A Very Big Day

Before I rush off to do the signings and publishing shmoozefest that is my day (I’m at BEA. It’s the Booksellers annual convention, and not open to the public, just the book industry. If you’re a book person/knitter, I’d love to see you. Be sure and stop by and talk to me about yarn. It’s a nice counterbalance. I’ll have the handspun scarf in my bag.) I need to take a moment and acknowledge the very special nature of today.

It is my daughter Amanda’s 19th birthday, which makes her of a legal age to do anything she’d care to do in Canada. She’s 100% adult. Happy Birthday sweetheart, I’m sorry I’m not there. Get Joe to buy you a beer.

(One.)

I love you.

If you give a moose a muffin

I packed all three yarns in my suitcase and left this morning, at what can only be described as too damn early (or that hour of the day I like to refer to as “not-enough-coffee-in-the-world-o’clock”) and I started the bleeding heart yarn ends of the stole on the plane…

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Pretty, pretty, pretty. I’m not usually a pink sort of gal, in fact, normally if you asked me what sort of colours I prefer, I’d be slamming the sorts right there down on a table as perfect evidence of what I don’t care for, but this has me charmed. Utterly charmed. I got to the hotel and my room wasn’t ready yet, so I went and stomped around downtown LA waiting for it to be time. I bought a shirt, I got lost, I got rescued by a very nice cab driver and I saw the rather unbelievable sight of an OUTDOOR ESCALATOR.

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I took a picture so there would be proof. Seriously. An outdoor escalator. I stood there and tried to understand how it could exist. (It wasn’t the only one either. They’re all over.) I couldn’t figure out what was so boggling about it until I realized that it was a Canadian moment. I was standing there all confounded, and I realized that what I was thinking was that this escalator was going to be a disaster when the snow came. (Tip: If you are standing in the shade of a palm tree while you are thinking that? The snow isn’t coming.) Back in the room I fought a battle to achieve internet access (turns out that you have to stand just outside the door of my room to get it) and standing there in the hall, laptop held aloft, gleaning what little signal there was to be had from the air…. I downloaded your 1200 comments about what yarn I should use… then I laughed. Laughed and laughed. Right there in the hall in a hotel bathrobe (Key in the pocket, I can be taught) I laughed till tears ran down my face.

You knitters are an opinionated bunch!

Since I’m the only one who’s ever going to read 1200 comments, I thought I would pull out a couple that were representative.

Sarah’s comment makes me want to look in her underwear drawer:

I’m a sucker for the whore’s panties. C all the way.



Several people voted for an option “D”. (You people write stuff in the margins on tests too, don’t you?)

Rams said:

Mixing handspun and machinespun? Grain and grape.

And you know what that leads to.

(Do the ends on the trip, come home and spin a complementary middle. You know I’m right. And back.)



Gillian said:

I looked at the stole. I don’t think that two colors will work unless you do a neutral cream. The pattern flows and is drapey and two distinctly different colors will look, in my opinion, just plain odd and maybe even bad. I also agree about mixing hand and mill spun, creates texture issues. Back to the wheel.



Even Denny had another idea… (but I did give her that alpaca)

I know you have white lace wight in alpaca, or did you give that to me??? So I say “D”. I know, I know. There was no “D”. O.K. then “A”.

Finally, Carolyn in NH summed the whole thing up.

“The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is

no good evidence either way.” – Bertrand Russell (British author,

mathematician, & philosopher, 1872-1970). There’s apparently a corollary

for blog comments.

She’s exactly right.

(PS. Cat Bordhi said to use A. What with the way I’m continuing to disappoint her with my persistent belief that double pointed needles are the one true path…. I think I have to throw her a bone.)

(PPS. I’m going to go stand in the hall to post this.)

Stash Diving for a Solution

Here’s an idea.

(Can I just take a moment to tell you all how blogging just never gets old? I mean, here I am in my kitchen, getting ready to shift off to LA and anxious to take this project with me, and I can have the opinion of all you interested knitters in minutes? That’s really something. That seriously beats the pants off of following Joe around the house saying “pink or green? Joe? Joe….. is the green too subtle? The pink too bold? Honey? JOE. LOOK AT MY YARN.” For the record, this technique has never been satisfactory. Joe usually just gives up and says he likes the green, and then I accuse him of not even looking at the green and just saying green to get out of talking about yarn and then Joe looks at me like “Yeah. That’s right.” The blog is better.)

The Bleeding Heart Stole is knit from the ends in two pieces, and grafted in the middle. I’m thinking that I should divide the bleeding heart yarn in two equal portions, knit the border end pieces out of my beloved, then switch to a complimentary colour for the middle. (I wonder what the designer would do?) The question is, which colour? I went diving in the stash (much easier since the big toss and reorganize) and came up with a wool/bamboo/nylon yarn from Jennifer. The weight and lustre is same, and I think they could work. Which one? I dunno.

A) Pale pink in almost exactly the same shade as the background pink in my bleeding heart yarn, but is either too woosie-pants washed out or beautifully subtle. I can’t decide which.

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B) Green is sort of good. Kind of like the leafy part of a bleeding heart, could be an organic outgrowth of the colorway or way too unrelated to work.

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C) Deep pink, sort of like the darker parts of the bleeding hearts, and is either elegantly rich or one step away from being a pair of whore’s panties.

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A, B, or C. You pick. I can’t tell, and frankly, neither can Joe.

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Should have considered that

Yesterday when I was taking knitting pictures in the garden (what?) I held the wool/seacell roving up to a plant to snap a picture, and this is what I saw.

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From the second I drew the connection, that became bleeding heart roving, and I was entirely besotted. (I know. Yesterday I was besotted with beads and waves. I still am. I’m a fickle, fickle knitter. Harlot – remember?) I came in, sat at the wheel and was absolutely diligent, until I had this.

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Still good. I plied.

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Oh, yes. It’s perfect. Perfectly perfect. It’s not quite as intense as the original colours of the flowers, which is good, because I human interpretations of natures intensity often come off as tacky or garish.

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Nature is a hussy, and only she can get away with the purple pink combo and still have it be delicate. I love this yarn. It’s a little heavier than a true lace weight, sort of halfway between fingering and lace, and I knew the whole time I was making it exactly what I would do. Exactly.

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See that? Kismet. Sure, that pattern calls for about 1100 metres of yarn and I was going to have nowhere near as much as that, but dudes, that was going to be fine, because I don’t really like stoles anyway. I was going to do fewer repeats in all directions, and make it less wide and less long and turn the whole thing into a delicate little scarf. if I made it half as wide and half as long then I would only need 1/4 of the yarn, and that was only 275m. Ha- ha! This 60g (2oz) had to have made that much. I heaved sighs of contentment just thinking of if. After I steamed the yarn, I sat down to wind it into a ball so I could start. It wound up really quickly. Too quickly. So quickly that I felt a funny little feeling that I have learned is the smart part of my brain trying to get my attention. The smart part of my brain was saying “You really need to measure this yarn.” I didn’t argue. I went and got my yarn meter and ran the yarn through.

150m.

Just over half of what I need. Smack me with wet merino and call me stupid. Clearly, the smart part of my brain needs to learn to speak up a little sooner before I get myself all worked up.

There has to be a way that this can still work…

Habit forming

There is so much that I’d planned on doing with my life today, and now it’s all over. Shattered. I was going to spin this pretty merino/seacell roving

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and I was going to try and get part of the garden in…

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(just the annuals. I’ll do the perennials in a week or two when they go on sale because I am very cheap.)

I was also thinking that I might clean out another closet (I’m doing very well on the de-cluttering) and sweep the back patio and maybe even write a little something and deal with some paperwork, or maybe even pack for the weekend away… and what am I doing?

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Yup. Can’t stop. Can’t put it down. The colour is most accurate in this picture below.

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I have to keep moving little beads along and putting them on yarn overs and I just keep doing one more repeat. Just a little more. A few more rows, a few more beads.

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I’m enchanted by the swoopiness of it, the whole pattern reminds me of calligraphy and serifs and any number of graceful things.

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Maybe I’ll just finish this repeat.

Random Monday

1. When I started the stash toss, I was looking for one skein. One. In February, before going to Madrona, I had dug out this skein, wound it and put it in a ziplock (yes. Knitters use more ziplocks than anyone else in the world) together with the pattern, the beads and the needles. I even put in the stuff I needed to thread beads on the yarn. Then I tossed it in my suitcase and was promptly overwhelmed by other projects and that was the last I saw of it. Since my stash has archaeological layers, I knew that if I could find the strata of yarn that represented February ’08, I would likely find the skein. No dice. I searched the surrounding area, thinking if it wasn’t in there it must be near there…nope. No matter how much of the stash I ripped up and organized, it totally wasn’t there. On Sunday, when I had ripped up not just the yarn stash, but the spinning stash, and the only place I hadn’t looked was the “sweater stash” (where there is only sweater yarn and nothing else) I had to admit defeat. The stash was cleaner, better organized and smaller … (there’s tons of stuff that I pulled out as giveaways for all of you on the 14th) but I still didn’t have the skein. I went to bed, lay there for a while thinking. C’mon. It was in the suitcase. That’s the last place I saw it. Then I came home and unpacked the suitcase and put away the yarn. I know I did that because the other yarn is put away, and because the suitcase is empty. I know the suitcase is empty because I put it away, and I wouldn’t put it away until it was empty. I didn’t take it to the cabin, I didn’t leave it somewhere because I didn’t take it somewhere. It wasn’t in a knitting bag (I checked all of them) and I didn’t put it on a table or in a box (because I checked all the spots I put things.) I had just about given up hope, decided to accept that maybe I left it in my hotel room in Madrona, when I had a thought. Got up, walked to the closet, unzipped the pocket on the front of the suitcase where I NEVER put things, and lo.

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I’m really not as smart as we had all hoped. Seriously. How many days of my life and it was right there?

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Dumbass. On the upside, the stash is tidy. (This is Schaefer Heather in “Gertrude Ederle” and it is going to be #334H “Undulating Waves Scarf”. Ravelry link here. Mine came from Schaefer, but there’s a kit at Earthfaire.)

2. On Saturday I (well, Rachel H drove) went to Kitchener to adjudicate the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters’ Guild annual show. I walked away believing that judging knitting is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It’s so subjective. I spent a lot of time trying not to bring my personal taste into it, and judge each piece based on the skill of the knitter and how well it fit the category it was presented in. Overall, the quality of the knitting was really, really high (if a few of the knitters had sucked it would have helped a lot in narrowing things down) and some of the pieces were so incredible, the workmanship so high… You’d have to see them, and actually, you can.

The Adjudicated Fashion Show & Awards Ceremony (where everything is modelled) and I give “colour commentary” and explain why I did what I did is June 10th, at 7:00, and all are welcome, even if you’re not member of the guild. I’m thinking it’s going to be interesting and fun.

3. I’m getting ready to leave again, this weekend to LA for BEA (Book Expo America) where I’m signing all over the place, (this book, and this book and a sneak preview of essays from this book) then to Kingston on the 4th June, then to Columbus for TNNA, then the show in Kitchener the 10th, then Franklin arrives for the Birthday/WWKIP/1000 Knitters party on the 14th, then the calendar comes out the 15th, but I don’t think I have to do anything about hat except worry about it, then BEC (Book Expo Canada) here in Toronto on the 16th, then Chicago on June 20th, and then I’m going to have a lie down and celebrate the official end of the tour and my survival of same.

4. 4…I forget what 4 was for. (Just totally flashed on the Violent Femmes there, oh, except that was eight, wasn’t it? )

5. I remember now. I plied the spinning from last week, and made this yarn.

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The green is a very neon green, and I was a little flummoxed by what to do with it, right up until Samantha saw it, and she went batty for it but had no idea what she wanted it to be, just that it should be hers. There’s not a lot of yardage, it’s 100g, probably about 250- 300m (but I’m guessing) and it’s about a dk weight (in most places)…. any ideas?

Stash Toss

Twice a year (spring and fall, as time permits, those are pretty loose parameters) I do a “stash toss”. A quiet, undisturbed stash is a grand home for all sorts of beasties, so I try and shake it up a couple times a year just to keep an eye out for problems. This bi-annual tossing of the stash also lets me visit with things I’ve forgotten I had, allows me to take the vaguest possible shot at organization (coughHOPELESScough), allows me to pull out things that are no longer to my taste and pass them on to someone else, and generally gives me the worse possible case of start-itis ever imagined on this earth.

I am, at this very moment, knee deep. This springs stash tossing was, ironically, sparked by the desire to find one particular skein, which, even though I have ripped up the better part of a small semi-detached home, eludes me yet. (Here’s betting that I spend eight hours today pulling stuff out, organizing it by weight and brand and putting it back, only to discover said skein sitting by the front door in a cloth bag…entirely divorced from the stash. (I actually checked all of the spaces that I put “transient stash” and didn’t find it, but you know how these things go.)

I’ve found some Briar Rose that I meant to make into a sweater immediately after last years Rhinebeck, and a couple (ok. Twenty) really, really juicy sock yarns that I can’t believe sunk to the bottom, and even some silk I was going to spin the second I bought it. Spinning stash in with knitting stash is actually a major offence in my rather loose stash management system. Usually they are separated, and the fact that fibre is in with yarn is a clear signal that sometime in the mad dash that has been the last six months, I have totally lost it in terms of organization. (Not that I had much, but what I did have was vital.)

Sorting through all of this has me thinking three things.

1. How many pairs of socks is it wrong to cast on in 24 hours? (Clearly I am done with being sick of socks)

2. This is a lot of yarn. I bet I have a smaller stash than a lot of you, and I don’t think of it as too much, not if you consider that I’ll be knitting for a lifetime (everyone is supposed to save for their retirement, and I don’t have more than a lifetimes yarn yet) and certainly not if you think of it as a collection of excellent inspiration and resources, but in terms of wanting to knit everything at once, it is a little frustrating. When I go through it like this, I find so much that I want to knit now. Right now. So many wonderful, wonderful things that I am overwhelmed. I keep thinking how everything in here was, when it came into my possession, something that was so brilliant that it was going to be next. I think I’ll knit from stash for a while after this, not because I think it is too much yarn, but because I want to play with what I’ve got. How do you prioritize stuff in your stash, be it big or little?

3. There has got to be a better way to store all of this. Right now the stash is ziplocked (allegedly by fibre weight, eg: bag of laceweight, bag of sock yarn, bag of worsted, and by project – a sweaters worth of yarn or three shades of a yarn that were to make a colourwork project are together.) Then I stack the bags flat in a closet, in a rubbermaid bin in the bottom of the closet, or on an old set of shelves that is dedicated to the purpose. Toronto is moth/mouse/carpet beetle central, and I live in a home that is over a hundred years old. (That means I’m extra vulnerable.) There is no chance that my stash will be wandering around without protection, so the ziplocks stay, but given those limits, can you think of a better way? How do you store your stash?

Once more with feeling

Blogging from the dentist office, where Meg is having her post-braces dental appointment.

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See how nice her teeth look? We’re both thrilled to bits that her braces are finally off. I remember when I got mine off. I showed everybody.

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I’m waiting in reception where I’ve finally found a way to get promoted from “that odd patient who knits all the time” to “that odd patient who knits all the time and was taking pictures of her knitting in here this morning”

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(That’s Dr. Yim. Best dentist in Toronto – also, good sport.) I also taught the receptionist to knit. She’ll have a sweater by next week. The gleam in her eye was very indicative. She’s hooked.

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This here is the second go around on the Flow tank, the first attempt having been summarily frogged for a row gauge problem. I find row gauge to be a big honking pig-dog. Given a choice between getting row gauge and stitch gauge I always choose stitch gauge, and that’s what I did with this tank. Actually, to be completely honest it is as you are suspecting now. I did not count row gauge. In a moment of uncharacteristic diligence. I knit a swatch. A proper swatch. A swatch that I then washed and everything.

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I had stitch gauge and so I just went ahead. My reasoning was that once you’ve cast on and begun, there is little you can do to control the width of a thing. That’s going to be stitch gauge and there’s nothing you can do while you’re knitting to make the width change except for some uncalled for increases or decreases (those don’t always end well) or the sacrificial burning of some of your best merino in a small birch wood fire at midnight under a full moon. Row gauge though, row gauge isn’t a problem. (Usually.) Usually there’s a lot you can do if you’re not getting row gauge. You can knit a few more rows or a few less rows, and then the thing will be longer or shorter. Most patterns say things like “knit 14 cm”, and you can do that whether you got row gauge or not…so I just started knitting.

That was a mistake. I didn’t read the pattern carefully enough before I started and it turns out that there are 18 rows of decreases that are supposed to add up to less than 3″, and mine didn’t and it’s all my fault and now I am to be punished and the only thing I can do at all is to accept it gracefully. Which I am, no matter what anyone told you about how much swearing there was last night. I’m reknitting. Smaller needles, achieving (something closer to) row gauge and hopefully (I think) still getting stitch gauge.

Someday someone is going to figure out why it is so hard to have both row and stitch gauge at the same time, and they are going to come up with a strategy. Something that actually works to fix the problem. Some simple set of directions that will tell you how you can have both, and when they share that with the world, they are going to be hailed as a genius and a hero. It will be like the knitters version of the typhoid vaccine.

Other business (that has nothing to do with row gauge)

1. There are still a few spots for the June 14 fun. People will likely drop on and off of the list as time goes along, so don’t not call because you think that there’s no hope. There is. 120 spots is a lot of spots, and the list will stay fluid up until photo day. To that end, if you took a spot but you find out sometime between now and then that you can’t make it…can you call Lettuce Knit and take yourself off the list so that someone else can get on?

2. WHOOPS. I just got an email from the publicist, they gave me the wrong store and address. It’s Chapters, at 2376 Princess Street, not the Indigo. I just confirmed an event at the Indigo in Kingston, Ontario for June 4th at 6:00. I’ll speak and then sign, as usual. They’re having a store celebration with live music later in the evening and stuff like that. C’mon down. It’s going to be fun. (I know. It’s always fun when there are way, way more knitters in a store than the store thinks there will be. Surprising bookstores never gets old.)

3. I was decluttering and organizing a knitting basket (a big one) and found this shawl that I was working on way back when.

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I hauled it out and took it with me to Philadelphia, and now it’s just 12 rows from the end. This decluttering thing might pay off. A shawl. Just like that. (I have suffered a minor setback by leaving the pattern on Juno’s couch, but she took pictures of the chart and emailed them to me so I can finish until it comes in the mail.)

4. Spotted on the menu in the Philadelphia Airport.

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Bad sign…right?

In which Rachel H and I hatch a plan

I don’t know if you are going to find this as remarkable a coincidence as I do…but this year my birthday falls on World Wide Knit in Public Day. Seriously. This year June the 14th is not just that day when knitters world wide host events, go out in public and represent knitters everywhere they go, but it is also my birthday, and not just any birthday, but my 40th birthday. I hear what you’re saying, and I agree. This spells party. Big party.

Now Rachel H and I, we are the Queens of Knit Party. If you want to have a knitting party then you should call me and Rachel because we know what a knitting party needs. Music, yarn, (free yarn), fibre, (free fibre) beer (not free beer. We don’t know any beer people. Just yarn people) cake, sunshine, knitters everywhere and all kinds of stuff, and if it can possibly be arranged, then you should have it in a yarn shop. (This has turned out to be the most difficult part, because Rachel and I do not own a yarn shop and are therefore reduced to invading, stealing and otherwise procuring the yarn shops of others. This can be tricky.)

When Rachel and I realized it was my 40th Birthday, (which is harder than you think, since I was convinced for a while that it was going to be my 39th) we thought yarn party. When we realized it was WWKIP day? We realized we needed a really, really good party. Great in fact. We tried to think about what we, knitters of modest resources could possibly do to show the knitters of Toronto a good time on this auspicious day, and after a couple of days, a couple of phone calls, another planned invasion of a yarn shop we don’t own, we made a decision to take a calculated risk, we drank the better part of a good bottle of red wine and we did something crazy.

We bought Franklin and his camera a plane ticket to Toronto for that day.

(Technically, Rachel H bought it, since it went on her credit card. I just agreed to split it with her if our plan doesn’t work.) Our plan? Glad you asked. Our plan is an all day photo shoot to get a little Canadian representation into Franklin’s 1000 knitters portrait project. Franklin (understanding that Canadians can get a little fired up about these things) has said that we can have 120 spots in the project. (Left to our own enthusiastic devices, he knows we would overwhelm the whole thing.) The project is called “1000 knitters” not “way more than 1000 knitters because boy oh boy do the Canadians know how to show up and party.” This left Rachel and I needing a plan to come up with those 120 knitters (and no more than 120) and how two ordinary knitters finance bringing a photographer and his equipment to Toronto for our own amusement. We didn’t want to be left out, but on the other hand, it’s hard to justify to your family that now you don’t just have a yarn budget, but a “bringing other knitters to Toronto to play with ” budget. This is where we hatched the plan.

If you would like to be a part of Franklin’s 1000 knitters project, you can call Lettuce Knit beginning tomorrow (That’s May 21st) morning at 11:00am. Lettuce Knit (who are being really awesome about providing staff and space to work this, considering that Rachel H and I just dumped it on them) will record your name and give you either a slot in the first block (10-2) or the second block (2-6). If there is space you can choose, but the whole thing is first come, first served. Then you come on down to Lettuce Knit on the 14th June and hang out, have your picture taken, Knit in public, have fun with the raffle (there’s a raffle. Great stuff from Franklin, great stuff from us) drink some beer (it’s byob) and party in general. (NOTE: even if you don’t get a spot to have your picture taken, or if you don’t want your picture taken, you’re more than welcome.) There will be a tip jar there, and we’ll be accepting donations from those taking part who can contribute. We’re suggesting a $5 minimum, and if we got that much from almost each person, then that would cover the plane ticket and Rachel and I would break even. That’s really the only expense, since Franklin has very, very graciously agreed not just to be hauled to another country for our amusement, but to stay on a couch instead of a hotel, and to eat home cooked food instead of restaurants.

Naturally, if everyone participating thinks highly enough of Franklin and his endeavour and decides to donate more than we need to cover the ticket, Rachel H and I will pass on the extra to Franklin, who’s been hauling arse all over the place giving great days and experiences to knitters, and he’s an artist, and art is worth something and so are knitters and he’s making history recording us for posterity and…well. I’m giving him more than $5, but that’s a personal choice.

So there you have it. A plan. A fun plan. A plan with a trefoil of fun and glory. Another Knitters party, and it is, I think… a very good one. Who’s gonna play?

Philadelphia and a scarf

I’m Canadian, and I’ve always lived here, and I’m a product of the Canadian school system. This means that most of the history I learned in school was Canadian history, and there is much that I don’t know about American history. (I have forgiven myself for not knowing much American history, because I think that after all this travel I have likely got more American information under my belt than most Americans have Canadian history.) What I do have, or what I did learn, is all of the Big Things. The American Revolution, The Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell, Betsey Ross… and so much of all of that, my tiny vault of American History, is housed in Philadelphia that just being in this city makes me feel like I’m in a really historic and interesting place…which, of course, I am.

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I love city hall. (I especially love the clock tower and the way it looks like the source of the Batsignal.)

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I really, really love the way that every time I say how much I love that bat, that Juno exclaims “IT’S AN EAGLE”. (For the record, I know it’s an eagle, but you can’t deny it’s very bat-esque from that angle.) I was in town to go to the Philadelphia Book Fair, and despite the rain (that was a total bummer) and the difficulty getting to the event (a bunch of roads were closed) Philly knitters showed up with glowing enthusiasm.

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It was actually sort of fun to watch, which is always is when knitters mix with the non-knitting in droves. The talk was in this space, but the signing was upstairs in a hall, and as knitters do have a flocking instinct, they gathered en masse. I can’t be the only knitter there who loved people wandering by and looking at us and trying to figure out what was going on. Here’s what was going on. Knitters filling the lobby, hoisting socks aloft, taking pictures, showing each other sweaters and shawls, publicly squeezing balls and skeins…we were inexplicable in the face of the rest of the book fair. Young knitters, William (11) and Diana, who was double qualifying at 9 years of age by also bringing her first socks, and Brianna, who showed up without her sidekick Leah.

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Knitters with babies, like Stacy with Zane, Amy with Abigail (but that’s her daddy) and Katie with wee Aoife.

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There was the first sock brigade: Julie, Laura, Jennifer, Maryanne, Carly and (although I sense a certain shame) Juno.

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For those who follow her blog, the picture of Juno knitting a sock is going to be particularly vindicating, as she has always claimed not to be a sock knitter. Doesn’t enjoy socks, doesn’t like knitting on small needles, doesn’t think its fun and doesn’t want to discuss (again) how it would grow on her to knit something that fussy that you just then shove in your shoes. Ms. Too Much Wool and I have been working on her for some time, and it was indeed Ms. TMW that I emailed on Saturday night with the date and time that our little Juno finally turned her first heel and uttered the words “Okay. I can see why people might enjoy this.” Sniff. It was touching. (Note to Ms. TMW. She has been assimilated. Resistance was indeed futile, admittedly took longer than expected, but futile.)

This here is Amy, who popped by to hold the sock and talk knitting before graduating from Penn in the afternoon.

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Sue came. You might remember Sue from last year, when she showed up with her yellow and red striped “sock of shame”…. and this year felt compelled to bring me a sock with human dimensions, just to prove she’d gotten the hang.

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It was a glorious day (rain notwithstanding) and I had a wonderful time. Philadelphia is awesome.

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All the time I was there, and for a little while last week, I’ve been working on a little project to sub in for socks. I needed something easy to carry around, small and simple…something that was as fun to work as a sock without being a sock (since I was sick of socks) and a quick and pretty scarf fit the bill. I wanted to use this gorgeous yarn I got from Posh in Denver, and though the yarn came with a pattern, it wasn’t quit what I had in mind.

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This was. This is 180 yards (179, really, since I had about a yard left when I was done) of Ivy silky fingering weight 50/50 wool/silk, from Caya Colour Yarn in Colorado. (I can’t find a link for them…anyone?)

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It’s a very pretty colour called “sandstone sage” and I worked a really simple feather and fan pattern over it. I was going to write up the pattern, but discovered that except for the addition of three selvedge stitches on each side, I have managed to invent the “Two Weeknights With Warrick” scarf from Karin’s blog.

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Pretty, pretty. It’s unblocked here, and that’s how I’m leaving it. Very nice, and Karin named the pursuit aptly, since it did work up in just a few sessions and a plane ride. I might just make another one.