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.
ma belle amie — Kty strikes again. 
Yesterday I was reading a wholly compelling story in the NYTimes about a man who lives with schizophrenia; he has learned strategies to talk back to his voices and leads a difficult but full life. The whole article was moving, but there was one line that gut-punched me. At one point in his life, the man sat in his bedroom with a gun in his lap, ready to end his life. His wife walked in and said ‘I know you feel like quitting, but what if tomorrow is the day you get what you want?’ A long long time ago, in another life, I’d reached that point too and in a letter, someone said that we keep going because tomorrow we might round a corner and see someone standing there, holding flowers just for us.
I am by no means in that terribly hopeless place, but you know how life just kind of grinds sometimes? World news is terrible, your personal life hits a bump, something freaky happens like you get a hug that breaks your rib, there are too damned many flies and crap it’s hot and muggy. It’s been a long time since you had fun, just some plain old fun. You’re in the grinding uphill part of the rollercoaster, and have been for quite a long time. Nothing’s wrong really, nothing’s terminally bad, there’s plenty of hope lingering in the corners, it’s not like that, but boy. Grind.
Zen Garden Sea Lace -- and why yes, dear Kty, I do think it would be gorgeous!
Today’s bouquet of flowers was brought to me by my favorite living Parisian, Kty, who happens to be on holiday right now. We’ve never met in person, but if you’ve read this blog for long you know of her because she shows up in comments and in posts (like me, her birthday is in November so she feels like my sister or something). One of these days I’m going back to Paris and taking that lovely woman out for a glass of wine or two or three. I just got an email from Kty asking me if I didn’t think a certain pattern (Kozue, which she gifted me) would look beautiful in one of the yarns in my stash, the one shown to the left.
Oh, the many things about her email that transformed my day. The thought behind it, I’m just grinning and feeling like maybe the world is ok, despite all the awful news (note: must stop reading the NYTimes). Maybe we hold each other up, maybe we give each other little smiles, little nudges, and it helps hold the world together. The tiniest things can be just the thing someone needs; I always know that but I don’t always remember it.
I’ll cast on asap and will post a WIP photo. Tonight I’m having dinner with two friends, one of whom is moving back to the UK (boo), and tomorrow night’s my poetry group, but my fingers will be itching to get going. Merci beaucoup, Kty.
in heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here. and when we’re gone from here, all our friends will be drinking all our beer!
I think I’ll start with the “not beauty” so I can end on a high note, on the last post I’ll ever write in 2010. We’re 5 days past Blizzardgeddon – the idiotic name the media gave to our big storm last Sunday – and boy is the bloom off that rose. For real. Here’s a shot out my living room window (shot through a filthy living room window, I apologetically add), of the view of my street. It’s made even worse by the fact that tomorrow morning trash is picked up, so it’s all out at the curb. Days like this I have to repeat over and over to myself “you love NY, you love NY, you love NY.”
looks like a set for a post-apocalyptic movie, doesn't it?
It only needs blood-dripping zombies staggering down the street to complete the gloomy lifeless feeling. Good thing I don’t feel gloomy and lifeless. Or zombie-like.
So here’s the beauty. My 3rd daughter has figured out that a very easy gift for me is yarn. She sometimes gives me a book – I’m so very very easy. The easiest person in the whole wide world. Here’s what she gave me for this past Om Day celebration — Berroco’s new Ultra Alpaca tonal, 2 skeins:
430 yards, worsted weight.....GO!
So soft, so beautiful, such a long queue to fit it into. There are worse problems.
And I’ll end unexpectedly, since this is a fancy day of anticipatory celebration (yay new decade! wait…last year actually startNever mind.). You get to decide whether this is beauty or not beauty. For me, it’s beauty all the way. It’s my favorite polka of ALL TIME, “In heaven there is no beer”. I used to polka around my bedroom to this when I was pretty little, and yes I was ‘unusual.’
See you next year!
my bag came! my new beautiful bag came! thank you susana devoe at make.good studios! WHEE! orange!
OK – remember how I won that dreamy bag last week? And remember how I was hoping hoping it would arrive before I leave, so I could take it with me? It did! And it’s absolutely gorgeous, y’all – just extraordinarily high quality in materials, beautiful workmanship, and killer design.
i even loved the packaging
it's irresistible to touch - all the tactile warmth and beauty of beautiful charcoal felt, with the great subtle design and that wowie orange stripe
look inside - perfect little pockets, and check out the label! and who doesn't LOVE ticking.
Isn’t it great! I love it – and it arrived just before I had to go downtown for a meeting, so I quickly transferred my must-take stuff and carried it as a clutch. It held my dark and stormy sweater, my wallet, keys, metro card, notebook, and a pen, with room to spare. It’s a pleasure object, in every way. Feel like you need one for yourself? YOU CAN HAVE ONE! Here’s the bag in the make.good shop - get one for yourself, at least, and I can guarantee you it’d make a wonderful gift. Do check out Susana DeVoe’s site, make.good studio. And thank you again, I absolutely adore this bag!
I knew I loved the color combination, but it wasn’t until I went to transfer stuff to it that I realized why:
oh! here's why i loved the colors! this is my daily bag. DUR.
This is the bag I carry every day! Charcoal, light gray, and orange. It’s a sacrasac, and I got it at the MOMA gift store. It’s so handy; I keep my Metro card, a small compact, a couple of bucks, and my keys in the orange bag. In the middle gray bag, I keep flat things – my moleskine, my calendar, any papers. In the larger charcoal bag in the back I keep everything else. And there’s a long thin charcoal bag between the gray and charcoal – you can barely see it, there on the left, it’s perfect for a few pens. A place for everything, no time wasted, and it slings over my body, messenger-bag style. You can tell I carry it every day; the light gray section is getting kind of dirty. Hey, it’s Manhattan. It’s dirty here.
OK, so this will be my final post on Thrums…..though I have one cued up to post at midnight, with directions to my travel blog. Once I land in Phnom Penh (which will be Saturday morning), all posts will be made on that blog. THANK YOU for the very sweet comments on the last post wishing me a good trip and pain-free knees. I do love a nice pun, Pamela. Pip, Pamela, Dina, Jocelyn, Kty, Laura, all-a-y’all – I’ll miss you but I hope you will visit the other blog and leave me little comments if something strikes you.
xo
Lori
even though I’m exhausted, funny things ARE all around me.
The heaviness and exhaustion of my previous post is true, and so are a couple other things, to wit:
* I swear to all that is holy and funny, you have to click this link and watch this video. I promise you’ll roll on the floor and have to hold your sides from the laughter. It’s always funny.
* And this isn’t funny, but one of those “awwww….” deals. One of my authors wrote a great little book. It’s a smashing success, and we enjoyed working together very much. We became friends, he calls me Sis. The other day, this arrived in my office, with a note I’ll cherish:
click to enlarge so you can see it better
It’s a print from the April 24, 1880 edition of Harper’s Weekly, drawn by Granville Perkins – “View in Riverside Park, New York.” Weeks before, he’d written me asking for my associations with Central Park. A weird question, I thought, but what the hell. I answered, and concluded with a comment that Riverside Park is my favorite, even more than Central Park, because it’s my backyard, I spend a lot of time there, I love it very much. Pretty sneaky of him.
And now, to knit.
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