I don’t know what this is actually called; my dad was a draftsman for an architectural firm and I remember seeing him sitting at a table, with blueprints spread in front of him and a carmine pencil in his right hand, counting electrical outlets. With each touch of the red pencil on an outlet symbol, he’d click the thing.

here's how you use it

I keep it in the drawer with my other miscellaneous stuff next to the couch; now and then I see it and think “maybe I’ll use that to count rows” but of course I don’t. My dad died in 1982, and this is one of 2 things I have, of his. If you know what this is called, let me know! It’s probably just called a counter. But I like old things like this, old machines.

For a bit of knitted content, since that’s the ostensible reason for this blog, I set aside my circle socks to finish (or at least almost finish) Marnie’s wedding shawl. Here’s how it looks now, with the heel flap. I just adore the color changes.

heel flap done, ready to pick up gusset stitches

And finally, since I’ve mentioned that Marnie’s wedding is handmade, I thought I’d show you a bit of her invitation. She is a print-maker and artist and book artist, so she put it all together for a truly unique wedding invitation. Guests received a giant mailing tube in the mail; inside was a large woodblock print of the wedding cabin, done in the style of the old WPA National Parks posters. It’s amazing. She carved the blocks by hand, of course, and printed them all one at a time.

Also in the tube was a small handmade book providing all the details – the when, where, how, what else to see, etc. It’s so charming I wanted to show you a couple of things from it:

adorable, right? this is the front cover of the book.

When you open the book, you get the charming story of the beginning of Tom and Marnie’s life together. She handset the type:

the top of the page (click to enlarge, and you can read it)

the bottom of the page

Then there are a few pages of specific information, followed by the schedule of events for the wedding day. I draw your attention to one part of that page:

look in the red box. are they cute? YES.

I love this. I was never clever enough, or self-confident enough, to think about any options beyond the norm. It worked, and that was good enough!

But isn’t that adorable? Really? It’s not just me, right? She also included unique postcards in each tube for the RSVPs. Each postcard featured a great old woodblock print of the WPA National Parks. Ever the artist, she created a flickr set to show all the responses. They’re often quite wonderful; click here to see them.

We’re dying here in NYC; today it hit 102 in Central Park. Lest you southerners or westerners scoff “102, big deal!” keep in mind that people here don’t have central air, for the most part. They have little window units, if they have anything at all. My husband was telling me that when he first moved here, people used to leave their apartments and sleep in Central Park when it was too hot, but then it became too dangerous to do that.

Stay cool, yo.

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