfectly complimentary to the loftiness of the yarn. I love it. So I cast on the day after Christmas last year and very quickly made it up to the armholes. Kept going, jolly old sweater, going quickly, tra la la.
Then I noticed that all my remaining skeins were a very harsh blue black – heavy emphasis on the ugly blue. (I love blue, this was just a hideously harsh shade, not to mention that it wasn’t GRAPHITE. It was so grossly different that alternating skeins would just give me a striped sweater.) So I started haunting rav forums, posting desperate ISO notes everywhere. One very sweet raveler got in touch and said she had a sweater’s worth and if I just couldn’t find any anywhere, she’d part with some. Which, of course, meant she couldn’t knit her sweater. So I kept searching. Occasionally someone would write, but their skeins were green black. FINALLY, months later, Jenny (boopersin on rav, friend her!) and her skeins matched mine and the deed was done.
But by then, I’d lost my passion for the sweater. I was also afraid that when push came to shove, it still wouldn’t be a good match. Anxiety and fear kept me from picking it up again. Maybe that’s happened to you before.
Finally, after the high of finishing my Peasy, I picked it up and hunkered down and did it. I finished the sleeve that was about 3/4 done, started and finished the 2nd sleeve, and completed the collar (which took much longer than it seemed it would, for some reason!). Soaked it and set it to blocking last night, and this morning it’s just a bit damp. When it’s completely dry, I’ll walk it over to the park for a photo shoot. Here is is, just lying about:
such gorgeous yarn!
in the “scarecrow” pose so popular this season
I hope to take an action shot this afternoon! I’m really glad this one is finished, and just in time to start the next one. Come on, mailman, bring mama a present.
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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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Well, I did it. I unbound-off the too-long Peasy sleeve, frogged enough rows, and knitted/bound off once again. The sleeve is now the perfect length – it matches the other one, and it matches my arm length. I like that in a sweater.
What an accidentally perfect choice I made for my first sweater; the yarn – Rowan Felted Tweed – is very sticky so it hides errors and looks fantastic when it’s blocked, and since it’s so sticky, it’s easy to frog with abandon, without worrying that it’ll all come undone.
Continue Reading–16 words totally
Well, I did it. I unbound-off the too-long Peasy sleeve, frogged enough rows, and knitted/bound off once again. The sleeve is now the perfect length – it matches the other one, and it matches my arm length. I like that in a sweater.
surgery - knitting needles, stat!
What an accidentally perfect choice I made for my first sweater; the yarn – Rowan Felted Tweed – is very sticky so it hides errors and looks fantastic when it’s blocked, and since it’s so sticky, it’s easy to frog with abandon, without worrying that it’ll all come undone.
It’s always good to take the time to fix what’s wrong. Mister Rogers had a great song called “I Like to Take My Time” (remember, Katie? ), but for this post, I just imagined him singing that he’s proud of me. I’m proud of me too, Mister Rogers.
a photo I took is in a glossy magazine!! If you can read Hebrew, tell me what the magazine is called please…
So one of my photos has been published in a glossy magazine! How bizarre. No, it’s not Vogue, or some knitting magazine, or something about food. Or Riverside Park (my favorite subject after my kids). I don’t know what the magazine is about, actually. I don’t know the name of it, even though I’m holding it in my hands. I just know it’s a real magazine, it’s very glossy, and it seems to be about travel. I got a big envelope from Tel Aviv, and this was inside:
the magazine - read from back to front! That's how I do it anyway!
The cover photo kind of freaked me out, and I was wondering what the hell, man. What the hell is THIS about? Why am I getting this magazine? Who do I know in Tel Aviv anyway?
So I opened it and started thumbing through, with an extremely vague memory of someone asking if they could publish one of my photos in some magazine. Was this it? The whole dang thing is in Hebrew, so I just looked at the pictures. And here’s what I found:
I took the picture in Zagreb, at the market - and there's my name above it, almost the only English word on the page
the page, for context - see how tiny my photo is?
Isn’t that wild??
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my buttons look like Milk Duds. Is that because I’m dieting??
….and so I face the final button.
Peasy is in the last stages of drying; it’s just a little bit damp, but I don’t want to rush it. I took a little trip across town this morning (sidetrack: it’s so easy to go north-south here in Manhattan, which is good since it’s longer than it is wide, but it’s a real pain in the butt to cross town. Getting to the east side of Central Park either requires a cross-town bus, walking across the park, or taking the subway down to Times Square, transferring to another line, and going back uptown. Hassle). ANYWAY, since I had to be across town this morning anyway, for a dentist appointment, I took the chance to walk a few extra blocks to Tender Buttons, the charming little button shop at the edge of the button district, where I bought the buttons for Marnie’s wedding dress.
It’s so hard, picking the right buttons. It can feel like there’s so much pressure: must get the right ones! The wrong buttons would suck! Dizzy! And then I remember….it’s buttons. Geez. Pick some you like. So, after trying a few little wooden ones, and a couple of coconut shell buttons, I ended up with these oval woven leather buttons, handmade in Italy. At $3.50 each I want them to sing Nessun Dorma whenever I wear my sweater:
my little leather buttons....but don't they look like Milk Duds??
And here it is, nearly dry. The next time you see it, I’ll be wearing it. I’m going to take my tripod and remote control over to Riverside Park, so you can see it out in the world.
Peasy, so pretty
atsa lotta stitches my friend
I love it. All the boredom of all that stockinette, forgiven and forgotten. And now I’m super motivated to finish my Mondo Cable Cardigan too. I nearly finished sock #1 while I was waiting at the dentist office this morning. I haven’t had an FO in SO SO LONG, I’d forgotten what a high it is.
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OH MY!!! HALLELUJAH!!!! YIPPEE-EYE-OH!!
Peasy is mostly done.
Ends are woven in.
Continue Reading–1 words totally
OH MY!!! HALLELUJAH!!!! YIPPEE-EYE-OH!!
Peasy is mostly done.
Ends are woven in.
All that’s left: neck and front edge trim. Finding buttons.
I can put it on. And it looks good.
It appears I’ve knit myself a sweater.
I seem to recall something about hating all the stockinette – was that me? I don’t remember it being so bad now.
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here’s why i knit: pleasure. sensory glory, pedestrian pleasures all made by hand. by MY hands.
the pleasure of doing something that's really clever, if you think about it
the visual and tactile beauty of textures that come from 2 simple stitches
the glory of something quite pedestrian, made by hand and with love
lushly textured fabric, made of one long piece of yarn and 2 sticks, and my two hands
wow – linoleum block prints of gannets. who’d a thunk they’d be so amazing and special…
I knew Marnie was making her thank you cards for the wedding gifts she and Tom received. So I knew they’d be way cooler than anything I would’ve ever thought of. Sure enough, my card arrived today. And this concludes the wedding posts!
even the BACK of the envelope is cool
remember the papier mache gannets she hung from the tent rafters? here they are again.
lovely graceful words on the right, out of sight, but look at her drawings of the dress and the shawl. she's always done this.
She specializes in artist’s books, letterpress, and hand-carved woodblock and linoleum prints. Her favorite is the artist’s book, I think. But if you like her style, she has an etsy shop – MonkeyRope Press. There might be a little gift for anyone who gets the reference in her store’s name. I’m just saying. Support artists! I know I’m preaching to the choir, with this crowd, but still.
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in which I give up my self-scolding and knit a freaking hat.
Aside from my sense of relative boredom with all the sweater stockinette that drove me to start a new project, there’s one other factor. Getting something done! Sure, I can knit and knit and knit and end up with a few rows on my sweater, or I can spend the same amount of time and get 1/3 of the way through a hat [rav link]!
it's just as soft as it looks!
I can't decide if I want to touch it, wear it, or eat it!
The rows zip by, only 96 sts per row, and there’s all the fun of stranding and color changes and pattern emerging. After the snowflake, just several rows of round and round, then the shaping. FUN fun fun. I agree Jocelyn – having projects to swap back and forth keeps me knitting! No more of this scolding myself.
Anyway, this is all but pleasure and fun and enjoyment! If I need something to scold myself over, it could be the 30th pound of pickles. Or something.
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help me! All you need to do is retweet something…..such a little thing..
Wa-hoo! I was hired to write a book review for Psych Central, and it was published today, I think (maybe yesterday, don’t know for sure). Anyway, the founder of the site emailed me to ask if I’d be interested in doing more writing for the site….beyond book reviews, I think. Still waiting to hear.
But I could use your help! If you are on Twitter or facebook, and if you don’t mind doing this, could you tweet it (or facebook it, or stumble it, there are lots of social networking options at the bottom of the article). Here’s a link to the book review: “The Skinny on Willpower”. If you scroll down to the end of the article, there’s a button to tweet the piece, and then the other options too.
Caveats: I know I am making much of a book review. But it’s the first piece of writing I’ve done that I was paid for (and paid pretty well!), and I hope it helps me get other writing gigs. Also, I have no idea if a little viral social networking will help me, but I do know it can’t hurt me! If you are one of the ones who loves me, could you also ask your friends and loved ones to do it too?
Thanks, my friends. I really mean that. And very shortly we will return to knitting content. Since – after all, according to the masthead – this site is about life with needles and thread.
announcement to texans and new yorkers: nobody likes you if you think you’re the best.
Maybe, in your life, you once had a relationship that was unsatisfying, but there wasn’t really anything wrong with the person. Everyone said Oh, s/he’s so great, such a nice person, funny, etc. I did once, and I agreed with them! Still, “perfect” as he seemed to be, it was not a good relationship for me. Around that time, I heard Joan Baez sing a song that included the line I used as this blog post title: a saint is hard to live with at home. It cracked me up, it felt very familiar and personally true, and obviously it stayed with me.
This line came to mind this morning when I saw the following article in the NYTimes:
we're perfect
Yep – that’s what it says. More city preschoolers are perfect. Test scores show. To me, that suggests that the tests are imperfect, or imperfect for assessing what they need to assess. Had I seen those data, I’d have written an article pointing out the problems with the test. But New Yorkers – you know how they are – instead say that we’re just perfect.
As a Texan, I really get that, and it’s one thing I find dear about New Yorkers. Well, dear and really irritating. Just like people get irritated (or worse) with Texans for their/our grandiose views of themselves (ourselves). NYers and Texans should either get over ourselves, or at least keep our mouths shut a little more often.
And look at this – what do we see in my gigantic knitting bag next to my place on the couch:
peasy and mondo, mixing it up together in the bag
That’s my Peasy sweater (I’m knitting a sleeve right now) and my Mondo Cable Cardigan (also on a sleeve). Two sweaters! But lost in sleeveland, the seemingly endless land of stockinette tubes. Yesterday I did a little Peasy sleeve knitting, then a little Mondo sleeve knitting, then back to Peasy. It didn’t feel like too much of a break, switching to the other. I don’t have a purse knitting project going right now, and I keep thinking I ought to cast on something small and quickly-finishable, but then I know I’d just do that instead of sleeves, and the sleeve-knitting elf hasn’t found my apartment yet so if it’s going to be done, I’ll have to do it.
Everything there is to do in this world has a bit that’s less fun than the others. I read an article by Jane Patrick in one of the first issues of Handwoven, where she talked about how much she hated sleying the reed (I think that was the detail). Then she realized that’s a necessary task, she’s always going to have to do it when she weaves, so she tried to reorient herself to the idea. That happened to me when I took my intro stats course as an undergrad – at first I hated it, but I realized it would be my essential tool so I found another way to think about it, and now I adore stats. So my mission is to find another way to conceptualize the endlessness of sleeves.
Happy Thursday, y’all.
.
i did it! i did it! i did it! i did it!
happy! joy!
SUCH a wonderful, happy day for me! I finished the final little details of my old job, tied up every last loose end, left nothing undone, left on a very high note.
I finished grafting the shawl together, and it LOOKS GREAT! I was so worried that the graft would be obvious and weird, but you know the kitchener stitch is really amazing. It really looks seamless. Now I just have to weave in a couple of ends, then soak it for a bit and do the blocking.
Isn’t it great when the things that hang over you are finished? You know that glorious feeling of liberation and accomplishment and exuberance?
Yeah. I’ve got those going. After I finish the blocking, I think I’ll do the next swatch for Peasy, so I can work on it on the flight later this week. To my daughter’s wedding. Two girls happily married, that’s another great relief, you know?
blocking
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look at my new sock!
I know - how many times is she going to write about those socks?! For heaven’s sake. Believe me, I understand. I think I’m just so fascinated by the pattern and this yarn. Plus, of course, I had to start over on the sock after getting through the heel flap so I’ve kind of been at this for a while. Turns out I didn’t get one sock out of one skein; I got to the toe decreases and ran flat out. But luckily I had a brown yarn in my stash that was a perfect blend. Lookie!
2nd lesson in 2 days about knitting – i feel like such a grownup!
Well, aren’t I glad I did this – I dutifully completed my (first) swatch for my beautiful new Peasy sweater. Last night I wet blocked the swatch, and I just unpinned it, got out my measuring tape, and checked my gauge. Using a 3.5mm needle, my gauge should have been 22 st and 30 rows = 4 inches. But I got 23.5 and 31 rows = 4 inches. Here are my lessons learned:
1) because I now know from my Wowie Zowie sock lesson that what seems like a small difference can actually be a very large difference,
2) I need to go down a needle size, and
3) the fabric is going to be absolutely gorgeous, with the most lovely hand and drape ever.
Madelinetosh is not in danger of being toppled from the top of my favorite- yarn- ever list — especially not with tosh merino light in this world — but Rowan Tweed has scootched immediately to a close second. I think I’ll knit a Manu with Rowan Tweed after I finish my beautiful Peasy and an Austin Hoodie with TML. I also have enough yarn for an Inaugural sweater.
Oh dear. I think I’ve just become a sweater knitter.* Good thing I live in a place with a long cold winter.
With a nice long weekend coming up, I have knitting plans that include finishing Marnie’s wedding shawl and getting it blocked, doing some work (you know, instead of saying work I’d rather say ‘fun’) doing some fun on my Wowie Zowie socks, and maybe I’m just sayin maybe getting going on my Peasy. Last night was the first major festivity associated with leaving my job; 20 people I work with came to a little party for me, and it was quite amazing. Much toasting and fete-ing and love; hugs and kisses from each one at the end. Tonight is a drinks farewell with my boss’s boss and my best work friend, Thursday night is my writing group. Not much will happen until the weekend but it’s all going to be fun. When it’s good, life can be really, really good, you know?
*disclaimer and acknowledgment: knitting a swatch does not guarantee becoming a sweater knitter…there is still the ability to be in it for the long haul, the perseverance to finish all the fiddly bits, and (for some sweaters) the ability to assemble pieces. The jury is still out on me with these parts!
I finished a project! I finished a project! SOCKS!
Finally! Finally! A finished object I can share! Yippee!! This is, after all, my knitting blog. I can knit this pattern in my sleep, and the yarn is great fun for socks, but I started them during an extremely busy time so several days would pass without a single stitch. The bulk of my knitting time for these socks was subway commuting, so a row here, a row there, you know how that goes.
Anyway. I proudly introduce you to the Minkeys …. pink monkeys, get it? (the word minkeys makes me giggle because I hear it as Inspector Clouseau — Chief Inspector Clouseau — would say it.)
the top/left sock hasn't been blocked yet - the other one has
oh, you minkeys
i love socks.......
The yarn is the incredibly soft Felici, from KnitPicks. The first pair of socks I knit with this yarn still looks great, after a couple years’ washing. They get a lofty halo, but they’re very hard-wearing. And they don’t need any special care at all, double good for busy people.
These socks are for the bride-to-be, my daughter Marnie. When my older daughter Katie got married, she gave Marnie a t-shirt that said “I’m a worm farmin’ power liftin’ bad ass” and that really says it all. Since Marnie has this photo in her Facebook photo album (and therefore it’s public) I don’t think she’d mind my posting it here.
Marnie and Tom, getting married in a few weeks - taken at Katie's wedding rehearsal
It’s such fun finishing something, if only because I feel a little less guilty about casting on a new project.
walking around my blogs – don’t neglect the pickles on Luscious!
It’s a taxonomical question, of sorts: does your blog just include everything, or do you specialize? Are you a lumper, or a splitter? I’ve been blogging for years, and I’ve tried both approaches. I started with a blog that just had everything – book reviews, movie reviews, handwork, food, life, photography – and then I decided to split them off into different single-focus blogs. I had a cloud blog, a dream blog, a book blog, a photography blog, a food blog, a NY Stories blog, and a personal blog. That got to be a LOT of work, man. And not only that, it left me feeling as fragmented as it sounds. Plus, most visitors just read one of the blogs, and I’d want to share something special but it was on one of the other blogs. So back I went to a single blog. [note: this is all a very silly problem, really.]
This blog originated as a knitting blog, exclusively. But as a very busy person, with limited knitting time, weeks might pass without something knitting-related to say, so I started filling in with other things. Now, even though it has a knitting-themed title, and I do try to focus on handwork whenever possible, it has a bit of everything…..and I like it that way. I hope you do too.
The only exception to “everything” is that I decided to reanimate my old food blog, Luscious. I wrote a post about this a couple of weeks ago. I don’t post on Luscious as often as I post here, on Thrums, but whenever I do, oh how I want you to see it! This morning, for instance, I made a big batch of pickles, as I do9 every summer, and so I posted it on Luscious.
- At the top is a counter – remember, the person who leaves the 500th comment will win a skein of Noro, brought directly from Tokyo. (I hope it’s you!)
- Next down is the little “welcome to my blog” widget
- And underneath that is an RSS feed for my food blog. And right there, the top link is to the pickles post. I’m excited about that one because (1) I adore pickles, (2) especially homemade pickles, (3) the photographs are great simply because how could they not be, given the dark green of the cucumbers and the bright red of the hot cherry peppers, and (4) it’s so easy to make pickles, and they’re so incredibly wonderful, I want to encourage you to make them too.
So anyway, this post is a long, roundabout way of saying that I hope you glance over at that little widget now and then, and head over to Luscious if the subject of a link is interesting.
AND! The wedding dress arrived safely in Chicago, and *wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles* the dress fits Marnie beautifully, and she looks absolutely amazing in it. I don’t want to post the quickie photo that she sent, for any of a million reasons, but I will post a photo after the wedding. I was really sweating bullets over the fit of the dress, so what a relief.
the wedding dress is nearly done!
marnie and tom, so cute
It’s getting close, Marnie’s and Tom’s wedding – July 17. A number of weeks. They’re really adorable, peas in a pod, and their wedding is going to be fun. They asked me to make the wedding dress, which really delighted me…..even if it also terrified me. I haven’t done any sewing to speak of in years. Little quilt blocks here or there, straight seams and who cares if they’re ready for others to see them. But I haven’t made clothing since my kids were young.
When they were here over the Christmas break, we went down to the garment district to search for just the right fabric. Marnie had already picked out a pattern, and given the setting of their wedding, we thought a nice green linen would be great. Here’s the pattern she selected – a vintage Vogue 1954 cocktail dress:
this, minus the gloves
It’s a simple dress, but since it’s Vogue and vintage, it’s not as simple as you’d think. There are bound buttonholes, a strange way of doing the straps, and darts and pleats deluxe….which means it’s got a lot of room for fitting it to her perfectly, and a lot of room for error. Since she lives in Chicago, the fitting part was tricky. She came here for a weekend so we could do a rough fitting, and it’s a good thing she did.
So I got it largely done, then hit a spot that totally intimidated me. I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me, and I so want this to look beautiful, not home-made. So many weekends, I’d say and write “and today I’m going to work on the wedding dress” but the fear and intimidation made me think “well…..I’ll do it tomorrow/next weekend, today I’ll knit.”
She needs it quickly, though, so my mission this weekend was to get it done. And except for some handwork, and making the self-covered buttons, it is done.
just a view of the back
I’m going to get it professionally pressed; we chose a relatively heavy Italian linen, and my little old iron, my no-ironing-board set-up, and my lack of proper pressing tools means it needs to have a professional press. Then I’ll put it in a large box and send it off to Marnie, with my fingers crossed for a good fit.
my kind of town, NYCity is…
Let’s take a little walk around my neighborhood, it’s a beautiful day. I live on the Upper West Side – Morningside Heights, to specific. Doesn’t that sound lovely, “Morningside Heights”? I’ll walk to the corner of 112th and Broadway, to start:
recognize this place?
Tom’s – the famous exterior shot of the diner on Seinfeld, and the eponymous place for Suzanne Vega’s song, “Tom’s Diner.” She apparently wrote the song in the restaurant. I must say, though, the inside does not look like the inside of the Seinfeld diner. That was a set. But this was the exterior shot. It’s fun to walk around that area and hear people say “…hey! Isn’t that….”
Turn your head and look toward Amsterdam:
St John the Divine
Right at the end of the street, there it is. The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. It was begun in 1892. Bishop Henry Codman Potter bought the site of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, and organized an architectural competition. By 1911, the Bishop and the architect had died, and a new architect was hired. The result is something of a mishmash of styles: Byzantine-Romanesque, French Gothic, and other versions of Gothic architecture. By 1942, only the great nave and west front were finished. They stopped because of WWII. Over time, others worked on it, but it’s still incomplete. Here, I’ll show you around the exterior:
a partial view of the front
a partial view of the right side
another partial view of the right side, toward the front
higgledy piggledy frankenbuilding - near the back
We walked behind the church, down into Morningside Park. It used to be a dangerous place to go, but now it’s filled with parents and kids, playgrounds, all the usual characters you’d find in a neighborhood park:
baseball games
waterfalls
lots of flowers
And now we’ve come up 110th St and we’re back at St John the Divine. It’s the Peace Fountain, and it’s super freaky. It’s meant to show the battle of good and evil, but it’s an acid vision weirdo thing:
Peace Fountain
Yeah, that’s a seemingly-random LOBSTER CLAW hanging there. Here, I’ll show you a close-up:
it's holding Satan's head, upside down and maybe decapitated?
Yeah. Weird. It used to have water, like a real fountain, but it doesn’t, right now. So that’s a little piece of my neighborhood. I like to show you around, because New York is so many things, you have to see more than Times Square or the Statue of Liberty, or even the Empire State Building. It’s neighborhoods, like mine.
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