The sun is shining, little green things are finally breaking out of the ground, I’ve started April’s pair of socks, and I efficiently got a ton done for work. A. Ton.
I loved Clara’s piece today, and my coffee was perfect.
Then I wrote a fantastic post for all of you- processed all the images – got the whole thing going on, and the phone rang. I dealt with the crisis on the other end with dignity, maturity and grand good sense, and took notes on my computer while I did so. Then I returned to the blog software and realized that somehow, while I was taking notes, I had (very efficiently, I might add) deleted the entire entry without saving.
I could re-write, but it would never be what it was, and frankly, it’s way to pretty a day to let this get me down for even a moment. I could rant, but instead, let’s play a game.
If you’d like to play, leave a comment with your idea for what I might (in the world of your imagination) have written about today. Best suggestion/guess/invention/story (as determined by me in a completely biased fashion) gets a present in the mail.
What do you wish today’s blog post had been?
Gnomes. And their knitwear.
I think it was about cleaning and deciding the best way to avoid it – rug-piling, spinning, knitting…
April Fool! I can’t be the second post. I would think the post might be about today being April 1–whether I wish so is open to question!
You should have written about how to weave sunshine and crocuses into a lovely shawl….
I am here in water logged Rhode Island, so I would wish for a wonderful, beautiful, inspiring look at Spring and all its glories.
The best knitting bag for travel. And something about the Easter Bunny.
Hmm–maybe today you were going to take your stash out into this beautiful spring day and pair up your yarn with all the beautiful colorful little things that are emerging from the earth. Then you and Joe got caught smooching behind the forsythia bush because it hadn’t quite bloomed yet.
I wish today’s blog post had been about the wonderfulness of being an April Fool’s Day baby. How absolutely joyous it is to have a birthday today, easy to remember, weather is usually cooperative, and it starts the month off with a real kick!! Just an idea….and by the way, it is my birthday today and I’m enjoying the heck out of it!! Thanks, Stephanie
The blog post was about a marvelous new knitting retreat/workshop, top be held just far enough from my house that I will have to stay for the whole weekend, at a resort that still charges what they did in 1952, and which serves fabulous meals and has a great wine list. You’re teaching, along with umpty dozen other greats, and there’s free yarn for everyone.
I would have liked it to be about your favourite yarn, why it is your favourite yarn, all of the escapades it has been on to give it ‘character’ complete with a ‘scratch n feel’ swatch so we could all see what it is like….mmm- and more about the squirrel who likes/steals your yarn.
Beautiful day … glorious sunshine … leaves budding on the trees … flowers pushing their way up out of the ground …
Squirrel’s looking for nesting material in the backyard being thwarted yet again by your efficient use of a picnic food cover!
Muhahahhahahahahaha
The one knitted item that you will never forget, and the reason(s) why you will never forget it: was it the yarn? the colorway? the pattern? the ease/trauma with which it was knit? other things that were going on in your life while you knitted it? the person for whom it was knit? Something along the lines of your favorite sweater post.
That, while you love rigid heddle weaving with a red burning passion, it still doesn’t replace knitting in your heart of hearts.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself. . .
Or maybe blog about cherries and trees?
You wrote about the utter wonderfulness of the fiber community, because, essentially, that’s what you’re writing about most of the time (aside from the occasional kick in the arse from a recalcitrant project).
I think the post should have been about spinning something in a soft green. Then you could explain how you’ve found a way to manipulate time and actually get around to knitting everything at once. Oh, and I think you have a humorous story involving a member of your family, a cat or some wildlife to tell.
“The Squirrel” brings back your lovely fleece, neatly spun and knit into a fine jacket for you to wear.
I would have written about the dream/nightmare you had the previous night. You know, the one where you had to pack to go to a book signing in Antartica, (great place to wear wool!) got on the plane with your travel knitting (a lacy pygora scarf), which was confiscated by over zealous TSA agents who thought you could hijack the plane with the needles. Then the plane made an emergency landing on an island filled with penguins. The nightmare climaxed with the horrible realization that you had finished the scarf and there was nothing to knit until you were rescued.
Either that, or one about how your teens still refuse to pick up after themselves.
Beer and knitwear and how lovely they go together.
I think your post would be about how you called your grandmother at work to wish her a happy birthday, and then felt embarrassed when she asked you to sing her the song over the phone and then your colleagues started coming back to their desks. sigh…oops…I think that was just what mine would be if I had a blog (but you can live in my shoes for the day)
Your patented invention of self-finishing knitwear. That way I’d have 10 FO’s by the weekend!
I’ll guess it was about April’s socks. The yarn, the pattern.
Unless it was about the squirrel’s in your yard, that invaded your home, absconded with all 4.5mm 16″ circulars, and are dangling just out of reach, knitting hats out of Quackmere. Yarn that you know, wthey bought ith all their pocket change! 😉
What was your post about? Hmmm… I bet it was something fanastically random. It started off with a few more comments updating on us on your weaving project… and then turned to how you had just the right colour of roving to enhance it, but that this would require spinning so off you went.. and decided because it was gorgeous weather, to spin on the back porch in the sun. In my imagination, knitterly chaos then commences involving a squirrel, a bluejay and (aka the “furry” and the “flying” fibre theives) and ends with tufts of roving floating in the air.
I’m wishing it had been pics of your April socks visiting the green sprouts….my idea of a perfect April first!!! I love to see what new socks you’ve chosen + often find I already have the pattern….but yours looks so much more intrigueing. Your socks have made me take a 2nd look at + then make several patterns. Thanks. Congrats on the “mature calmness”…I’de have been less so!!!
1. Progress of weekend weaving.
2. Show and tell of weekend purchases.
3. April’s sock preview.
4. Joe’s return from Mom trip funnies.
5. Squirrels are back, but finding renovations completed on your house, don’t recognize it, pack their bags and wave goodbye, FOREVER.
Shown photos of knitting or knitwear in the sun (with amusing captions, of course)? We haven’t seen the sun here in several days 🙁
I was going to try to come up with something of my own, but commenter Stephanie’s suggestion of “gnomes and their knitwear” far surpasses my imagination right now.
how when you go to the dentist you should try a little yarn therapy, and not go back to work. If you do go back to work realize that things will bite you in the ass the remainder of the day.
I wish you would have posted:
1. Updates about your daughters because I like reading about them (I hope that isn’t creepy). Is Sam still playing the French Horn?, When will Amanda come back from Down Under? (or has she already) and what is Meg knitting these days?
2. That you have finished the Wild Apple sweater and posted lots of finished drool-worthy photos. And you also posted detailed short row modifications (‘cuz I want to knit it someday and could use some help with it)
3. That you and your family are moving to Minnesota, USA where you are setting up a yarn/spinning/weaving shop that will also be carrying Blue Moon Fiber Arts yarn.
4. A description of how that one shoe of yours ended up on the roof of that hotel that you were staying at a few years ago. ‘cuz I still want to know…
You’re April Fooling us into providing future blog topics for you! 😀
Stash weasels got into your yarn! Oh no! But then… the fleece-stealing squirrel (who has since gone to Fleecers Anonymous and changed his ways) came and fought them off for you, because one of the steps is to apologize to all the people whose fleece you stole. Then you invited him in for a nice glass of Screech.
I can’t imagine that your post could possibly have been about anything else, frankly.
I was hoping for a good knitting-realated April Fool’s joke!
You posted about the underground bunker/storage room that you built in your backyard after the installing of your furnace.
In my happy place I am imaging that the post was about the joy of a new spring being all the sweeter with the announcement of a new book.
That and you figured out a way to get David Bowie to deliver pizza and beer and are willing to share how.
It was about how you wish you were an American so you could spend the week filling out the census forms and then your taxes. You long to answer the census entirely in knitwear, and to make a great pair of skew socks for your tax attorney. Admit it, you do…
Your cherry tree spontaneously burst forth into full ripe cherries this morning and so you made cherry cobbler.
You posted about the underground yarn bunker/ storage room that you built in your backyard after the installing of your furnace.
Yarn: The Revolution. There is grumbling amongst the ranks. Hanks piled together in your closet have been sending messages of revolt to the sock club yarn in your office via the DPNs you’ve been using. Freshly spun skeins are unwinding themselves and combining together to create a monstrosity of fiber. The master plan was to crowd into your bedroom tonight, all of the spun and unspun and wound and unwound fiber in your house, and smother you in your sleep for forcing them to give up their natural shape and giving them such lowly destinies as becoming gorgeous knitwear for your loved ones.
But your spinning wheel tipped you off, and Joe installed a padlock on your yarn storage closet so you’d be safe. He was also hoping that it would keep you on the sane side of the crazy knitting spectrum for a little while…little does he know that having all you yarn locked up is just the perfect opportunity for you to go out and buy MOAR YARN.
(sorry. just finished reading a book of absurdist short stories, so that’s where my mind’s at. ^_^)
~Erin
Squirrels.
The return of the wool-stealing squirrell!!!
Squirrels.
You discovered that the yarn-stealing squirrel in your yard shacked up with a girlfriend over the winter and now there’s a whole family of yarn stealing squirrels. Mama squirrel is using her stolen stash to knit very tiny squirrel booties.
I would like to read a post about your children. As the mother of two daughters, I most enjoy your tales of motherhood. My children are so funny about my knitting and quilting. They take it for granted, they assume every one has a mother who knits and quilts, they are not the least bit impressed or interested in my (apparently endless) tales of knitting and quilting which I find fascinating. I like to hear about your children, although they are much more appreciative of you and your knitting than mine are. So, even if you weren’t going to talk about your kids, I like those the best. Although I have often thought how much my kids would absolutely HATE to have our lives exposed on a blog, do yours mind? You are great!
How about how wonderful it must be to be the grandma to the sweetest, smartest, prettiest 8 month old baby girl who brings you unmitigated joy? Someday?
I think you were going to tell us all how you woke up this morning, having fallen totally and completely *out* of love with knitting, had burned your stash and all your tools, and were going to go to Hollywood to stalk Tom Bergeron in a desparate attempt to be on Dancing with the Stars, because your new love was sequins, fake tans and teeth whiteners.
You were then going to wait a couple hours before putting us all out of our misery with “April Fools!”
I can imagine you writing a post about how you’ve just realized Easter is upon us and you’re not nearly ready (although I don’t think there is a knitting tie-in, there might be a dyeing one?) I can imagine laughing at the post and feeling better for it.
Today should have been about some absolutely monumentally incredible pair of socks that you are knitting for April, descriptions having us drooling…bright golden socks knitted from the rays of the sun so each stitch fills your heart with the joy of spring and all the new life it brings…rejuvenating the soul as you knit…socks that bubble and squeak off the needles so that you can’t wait to put them on. That’s the post I was hoping for!
Gansey. Finished. (Joe, can I have my $5 now?)
In a sudden realization in the bath this morning, you realized that you never followed up about the skirt you posted back in January 2009.
Your memory was fuzzy about whether you had finished it or not, frogged it, or punished it to banishment. So after a thorough search of the house in which you found one long lost set of keys, a childhood outfit of Meg’s you’d forgotten ever existed, and an unopened bottle of Eucalan you didn’t know you had, you found it at the back of a cupboard behind some cans of beans.
(I remembered about the skirt when I went back to see your posts about your Feb lady sweater in research into doing my own.)
I hope it wasn’t anything about April Fool’s as I don’t very much care for this day.
Clara’s piece was great, though I’m very disappointed it isn’t a real yarn.
Sunbathing…topless.
You wrote that you would be picking 5 or 10 of your loyal fanbase from around the world and they would come to Sock Camp as your guest. You wrote that you would be able to sort all their domestic issues, and travel, and accommodation, and food, and most importantly their yarn and alcohol needs, and it would be no problem for you, yarnharlot yarnmagician yarnwonder. You wrote that you would be examining our desperate needs and even if we weren’t in the lucky group you would send the happy fairy, laden with good patterns and excellent yarns, to our homes and lives. And we were happy, very very very happy.
We all were still amused when we realised it was all fools day and perhaps the happy, yarn laden fairy wasn’t real … and you had made us smile.
But then, you always do.
x
I think that the squirrels who have previously stolen your wool from your backyard should have done something in your backyard as a peace offering. Or perhaps you stumbled upon a squirrels nest with little squirrely yarn thieves to-be all nestled in some of the stolen wool, and they would have been so cute that you forgave their parents, who after all, just wanted their little nutkins to have a warm soft bed.
How the Easter Bunny snuck into your house last night and did a deep clean of the kitchen and all the bathrooms, did all the laundry including folding it and putting it away and managed to collect and organize all of your knitting needles that had somehow managed to hide themselves in various corners of the house. Just in time for you to wake up the Easter Bunny made you that perfect coffee and had a warm delicious breakfast waiting on the gleaming table. At the foot of your bed was an giant Easter basket filled with yarn in every color you could imagine along with magical chocolate that tasted sinful but has absolutely zero calories.
Another Death Match with the wool stealing squirrel–who is also digging up and eating your spring bulbs!
NO MERCY!
Progress made on the cut pile weave and new socks while sitting outside enjoying those beautiful blooms and perfect coffee. Pictures not only included yarn work but favorite chair outside, perfect cup of coffee (still steaming) on a nearby table and a few blossoms in a vase.
Today ladies and gents is the day Joe’s gansey is finished! Finished I tell you.
How you’d decided knitting wasn’t really for you, now that you’d taken up weaving, with a side line in baking. How you were considering taking up sewing, and perhaps badminton to fill the void in your life because they were such noble pursuits. And there was some weird bit at the end that I found hard to understand, something about a wool allergy…and then I woke up and it was all a dream…
Blog entry: How you were asked to write the screenplay for the latest knitting thriller, Triumph of the Wool, as noted by Franklin over at The Panopticon http://the-panopticon.blogspot.com/ . You were THRILLED to know that your greatest literary quotations will now be uttered by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin. Your words and their comic timing.
Could the knitting world ask for more?!
You wrote about how you were going to come visit Baltimore soon, and give us a nice talk and taste my husband’s most recent yummy homebrew.
You wrote about visiting a new yarn shop. As you entered the shop you could hear a tiny voice calling “Steph…an…ie”. As you walked towards the sound, the voice got louder and louder until you were face to face with the most beautiful skein of yarn!
I think it started with the coffee, the contentment, the satisfaction, and then the universe pulled its April Fool’s joke on you.
It was a metablog.
It was something about Joe. You know, Harlot dear, that I dearly love your knitterly escapades and all that they entail. I’ve learned a lot from you and about you through the years. But somehow, my very favourite posts of all are always about Joe. There’s something about that guy!
No no no! You’re all wrong! Stephanie had orignially written about the furious planning and packing she’s doing for Sock Camp and the trouble she’s having deciding on what projects to bring. I also suspect that she is lamented about the fact that the cut pile weaving is so large and could not possibly fit into her bag to take along.
Spring, fertility and what it is like to move from weaving to socks with the sun shining.
I’d like to think it was about your trip on this really big boat’s maiden voyage with your fiance. It was there that you met the true love of your life and learned what a jackass your fiance really was. Your true love didn’t live up to your mother’s expectations so you had to hide it from her until you worked up the courage. Then the boat hit some ice and you and your true love jumped off the boat at the same time. While you floated on a door, you promised him that near, far, wherever he was your heart would go on and on.
Would it be too boring of me to guess that the post was about April’s socks?
I want a post about the mystical magical beings that exist to multiply my yarn stash and confuse me. When I go to get a certain kind of yarn sometimes I find multiple similar yarns. I must have a “type” I love to buy, but I need to think it is some mystical troll of yarn instead.
How your powers have progressed beyond the amazing and into the superhuman. You said, “You know what would be fun? If I totally shocked The Blog so much that their collective gasp caused a breeze that dried up all of the flooding on the east coast of the US.” Then you put in an awesome time delay that you programmed into the site yourself so that we would all read it at the same time. And then you told us that you’d finished Joe’s gansey as a surprise for when he got home from his trip with his mom. And then you told us the new KWB total. And then you said that Sir Washie had risen from the dead and was a washer-zombie and was eating all your towels, and you had to do the tragic but heroic thing, so you quickly knit up a whole bunch of clogs, and used them to clog his filter one final time.
I bet it really would have been tons of fun. You should post that post tomorrow.
I know the answer. You posted about how, over the weekend, in a moment of clarity and brilliance, you figured out gauge. You finally grasped what so many of us have missed for 100s of years in failing to make it work every time. You, dear Harlot while relaxing in the tub with a glass of wine, had discovered how to make gauge work every time. And you were going to share it with the rest of us.
And now the world will never know.
Tell us about your April socks! Some of us are trying to follow along with our own home-grown sock clubs and it is fun to compare.
Today’s post was supposed to be about post Olympic lethargy and the exciting plans you have for us this summer to keep us from getting bored! Possibilities include: a new and exciting underwater knitting tutorial, flattering for every figure knitted bikinis!!! and the very popular, 100% wool afghan pattern to knit and sweat off those pesky extra pounds in July.
Riveting stuff and we’ll no longer miss the Knitting Olympics!
I have to think (as others have said) that your blog is related to Clara’s wonderful April Fool’s piece (she just quacks me up sometimes).
Squirrels.
Title: A Little Cleavage!
Content: You were drafting your syllabus for the upcoming Sock Camp with your planned demonstrations for constructing a pair of boobies. This to include color consideration, fiber selection (with a sub-topic of stash diving) and variations on top-down versus bottom up approaches. The capper (so-to-speak) would be embellishments (the use of buttons versus bobbles?) for the finishing touches. The pictures would give nothing away of your intended discussions but would focus on your notes and provide enough food for thought to make us all wish we could attend…
Today’s post was supposed to be about post Olympic lethargy and the exciting plans you have for us this summer to keep us from getting bored! Possibilities include: a new and exciting underwater knitting tutorial, flattering for every figure knitted bikinis!!! and the very popular, 100% wool afghan pattern to knit and sweat off those pesky extra pounds in July.
Riveting stuff and we’ll no longer miss the Knitting Olympics!
I imagine a blog post filling with research regarding the health and weight loss benefits of knitting rather than cardio work. That in reality drinking a beer while working on a challenging pattern burns more calories and provides overall well-being that other exercise just can’t beat. That you have been recruited to be the new spokes person for an international campaign similar to the Kardashian weight loss drink; including a photo montage of beautiful, healthy women sipping beer and knitting in local pubs. While spring may be here and the local trails are bursting with exercise enthusiasts; it is best to work on knitwear in a sunny location!
I’m sure that there will also be some information regarding the new April socks and an update on the Wild Apple sweater. In addition a small photo collection of gnomes and their knitwear! :0)
Happy Knitting! ~Summer
Your column probably deleted itself because the subject was too hot too handle – subject being Joe’s return from his travels, hopefully with passport still in his possession, and how he missed you so much and even though he loves his mother very much – although perhaps slightly less now after spending however many days with her – he wished his travel companion had been you… and then because you couldn’t share any of ‘those’ photos, you had to divert attention back to the weaving trip and all those delectable photos of the ‘craft zone’ that we haven’t seen yet. The chicken picture is great but not exactly necessary for setting up our own mobile craft zones – or is it? Maybe that’s what I’ve been missing all these years.
doreen
I think todays post was an instructive post on the How To’s pertaining to Dysoning a Bison (Really, I can’t get the visual out of my head after yesterdays post). Complete with how to get it to hold still, removing the hair from the dyson, proceeding into fiber prep.
Seriously? I suspect it was about how lovely it is to have the kids gone to school on such a beautiful day! Flowers coming out to visit and everything!
I think you probably wrote about the cut pile rug, and how you ran out of the stash of little bits of yarn that you had spun for it, and were looking around for other bits of yarn that might match it. That’s when the cat walked by, and you noticed that her fur was exactly the color of one of the yarns you had already used, and wouldn’t it be fun and kind of texturally different to have some cat yarn in there? So you got down to the business of combing her. But of course, what cat likes to be combed vigorously? Not yours. So she whipped around, taking you completely by surprise, and had a hairball right in your lap. On your favorite sweater. So you took off the sweater, filled the sink to wash it, and noticed that the water coming out of the tap looked a bit strange. Kind of bubbly, more than usual. And pinkish. Tasted kind of weird too. While leaning over the sink tasting the “water”, you heard a muffled giggle. You looked up, back at the sink, back up – the giggle came from the window. Outside was your neighbor, usually a keep-to-herself kind of person. She had a shovel in one hand, and a bottle in the other. With a shock of horror, you realized she had dug up your water line, broken the pipe, and poured the contents of the bottle into it. April Fools! You weren’t particularly amused. But, after all, it was April Fools day, and such a pretty day outside. No reason to let it bother you. Don’t sweat the petty stuff and don’t pet the sweaty stuff, and all that. So you took the laptop outside, with a beer and your knitting, ignoring the by-now-maniacally-laughing neighbor peering at you from over the fence, and sat down to write a blog post. You nearly got it written too. Until the squirrel came. He was after the yarn, you know he was. He took a flying leap and landed on your computer, right on the delete key. And in the struggle to keep your knitting away from his gnashing teeth, you didn’t notice his paw staying right there, on the delete key, slowly devouring your post letter by letter, line by line.
I’m going to guess it’s something to do with Easter baskets for your kids and whether it’s time to end the tradition or just keep it going for tradition’s sake.
I don’t think you wrote a post. I think it’s an April Fool just to get us going heh heh evil laugh 😉
I wish you had just discovered how you could knit while doing housework. I wish the blog post was SHARING that knowledge so those of us who currently live in messy houses (ahem, moi) could start their second sock without the fear of being buried under the pile of knitting magazines that need to be put away. Was I close?
I wish your post would have been:
You have a new book out. It is still a funny book but it is also full of patterns written by your imaginative and wonderful self, along with stories about how each one was inspired by a member of your knitting group and people you have met along the way during your career. The picture would have been spoilers for the sock patterns included in the book as well as a scan of the cover in which you are sprawled in a flower bespeckled field with socks surrounding you, a daisy in your wild hair. The title has yet to be determined and you would love to know what your fan base thinks an appropriate title would be.
The absolute gem of this post would be that your publisher has finally noticed how huge your readership is in your home country of Canada and has booked your book tour to include dates in all provinces and territories, starting with Saskatoon. 😉
You would have ended with a picture of your current work in progress, a tiny bit of cuff done in the April yarn of your own private sock club as this has always been your signature.
I think you might have commented about the Molly the Owl webcam and how Donna Royal is knitting Owl vests with her knitting group today! And….show us an owl vest pattern photo!!
Me, wine and Johnny Depp. Throw in some gratuitous fiber talk.
I think you had an entire april fools post about giving up knitting and taking up crocheting…
It’s also April Fool’s Day and I’m not fallin’ for it. Good try, YH.
An homage to Alice Starmore, in the form of an impeccably written, diagrammed, test-knit and photographed pattern for a house cozy. In 2-ply wool, 7005 colors (sometimes 4 to a row) on US size 2’s. Steeking for doors, windows, skylights required.
Supplemental insert for fully realistic front and back gardens in the style of Nicky Epstein.
Purchasing options: pattern only or full kit.
It was about the amazing yarn that you spun this Tuesday: glossy and perfectly balanced from freshly-gathered (always brushed, never cut!) unicorn manes. It won’t take dye, but glistens in the light such that you can never quite nail down its color.
Fingering weight, maybe. Imagine the rainbow socks that you could make from that?
Or laceweight for a luminescent shawl. The hunt would be on for the perfect pattern!
(OOh, darn it. Now I’ve got myself wanting some!)
Spring buds popping out of the ground (with fabulous pictures of course) photos of sunny skies, warm weather, socks in progress. Possibly even some pictures of what you’ve been weaving lately. Hmm, perhaps some spinning too? In nice light springly colors.
Perhaps there was some news about the kids as well, or more about the trip that you forgot? I know not…
I wish you had shared with us your amazing discovery of how to learn to knit while you sleep. (If people can sleepwalk, surely we can sleepknit.)
Also, a bit of explanation on how to know by looking at a lace pattern just how much wine/beer will be required when you rip it back five rows to undo something.
You started April’s socks this morning, and it feels good to start a month’s socks on the 1st of the month. Kind of like starting supper before the family comes home.
You also have no idea where you’re going to put all the new wool you bought in Michigan, and waxed poetic once more about the blissful satisfaction of learning a new hobby, and best of all, beer was part of the learning process. It wasn’t as good as Labatt’s 50, but it was still damn good.
Let’s see, you also mentioned the train wreck I mean clutter around the house and does anyone ever pick up anything besides me? But you tore through it all and got it back into pretty good shape and it’s now manageable so that you may actually be able to sleep in this house tonight. But we must not ask how the laundry is going or you are sure to weep openly.
Am I close? Oh, and you’ve also decided to give a half skein of Louet Mooi and your “precious thing” pattern as the prize. Almost forgot that part.
1)knitting
2)Squirrles
3)weather
4)April Fool’s of course!!!
Moose! And their eating the first spring flowers.
I wish you were going to write how excited you were about going to (and speaking at)the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this year and how you wouldn’t even mind being kinneared by people like me.
I would have enjoyed a post encouraging beginning knitters to keep at it. I’ve been frustrated with mine and consequently haven’t kept with it. Some suggestions on good beginning/intermediate projects would be nice, as I almost bought a bohus package the other day, and from what I hear that would have been quite discouraging for a beginner like myself. ??
I am foolish enough to wish that you had created just another of your funniest blog ever. Each sentence would have brightened the day, captured the imagination, and lifted up every single reader, replacing sadness and stress with laughter, joy, and a fabulous sense of shared community. However, really Stephanie, that is what you do with every blog–make us smile, touch our heartstrings, and make us look at life in new, enjoyable ways. Thank you, always.
Teenager exploits. Unexpected, unfathomable exploits.
Since it is Aprils Fools Day…
I think you would have talked about how you woke this morning to a spotless house, the teenagers in your household talked lovingly and civilly towards each other and did everything you asked before you even said it out loud (all you had to do was think it!) and that you were able to spin and knit an entire sweater before lunch.
🙂
Gerard Butler naked?
G’Day Stephanie!!…in my perfect world, your post would have been all about how I can maintain my knitting mojo half way (really only a quarter) through my first jumper (that’s Australian for sweater)…pleeeeeease Dear God of knitting DO NOT let me give up.
Knitted items that should have been April Fool’s hoaxes, but in fact were/are real.
Not April Fools Day = )
You live in TO, right? Then your post was about going down to the Lake to enjoy the spring wind coming off it, and as you were meandering the shore, dreaming of your next major knitting conquest, a fish popped out of the water, and said “hi.” Now, we all know the fish in that Lake are polluted, but the fact that their mutations have led to talking fish is news. You stop, and quickly Kinnear a photo (so as to not frighten it off) as you respond with a hello.
The fish next asks how you are doing today, and if you’re enjoying the lovely weather. You respond, and ask the same. A conversation of pleasantries regarding the weather ensues for a short while, and eventually the fish pops back into the water. You shake your head, and say “good bye, Fish.”
As you turn around, you notice a woman sitting on the beach behind you. She looks at you quixotically and says “do you often say good bye to fish?” – and as she speaks, you realize that it’s her you’ve been having the conversation with all along.
You mutter something about having a fanciful day, smile at her, and walk away. But only far enough to not be completely rude as you take her photo.
well, my first hope is that you would have posted many lovely pictures of sock yarn, and socks, and projects that you’re working on. then i could have sat here saying, “oh, what a talented knitter she is, and look how amazing her work is” and then i’d feel inspired to get my lazy rear off the computer, so i could go do some actual knitting myself. 😉
but that’s not really exciting, or creative. if this is the world of my imagination, i’m going to have to come up with something far better than just a couple of sock pictures [even if the yarn is going to be the most heart wrenchingly beautiful sock yarn in the world!]. something different is going to have to happen.
you get up out of bed in the morning, thinking that today is going to be like any normal day in your life [and when i say normal, i mean respectively normal, because who, really, is completely normal?]. you’re going about your business, having your “normal” day, when you get inspired to cast on for a new project. this is also “normal”, as it were. you find the perfect pattern, you get all excited about it, and you march off to the stash to get some yarn.
this is when you realize that overnight, your stash has rearranged itself according to what would like to be knitted first. [don’t ask HOW you know that’s the way the yarn was going to arrange itself. a truly good make believe story doesn’t have to pay attention to details like that. *wink*] at first, you think [almost] nothing about this. any normal person would be freaked out, but you? you’re the Yarn Harlot, Knitting [with a capital K] doesn’t scare you, and a Knitter’s Stash [note the capital S] can do some pretty crazy stuff. but you are THE Yarn Harlot, and you’re in control of the yarn. unfortunately, the yarn that’s in the front of how your yarn has arranged itself, in the order that it wants to be knitted in, doesn’t really suit the project you are envisioning. you’re picturing a pair of gorgeous socks, and the yarn that apparently wants to be knitted first is a bulky weight wool that, if knitted into socks, would make bulletproof material. you pick up the skein of yarn, you caress the fibers, and you say, “oh my sweet darling precious… i love you so very much. but you’re not for the project i have in my head. so, i will knit you first, SECOND. i must make these socks first. they are practically in existence, but just in my head and you know perfectly well at this point that i can’t not make these socks, right now. so stand aside, bulky weight.”
you place the bulky weight yarn off to the side, and progress into your stash. now you’re heading towards the sock weight yarn, already thinking of the yarns you have in your stash, and pairing them up with your sock pattern from heaven. you get to the sock weight yarn, and stop dead in your tracks. you KNOW you didn’t put any bulky weight yarn into your sock weight, because you are a Knitting Goddess and surely you have your stash organized by weight. with a growing sense of confusion, you realize that this is the bulky weight yarn that you just put aside. you pick it up again, not as lovingly as the first time. “okay yarn,” you say. “i told you. i can’t knit with you at this point. goodbye.” you fling it, rather roughly, over your shoulder, and set into finding the perfect sock yarn for the socks you want to make. the color has to be interesting, and bold, but not so bold that it looks like a crayon box threw up onto the skein… you know you have some yarn like that, just a little bit to the left. you shuffle on over, going for that perfect sock yarn, but instead, what do you find? not the sock yarn. the bulky weight. again.
this time, you don’t even bother to say nice, loving words. you grab the yarn, go into a different room of the house, and stuff the yarn somewhere that it can’t escape. you return to your stash, looking for socks. the bulky weight has appeared, once again, this time looking slightly frazzled.
“BULKY WEIGHT!”, you yell. “i told you once, i told you a second time, and i’m telling you now that i CAN’T knit with you!!!! i want to make SOCKS! i want to make delicate, beautiful socks with a lovely lace pattern that dances around my feet, and i CANNOT do that with you! furthermore, the last thing i want to knit with right now is BULKY WEIGHT YARN!!!!!” your patience for this unruly yarn has officially left you. you grab the yarn, run outside, and stuff it in your mailbox. let the mail man take care of it. he’ll think of something to do with it.
finally, that bulky weight yarn is out of your space. you are immensely relieved. you find the sock yarn you want, find the knitting needles you need, and cast on. oh, the joys of knitting socks! somehow, they will never get old. and the lace will be great, once you get past the ribbed cuff. happily you knit, spinning your double pointed needles round and round, making row after row of delicious sock. your day is finally returning to normal… until the door bell rings. confused, you arise from your knitting chair and go see who’s there. it’s the mail man. dread creeps into you, but you try to ignore it. the mail man is handing you a package, and then you remember: this must be the yarn you ordered from the internet! you take the package gratefully from the mailman, wish him a nice day, and go back into your house. happily, you tear the package open, only to receive the shock of your life. the yarn wasn’t the yarn you had ordered from the internet. it was, instead, the bulky weight yarn, which has inexplicably arrived at your house in a box you’ve never seen before, complete with postage, and with a stamped delivery date saying it had been mailed three days earlier.
this was, of course, the last straw. you can’t have for this yarn constantly reappearing, when the more you see it, the less you want to have anything to do with it. heck, you can’t even remember what store you had bought it at to begin with! with a growing sense of urgency, you open your blogging program and make a post. you resist the urge to write something overly frantic, something like, “my yarn won’t leave me alone!!!! what do i do????” you calm yourself down. you can’t let your blog readers know the condition you’re in. nobody would ever want to knit again. you must have your blog readers think that today is going excellently. you let them know about how well your day is going, how much you’ve gotten done. then, an idea occurs to you. what if you can somehow unload this killer yarn onto an unsuspecting victim? maybe if you mail it completely out of the country, it won’t be able to figure out how to come back. you explain, patiently, to your blog readers how you wrote up a lovely post for them all to read, and accidentally deleted it all. the idea growing quickly now. you keep on typing, you’re excited now because this yarn will finally be gone forever! you tell your blog readers that it would be really fun for them to leave a comment, saying what they think you SHOULD have blogged about, or what they would have wanted to see. and, the icing on the cake [or the final nail in the coffin, whichever you prefer] is that whoever leaves the most clever and creative comment on your blog will get something in the mail from you. you realize that everyone will love this idea, because it means something from the yarn harlot. but you are the only one who knows that they will actually be helping you get rid of the most obnoxious, stalker skein of yarn that has ever existed.
I think that you were going to write a post about the beautiful silk that you received. In that post you would elaborate upon how, even though it wasn’t spinning day, you spun it into the most perfect yarn that you have ever produced and you were considering changing the day you spin in the future. Next you had knit it into something that came out exactly the right size without swatching. And to make the day more complete and perfect, you didn’t spill a single drop of coffee on it. Oh, that, and your family waited on you hand and foot.
I’m with Lisa at 4:07. Photos of the FO, photos of the Model (Joe) wearing the sweater, photos of the look of undying devotion on Joe’s face, the relief on your face and the final photo with you and your tongue stick out, finger pointing at us, saying “April Fool”.
How the full moon affected your life (knitting and otherwise) the other night.
The free bunny with purchase over at Dharma Trading?
That April showers bring May flowers and how this inspired your April socks…. definitely included pics of the April socks, a link to the ravelry project page, and luscious details about the yarn and the socks. I also imagine an anecdote about your sock goal and your April timeline.
You need to write the Answer Post, wherein you answer the following questions:
1. Did you ever finish the green afghan?
2. What is the current actual status of the gansey?
3. Was Blue Tiny Baby tearfully recognized?
4. What did you do with all the green ‘step-out’ socks?
5. Did the family-knits-a-few-rows-each scarf ever get done?
6. Did you observe Earth Hour?
7. What’s the completely up-to-date total for KWB?
These are just the ones that spring immediately to mind. Give me a few days and I could compile a list that would make the top of your head pop right off.
I’m guessing how hard it is to get melted chocolate bunny out of wool/alpaca/silk blend yarns, and whether or not just sucking on the yarn is more effective (and tasty) than attempting to Soak™ it?
I was looking forward to the story of your new beagle puppies: You were on your way to the yarn store, and, seeing a box of puppies, were diverted by the endearing brown eyes and silky ears. Suddenly it struck you that these pups would be the solution to your Squirrel Problem. You immediately offered an appropriate amount of yarn and took possession of the pups (2 boys, 1 girl). At home, they practiced Squirrel Patrol by cornering the Cat, who demonstrated the proper use of cat claws. While you cleaned up the blood, the pups moved on to their next game, “Let’s Chew Something”… followed by “Let’s Eat Everything Not Locked Up” and “Let’s Cover Everything With Beagle Hair.” Who knew life could be so exciting?!?
Oh yeah – I’m an April Fool Baby, too – and I LOVE reading & listening to April Fool stories… I think last year’s cat litter story was one of the best.
I figure it was a list of all the items you planned to knit from Quackmere Classic –
Xiphium Crazy Lace Shawl – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/xiphium-crazy-lace-shawl – 1200 yds = $10,069
Sylvi – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sylvi – 1904 yds – $15,977
Hermione’s Fair Isle & Cable GOF Turtleneck – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/hermiones-fair-isle–cable-gof-turtleneck – 2000 yds = $16,782
Great American Aran Afghan – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/great-american-aran-afghan – 4000 yds = $33,565
– and your grand plan about how you were gonna finance this whole thing by writing 308 more best-selling books in the spare time you’ll create by purchasing only cold cereal and milk for all future meals. Somebody wants something else to eat, they can damn well go out!
Your post could be…anything..we love catching up!
Well I’m sure it was about April fool’s day and how beautiful a spring day it was. Not to waste it writing a blog. So you sat down and came up with a way to state your sadness at the lost of the fully writen blog. With one big April fools you got all your readers and friend to write it for you. Enjoy your Spring day glad we could help.
I would say that you were thinking of teaching a spinning class for squirrels so they could spin the roving they steal and make it into sock yarn. And the follow up class to that would be for teaching squirrels how to knit their socks on toothpicks.
I think it was an April Fool’s email about how you’d given up knitting to spend more time cleaning and shopping for new outfits.
101 Ways to Keep the Dog from Eating The Garden Hose . . . because I sure could use the advice.
you decided to climb mt. everest and you’re knitting all of your equipment, including crampons and a tent. the rope is going to take you the longest.
posts again to concede victory to Sara with the Stalker Bulky Yarn story. 🙂
I imagine you were GOING to talk about your lovely cut pile and give us witticisms about your progress thus far.
BUT, given that spring makes one’s head go all silly, in your heart of hearts you really wanted to write about the dream you had last night in which you played the starring role in The Virgin’s Knot. Except that it wasn’t the same story. There was cut pile, but also danger. Cylon danger. And the only way to save the planet was with very pointy DPN’s and magical bison sock yarn. Yup, that’s it.
I’d like to hear about Joe’s trip with his mom to the Grand Canyon.
I think you were going to expand on Quackmere Yarn, and all the projects you were dreaming up to make with this new wonderfibre. I was going to compare your list with mine, starting with socks for my dad who went to the University of Oregon, the home of the Oregon Ducks. I am hoping it comes in yellow and green, UofO colors. So, what are you going to make with the new yarn?????
Well if it is as beautiful a day there in Toronto as it is here in Lodi, Wi. I say outside stuff with fleece and possibly a squirrel ,lambs being born and pronging.and of course the shearing that is going on, plus a mention of sock camp,with a sprinkle of your new found weaving skills.Maybe a thought of a possible garden.
It came to you so clearly this morning, as the caffeine hit your system. Why hadn’t you seen it before? It was so obvious — how easily we could produce piles of gorgeous spring fashions, finish the winter WIPs and spin up all that gorgeous silk roving in the yarn closet while working full time if only we ….
On the other hand, I really like Heather’s Sir Washee’s zombie image.
The recent article in the WSJ regarding the truckers who’ve taken up knitting and quilting while on the road (at REST STOPS, not WHILE driving) to pass the time…
I enjoy everything you write about however I would really like to hear more about the trip that Joe took with his Mom. Thanks
A special blog that will give all of us your “secret” for knitting as quickly and imaginatively as you do, using a pen and a chopstick instead of knitting needles.
I think you were going to scare us half to death with pictures of something you have decided will replace knitting in your life. As well as other fiber related things. Things come to my mind such as only doing laundry!!!
Maybe you were going to post about this thread on Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/remnants/1063101/1-25) – about a rogue project that someone found and is looking for the proper owner. A bunch of us are following the thread hoping the project gets reunited with its knitter. If your post HAD been about that, it would maybe help find the knitter!
Is it about your teenage girl telling you she is pregnant by text message, then announcing five minutes later it’s an April fool’s joke? That’s what my 17-year old did to me today. Fortunately, I was at Toronto General waiting for an appointment, so if I had had a heart attack, help was near…
I wish today’s post had been about the washcloths that people bring you when you go to speak…did I miss the post where you explain what that is about?! Glad you are having a good day. 🙂
I think that it was a slightly conflicted entry, complete with pictures, that featured baby squirrels.
The entry began with some wonderful reflections on how Spring Has Sprung, including pictures of flowers and knitting. This segued into some talk about babies and baby animals.
Following this, there was a photo of some brand new baby squirrels (you know, when they’re all pink and look a bit like jellybeans with squinched-shut eyes). After this photo, you waxed poetic about how maybe squirrels aren’t so bad and how innocent and sweet the baby squirrels look, even though it’s rather sad that they’re naked and their parents can’t really knit cute little BSJs for them.
Then there was a close-up photo of the nesting material.
Which was fleece.
YOUR fleece.
YOUR fleece, which was BASELY STOLEN from you by, apparently, Mummy and Daddy Squirrel.
There followed some ranting about what kind of example Mummy and Daddy Squirrel are setting for their Naked Jellybean-like Offspring. Then, on reflection, your heart softened and you thought about how lucky those little naked squirrelings were to have wool to keep them warm, even if their parents couldn’t knit.
They’d just better leave your wool alone from here on out.
(Please don’t tell me it’s too early in the year for squirrelings. That would just ruin the whole thing.)
Quote:
“Gnomes. And their knitwear.
Posted by: stephanie at April 1, 2010 3:42 PM ”
I *so* hope this was the case!! 🙂 That, or dinosaurs. Or both!
I know, I know! You woke up this morning and finally threw in the brush. You decided it was time for a major change – no more fighting that wild mane of hair – and…. you cut it all off! Now you’re sporting a brand new mohawk and posted pictures to prove it. And, you asked us if you should dye it purple.
You wrote a lovely post about your new weaving skills and what lovely new soft and supple underwear you’d made for your entire family.
The discovery of a tribe, isolated from the rest of humanity, evolving independently, that had been found knitting around the firepit while drinking coffee. With whittled bamboo needles, spun baboon & banana fibers, plant dyes in a variety of colors, and having recreated – independently – Barbara Walker’s knitting stitch treasuries.
With pictures.
How to pack a suitcase. And how YOU pack a suitcase. (which may be two different things, no offense intended)
Pictures and rationalizations for a new spring project (possibly a spring-weight sweater? The beginnings of a tank top?) that matches your flower buds and warm weather mood.
I think you were going to write about anything but yarn, knitting, spinning or dying. A totally random blog to throw us all off. Where would we be without hearing about your adventures? And laughing along with you. Happy knitting…. can’t wait to see the April sock take shape!
You could have written about knitting on the porch with your best buds, then going to a spring yarn sale around the corner.
Oops, that’s what WE did! Have a good springtime!
Rick Astley appeared on your doorstep and begged you to knit him a new trenchcoat for his triumphant return to the stage. As you worked, he serenaded you softly, “Never gonna knit you up, never gonna frog you down…”
I think it was how torn you are now between working on your weaving and starting your socks and have set up your kitchen similar to how Denny had set herself up in the backseat of the car. And then your family wanted you to be crafty in an edible way.
I think it was a story about how Mill St. Brewery had decided to make an organic beer inspired by knitters. Possibly named Tink.
You created world peace and an infinitely reproducible, non-polluting power supply. And then you did your nails.
I think it was going to be about how you came to the sudden and unexpected realization that Sunday is Easter, and had to drop everything in order to make your daughters the most beautiful something between then and Sunday. In your desperation to prove that you’re a good mum (which you are), you would have created the most perfect, simple, quick knit for such emergencies.
That or how to distract your offspring with sugar.
Post is as follows:
“I woke up in the wee morning hours to what sounded like the unmistakable *clack clack clack* of tiny knitting needles. Dismissing it as fancy, I fell back asleep. Upon waking up and leaving my bedroom, I was surprised to discover that all my UFOs were suddenly FOs! How could this have happened? Please allow me to conjecture:
“I believe that *clack clack clack* I heard this morning was in fact the hardworking little elves living in my walls. I don’t mention them much, as I’ve always felt they were the worst of squatters. It’s not that they’re terrible houseguests, they aren’t really. I barely notice they’re even around except for a bit of missing fruit here and there. My offense is taken in that they always seemed like they thought they were ‘special,’ ya know, being elves and all. But how wrong I was.
“You remember the shoemaker and his elves? It seems I have become the ‘yarn harlot and her elves.’ These gentlemen seem to have discovered our uneven relationship and have attempted to make amends by doing me the favor of completing all my unfinished work every night. My April socks are completed, as are two sweaters I hadn’t even begun (I’d only just designated pattern and yarn)! They’ve even been spinning and weaving!
“There is one issue with my new-found helpers: gauge. Always check your gauge, people! My April socks are complete, yes, but they would fit better on a mouse than on a person. But I don’t think it is a great issue; I left a note and a plate of cookies next to what I believe is their front door, asking them to go up a few needle sizes. Realizing their physical limitations, I also left a calculator and some formulas so they can still find sizing success on their tiny needles.
“I do so hope my new friends stick around in this arrangement. I don’t mind losing an apple here and there if it results in some beautiful FOs.”
There. A little magic. A little mystery. Hopefully, you giggled at least once.
I think that Universal Studios called and wanted to option the rights to “Yarn Harlot – the Movie”. Meryl Streep is going to play you, with a special guest appearance by Greg Kinnear who will play Ken, your website friend.
Stitches and yarn combining for knitted sunshine — bright yellow for the sun. Perhaps lace buds for the trees and the flowers.
Spring is like a tonic!
It’s also April Fool’s Day and I’m not fallin’ for it. Good try, YH.
Well, considering what a fabulous day it is, I think your post should have been about how you spontaneously came upon a troupe of wandering performers who offered to improvise for you, on the spot: Knitting the Musical! And, of course, you said yes, and then there was laughing and singing and dancing and everyone who was passing just happened to know all the words and dance steps, and miraculously they all had oversized knitting needles with WIP’s on them that functioned strangely like the flags used by flag-twirlers, leading to a rousing, colorful number right in the middle of the street! And the sun shone, and there was happiness and contentment in every heart.
That’s what I think your post was/should have been about. 🙂
It must have been about the utility of beer in knitting; how such a multifaceted tool emerged and became a mainstay in all knitting circles. Or at least that is what I would have written about 🙂
I hope we get to hear about Joe’s trip with his mother to the Grand Canyon.
Spinning you had spun up some of that luscious silk and were considering how best to use it maybe in a new shrug or shawl. Also a pic of the socks for April in progress. Not forgetting to post the name of the yarn, color, and pattern.
I think you would have posted about everything that you had accomplished today and how happy you were about it 🙂
I think you wrote about how you spun more yarn for your next weaving project even though your first project is not yet finished.
That’s what I’d have done. 🙂
I was hoping for an elaborate story including details about yarny-goodness, knitting-hijinks, and maybe even an everyday occurrence that we could all relate to only to find out at the end that it was all an April Fool. Score two points if it was a joke played on you, not one on all of us!! ; )
I was hoping to see more of the cut pile bag you are weaving!
Buddhist monks in multicolor knitwear. yes, I think that could be nice a topic. or speculation.
I think your blog was about your new bunnies and how you were spinning fabulous things straight from the bunny pen and would be whipping up a dozen fantastic and different pairs of socks for your family and friends easter basket, all to be finished by Sunday early morning and for which you would earn a new pin and we would once again be in total awe!
I think you wrote about how you can integrate newfound weaving knowledge into future knitting techniques and tips, accompanied by creative spinning techniques to pull the whole thing together.
About how you decided to air your stash a little, and realized the squirrel was back.
Today you sat down at your computer with a wicked chuckle to put up a picture post for your “April (Fools!) pair of socks”– or the beginning thereof! These are knit top down, with a little trapdoor at the top to make the recipient of your gift frantically figure out how to get them on.
If knit for a French recipient, they can even have a cute little fish design, so that you can laugh and say, as the French do when you’ve been fooled: “Poisson d’avril!”
Deb
Hmm…perhaps your blog post would be on your weaving or your socks or your current spinning. But you’re the Harlot, so I am guessing, inspired by our lovely weather (I live in Wisconsin, I get it) you started a new spring/summer project and were going to tell us about it. The perfect tank or the perfect skirt, or the perfect cool evening shrug. Heck…you are the HARLOT, you could have started all three!
Hmmmm—– I think you decided that because the weather was lovely you could take the Pole out of the house and utilize it in the Fresh and Happy Out of Doors. You shinnied, you shimmied, you knit while pole-ing about. The upside down moves and the extra oxygen to the brain made you think that those excellent card woven straps could be used a month from now for a May Day Pole. I mean who knew?
I see squirrels are a recurring theme.
My initial thought was that it was about you spinning squirrel fur/hair/whatever it is into a lovely wool. We would be left to wonder about the fate of the now chilly squirrel.
I think you wrote a long discourse on how, after years of doing this, you realized that you didn’t really LIKE to knit, and that you were giving it up.
Well since it’s April Fool’s day you surely wrote a long and moving piece about how you had secretly finished Joe’s Gansey, washed it, placed it out in the warm spring sun to dry and soak up some essence of nature, then watched in horror as Mr. Squirrel drug it up a tree to nest in.
I can only assume it was a review of the new 24 karat gold Signature Needle Arts (14″ single point) needles that are required to knit up Quackmere yarn.
Would you have written about Joe coming home??? and perhaps a new spring project that you wanted to start??
You were writing about Joe’s unfinished sweater….and trying to convince us it was almost finished…..as an April fools 😉
I think the blog post today was about the grand april fool’s joke that Denny and Abby pulled on you.
there was knitting, spinning and cut pile weaving involved and they completely fooled you.
the wonderful ultra-small breed of sheep whose fleece when sheered self plies into lace-weight and a flock of which may be kept in any flat with a balcony and half a dozen window boxes of cat grass
I think the post should have been about how each of your daughters has simultaneously gotten pregnant, your cat has decided your stash is a litter box and your husband has left you for an accountant. To top it off you spilled your coffee on your new silk roving which was then grabbed but a squirrel who is using it to camouflage himself in your underpants drawer.
Oh, and…. April Fools!
…in 31 minutes I’m on Spring Break!
Sorry, I had not read the comments before posting….obviously I should have….Petosky Turtle..we must have been on the same wavelength. My apologies for not reading first…and Happy Easter.
Because it such a pretty day here in Toronto, you took a stroll and were struck by the city in which we live. You contemplated knitting a Toronto afghan to capture these spring days – perhaps squares to reflect different neighbourhoods, one for the CN tower, one for your favourite LYS, and some just representing spring. It will be a reminder during those long grey months that these blessed spring days will return. (Or maybe it will be given to a daughter as a reminder of home.)
I think that it was about spinning that beautiful green and blue silk that was given to you at the weaving event.
You were amazed to see a small procession in your yard; Papa Squirrel, Mama Squirrel, and four little babies, each carrying a bundle and hurrying away from your house to catch a very small bus marked “Rodent Express”. They see you in the doorway and wave goodbye, they’re moving out, they are gone, gone, gone.
I’m imagining that it opened with a photo of the first crocuses of spring, which are sprouting on the side of the giant pile of dirt from the basement shenanigans. The pile fortuitously has a nice southern expsoure, so while everything else is all white & snowy, or dirty brown & bleak, there’s a little POP! of purple.
Then you segue into a brief discussion of April’s socks, and how marvellous it is that the sock club gave you a color that coordinates with the crocuses. Two photos, one of yarn + pattern, one of sock WIP + crocus.
Then you let us know that you’ve signed on to be on a new tv show, “So You Think You Can Knit”, and that you’re totally stoked about hosting the panel of judges. You explain the audition process, and note that we can also audtition in a video, with points awarded for knitter’s style, confidence, ability to save a project, frog when needed, knit when drunk, and spit splce while walking.
That’s what I’m imagining.
Ahh I wish you had written about how you have managed to miraculously finished your bohus with loads of gorgeous pictures 😀
Did somebody already say “knitting”?
I’m guessing you were writing that even tho it is a beautiful Spring day, what you really want to do is knit and that’s one more sign of how obsessed you are. Obsessed in only the sunniest healthiest sort of way, of course.
In honor of April Fools, I think it should have been a post about your resignation from that knitting world. Having suddenly discovered that, with all the math skills you’d learned knitting, you realized you want nothing more than to teach math for students in grades seven through nine…cause they’re just so charming at that age.
It had to be about Joe’s Gansey. You’ve finally finished it and took pictures of Joe wearing it (looking stunning) and then photos of him being attacked and carried off by the Squirrel of Doom. He returns, hours later, without aforementioned gansey but soundly chewed and scratched. Last picture is of his bandaged hands.
That would have been a good post.
I think you wrote a completely convincing post about how your new furnace, your laptop, and Sir Washie’s replacement all conspired to concoct an evil plan that would slowly yet stealthily rob you of one (just one) DPN from each of the sets in your collection. You would have written it in your inimitable, humorous fashion, complete with photos. Either that, or you would’ve posted an “I QUIT KNITTING” April Fool’s post that would’ve left all of your many fans gasping and saying “Oh no – say it isn’t true!”.
In my little imaginary world, your blog post today was a “Welcome Spring” with visions of blooming forsythia and cherry, and some wonderfully scrumptious yarn I could never actually afford being knit into something sweet and darling for someone terribly tiny (who’s debut has not been made yet, but is soon enough for this to be a challenge) on needles so small my hands ache in sympathy.
Enjoy your beautiful day!
I think it would have been about Joe’s magical trip with his mother and what a great son/husband he is and how even when he was away he was thinking of you and taking fantastic pictures of where they were so you could enjoy it too. Cuz, you know, he’s a good guy.
I don’t have a story but I laughed out loud visualizing what Jen wrote at 4:21 regarding the shovel wielding lunatic neighbor and the yarn stealing flying squirrel. Carrie’s post at 5:08 had me laughing again picturing Rick Astley crooning “Never gonna knit you up, never gonna frog you down” in a knit trenchcoat! You have some imaginative followers! Glad you had a good trip!
i’m sure some of the other commenters have already guessed accurately what you really wrote–so here’s what i wish that you had written…
as the world-famous yarn harlot, you had been selected to receive skeins of the new quackmere fiber to test knit. you announced a contest on your blog to give away a skein to one lucky blog reader. to enter, all you had to do was leave a comment with your best april fools’ day prank. (double your chances to win if it involved knitting/ yarn/ fiber.)
Colorus of the day being so glorious inspired you blog about your colour choices for your next project. How you had intended to use a certain colour, but the wonderful spring day insisted you use another colour, suited to you. You gave in to your spirit colour guide.
It was about the perils of DIY eyebrow threading and how to efficiently and creatively use the many little hairs resulting from said peril in one’s current fiber project all while enjoying one’s favorite beverage. Not that I would have any personal knowledge of aforementioned peril.
I think you were making a post about January’s Socks that Rock shipment.
It was very philosophical, inspired by a cab driver indeed.
You lovingly presented the first chapter of your next book – Knitting on the Go. It included pictures of you knitting while biking, taking the bus, and driving. It did not include pictures of the stitches received from said knitting.
It would have been about how all the elves decided to join you in spring cleaning and finished all your projects. Thus, giving you a huge lead for Christmas. =)
Given the tone of your described lovely day & coffee, the post must have been about the marvel of your teens cleaning up after themselves, actually telling you that you’re running low on (but are not yet out of) specific groceries, and that they do indeed need special supplies for school — but not until a week from Tuesday. Oh yes, and they’re cooking dinner tonight, too!
You were going through the stash for unused pastels, and had invented a very cool quick-knit-and-decoupage method of building yarn eggs that you’d stuffed with those nummy malted robin’s egg chocolates and jelly beans for the kids to find on Easter morning (but of course there had to be a good deal of quality control testing first). The malt reminded you of a wonderful Guinness-and-chocolate-chip ice cream you discovered in a tiny hole-in-the-wall diner on the way home from the weaving class, and you had tortur^h^h^h^h^h^h convinced the proprieters to share the recipe with you (and you were now sharing it with us). You finished up with your research on The Perfectly Proportioned Mimosa to go with our hot cross buns, and the photo of the half-full glass of bubbly stuff had your April sock arranged artfully at the base.
Happy Easter, and congrats on one of the best lemonade-out-of-lemons tricks I’ve seen in a long while!
xoxo, Katje
It had to be an April Fool’s joke….maybe about your next big book tour that was being scheduled for 200 cities in 100 days?
Or…Greg Kinnear calling you for a cameo in his next movie?
The push that keeps us knitting is the tricks we play upon ourselves. We knit and find it’s turned out, for better or worse, quite different from what was in our minds. We can be foolish by chance when we knit but we always come back for more and we’re always “fools” for knitting
The finished Bohus, with many pictures.
I hope it was about doing what I’m doing now: sitting on my front porch in the sunshine, listening to the birds, eating hot-coss buns for dinner and thinking about chocolate for dessert.
Was it…. informing us that the United Nations has given up attempting to bring about world peace and is instead working it’s way through the Guinness book of records.
So far they have successfully held the worlds longest conga, the most multilingual knock knock joke and they are now trying to knit the world biggest building cosey to cover that nice shiny building of their in NY.
Give fleece a chance!
It might have been about the little butt stickers that I saw on etsy today. They are for covering your dog or cats little booty.
I think you wrote about how you had discovered a particularly delicious and highly caffeinated coffee bean on your weaving trip which, in generous enough quantities, had the effect of turning you into a fibre dynamo who was able to card, spin and knit overnight the remaining grey wool into the masterpiece that is now Joe’s gansey. Delighted at finally being able to wear his wedding sweater and after showing his appreciation in the customary ways, Joe purged the house of all its remaining electronic detritus which he took ourside and rigged into an intricate and humane squirrel trap. Once caught, the evil rodent was despatched to a faraway retirement home for psychotic vermin and you celebrated by sitting on your patio with a cold beer and your now-safe sock yarn while your daughters cleaned the oven.
You finished Joe’s guernsey.
Joe’s finished guernsey.
I think it was about your fleece stealing squirrel, how he had a family over the winter and now they’re all running around in your yard, staring in the window and driving the cat insane whenever you pull out any yarn/knitting/spinning/fleece.
You know, they might be behind the hole in your foundation last year. Tunneling in to get quicker access to the good stuff.
Beautiful spring weather, and more beautiful knitting.
I think you wrote a lovely entry about your new cut pile bag you just learned how to make. You described how perfect the colors were for you, how the bag was just the right size for you and how very clever the techniques to make the bag were. You felt very clever constructing the bag.
You were going to shock us all and reveal that you’ve only been pretending – for all these years – that wool is not itchy. You were going to tell us it makes you break out in hives and you have the photos to prove it – the rashes, the action shots of scratching, and the pile of previously hidden yarn labels, all acrylic and polyester.
Fortunately, your computer realized this would in no way be a funny April Fool’s joke and could actually cause lasting harm in the Knitterverse, and it ate your post.
you were having a meltdown and giving up knitting, spinning, and weaving forever because you just can’t take the stress of what project to do next when there is so much in your q. You had it all brilliantly documented, about why, and that this would be your last blog post EVER, and then there was the “April Fools” at the end.
Something to do with killer bunnies (who poo different chocolate eggs depending on the bunny’s colour) getting poisoned from eating the emerging spring bulbs. Oh and how nice this weekend is going to be.
I think that today’s deleted post was all about your first time playing with the knitting simulator on the Wii … Honest! Apparently, some brilliant person determined that the target Wii demographic was women of an — ahem — certain age who enjoyed crafting but rarely had gym memberships, and said person developed an actual Wii application — like the tennis racket one, but with knitting needles — to permit one to knit interactively with the Wii. This is *not* an April Fool’s joke! Your photos were, I would imagine, showing you knitting various things interactively with the Wii.
What knitting teaches us about detachment. That is, spending loving time on something, only to have it be too large, too small, lacking in yarn, or otherwise unworkable. And ripping (letting go) and starting over, knowing next time will be new and fresh. Like your post for today…
I’ve got a thing for pictures of people’s stashes (I can’t get enough of the “flash your (sock yarn) stash” threads on ravelry), so… today was the day you decided to show us your stash in all its glory. You spent all morning digging up wool so you could lay it all out and show us what you’ve acquired over the years (or what you could find of it with such limited time, anyway). Complete with interesting stories about how you found stuff you didn’t even remember you had, of course. Every time you write about how you were looking for something and had to dig around in your stash for some amount of time, I want to come over to your house to see what your stash is like in real life.
Happy Easter!
The Gentle Art of Knitting Kilt Knickers, or, What to Wear ‘Neath the Pleats?
Utilizing the spaghetti from the Swiss trees to create truly unique knitted gifts?
It was a long entry about how you hadn’t mentioned it on the blog before, but a while back took a “make your own sock blockers” class, where you learned how to use a scrollsaw to make those decorative shapes from a piece of good plywood. The class was fun, and the process of working with wood was so interesting that you took another class on how to make a box. That first attempt was rickety, but your second try was better, and your third looks pretty darn good if you say so yourself. Then you decided to make a spindle, and then you got the idea of making a special stool to sit on for spinning….
And the long and the short of it is that you’re not going to be posting much knitting content for the next several months, because you’ve started an apprenticeship in woodworking that you hope will eventually lead to your own line of spinning wheels and looms. (And wooden knitting needles, of course.) You hoped that we’d grow to love pictures of sustainably harvested mahogany as much as we love pictures of small-producer merino, that we’d become as comfortable hearing the terms “chisel” and “mortise” as we are with “yarn over” and “draft”, and that Joe would eventually forgive you for filling the basement with power tools and wood scraps.
(The final line, of course, was “April Fools!”)
I refuse to consider chocolate bunny poo. I just refuse.
Perhaps on this beautiful day(also beautiful in Rochester, NY) what you really did was chuck the blog and go egg hunting. I would bet you found a couple of really pretty skeins, err, eggs, too on such a nice Maundy Thursday.
You post was all about you discovering a new time warp machine!! You and your family moving to the States, setting up a new-age FABULOUS retreat center in the time warp machine, where there is free yarn, unlimited time to knit and crochet and spin and weave.
Also Beer.
We cross our turbo bamboos DPNs to the assigned star and are transformed into the RETREAT CENTER. Stay as long as we want. Cabana boys will cater to our every food and drink need.
Time stands still while we are gone, so we can stay as long as we like.
I may never go home.
You were going to start with a photo of your April socks, followed by photos arranged in some creative manner of January – March socks.
You were then going to tease us with close-up photos of the treasures you brought back from your road trip, and your nearly completed class project. Where do you find the time???
I really, really miss that website “You knit WHAT?!?” and kinda wish someone would resurrect it. Or, you could write up a post detailing a pattern for a handknit Snuggie, which would be 10,000 kinds of awesome.
I wish you’d continued your riff on funny-reasons-given-to-border-officials for entering the US and/or most unusual items transported in the car while so doing. I once accidentally carted 8 20kg bags of kitty litter back and forth over the border and was amazed by how funny both sets of border officials thought that was 😉
Bonsai trees, cat scratchers, and a bag of oranges.
What do I wish today’s blog had been?
In the spirit of the day, a pattern for knitting a beer, with foamy head, and a logo on the side of the glass (a few choices of logo would be nice — I favour Warthog) and maybe a beer mat to go with it. Seriously, are there any knitted beer patterns out there?
After your weekend with knitters/weavers/people who love the art, a wonderful rambling about how generous and sharing knitters are as a whole. How energizing it is to spend time with other creatives. Plus a picture of your progress on the latest pair of socks.
I’m sticking with the Gansey theme, with a twist. Post about how the Gansey was finally finished, and awaiting the perfect lighting/scenery (and willing husband) for pictures. Leading us all to believe that this was obviously an April Fool’s joke (the Gansey could never be finished the Blog scoffed). Then tomorrow we realize it wasn’t a trick when you post pictures, you HAD finished the Gansey. Brava YH!
The blog post was about how sometimes what you see in your head is exactly what comes out when you design a knitted piece, and the details you used were exactly the bits I needed to get the piece I am working on to just fall into place. It was serendipity! (And all those budding spring photos with knitting didn’t hurt, either!)
I’m first! (APRIL FOOLS)
I imagine your blog post would have been a 1-2 knockout book review of Clara Parkes’ Knitters Book of Yarn and Knitters Book of Wool. You would have waxed eloquent on Clara’s ability to write about single-2-3-multi ply, woolen vs. worsted, S vs Z, and of course the sheep – those vignettes of all the lovely sheep on this green earth, and how each sheep’s wool is ideally suited for particular types of knitting. You would have mentioned that Clara leads a monthly Wool-A-Long on Ravelry, that she just wrapped up BFL, and what will April be? You would have shown a few of the beautiful patterns by knit-designers we all admire, and admit to having at least one of the sweaters on your short-queue. You would have ended by reminding us how precious our knitting community is, and how reliant we are upon the sheep and their herders, shearers, etc. Then you would have shown us one last picture with a mystery piece of knitting and a lovely glass of red wine.
Or, maybe that’s tomorrow’s post.
Oh, the blog was a definitive entry on the uses of socks during springtime, when we all feel like running around barefoot! And of course, you gave us all kinds of tips on incorporating the lovely spring greens and how to stay cool in the springtime heat while knitting beautiful wool socks and drinking an amazing hot chocolate. Because everyone knows chocolate and knitting are two perfect things, which combined make utopia possible!
Well, my ideal post would be “annoucing my first trip downunder” in a world first the yarnharlot is visiting New Zealand touring all major cities and some smaller towns. Timed to allow her to visit our creative fibre festival and staying in the wonderful city of Porirua with a sometime blogger and all time stalker……”
In the real world about April fools day, [ my sons birthday ] and the joys of card weaving and rug piling with perhaps a finished project and the April socks pattern and yarn links.
Enjoy your day I plan on spinning some plastic bags for my next exhibition project and watching Lucy Neatbys sock tech DVD.
Cheers
Maybe finally tell us what you are going to do with all those little square knits/washcloths you collect from people on your travels.
And show us pictures of daffodils.
You were writing a post about watching some guy ride by on a bike dressed as the Easter Bunny with his kids in a pull along stroller that was all decked out in Easter Eggs. It inspired you to pull out Easter Egg type colours and cast on a baby sweater. Then there was all the egg decorating and how you were going to figure out a way to hang chocolate Easter Eggs in your cherry tree and see what the neighbours would do to get at them.
Wasn’t Clara’s post great? We also had a bit of frivolity over on WeaveZine:
http://www.weavezine.com/projects/extruded-string-weaving
and
http://www.weavezine.com/reviews/tabletop-jacquard-loom
As for future blog posts, I’m anticipating updates on the cut-pile bag!
I believe your post was about how wonderful your coffee was and continued to discuss the distinct qualities of coffee vs. tea.
I wish your post had been an announcement of your next book….TRAVEL HUMOR!!…Not that I don’t appreciate the knitting humor, but I’d like to see you open your horizons so to speak. I think the muggles deserve/need your humor also.
I wish it had been about how all wars are officially ended as of today, for all time. That health care and education from kindergarten through college in the US is now magically free, including the ever-increasing mound of student loans that I am currently building up. That chocolate is now considered one of the 4 basic food groups by men as well as women. That everyone who wants a job can have one, doing what they like to do, and earning a comfortable living. That no one is homeless. That all women’s clothing, regardless of actual measurements, is now designated as “Size 8.” That all cancer is now cured by a single dose of a very pleasant-tasting pill, whose only side-effect is that it makes you take a refreshing nap. That all knitters automatically get a sizable and free box of yarn every week, of their choice. That my parents, who are sitting in a doctor’s office even as we speak, are being told that it was all a big mistake: that my mother doesn’t need to have a gastric tube put in, and won’t spend the rest of her life eating through a tube in her stomach.
That’s what I’m wishing for today.
Hmmmmm . . . I think your post was a wonderfully and beautifully written piece on your epiphany that would save the world. But, now that it’s gone, we’ll never know how to do it, and we knitters will have to step in and do it ourselves. ;o)
Not very original, or funny. I know. I’m not good at that kind of thing in the face of your history of surprising wit and clever posts. But hey–I had to give it a shot, right?
So, the safety and peace of the world is now still hanging precariously in the hands of knitters everywhere . . . which means I’d better get blogging . . . :o)
I think perhaps you didn’t write another post at all, and that this was it (although I can imagine that what you said happened really did happen). And this was a way to get The Blog to come up with ideas for future posts – sort of an April Fool’s joke on all of us.
It’s obvious.
You’ve invented a new sock where the sole is made of a cut pile rug. It would be a sock like EZ’s moccasin sock with the sole being a rug – therefore eliminating the need for rugs in the home, the need for darning skills or frankly the probability of holes in socks at all.
It will be a new class at the next Sock Summit … and will be called “Socarpet Recipe: A Good, Plain Socarpet”
Did you make the strap for your bag with the card weaving? Almost posted lots of pics?
I think you took pictures of “spring” popping through the ground and wrote your post around those pictures!!!
Something about best laid plans being foiled by cats, dogs, children and yarn that wants to made into something wonderful but can’t because of the plans, cats dogs and children. Then you take a deep breathe and grab a beer and be thankful for cats, dogs, children and yarn because the plans lead you astray from what’s really wonderful: cats, dogs, children and yarn.
How you’d discovered that the Translate for Animals app (http://www.androidfreeware.net/download-translate-for-animals.html)also works for yarn, and that it could tell you what it wanted to be when it was used, and what it said when the knitter/crocheter/crafter disobeyed those wishes and subjected it to their will……!
I was very sorry to hear that you tripped when carrying your SOAR silk in to the house. Of course it would happen in the fading light of late evening and, in the slushy winter/spring driveway of churned mud and pale early-spring grasses, despite your best efforts, you couldn’t find it. Did the precious bag fly from your hand as you went to catch yourself? Did you unknowingly kick the bag as you arrested your fall? Perhaps, your increasingly desperate search in the ink-black of night kicked mud or grass on your precious bag of SOAR silk. You gave up, dejected, despondent. All these possibilities you were considering as you waited for your morning coffee to percolate. And then! And then you saw it! The early morning sun glinted off the edge of the plastic bag. Right there by the tire – blue silk camoflaged by the blue tones of your car! What was that sound?! Mr. Squirrel! Noooooooo! He sees it too! You leapt to action, screeching as you flung open the kitchen door. A mad foot race between knitter and beast. Your hair pushed back from the speed of your rescue, Mr. Squirrel’s tail dropping into aerodynamic alignment with his scurring paws. He has it! You leap! A mad tumble – Stephanie, squirrel, silk, Stephanie, silk…. victory! Yours again. Even now, as you finish typing the post to tell us of your victory, you can hear the angry chirping of the silkless Mr. Squirrel.
That would have been a good post to read.
I think today’s post (without having read any of the other comments) was about how, you started April’s socks and it was such a beautiful day you took your bike out of the bike cabana(for the first time this year), rode to the park and knit the entire pair of socks while writing a beautiful few chapters to whatever book you are currently working on. You were so excited about finishing the April socks and the amount of work you got done that you started May’s socks extremely early and laughed in the face of Christmas knitting.
I think you might have gentle chided us all for thinking you would write an April Fool’s post, and then you would have led us on a devious and delightfully entertaining post about the journey you had just taken, taking us all along with you, and when we arrived at the destination, so NOT expected, you would divulge that this was not April Fool’s but what was really had happened and we all are left wondering whether it was for real or not!~
Let’s seeeee….you were drinking your perfect coffee when your hubby came into the room with a lottery ticket. After fishing a coin out of your (very *organized*) purse, you scratched it off to find that you had won TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS!!! (Canadian, of course.) After doing the happy dance and hooting and hollering for all the world to hear, your husband sheepishly utters the words…”April Fools” upon which you turn the ticket over to find that it is a FAKE!!! Well, he got you, for sure, but it is early, and you have plenty of day left to plot your revenge. You decide to knit for a spell, and just as you are settling in, you hear a very loud crash coming from the other room. You are sure that it is another April Fools joke, so you completely ignore it and continue knitting. All is silent, so you completely forget about the crash. You are so pleased with the progress of your April sock that after about an hour, you search out your husband so that you can get some “ooh’s and aah’s” from him – only to find him unconscious on the floor in the other room. Uh, oh. This ain’t no April Fools! So, you call for help and in the end it is a concussion, which is too bad, but you can’t help but inform him that it is all HIS fault for crying wolf in the first place. When you return home, a large packing containing FIBER is waiting for you. You decide to open it later, because you must blog about the “April Fools Incident” It is all slightly funny by now and the weather is beautiful and your coffee is delicious and you are almost finished typing when the phone rings….you cheerfully answer it…the rest we know.
♥
You probably wrote about an epic knitting battle between basement cat and ceiling cat.
I wish your post had been full of pictures of gorgeous knits and filled with your witty commentary. Love your blog.
Oooh, I like Tracy’s comment (5:54 p.m.) about Greg Kinnear calling you to do a cameo in his next movie!
Joe in a knitted bunny suit.
(I have absolutely no idea where that came from…)
I am hoping that the post today was of the historic event of a troupe of your neighbourhood squirrels pledging their love, life, and honour to the defense of your fibre holdings against the rouge squirrels from a few blocks over who had been trying to steal the territory for their own by subterfuge and evilry including framing your squirrels for all the offenses against your stash in its many forms.
Photos of the earth shattering squirrel delegation’s visit to you would include images of the wee things presenting to you a bouquet of softest flowers and random selections of lofty fibre in spring shades stolen back from the enemy, a collection of precious nuts spelling out ‘We Love Yarn Harlot” on the grass, and a sentinel line of squirrels around the perimeter of your property, facing outward and ready to bravely beat off the yarn-hungry intruders.
The blog could have been an opener for one of your sock camps to be taking place in Toronto next fall because you had decided that the west coast was having too much attention. I think it is more about my intense wish for this to occur then an realistic blog entry. Thank you for sharing Clara’s blog, it made me smile.
Current lip gloss trends?
I think you were going to write about another brilliant knitting insight that would be as enlightening to me as the recent one on loose gauge which I am still rapturously sharing with anyone who will listen to me (hardly anyone besides the cat). But if not, oh well, I love everything else you write, too.
Well, I hope it wasn’t the perfect solution to SSS or how to avoid weirdness between DPNs on purl rounds. because if it wasn’t, maybe they are still coming. And I could use them!
Easter eggs and easter chocolate- the prettiness of, the consuming of, and dealing with the after effects of too many or too much. And maybe the sort of yarn that goes with the various types of chocolate (sort of like which wine with which meat). I personally think eating chocolate covered ginger while knitting a tweedy mix is rather a good combination. And possibly caramel filled choclates and angora sounds rather nice. As long as its not light coloured angora. It might stain. 🙂
Happy Spring….April Fools
I think your post was going to say that you were about to write to the LCBO to thank them for being so kind to the knitters of Ontario. What other province – or state or country for that matter, has a liquor outlet that provides snazzy knitting bags that are just perfect for heading out to stitch gatherings!? In lovely shades of green with turquoise leaf-graphic accents …the interior lined with individual compartments on both sides and a larger open area in the centre. Each separate section will hold a couple of skeins of yarn or a small-project sack. Slip a Neustadt 10W30 into another section [local to this area], or any other brew/beverage of choice, your gadget bag in another section, lunch or snack in another, bottle of wine in another – and your purse, cell phone, main knitting project in the centre compartment. Lightweight and strong with sturdy handles…and all this for $1.49! Thank you LCBO! It’s caught on with several knitters up this way, I wonder about other Ontario knit groups? Just realized, our LCBO knitting bag probably does sound like an April Fool gag – but it’s not 🙂
I hope it was about the knitting weekend you were giving in Clara’s mythical land, with free samples of all the colourways and gauges, good food and great beer, and, oh, discounted air fare for anyone who signs up. Adding Denny, Rachel H or Tina to the teaching staff would be a bonus. If you got Anna Zilborg, you would be golden.
In my dreams ….
You were thinking of how tufted textiles created an entire industry – machine tufted carpet, in a small North Georgia town during the Great Depression. You were coming up with ideas to revitalize your own small part of the world with your new skillz.
First, the Aflac yarn blend made me spew coffee out my nose.
I originally thought your post today would have been about getting 8 freakin’ feet of snow in the last 2 weeks followed by flooding in the barn with the ensuing melt, (which really puts a damper on the alpaca stash down there that’s still on the hoof) but then I remembered that’s Spring here in Colorado, likely not so in Toronto. But I digress, and apparently whine, but that’s how I roll when seized with the Snow Crabbiness. I plan to be very cheery in June.
I think you were about to post how to change a toe-up sock chart into a top-down one, because that is the problem I am faced with right now. (What to do with the M1 and M1-purlwise.) I think I figured it out today, and my knitting this evening will see if I’m right.
Hmm… well, I think it ought to have had many pictures of the spring poking out… color and sunlight, and maybe green things or flowers.
And knitting, of course, it should also have had knitting. Perhaps the glimpse of the new April socks?
This is an April Fool’s joke–you never wrote anything and you aren’t going to send a prize either. LOL
The crane flies came in when I let the cats in last night. Here in Louisiana I’ll let in several every night until next winter. Just one of the signs of spring that have busted out all over. I think you’d write about how hard it is to find time to knit now that the weather is getting better, especially after the winter you must have had. Hey – we had snow twice this winter here in the deep south. And for us it was a lot – 4 – 6 inches. I know, I know, I can see you rolling around on the floor and I can hear you laughing all the way down here.
Perhaps you were writing about why April 1st is the best day in the world for a birthday. But then I’m slightly prejudiced – it is hubby’s birthday!
A true story of how you McGyvered your way out of a deadly situation using only your dpns, a leftover yard of self-spun yarn, and a safety pin, thus saving the world with your super-knitter skills and letting us all live happily ever after with our loved ones and our endless stashes.
……How I finished Joe’s Gansey!
After reading Claire’s post, you were perhaps contemplating yarn spun from coffee beans?
I want you to have written about some wonderful messages you’ve gotten from Americans who understand and appreciate Canada and who GET universal Health Care (and don’t believe in Death Camps). In a perfect world that would have been your post.
I think it’s all just an excuse to write a very short blog post today and go enjoy the sun! And after a long Canadian winter, I would too.
Heaven on Earth ……… Fiber for Life…….. a life time supply of fiber………………
I think you had a full post on knitting with Silly String, including pictures, for a wonderful April 1st counterpart to Syne Mitchell’s Weavezine post on weaving with Silly String, complete with video demo, http://www.weavezine.com/projects/extruded-string-weaving.
The post was about how you recently discovered how much you love crocheting.
I am sure you would not remain silent for long with my problem – how to knit with one hand! Yep, broken wrist – five weeks confinement in a soon to be grubby looking cast. What to do? What to do?
Well, it IS April Fools’ Day after all. So here’s my wild guess: you knit up all your stash and have run out of yarn.
I would love to read about how you managed to get enough Squack fiber from Quackmere Yarns to knit the fabulous Flying Geese shawl. You know, the one that is so light and airy of a lace that it will float off of your shoulders if you do not use a gorgeous shawl pin with it. Of course you get the fiber gratis for a mention and a photo of the finished shawl in your blog!
Earlene
PS My birthday was yesterday! I April Fooled the doctor who kept telling my mom I would be born on April 1st. This was the same doc who when he saw a child he had delivered gave them a nickel and told them to go get a chocolate ice cream cone. This was in the late ’40s early ’50s.
Roller skating hitch hiking Moose, crocheting blankets of course.
I believe you were going to tell us more about your recent travels–the ones that didn’t involve weaving. Despite your recent return to Canada, you were struck by the sudden urge to pursue the age-old quest that had inspired brave acts of heroism from Jason and his Argonauts: what more could a fiber addict dream of than the shining, heavenly, skooshy fleece of gold? I’m pretty sure you found it, too. I mean, it must have been one long and involved story on par with Jason’s, right? I can imagine that being a bit trying to rewrite after pouring so much effort into it. Could you at least let us know how is spins up? 🙂
Probably that it was all an Aprils Fools joke, reality, your washer ran over, yarn was tangles, you skipped a whole row,used the wrong needles, forgot to put a marker, counted wrong…oh wait that was me. Happy Aprils’ Fool day…enjoy that sunshine, New England ( Boston) is after all this rain!
Your post was a lovely one about how the flowering pear trees in Kansas are just on the verge of bursting into puffy cotton balls…for a day or two until the 40 mph winds rip all the petals off.
Today’s entry:
Knitted lawn ornaments and their futility. ;D Either way, have a great day. 😀
After reading your blog for several years, I feel I know you even though we’ve never met. So, based on how well I know you (ha ha), I’m guessing your post would have been something totally off the wall (like you’ve bought a Hummer and stopped recycling), only to end the post “April Fool’s Day!”
I expect, as it was April Fool’s Day, that you had an excellent post on how you have been creating exquisite (naturally) patchwork quilts by hand in secret, and now wish to reveal them to the world.
I think your post was about how you called a family member and left them a message that you would not be participating in Easter festivities this year because you have better things to do, and that they would have to simply make other plans. Then you waited a few hours and called back to say, “april fools!”
Either that or you calmly and cheerily told your family that you love doing the housework all the time and that they shouldn’t be expected to contribute (especially if you’ve been gone on a trip). You let them stand there in completely in shock for quite a while before letting them in on the joke. Then you ordered the girls to clean their rooms immediately.
I can’t decide how it went down.
Well, today being April Fool’s Day, I’m sure your post was something about that- directly or with subterfuge, I’m not sure. Perhaps you meant to tell us how you finished the Bohus sweater last night (April Fool’s!!). And or the self-imposed April Sock.
I’m sure you wanted to talk about the fact that Sock Camp looms upon you and how excited you are- especially since you got “A.Ton.” of work done today (Hooray, Great Job!!!! :D)
You also wanted to discuss the amazing amount of spinning that has recently happened and what you intend to do w/ the fabulous yarn you created.
But, I forgot, you didn’t get spinning done b/c you finished your cut pile weaving! And you had fantastic pictures of it that we will now have to wait to see.
And in your spare time, you managed to complete a brand new 500 pg book that will be published in August. Because, after all, sleep is over-rated.
AND, you wanted to show us what your lovely daughters are knitting these days.
That’s all. 🙂
I wish you had spun us a yarn about how much you have enjoyed entertaining us with your blog these past several years and also how much you have grown and expanded your world because of it.
You finished the weaving and everyone you met all day long commented on its loveliness and someone even offered you money for it but you politely (you *are* Canadian, after all) declined to part with it. Your daughters all put in orders for their copies as did each of your sisters/sisters-in-law and even your mom and Joe’s mom.
And then you woke up.
You might have written about knitting.
And how one can be fooled by ones knitting.
And using the hand died silk you recently acquired.
And knitting.
And a big April Fools surprise.
Well the topic I am sure was of fiber. The photos a fiber involved hobby or finish fiber item. Possibly a peek at the April socks in progress.
Today’s post began with the following disclaimer: “No squirrels were harmed in the creation of this post.”
How about an article on Hank? We haven’t seen anything about him for far too long. I’ll bet he’s grown an amazing amount. What’s he up to?
-Shearing urban/suburban Candian fleece-thefting squirrels for fun and profit, with a bonus as to how to best spin yarn from their fuzziness.
-How to dislodge the family cat from a freak yarnslide, including how to best minimize damage to the yarn. Oh, and the cat too.
-How Joe managed to loose his passport in the US, and how much less friendly the authorities are about such things on this side of the border.
Hmm. Some appliance not working? Nah, you’d be crankier.
Well, what could it be? Maybe it was pictures of little green things coming out of their winter hiding, your April socks? Maybe it was more wonderful and delightful thoughts that you may have had regarding knitting,and life in general. What ever it was I’m sure we would have all enjoyed it.
Today you were so taken with the gorgeous skies that you decided it was time to reclaim your space. You organized your new office and came to term with all the construction that had sent you into a frenzy over the winter. You even had a few laughs at the last bit of dust that you found hiding in the corner and decided to let it be for today. While on your organizing pursuit you came across Joe’s Gansey. Today the birds chirped and the sun shinned as you picked it up and it finally all came together. You knitted as you have never before and the planets all aligned on this day to finish this piece of work that was long time coming. Just as you finished casting off and held it up to admire it Joe walked into the room with a cold beer in his hand just because…..
Of course this means you have used up all your knitting karma for a month so the rest of april will be interesting.
It was about how a woman who was disenchanted with men after a difficult divorce met the love of her life at Pat O’Briens, (a super-cool piano bar), in New Orleans while on a girls trip with her friend 12 years ago today. Wait! that’s MY story. We’ve now been married 10 years and have a beautiful 3 year old son. Even though we lived 700 miles apart when we met. We made it work and have been together ever since that night 12 years ago today. Dreams DO come true. What a story for a beautiful spring day. It’s all about beginnings.
oooooh! are the suggestions limited to only ONE entry per player? cos i could come up with 1000’s! 🙂
hmmm…..but here’s my best guess:
it was about how you FOOLED everyone on the blog into THINKING you accidentally deleted a totally excellent post just to get THEM to (sort of) blog for you…. because it is, after all…APRIL FOOL’S DAY!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA …. GOOD ONE STEPH! 🙂
Your April Fool’s Day post was all about how you were going shopping for some completely new outfits to take to sock camp along with several unique and exciting, lacy and feminine bras(and other undergarments). This was despite the fact that you knew the author of the saying, “Distrust any enterprise for which you require new clothes”. It would also be interesting to hear how long it took before you realized the quackmere post was not all it was quacked up to be. I was suspicious of the retired reindeer herder and, especially, his reclusive ducks. Too, too funny. Cheers and red wine, Hazel.
I would like to think that your original post was about the progress that you were making on your new project and how awesomely amazing and cool you are, along with your friends.
I am tempted to hunt down RachelH on Ravelry to find out but that would take all the fun out of it!
The post? How the beautiful weather is inspiring your newest sock creation? Nah. How the little green plants that are just poking out of the ground are giving a really bad case of startitis? Maybe. Could it be that the kids are out of the house, husband is busy working and you’re enjoying the sound of silence (and the fact that you can finally use your ball winder yourself for the first time since time began)? That’s it!
I wish we’d heard all about Joe’s trip with his Mom to the Grand Canyon!
Enjoy the sunshine!!
I wish today’s post had been an epic poem
Ode to Wooly Love
or
fiber frenzy springs eternal
blessings,
robyn
I think you should have written a blog about the new method of knitting you have invented. Knitting backwards on square needles, using cobwebs and elastic bands wrapped together to give a lacy effect with stretch!!
I don’t comment often but I was hoping it would’ve been about you coming to San Diego to give a talk. Unfortunately I have never been able to hear you live and I’m still waiting until that day…sigh…
Perhaps you were telling us about the April socks…the yarn and pattern, and about what you did for the remainder of March after the March socks were done. ( I know you did quite a few random things).
The Craft Zone. With more pictures of Denny. Pictures of Denny make me happy.
I scrolled down with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t see anyone else’s guesses. We are full on spring in New Jersey. I think you must have some kind of lake effect microclimate in Toronto that warms you up so I think you wrote about spring. I think your theme was starting new socks, new beginning, pictures of little buds poking up their heads, and all that springy newness.
My guess is this: How Ninja Spinners came to your house, rifled through your fibre stash and made sparkly shiney beautiful fairy fart yarn and then knit it up into the most beautiful sockage in the world, which they then made sock monkeys of. Said sock monkeys then stole your bicycle, kidnapped you and went on a rampage throughout the greater Toronto area, perpetrating acts of drive by yarnery.
how you wanted to go outside and start rolling in the flowers of springtime (well, not on the flowers, that would be destructive).
You were going to write about raising children to be remarkable world citizens, who can convince people to be kind and supportive to others, by just saying several sentences. These wonderful children were going to fix politics in all countries, from Canada’s language issues and clashes between groups, to the US’s heath care and presidential dislike issues, to the countries denying basic rights to girls, to the countries whose goal seems to be killing off other counties.
These remarkably raised children will travel the world, and every sentence they utter will cause who towns…yea, whole countries to flock to their banners.
And we’ll finally have world peace.
Oh, and the prototypes for these remarkable children are your own three ladies. 😉
How’s that, Stephanie?
Sue @ 4:01 pm: She can’t move to Minnesota because she and Tina are both moving to NJ, setting up shop on the banks of the Delaware, and all sock summits, camps, and other assorted fun will be held in Trenton. April Fools! I can dream, can’t I?
I think todays post was about the awesome sale on green wool. You know… The green wool in the backseat with Denny in the previous post. No point in denying it!!!
It is a well known fact (giggle) that sheep love to skinny dip. It is a slightly less well known fact that many rivers in the world are dyed lovely shades of green for St. Patrick’s Day.
This year, with the luck of the Irish, St. Paddy’s fell during a warm spell and many sheep took advantage of the lovely weather. They snuck out of their pens and could be seen frolicking in the local rivers in nothing but their bare fleeces!
Of course, Spring is upon us and with it the shearing season and a huge surplus of green fleeces, rovings and yarns on the market. And as the law of supply and demand goes, the supply is so high it has driven costs down considerably. Which fully explains the mass of green wooly goodness in your backseat. *nods convincingly* Tell Joe that. I’ll back you up.
The weather is very nice here in the central US as well, and when I came to the blog today, and read the first sentence about spring beginning, I hoped the post was going to be a spring-related post. Maybe also involving the April socks, posed outside. (in flowers? Are there flowers in Toronto yet? There are some in our yard.) I always like reading your nature/weather posts, (winter and spring in particular) so I wish the blog post had revolved around spring returning.
I think the joke is on all of us–you didn’t delete any pictures/entries, because the day actually is too nice. And you are teasing us all with a prize because it is April’s Fools!
your superb rug … created with ease and agility thanks to the excellent class over the weekend…pictures to illustrate the stages of progress – the finished product in place in your home … Joe & the girls smiling at how much beauty has been added to their lives.
Frankly, I would love a post wherein you reveal that while on your first book tour, Joe learned to knit. Mostly scarves and rectangular sorts of things. But he kept it hidden from you. On your second book tour, he upped the challenge and tackled cables and lace and circular objects. Still, he kept his hobby secret, stashing yarn at friends homes and making excuses for going out. And you thought he was doing some sound engineering! On your subsequent jaunts, Joe continued upping the ante, learning colour work of all sorts. Then he did the nearly unimaginable. He took on a Bohus and knit it completely and entirely for you. And that is how Joe told you that he knew how to knit.
Haven’t read all of the preceding comments, but my vote is: you finished Joe’s gansey, and here are the pictures.
You got us, kiddo.
My best guess at the topic? I imagine a carefully crafted essay on how the education of children around the world would be improved if knitting were taught and encouraged at every grade level. The pictures of your children knitting and the other children knitting around you would be a perfect compliment to the story.
A long and involved discussion on the futility of egg cosies. Because unlike teapot cosies, egg cosies only last on their object for about 5 seconds before you whip them off, throw them onthe bench and munch on your egg. How they truly are an artform as they really serve no useful prupose (and is’t that a difinition of art?)
Today – in honor of it hitting 80 degrees here – I had a twist icecream cone. I know you were writing about yarn that is the color of ice cream flavors – strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, banana…coffee… yum.
You thought, “Hey, you know what would be fun?” And then you started calculating how much yarn it would take to knit the Earth a shrug. And sketching out a pattern. With complete confidence that you would have it done by Earth Day.
The sun is shining and I have Earth Day on the brain.
I actually believed that Quackmere right to the end, having once bought Chinese yarn that was cashmere blended with, it turned out, 50% of the cheapest, worst-grade acrylic–WHY?…
Re your mythical post: you and your family get on your bikes and go to Lake Louise. (Somewhere closer if you really must, but Lake Louise is gorgeous, mountain-ringed, the Canadian version of Lake Tahoe; what more could one ask for.) You’re all test-knitting the Quackmere together to promote its family-togetherness-enhancing qualities. You knit a duck-shaped boat out of it–it floats!–and then paddle happily around the lake together, the press in tow, bringing worldwide attention to this wondrous new fib-er.
You didn’t write anything at all. You just made this up as an April Fool’s Joke.
I think you wrote about some April Fool’s socks and the progress you’ve made on weaving. Maybe included a little bit about a sweater you mentioned a week or so earlier.
On a completely unrelated topic, I loved the Tweet about the cab driver being so philosophical. Naomi Shihab Nye wrote a wonderful collection of essays about driving and being driven called “I’ll ask you three times, are you OK?” I don’t think she is a knitter but she could be.
I think it surely was about getting back across the border into Canada and how stupified the border agent was by your fabulous story of learning to weave – “Wanna feel my sample?” – and that now you are so hooked on weaving that, well, that…. Well, that must be the part that was too hard to recreate.
The joy of new yarns and new projects when new things are growing. I wonder, could I have used “new” any more in this post? Ha ha! Happy Spring!
I was hoping you would be blogging about how the grass is finally starting to turn green, and the crocus’ are blooming (which is what I discovered today) and your gorgeous weaving that you are doing.
I wish you would blog more about the card weaving you did. That looked really interesting.
I thought you’d pull out something totally off the wall for April Fools day. Like you were going to give everyone who posted a comment a skein of yarn!
It’s a post in which you invent a knitting-powered and/or bicycle-pedal-powered auto that can be steered with the toes and folds flat, thereby solving the energy crisis, the parking crisis, the automaker crisis and making commuting green, productive, and … pretty. OK, a girl can dream…
I envision a post detailing your return to a spotless home courtesy of Joe and the girls. In this dream sequence, they had also put you three weeks ahead on the laundry, prepared a week’s worth of wholesome veggie meals and finished all the Easter shopping. This shopping included a goodly amount your favorite chocolate & wine. To top it all off, the family had worked together to create a new and additional storage area for your stash.
Hmmm… Maybe you were going to blog about your new idea to auction off each of your sock-of-the-month pairs of socks, on the first of each month, and donate all proceeds to a charity organization (organization to be determined by your audience, via online vote)!!! Am I right?!?
In honor of spring and the day of fools, I believe the disappearing post was about all of the babies/new parents you have knitted for.
I heard that there is an awesome group of awesome knitters in Winnipeg who meet every Tuesday in an awesome LYS in Wolseley. Since the weather is nice and there is no possibility of snow storm, I decided to go and visit them in two weeks.
I checked the website and this Mona gal has lots of awesome yarn. There will be serious spending when I get there. Oh, and a sale, it’s even better.I’m totally going!
I’m thinking this was the original post, being that is April 1st and all. I bet the day was so wonderful that one extra minute spent inside would be a fate too horrible to face. Quick post, let the readers make it up, way more time outside!
I think you told your hubby and girls you were PG and they believed you, forgetting it was April Fools Day. Then you told us about how ALL the snow has melted and the crocus, daffodils, etc are peaking thru the ground and that you even saw some blloms ready to open. I live in FL, don’t even know if you have them where you live LOL You got more done on your piece from the class this past weekend and last but not least did some spinning. Boy did you report on a lot today!! Congrats for all the news!!
Hi! Wow, that is one tall order!
What would your dream fiber studio look like?
Be forewarned, my imagination is an odd place. Also, I work in a mental hospital, which possibly has me further warped.
I think in my imagination, you’d have posted a long, eloquent hymn to the brilliance and loft of Quackmere, how rapt you were at having received 1/10 of a skein to sample and, showing us the finished project, which would be a 3cm square, be evocatively enraptured as the townsfolk upon viewing the Emporer’s new clothes.
Then mention that you’d decided to sell your house, children, stash (minus the quackmere) and move to a mud hut in the back yard to live with your very own reclusive duck herd. This would all be lovingly photo’d and sketched and then Joe would interrupt to inform us he’d taken you to the loony bin and he’s not sure whether they’ll ever let you go as you can’t have your knitting on the ward, so there’s very little hope of your recovering sanity.
In other news, one of the docs at work wrote an order for one of my patients to have her knitting needles in the open area and I didn’t quite clap, but I did buy her lunch. She was absolutely befuddled as to why knitting needle allowances earned her lunch, but that was half the fun.
The end.
I’m pretty sure you could have come up with something snappy about the Large Hadron Collider that was in the news this week.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/03/the_big_bang_machine_is_up_and.html
Or is there something nasty in my drinking water that I look for a link between particle physics and yarn?
Well it was about the cat, of course.
I think that you wrote about trying your super knitting hero cape on while preparing to leap tall needles in a single bound. You were smitten, it fit so well, you looked fabulous, you stood tall. Preening in the mirror you glance over your shoulder to see your arch nemesis, a shady, uniformly pale, winged wonder, who swaggers toward your latest wooly haul and all bets are off! You drop your knitting (post obliterated) and defend the scrumptiously hued, springy and ever so beautifully spun strands from the clutches of that mangy predator…
Eating Peeps. (You do have Peeps in Canada, right?)
Jennie
I would have like it to have been about all the wonderful things you were planning to knit me for my birthday – which is only ten shopping days away I might add!
I think that today you probably wrote about starting a new pair of socks and sitting in the sunshine with a beer. It was that kind of day in Ontario..
yarn from squirrel fur.
Spring time in Canada.
The advantages of being a knitter during an alien abduction.
I wish it was about how you decided to start a new KAL…. perhaps another Log Cabin Blanket or Bohus Stickning!
I am certain it was about the new breed of sheep that has wool with the lustre of silk, softness of merino and cormo, with long staples. It repells moths and dirt (and squirells) and is ready to spin with just a gentle swish, swish though the water. It is reputed to take dye with no bleeding and knits into wonderfully durable garments.
Tell me, you have one hiding in your back yard, right?
today you wrote how the world leaders finally realized that yes, world peace is possible if we put aside greed and our egos. this said summit of world leaders then ended with them knitting.
you were then, in the background, vibrating. everyone would think it was from world peace excitement (which part of it would be due to that) but the rest of the vibrating would be you trying so frickin’ hard not to scream out of your skin with an all out I-TOLD-YOU-SO dance about how knitting has nothing to do with knitting sometimes, how it is truly a wonderful overlooked art form, and how bringing ourselves to a beautiful meditation of a lace chart repeat calms down the blood pressure of any being; from a postpartum mother with a colicky child to world leader who leads the world in stockpiling weapons whose neighbouring political leader just ought another silo.
yes, today, you wrote about how knitting, on some scale, achieved world peace.
and we would have read it, nodding along, realizing how true that is in our personal scale of the world.
How you got Joe to pose for pictures wearing the finished gansey. . .and nothing else but a smile!
And his reaction when Sam came home unexpectedly.
Who cares? It was by SPM!!Loved reading all the comments!
I can only hope it was about Star Trek pot holders. What the best pattern is, the best yarn to use and the best color scheme. Preferably it would be TNG; Picard is still the best Captain in my humble opinion.
I think your blog would be about “new beginnings” as in new knitting projects, home projects, children maturing, spring and how they all equal life and hopefully, joy, ….on a very good day.
Were you writing about the giraffe you’re raising in the backyard? And giraffe fiber love? Those tufts of hair (mane a la giraffe) making fabulous sock yarn, and if you carefully spin the fiber from the rest of their coat, you can make self spotting giraffe socks that make you look long and slender too. 🙂
Apparently your software decided to join in the fun – maybe it will show up at 12:01 April 2nd? Ah well, at least the rest of the day was good!
I’m pretty sure that you were posting about the contest you are going to have, whereby a lucky contestant, and the yarn queer of her choice get to come and hang out with you, and your cool friends. We’ll drink tasty beverages, knit WHATEVER we feel like, and… yeah, that’s good for me. I could probably do your dishes or something. 🙂
Yarny peace to you Chica!
I was hoping you’d write about how you got an advance skein of Quackmere and how you were knitting duck sweaters with it to keep those naked ducks in Mongolia warm. And , you know, publish a pattern with it so people could send the sweaters to Clara for forwarding.
Today’s post would have been a “Where are They Now?” expose (with an accent that I don’t know how to make) on the socks you have made for other people and the lives of wonder, degradation and redemption that they have lived since they left your warm and protected abode. Hopefully not too much degradation, but you have to have some in order to have redemption, so…….
I don’t know if canadians do “April fools day” but in order to contribute to the tom foolery of the day you posted about how you spent the entire day finishing joe’s gansey only to hit us with an “April fools” at the end.
I would have loved to see a post about how the yarn stealing squirrel was back and this time he brought friends, getting into your roof and into your stash, generally wrecking havoc. A knitters worst nightmare next to a moth invasion. Then you would have happily stated at the end “APRIL FOOLS!”
Ha! There was no first post. This was a very sneaky April Fool’s joke!
Your newly developed wool allergy
The tracery of the newborn leaves against the spring sky inspires you to create a glorious new shawl.
Better directions for my son driving from Sarnia to the CN tower than yahoo provided – “from the 401 take thw QEW….”. Guess where he ended up? Yep- niagra.
How you wrote a whole post about a favorite sweater, which contained only one picture of said sweater taken in a restroom at the airport, and then wrote a different post about non-knitting (albeit fiber-related) things that contained a great picture of said sweater– and didn’t mention the sweater (or the great picture thereof), proving that there is no separating daily life and the hand knits.
I wish your post had been about how you have the patience to deal with the morons with whom it seems like you have to ignore/deal with every day. 🙂 More accurately: Those who think you are somehow in the wrong because of your nationality/religious beliefs/fiber beliefs/associations. 🙂
Well, after reading Clara’s post, you’re thinking how the Canadian geese are returning and how you can pluck each one, to make millions of dollars out of their feathers that you will make into yarn?!?
Or maybe April Fool’s yourself!
BTW, I didn’t take the time to read the other 400 posts, so someone else may have already said this.
Spinning and all the fabulous fibers you brought back from your trip and all the wonderful projects you have planned for summer.
I think your blog post was going to contain a big photo of my son in Toronto, admiring said “green things”…wearing the lovely alpaca scarf I made him for Christmas (your one row scarf). Oops…I guess it is too warm now for the scarf. I’m living in Cincinnati, and I miss him a LOT! Couldn’t you do that, Steph? Just walk over to where he lives (or works…they are both pretty close to you), and take a lovely Springtime photo of him, waving his new scarf at his lonely Mum?
Did I just say that out loud??? Sorry…Spring makes my mind wonder.
A pattern for Quackmere, because when I read Clara’s article at 1:00AM, I totally bought it, until the part where the plucked fibres had to “rest in a quiet room for 24 hours”, at which point I finally clued in to the significance of the date and the ludicrosity of the name and blamed my gullibility on sleep deprivation. Upon waking this morning, I read your tweet re:falling for it and was relieved to find my self in good company.
Well, being that it’s April fool’s day, that could be anything (and that could include you fooling about the gift in the mail even!). But in the name of fun, I think you were posting that your knitting had gone perfectly today, so perfectly in fact that a space time continuum opened up. When that happened things began to align in the world and, via knitting, World Peace was achieved. Viva la Knitting!
Daffodils.
Sex. I am sure you could work some knitting in there somewhere 🙂
After a bust day at work that included computer systems crashing at key moments, I can totally sympathize with your computer crisis. What pattern are you using for your April socks? Pictures of knitted Easter eggs could have added some levity to my day!
After a busy day at work that included computer systems crashing at key moments, I can totally sympathize with your computer crisis. What pattern are you using for your April socks? Pictures of knitted Easter eggs could have added some levity to my day!
I think you wrote about how the place that you had your weaving class this weekend was the place that I took my first spinning class. However, you had the sense to go at the beginning of spring, while, well, did not. I took a turn too fast and went off the road and got myself stuck in a snowbank about a 1/2 mile from my destination. Fortunately, they were kind enough to come and attempt to get me unstuck, then called a tow truck and took me back to the shop to wait the several hours it would be for the tow truck to get there. Yes, I was not the only person to get themselves stuck that day. (Ok, I wrote all that, and seriously, I almost deleted it all. Thank goodness for open-apple+Z!) So, I’m going to stop now, but I think it’s totally cool that I was in your class at Madronna and you took a class this past weekend at the same place I took a class about 7 years ago.
The best way to disguise goats as dogs so as to keep them in one’s backyard without raising the suspicions of neighbours, or the local squirrels?
I wish today’s post had read “I’m holding a sock summit in Toronto, this fall and I will be speaking in Toronto, here and here on this and that date,” and selfishly, “the person who suggested this,” (that would be me. :O) “gets a front row seat to all events.”
a photo essay of your stash, recently rearranged by colour and weight. broadcast to the world so we can covet thy stuff… 😉 and a huge sale that so your loyal and beloved readers can help you “declutter” and get more yarn monies!!! 🙂
I say you posted about how much you love/enjoy/care for the new washing machine that you have. Because it is the best/most effiecent/silent machine in the house.
I think it was about Squirrels, because they’re deceptive little buggers. The have that cute bushy tail which makes people they’re all nice and cuddly. Though really that’s not the truth. They’re EVIL! You can tell because they run in packs and scurry up trees together like they’re conspiring. Tricky little things, too they are. Making those chirping noises, and taking things. I bet they took your blog post, and just tricked you into thinking you deleted it. They’re just that good.
How you cast on, once and only once, because your math was spot on for a very complicated lace piece. Not only did you cast on error free, but were able to complete said piece in a matter of days, again error free, no ripping back. A girl can dream, right…..
I bet you were writing in mortal fear about the gigantic rabbit chomping away at your shingles, smashing silk-tie-crafted coloured eggs against your windows, bellowing,
“STEPHANIE! PUT AWAY THAT BEER AND THOSE DARN NEEDLES AND YARN! RIDE MY BACK INTO THE SUNSET!”
You were torn because if you befriended him, you could probably shave him and spin up some really nice yarn.
Or get crushed under his thunder-paws.
Just a photo of daffodils or shadows (because where there are shadows, sunshine cannot be too far away).
Enjoy the day! and the days to come.
Oh, I just thought of a couple more things besides the dream lace piece. The entire world has come to relize the virture of wool and how important knitters are.
Just the usual: a little family, a little friendly adventure, a little knitting, done with the usual wit and aplomb.
A cure for the common cold. Which I have in spades. I can’t knit for the misery.
Squirrels! My last blog entry has a squirrel in it, and it would be funny for you to “copy” me for a change. 🙂
Hmmm…I don’t have a single suggestion for a topic or project or yarn…anything works. From a strictly selfish standpoint I would have loved a bit of writing that would have inspired me to pick up my needles which are currently languishing. Or some writing that would make me laugh. Or both (no pressure, right?). But in lieu of that…a spring day is just fine! Thanks!
The joy-killing effect of deadlines on knitting.
While you were taking a bath this morning, your lovely cat came in to stare at you as usual, but this time, she started TALKING to you. She’d decided she’d been watching you struggling long enough, and decided to enlighten you about THE TRUE SECRET OF GAUGE. Cats are wise beyond measure, with mystical knowledge they keep to themselves, but she took pity on you and told you at length how to make gauge work (knowlege which is only kept in the alternative dimension she sometimes visits.) You frantically wrote and photographed your beautiful samples to share with the world. But, alas, the flow of the magical spell was interrupted by the jarring sound of the ringing phone, driving the elusive secret from your mind; the magic has faded into the starkness of reality. Your cat, disgusted that such a revelation was wasted, ignored you for the rest of the day and refuses to speak again.
Chocolate. Sunshine. Socks. There – a perfect day.
You were pondering your upcoming trip to Idaho to visit us here in our beautiful “Famous Potato” state. Really, it is on the way when you go to the Oregon Coast. Heck, why not just have the next Sock Summit in Boise?
You must have been writing a post about the amazing new invention you created, the beer-bottle-holding-circular-needles; circs curved around a suspended beer cozy so you don’t even have to stop knitting to take a gulp. Of course, HOW you managed to suspend a beer cozy inside a set of circs is beyond me, YOU’RE the genius here.
Too bad the invention will have to wait for another day. Until then, we’ll have to continue to pause in our knitting to take a drink. How long will you keep us in suspense, Stephanie? WHEN WILL THE INSANITY END?!
I totally wish you’d written a post saying that you were going to open up a sock dojo in Texas and were going to personally teach the art of really freaking awesome socks! I’d go.
How, despite it being April Fools’ Day, absolutely everything was going right…and you finished so much knitting before your self-imposed deadline, that you were able to take yourself out for a well deserved beer at the pub!
Anything to do with either (1) yarn or (2) knitting. What can I say? I’m obsessed.
What you wrote was hilarious (causing computer spits all over the world), inspiring (because when you aren’t as funny, you remind us that even experienced knitters make mistakes), and educational (I really appreciated the post on tight/loose gauge–thank you, and the comments,too).
And that the gansey and bohus are done! I do want to see them. Must irk you no end that everyone asks about them (and squirrels).
I think your blog would’ve been about hockey today. Because if I had a blog, I would have written about hockey because the playoffs are around the corner and the Red Wings have amazingly found themselves in fifth place. (!!!!)
What I would have hoped for was an article on beautiful knit things for new babies. I need an idea for a knit something for a new baby to be born in april or may and I haven’t found anything I like.
I wish your blog would have been about how to go back and take out the extra row one put in between cables way back on the first cable and one has already torn out the sweater once.
Since I so loved last year’s post and pictures about Earth Hour, I was hoping you’d blog and share pictures about how you celebrated that event this year – although maybe it didn’t work out with your weaving trip. Thanks for last year’s Earth Hour post, anyway; it inspired me to participate this year (although not nearly so beautifully – I took a nap!)
I think your blog post was about all of the ways you could use your new skeins of Quackmere to get ahead on your holiday knitting…
A new sweater made of Wack.
A beautiful shawl made out of Squack.
A nice warm hat made out of Yack.
A Pretty Thing cowl made out of Quiquack.
And finally, a comfy pair of socks out of Aflack.
And with that post you have inspired countless knitters to get a jump on their own holiday knitting! It was a grand post 🙂
I am sure it was about how much you wanted to visit rochester, NY since we have a knitting guild, good beer, great food when you have had too much beer and lots of Tim Horton’s!
Baby otters. Lots of them. Videos too. http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/2010/03/otterrageousuly-cute.html
How about a blog post about the mean evil squirrels? they made up this evil plan to come into your home and nab all your 4mm’s and take that one skein that you really need. But while they were in there, they saw some coffee. Being squirrels, they had never had coffee before. so they decided to try some. You learned today that squirrels don’t react well to coffee. They went and invited all their little squirrel friends and had a party in your Stash. They spilled coffee on your silk roving, knotted your STR, and threw your Malabrigo in the washer. After the effects of the coffee wore off, the squirrels realized what they had done and bolted before anyone could see them. But you had a motion sensor camera on your Stash. Why, you ask? Because you believe that the Gnomes are evil and in league with the squirrels (which is completely true) and the evil Gnomes have been secretly stealing your measuring tapes. you had 5 on the table just the other day and now you can’t find a single one. So this camera caught the Squirrels and now you have proof of how evil they really are.
Good on you for throwing aside the stress because it’s just too nice outside. Hope you have fun reading 400 stories!
I wish the post-that-nearly-was detailed your plans for the ultimate fiber farm. You just bought a bunch of land and it was being prepared for alpaca, angora bunnies and goats, bison, and lots of sheep. This Farm of Fiber Dreams would host classes and take in lost knitters who needed fiber-y love and sock classes.
Oh, and the land you bought is (inexplicably) in Colorado…. right next door to me.
You did say “wish”, right?
I wish you had posted about a lovely trip you were on. On this trip you encountered someone akin a knitting saint who gave you some kind of knitterly revelation! You also found a sale on the most wonderful and beautiful yarns, and started a charity that donated knitted goods and knitting education to the needy.
Also, you perhaps made a beautiful spring knitted thing that would make us all green with envy. Perfect for all those little green things poking out of the ground.
Monkeys.
Hmmm….. something about the girls and Joe and something crazy that happened while you were gone. Maybe involving all the new duct work in your house. And squirrels. And it would have ended with pictures of the beautiful socks you knit while solving the squirrel/duct work problem.
I wish it was about how to make my children behave and stay clean for more than three minutes at a time. Also, how to ensure that my husband doesn’t leave his dirty socks on my pillow or his wet towel on my side of the bed when he gets out of the shower. And finally, how to get my mailman to bring me yarn every day of the week. Wow, that would have been the best post ever.
I bet the post you did write was just as magical.
Another vote for Tiny Blue Baby. More of that story please.
Maybe you wrote a post about a knitter you met in the book-signing line at Sock Summit who, when you asked “Have we met before?” replied, “I think I’d remember,” which you found amusing and charming rather than rude, as said knitter has feared ever since. (Or more likely, you don’t recall at all, as not everyone is as neurotic as me.)
I know exactly what you were writing about. Exactly. When you woke up this morning, you were greeted by Joe and Sam. With breakfast. A big, steaming vegetarian’s delight, with delicious yoghurt and Kashi cereal and fair trade organic coffee. And a ball of yarn. A big one.
What’s all this, you would ask. What’s the deal. The very moment the words escaped your lips, Joe and Sam fell to the floor, gnashing their teeth, wailing, sobbing furiously, prostrating themselves before you like Inca servants before their goddess. They would suddenly proclaim that when you were gone at your cut pile weaving class, they realized how empty their house was without you, and how empty (and considerably less clean and organized and warm) their lives would be if you had not been there feeding their bellies, cleaning the laundry, and knitting them the layers so essential to life in our lovely northern clime.
Joe would suggest how sheep are a wonderful addition to the family home, and he’ll be sure to take care of them. Sam would beg of you to teach her all the known ways of the sticks and string. And then, most importantly to the tale you were going to tell us, they would LEAVE and let you enjoy your breakfast alone, the only sounds being the sound of dishes being washed and floors being vacuumed, swept and mopped, and walls wiped.
Upon the discovery of a small bell on your breakfast tray (let’s say a golden one, shall we?), and said bell’s ringing, one of your family members (the cat?) would retrieve the breakfast tray and refill your coffee and hand you needles and yarn.
And, after knitting in bed all afternoon, knowing that you are in a warm bed, a clean home and possess a doting family, you would snuggle into your bedsheets and fall fast asleep…
Only to wake up when you hit that damn delete button, remembered that you’re out of coffee and it’s effing April Fools Day! Well, mommies can dream, right?!
It could be a post of how to hold a baby, knit, and still get sleep? (guess that’s just me.) or about how to stay in the beautiful northwest a little longer, yet then you’d miss all the sunshine.
Hm…you suddenly had an urge to knit all in purple, and vivid, bright pink and turquoise?
You unvented a new way to knit socks?
Your children have begun aging backward, and you are trying to figure out how to reverse (and/or duplicate) the problem?
I love your funny home life stories, or your stories about how you tried and tried something in knitting only to screw it up and telling us your efforts on how you fixed it. It shows us, that even someone as great as you is human, and it only makes us feel better about ourselves.
You decided to come out with a line of knitwear for cats, wherein your cat will be the scintillating model. Many pictures to follow.
I hope that somehow you were going to write that those who have somehow found themselves in a position of authority can find the ability to not just dictate to those of us who are somehow in their realm of authority. I might just be a tad bit bitter because I am the mother of a son who has autistm and is going to move on to middle school next year and has just found out that the school district, in all their wisdom, has somehow misjudged the demographics of our district, and determined that it is all of our best interests to put him on a bus for more than an hour a day to place him in a school across town that has room as well as all of the other incoming sixth graders with learning disabilities in our area. I’m not done fighting the battle yet, but somehow I expected that they would be smarter than this. I don’t think I will win, but I feel responsible for speaking out for those who will not on their own. Not to mention, what has happened to common sense. Sorry for the rant, but it’s been a long week.
You finished the weaving project and have adopted a duck for yarn!
You converted to full-time weaving and shared a new pattern for a pile woven loo roll cover and matching brush!
Making cupcakes!!
I think you post was about (or should be if it wasn’t) how to properly design sweaters to fit around “hey babies” (see link listed in url for definition).
Clara fooled my friend, Faythe. HEHEHEHHE!
http://rayleen.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-fools-yes-we-find-ourrselves.html
Doh! I forgot about it being April Fool’s Day and I was wondering who in the heck would ever go to those lengths to acquire fiber for yarn! I even gasped at the price without an inkling of this being a joke. It could only have more obviously been a joke had the bird been a snipe, rather than a duck… and yet I fell for it hook, line and sinker. I’ve no suggestions for a blog post. I’m too humiliated at having coveted non-existent duck down yarn to think properly.
I think the best thing you covered in today’s post was how when you travel you get to see daffodils again and again throughout the spring. A close second being the ability to extend the cherry blossom season by visiting multiple climate zones.
Have a terrific day.
Susan
i think you were going to write about how you were going to put together a calendar with the knitting world’s sexiest men posing in pretty much nothing but a well placed extra lacy doily.
i’m fairly certain that’s exactly what you were writing about.
Given the calendar, I should have thought it would be along the lines of finally coming to your senses and realizing that this knitting thing was all bollocks. What a sensible woman in your circumstances should instead be doing is setting up web cams to monitor the mating/nesting/feeding habits of the local wildlife (aka, squirrels) in the Toronto Metropolitan area! Animal husbandry is much more important than all this mess with bits of string and sticks, isn’t it?
You were suddenly struck by a lovely idea for spring socks with patterns. You rooted through the stash and had the perfect green blends. And then you spied that orange you have been saving for sooo long in the stash – perhaps it was a sentimental favorite from a trip? Aha, you realized this is the perfect combination for the perfect pair of socks. And this yarn has aged appropriately and is now ready for use. “There is more in the store” is what fiberguy says. So you cast on to the most perfect pair of socks and, wow, it was so much better than you ever hoped for. You are now just so delighted with your choice and pattern that the socks will fly and you wanted to shout it to the world. Fortunately, you did right here.
Wow! So many great ideas! You have enough for a year’s worth! But then, when would you have time to knit?? That’s my problem, finding time to knit! And finishing anything! Love to start things and experiment and see what the yarn will turn into. But finishing…. But I’m really curious about the squirrels…..
You were going to post that the weather got nice and all the squirrels came out and you noticed they are all wearing sweaters made from the clean fleece they stole from you and you realize that, while you miss your fleece, it’s serving it’s purpose and keeping them warm in the bad Toronto winter. 🙂
Which would have been an epic April Fool’s post if written by you.
An orderly, useful and precise (snort) overview of how to set up a stash in a new home and what organizing principle to uphold (colour, weight, type, content?)
I am moving soon: seven clear plastic containers full of stash and notions have a new room to play in and be displayed! But how…how??!!
That as it was April 1st you wrote a piece that detailed how you were giving up all things yarn and fibre related to go to a circus skills school and become a trapeze artist complete with net tights and spangley costume and hence forth you would be known as ‘Delia the Daring.’
:o)
You wrote about taking your bike on the train (which was illegal, apparently, because it was rush hour and you’re not allowed to take your bike on the train during rush hour) to see your parents. Then you covered coming home from a gala and being unable to sleep. So, right then, you were wearing an evening gown, and high heeled shoes and a push-up bra while puttering around in your Mother’s the kitchen making hot cross buns. Without wearing an apron, mind you. Then you told us all about sitting on the counter, watching the dough rise while you knit away on a pair of Bavarian themed stockings.
No, wait, *I* actually did that. But I haven’t blogged it yet 😉
No, you’re better than that. You wrote about something sensible like cut pile rugs (which are CRAZY COOL, might I add) that have the colours of neopolitan ice cream (and pistachio too, if we’re being picky). Which made you really want ice cream. Which you then went out to get (on your bicycle! Cyclists for the win) because it was lovely and springy, and it all turned into this totally profound ice cream experience because nowhere had what you wanted except this one, super friendly Italian bloke. After all of that, you got home, set the ice cream on the counter/kitchen table/whatever horizontal surface was available at the time, and got distracted by, something, probably the laundry. When you came back into the kitchen, someone had absconded with the ice cream (Joe? The kids? The cat? We’ll never know), but you were happier for it, because at least now you couldn’t spill ice cream on your project any more!
What is the latest date that you could start knitting a neck warmer for a giraffe and have it ready to wear,by Gemima, on Christmas Day.
I wish you had created a fabulous knitting related peeps diorama — similar to the Washington Post creations. There could be peeps bunnies spinning and knitting and surfing Rav.
That, or you finished your Bohus. But, if you’d done that you’d have posted because it would be too beautiful not to brag about.
About how the knitters of the islands of San Serriffe have developed a congenital inability to make bobbles or nupps in their knitting (or anything with a little flare at the end of the row), and how scientists have discovered that this may be connected to the fact that they all have the type O blood group.
About how even though weaving and cut pile ( and all other yarny activities, spinning, felting, especially crochet, and lets not forget macrame… ) are great, they are only great because they eventually lead back to the magical wondrous simple and endlessly fascinating complex genius that is knitting….you know, like how so many food stuffs somehow turn out to be a variation on pizza if you think about it….cheese on toast, anything in a sandwich, welsh rarebit…spaghetti and….nachos… I could go on, but I have to admit that fitting fish and chips into that equation is giving me slight pause….anyway, either that, or some inspired way to fuse cut pile rug techniques into the knitting process so you can do both at the same time. x
I was imagining that you were thinking about digging into more spinning and maybe even spinning outdoors. At least when the weather was ready. And then you were thinking about what to plant in your garden. And then you might have looked at that cut-pile project and decided it would be a crime to walk on that much time and if you ever made a large piece that was NOT destined to be a bag, it would go on the wall because nobody, nohow, never would be allowed to track April mud on it.
Sewbeads@yahoo
I think you were writing an amazing post about Joe’s epiphany re: the importance of the perfect sock photo.
The post started with how Joe greeted you first thing this morning holding all the socks you ever knit for him in one hand, and a big mug of coffee for you in the other. Gesturing wildly at all the beautiful sunshine outdoors yet still managing to not spill your coffee, he then went on to explain that he had a dream in which he suddenly understood the way of the FO shoot, and that he was sorry he never knew about this before.
Tirelessly flexing his feet in the best light while you took photos, he made helpful suggestions about the best place for each shot and even helpfully pulled in some props for a couple of the images (a newspaper here, some slippers to the side of the shot there, etc.)
In all the available three minutes of his time for sock photo shoots, you got some amazing images which made you consider applying for a job as a knitwear photo stylist.
As luck would have it, such a position literally just appeared in the OPPORTUNITIES section of the knitting magazine you were flicking through this morning. Very part-time and ludicrously well-paid this position requires maximum creativity and involves zero administration. Led by a team of FO-shoot enthusiasts who can supply light, props, knitwear etc. at the drop of a hat, the only professional requirement for the job is years of knitting experience and a unique vision.
Inspired by the sock photo surprise morning joy, you got your CV faxed across *immediately,* accompanied with the best images from your photoshoot with Joe – and all before you’d even finished that coffee.
In fact the coffee hadn’t even gone cold.
I’m pretty sure that was it.
I put it to you that this is all a clever april fools ruse – i believe that there was no first blog and that you have been knitting, spinning, rug making and drinking coffee and/or beer when realising the time had somewhat run away with you the first deleted post ruse was born, my evidence is as follows:-
i) the date of the post
ii) you mention good weeather its freezing and pouring with rain here
iii) dealing with a crisis over the phone with, and i quote “dignity maturity and grand good sense” – please – you expect me to believe that! i KNOW this to be impossible as i have tried it many many times without success!
iv)you took computer notes whilst on the telephone – you make no mention of the telephone shooting out from between your shoulder and your ear knocking over previously mentioned coffee or cutting off the person on the other end of the phone therefore incurring a 45 minute wait on hold whilst listening to what can only be described as “plinky” music whilst trying to reconnect.
I will admit that i am listening to a hercule poirot radio play but do not believe that this has influenced me in any way.
i look forward to your confession which i am sure will occur on a train whilst travelling to venice!
warm regards Tracey x
Taking your spinning wheel outside and enjoying the sun and spinning, maybe even a little knitting. What a perfect day and we all need a perfect day about now.
I especially love your stories about squirrels. And Sir Washie. So perhaps a happy story about the Squirrel, Sir Washie, and your latest weaving project all frolicking together in the Spring sunshine over a field of crocuses and daffodils.
How to use a beet juice soak, a plastic food storage bag with 18 grams of crushed toothpicks inside and a microwave to clone a second sock from a completed first. Cure for second sock syndrome.
I would have liked a post about how, on reflection, you were so blown away by the passion of ice hockey fans at the Olympics that no knitters could ever compare. As such, you have decided to give up knitting, donate your entire stash to some guerilla knitters, and take up ice hockey. You signed up to join the local team this morning, and the pictures were of your many many bruises (and lack of knitwear)…
… April fool.
I wish to see weaving pics and photos of further hilarity.
I am sure that today’s post was about how you [1] completely conquered your stash organization challenges, [2]created a definitive to-do list of projects (including pre-planning your holiday gift knitting) and sorted the materials needed accordingly into their own little bags with yarn, neeldes, pattern, etc, and [3] finished and blocked all the lingering WIPs in the nooks and crannies of your house (which is also spotlessly clean, by the way).
…and then you woke up 🙂
I wish the blog post for 4/1 would have gone something like this:
I turned on the news, and the lead story was about how knitting replaced war. In the Gaza Strip, the Sudan-all over the world! Former enemies are sitting together knitting socks, and they’re not thinking about using the DPNs for weapons. Its catching on all over. I think the roving correspondents are actually going to BE roving correspondents, and the news will be full of discussions about pencil roving instead of the latest bombing. I can’t wait! The knitters have prevailed!
Definitely some kind of april fool joke!
update on the weaving, and how you are not a complete woman.
Your post was about Easter-related knitting. Dyeing both yarn and eggs into springy colors, knitted and needle-felted eggs, and perhaps really big plastic eggs with skeins of really nice yarn hiding in them for the best possible egg hunt.
You were happily knitting and went into a mystical colourway-induced trance. Found yourself in a parallel universe where fibre arts are considered to be the work of deviants…who are then forced to work on mind-numbing assembly lines boxing machine-made uniforms. Woke up to find it was all a dream…or a very cruel April fool’s trick!
I wish that today’s post had been about how you had figured out how to convince bosses everywhere to let us knit at work. While I know it would have been difficult to work out the specifics on how we are supposed to knit while getting actual work done, I have great faith that you of all people could sort that out for us! And then you were going to post the presentation (complete with pictures and slides, perhaps a powerpoint) you created for all of us to show our respective supervisors that would convince them all to begin a knit at work program!
I think today’s deleted post was about how you screwed up your weaving in great fashion cause you are human like the rest of us. And than drank a beer! If you read all these comments and have reached this one that’s amazing and also means you aren’t out enjoying the day like you said you would and could have rewritten the whole post complete with pictures.
I believe you would have written about how you came all the way to New England to help this poor knitter finish her son’s wedding afghan that is only 18 months late!
I think you finished your Bohus and have wonderful jealousy inducing pictures.
You finished Joe’s gansey & then quit knitting for life.
The grey squirrel came back, broke in the house & stole your stash.
Amanda moved back home to study knitting at your knee for the rest of your life.
Gave up coffee & beer.
Well, I guess those dotty Americans have found that the world won’t come to an end when they begin to reform their health care system to approach that in place in other industrialized countries. Maybe then they’ll get their infant mortality rate down and their life expectancy up.
(On the other hand, do you want two posts a year – referring to Canada Day – to net you all those idiotic replies?)
Baby ducks and sunshine. This is an excellent day to write about baby ducks and sunshine.
I think there was no first post, you did not have the perfect cup of coffee, you did not get a “ton” done for work and the phone did not ring or if it did you did not handle the situation well at all. April Fool.
Stephanie, not that you are asking for help but I vote for Jennifer. Just the thought of knitting sunshine and crocuses into a gossamer shawl for yourself or a loved one is brightening my day! Imagine!
I’m sure you would have taken advantage of the day and posted some thing to fool us. You might have said that you have really gotten fed up with the whole writing-traveling-knitting-spinning thing and had decided to take an entire year off to devote yourself to hearth and home and to become the perfect domestic goddess . Oh and of course that you would be donating your stash to other deserving knitters
Wait! Wait! You forgot–You did a long tail cast on and did the tail length came out EXACTLY RIGHT on the very first try!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You sustained an injury that left you unable to ever knit again? (And that wouldn’t have been a funny April fools entry, by the way)
I’m guessing that since things are pushing up in the garden, you post was about what was going to grow where and the photos were daffodils and crocuses, and other signs of new life and spring.
But maybe I’m biased by the lovely weather today and my memory of a post several years ago showing lovely flats of plants that were going to populate your back yard?
So maybe it was that you devised a new storage solution for your stash (now that weaving has entered the picture) and you were sharing with us dozens of lovely pictures of organized shelves with fibers sorted by type, weight, color, and craft. Yeah, that’s it!
The blog entry was probably about “Foolish Knitting”. For some the love of knitting is so great that perhaps we sometimes “step over the line” and knit really foolish things. You’ve probably discovered many (knitted pasties come to mind, they always give me a laugh)that nobody else has heard of – and you were about to share them with us – pictures and all.
Thanks for your blog. You give me advice, encouragement, food for thought, laughter, lovely things to look at . . . . oh yes, and knitting information too. Thanks. salam wa sa’aadah Linda
I’m guessing you wrote about your sudden, deep desire to go to Mongolia, kidnap (with Joe’s help) a breeding pair of the reclusive ducks, sneak them into Canada and start an urban breeding, spinning program so that you could have sole, unlimited access to this amazing new duck yarn. Right? Of course the squirrels might complicate things. . .
Stephanie,
My hopes would have been that you would have written about how glorious it is to have the ability, the time, the $, and the passion to create what you do and inspire others to do. As a working mother, I long for days to create, but they are few and far between.
The inspiration you provide keeps me going.
To write abou this provides me with the calm I need in those “in-between” times.
Thank you!
I am daydreaming that the Yarn Harlot has decided that Indiana in April is the most beautiful place to visit for a long vacation and that she’ll come to Lafayette and help me procrastinate on all the work I should be doing for my wedding (June 26th). We’d enjoy the country air, knit in the sun, enjoy laughing at the silly college students at Purdue and generally do very little the ‘outside’ world would call work
Call me! I knew you’d make it to my neck of the woods eventually!
OMG! You’ve succumbed to Knitting Graffiti…and the post was all about you and your friends after an evening at the pub…gracing the entire neighborhood with knitted glory. of course it all turns out to be an april fools joke 🙂
The rat bastard, in a fit of fiber theft remorse, brings a peace offering of hand dyed Easter eggs filled with hand spun yarn. He’s been working feverishly to spin the yarn before Easter. His partner in crime drew up a spinning schedule in order for him to get the yarn out the door (or in through the door as the case may be) in time for the holiday. How’d he learn to spin? By being a voyeur, he’s been sitting in the tree right outside the window where you spin.
The joke is on us. There was never an original post that was deleted. And there isn’t even this contest you write about. It is all an April Fools gag!
Nice try, but I’m on to you. Happy April!
Knitting while absorbing the rays of glorious sunshine. Daydreaming, an elegant drink at hand and knitting sunshine to the rhythm of gentle ocean waves.
Ok, I’ll take a stab. You were going to tell us of the fabulous April Fool’s prank you pulled on your family that miraculously left you with nothing to do but knit and enjoy a luxurious bath, while Joe and the girls cleaned the house, including washing all the dishes and laundry. In the end, you were too delighted to tell them it was all a prank.
You were going to blog about the dilemma of loving the heavy wintery yarns and wanting to do them justice but having to deal with the constantly sweaty hands that suddenly ensue once it’s April in TO because there really are only two seasons in TO — winter and construction.
I wish it had been about the travelling sweater from Blue Moon Fiber Arts in the Twist Collective Issue. I went straight to their blog and IT’S NOT AVAILABLE YET. The blog had a back shot. The Twist Collective had other shots. Gorgeous! If you detect the pattern is available, a heads up in Twitter or your blog would be appreciated.
Well, my money’s on the Gansey, unless….wait….are you knocked up?
After viewing Clara’s April Fools column I think you wrote one of your own. Topic? Not a clue, but I think something about how you discovered a new way to get things knitted right the first time and every time, under deadline or not, would be well worth reading.
You bring such joy to your readers every day you post, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re fooling us or not!
April Fool’s Day!
I think your post was about how you would survive a zombie apocalypse with nothing other than knitting needles, yarn and hand cards. I think you probably have some nifty survival tips up your knitted sleeves and just want to put them in my back pocket for future reference.
I think you were going to comment on all the amazing historical events that happen on April 1st. For example, Back in the 1800’s, how it was a common practice of selling wives, or how in 1970, the US Government released 60,000 Gremlins, to wreck havoc on factories and car plants. Or it could have been about how you have decided to no longer write or knit. That you have realized your true calling, being a professional Pig Caller, and that would really irritate me, because then I would have to take it up so I could follow you doing that.
Hmm…pictures would imply EITHER: FO’s or Kinnearing a celebrity. I’m going to go with Kinnearing a celebrity, and then having them catch you at it, and them turning out to be a lovely person who knits between takes (seriously, I read a lot of celebrity magazines, and there are quite a few celebrity knitters out there – something about keeping their hands busy so they’re not over eating at craft services – which, not why I knit, but hey, knitting is knitting, right?).
Yep, famous celebrity knitter.
How you had created an entire Peeps diorama about the Sock Summit and how you submitted it to the Washington Post contest and how you won and now you were going to be on Oprah talking about knitting and socks and how it’s really hard to knit with Peeps.
Shoot. I spent yesterday afternoon on my knees trimming and weeding and missed the start of your post. However.
In the tiny suburb of Stepford, Ontario, Ms Pearl-McPhee was started her day by realizing that, up to now, she has really been just a wee bit selfish and has decided to get a jump start on her new year’s resolutions (original new year being the first day of spring, of course).
She started her day with a very small de-caf, got the house into perfect order, polishing as she dusted; beds made, laundry done. A visit to the hairdresser to finally tame the unruly locks on a permanent basis, followup appointments made for the next 5/10 weeks so there would be almost no visual difference in her newly put-together appearance. A quick stop at the local department store for at least a half dozen perfectly fitted bras, a stop at the butcher’s for a few steaks for the grill.
Because you’ve been so good and behaved like a perfectly responsible adult doing everything that needed to be taken care of, you really deserve about a half hour to yourself to knit. You daydream about Joe being home from his vacation with mom and how the kids are so grown up now and find yourself thinking about what you might really need is another little one. Giving up all caffeine and alcohol is such a small, temporary price to pay.
Whatdaya think?
I think todays post was going to reveal the secret to knitting perfection… how to get perfect gauge everytime (without swatching!), how to knit the fastest and most efficiently, how to make sure that what you are knitting will be exactly how you pictured it in your mind….
That’s why it got deleted, the knitting gods couldn’t let that pass. That’s how it always happens.
That was an insightful article about how to generate ideas for future posts.
The joys of a nice spring day, and how if you don’t start cleaning the dust bunnies, now larger than the cats, will take over. First your house, then the block, finally the world! Muahahahahaha! Ooops, maybe that should have been my blog post, sorry!
I think you wrote about spinning (including pictures of your progess and finished yarn) and you talked about getting your home in order while your husband was out of town traveling with his mom and then you mentioned how ready you are for spring.
Well, it was April Fool Day, but since it was such a gorgeous day I would think your comments were (or would have been) turned toward Spring, the flowers budding and a time of new beginnings. Like a new pair of socks on needles.
Maybe you were going to offer up some tips on how to nibble the ears off chocolate bunnies without getting crumbs on our knitting.
I’m sure it was a very philosophical reflection on weaving, both what happened on your trip and out the lives of those who got together to do it were woven together.
Or beer. There was probably beer.
I wish you had told us what your beautiful daughters have been up to. They sound like such fantastic girls!
I think the post was about how the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to make the playoffs after all. Well, some sort of April fools joke anyways.
You were writing the perfect April Fools post, about how your all your projects were finished and that you were done with your Christmas knitting 9 months early. And then you would show us the most beautiful April socks ever.
Have a great day.
I think that you were writing a post about how far your cut pile has come along. And you had pictures of the finished project out in the beautiful sunshiny spring day.
There’s a Firefox add-on called Lazarus that autosaves the text you enter in any online form. So if the internet eats your post, Lazarus can get it back for you.
Something about how you had already gotten Lene to work out your Christmas timetable. There would be a mess of projects and you would spend something like 27 seconds on each one per day.
That or you were pregnant. (I’m working the April Fool’s angle here)
yarn and how wonderful it is
chocolate and how wonderful it is
flowers and how wonderful they are
kniting and how wonderful it is
sweet smell of something baking and how wonderful it is
babies faces and how wonderful they are
yarn and how wonderful it is ( oh i said that)
Coffee and how wonderful it is
I think you were writing about April Fools… and/or how spring is here and your arch nemesis, the squirrel, has already made his appearance. Do you have an attic – perhaps that figured into the squirrel story. Oh, I know, you have some stash in the attic (you have one, you need to for my story idea to work) but the squirrel got the stash in the attic. Wait! You knew that the squirrel would get into the attic stash (either because you are a knitter or from your cat – because, honestly, cat’s know these things and you cat looks smart/wise) – so you knew the squirrel was coming so you foiled his plan (not sure squirrel’s gender…) so you put acrylic up there. Nope, that wouldn’t be nice and knitters are nice – so you put cheap wool – so that he would be warm but not getting into the good stuff.
Yep this post was about outsmarting a squirrel. A rather good post it was too – very involved and with plot twists.
Perhaps an Easter post where you reminisced about when your girls were little. And possibly about Easter knitwear past.
A pictorial essay of signs of Spring in Toronto (including the spring colors in the cut pile weaving and in your April socks). We had 3 days of Spring here but it is about 36degF right now (with a predicted high of 45degF, that’s 2 and 7C for the metric minded), windy, and with snow showers predicted for the afternoon so I could use a dose of vicarious Spring right about now. 🙂
I vividly imagine that you wrote an heartfelt (sorry about the “an” I have the old-fashioned notion that the letter “h” is treated like a vowel) somewhat poetic (haiku, perhaps?) piece about the confluence of spring renewal and the world-wide connection of the various fiber-craft-arts of dying, spinning, weaving and knitting with hope of world peace and generosity of sharing for all of man(and woman) kind.
Either that, or a mildly dirty limerick about mating wildlife.
Your “lost” post was an amusing elaborate April Fool’s joke. It had pictures of impossible finished projects and ended saying you had finished all the projects on the needle!
Ooh ooh–the Yarn Harlot visits my house (or at least the local yarn shop), buys yarn, has a beer, and teaches me to knit socks!
Yeah, I’m sure someone else said the same thing, but it doesn’t stop me from dreaming! 🙂
I wish your blog entry was a secret spell that forces sweaters to knit themselves. So I could finally finish the sleeves on this purple tweed sweater that I will never wear because I’m sick of looking at it.
Purple tweed?? Seriously? Who chooses that color on purpose — unless it’s dramatically on sale? What was I thinking?
The squirrel playing an april fool’s day joke on you! OR!!! better yet, you playing an april fool’s on the squirrel!!
I wish today’s post had been a wonderful, humourous list of April Fool’s anectedotes, based on knitting!
Please, I need some humour (‘u’ added for Steph’s benefit)!
A lovely tale of a knitter who upon going to her stash for a ball of sock yarn falls in, and is transported to a magical world through the stash-closet filled with strange characters and a trippy garden of fluffy fleece flowers waiting to be spun?
You’re almost finished with Joe’s gansey. So Close! Except for…
(you know we had to)
Something about bunnies and knitting or spinning — Angora???
You started off about the April socks, but then sidetracked into the events of last night . . . Mr. Washy decided to return, but somehow slipped on some ice that hadn’t quite melted and got stuck between a utility pole and the building of your in-laws house. You and Joe decided to help the beloved appliance and set off for a midnight wander through town. Once you had set Mr. Washy free – he was so happy that he decided to share some suds and bought a round at the pub. Where you spent a little more time on the April socks . . .
Your posts would have concerned posts on your latest spinning efforts (I loved the way you spun yarn – lovely colors – for the trip to the class in the USA, and your conversation with the border guards) and the knitting of something fair isle.
Or, it could have been about how it was just as easy to get back into Canada, and how the border guards really enjoyed seeing what you’d made so far from the yarn they’d previously watched you drive across the border. Fun for me, the armchair traveler.
Someone invented a chip that stored knitting knowledge, directly to the individuals brain. And as with any computer software, there are upgrades. All of the knitting world’s greatest minds have added their own knowledge to the pool. So you can get any knitter’s knowledge you could imagine, for a nominal fee of course.
And of course seeing as how you like all things knitting and are a great knitter yourself, they let you be one of the test subjects. And all your pics were of things you had made from all of your favorite knitter’s know how.
Unfortunately in the process you happened to use up all of your stash. But since you were the test subject, they compensated you well. So you also posted pics of your brand new stash enhancements.
Ain’t technology grand?
😉
Come on!! You are just taking the day off, almost. The whole delete think is a big April Fools joke!
Are we entirely sure that the Clara/duck feathers piece is not an April Fool?
I miss the affectionate complaints about raising teenage daughters, and I hope the missing blog was about them.
You’re buying cashmere goats?!?!
A photo diary describing with great fondness your trip to see ME in London. We tour the sites, visit the yarn shops and drink beer in the pubs, all the while knitting some fabulous thing out of luxury yarn.
Ok, in my mind you got up–it was a beautiful morning–and were happily enjoying your morning cup of coffee, when a small herd of the most beautiful, woolly sheep that you’d ever seen amble up to you. You’re momentarily surprised when the lead sheep says, “Stephanie, please take care of us and we will provide for you all of the softest, warmest wool that you will ever need. Please just allow us to live and graze in peace, eating only the occasional psycho squirrel or moth when our protein gets low.”
I think this is really an April Fool post!
You found a wonderful way to manage to NOT put up a post today, and instead be entertained by dozens of people willing to write a post for you instead!
I think it’s brilliant, and it only cost you an unspecified gift in the mail to get all of us to write a lot of entertainment for you!
Way to go, Steph!
Finished socks and daffodils.
I want to hear about how Denny’s chicken caused trouble, got you arrested etc. Did you weave it a little straight jacket?
I read the article about the duck feather yarn. I hate to be the downer but these animals would be raised exclusively for their feathers now and wouldn’t they be destroyed in order to harvest these feathers? I know they are raised for meat but this would be a new industry for high fashion. I read some of the animals that would be used for blends as well and just to name a few I read lemur and falcon. Any knowledge regarding how these fibers are harvested and what happens to the animal?
I think you must have written about the importance of multi-tasking, and how good at it you are!
I think it was about all the pretty flowers popping up (or, well, at least sprouting, if you have actual flowers outside right now, I want to see!). And some really pretty flower socks.
Am I looking forward to things becoming all nice and green and pretty here (Edmonton)? Maybe… Our snow is finally almost all gone.
Well, you have already shown us the restorative powers of being with friends with whom you share the same passion, so…
How about the passions you share with family?
Because it it April Fools Day, your post would have been about how you planned to give up knitting and join the circus as a tightrope walker. You could have posted many pictures about your new costumes, as well as one of the bearded lady.
I’m going to go for different: You made a cake for someone’s birthday-and they couldn’t come to eat it let alone see it, (the phone call). Oh, you also made it to look like a really nice cardigan using fabulous hand dyed mohair yarn.
Thank the gods and goddesses that this was a wildly spun tale. I work in animal rescue and though it seemed insane and unbelieveable there is nothing that doesn’t surprise me in this world.
I wish yesterday’s blog had been about how you came to NY and met a long time blog follower and fellow knitter named Leigh, and how much fun the two of you had together.
I wish your magically evaporated post contained the perfect detailed explanation of how to snarkily, confidently, unflinchingly, and definitively explain to non-knitters exactly what the bejesus we find so awesome about it. Your ghost post would be filled with witty explanations so sophisticated that when I put them to use in fine verbal comabat, my son’s teenaged friends and my college classmates would come, not just to understanding, but to reverent respect.
These formerly judgy, shiny, facebook addicts would scamper off to lurk on knitting blogs and cruise each other in Yarn Shops. However, the rapier wit, the adept explanation, the confident showcasing of current WIP would not just change their underwhelming opinion of me into one of a sexy and vibrant wielder of knitty things, but it would drastically change how they view themselves.
Yes, Harlot, your missing post must have contained the keys to send them off transformed and in awe, and yet so ashamed of their machine knit cardigans and athletic socks that they tore loose their embarrassingly un-knit scarves, burned their machine knits, and stumbled bare naked and humbled around the campus muttering apologies to knitters everywhere and begging me to come to their frat parties and sorority teas.
I am confident that this is what we missed out on. That or another picture of socks.
Love your blog!!
I think today’s post would have been an inspirational piece about spring, life and embracing the life we have, not the one in our head.
and maybe link that back to accepting our knitting the way it is, not what it is in our head.
oh yeah… and maybe some daffodils?
B
All the world leaders are getting together on a small Canadian island for a knit-along featuring sweaters for the underprivileged. Putin is teaching Obama how to knit Continental, and Turkey and Afghanistan are providing yarn. The military worldwide has turned in their weapons to be reforged into knitting needles for redistribution to all soldiers. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and her cohorts are organizing sock classes and have come up with the slogan “World Peace Work.” Everyone is so intrigued by knitting they forget to wage war. Peace (and knitting) ensue. Everyone has warm woolly things to wear.
How pulling an April Fools Day prank on a knitter is cruel, yet they don’t react because their knitting shows them how gullible and foolish they are a regular basis (perhaps because they, yet again, didn’t swatch?).
“April in Toronto, chestnuts in blossom…” Oh are there chestnut trees in Toronto? Enjoy the day!
The post was probably about you looking at the old photos from 2008 of the Inexplicable Knitter Behaviour in Toronto (international entry). YOu saw that April 1, 2008 was my son’s 18th birthday and realized that it was now his 20th birthday and you thought that you’d wish him a happy birthday. No? Maybe it was about the squirrels being back and what they had done to you on April Fools’ Day.
About how you have found the newest, most exciting fiber and have ordered a sample…of course, only a sample because you have mixed feelings about it and are undecided if you really should order more. Then post a link to Clara’s piece and a response link for comments(?) back to you that when clicked on says April Fools etc. (Just in case someone was too upset to click and discover Clara’s secret.) If you really wanted to pull someone’s leg….come up with a sample of your own making: knit it or just show the sample as what you recieved in the mail and announce a contest for project ideas complete with prize (rubber plucked duck?)…..I need a drink, I think I am getting carried away here. ((((blushes)))) note to self: remember to take OCD meds today….
firelily
I am going to guess that it was about how you are planning a pattern book all about knitted undies. No? Really? I can’t imagine why not! 🙂 Enjoy the beautiful day!
told hilarious story about how the April sock ended up like the Jan/Feb sock back into a yarn ball thereby making two birds very happy as you didn’t slay them by “killing 2 birds with one stone. Then making an organic display fr the unused stone.
told hilarious story about how the April sock ended up like the Jan/Feb sock back into a yarn ball thereby making two birds very happy as you didn’t slay them by “killing 2 birds with one stone. Then making an organic display for the unused stone.
Your beautiful progress on the cut pile project. Probably of cut pile project next to sprouting daffodils.
Today will go down in Harlet history. Aprial 2,2010 The perfect day. Fresh baked bread cooling on the kitchen counter. A hot spicy black bean soup simmering on the stove. Cold beer chilling in the frige. One sockdone the other done up to toe decresses. A new sweater cast on. My favorite T.V show is being rerun from beginning to end. The kids called they want us all to get together tomarrow night for a big serprise. They tell me it’s a wonderful one. My 40 skeins of new hand dyed yarn just arrive postage free. And is just waiting for me to inpack it. Oh yes, this is a good day. No! A perfectday.
My guess about the lost post:
While working on the problem of Gauge, Which Always Lies, you stumbled upon how to have Knitters Rule the World.
But one can’t just ring up the PM or gov’t and announce: “Oh, by the way, we Knitters will be taking over today. Please clean out your desk. Thank you!” So you had to start thinking, *crafting* — if you will — the perfect way to sneak in and take over before anyone notices.
A quick walk through the garden provided you with the perfect means of a completely pleasant, peaceful take-over: squirrels in little knit sweaters bearing cookies.
It’s perfect! What non-knitter could resist the cuteness of a little fuzzy wuzzy squirrel in an adorable little sweater! And the cookies! Everyone would be too distracted to notice the line of knitters of all makes, models, genders, colors, sizes, shapes, and opinions.
By the time the squirrels were done handing out the cookies and all the officials and representatives returned to their offices, those officials found the knitters at their desks, in their offices, and sitting in their chairs.
To the confused faces, the knitters merely said: “Thanks, we’re all set. You can go now.”
And the officials did, as when faced with something so unexpected, sometimes people just do what they’re told.
Except for a few who pulled *their* needlework from a drawer or bag, sat down with the knitters and said to their former co-workers: “Yip, all set. Thanks and take care!”
But then you realized that it would be very, very difficult to find zippers small enough for the little squirrel sweaters. And anyways, it’s too nice out to be wearing a bulky sweater!
the effects of heavy drinking on steeking progress
what I wish today’s post would be: Long. I enjoy reading your blog so much, it’s always too short.
Oh goodness. A post about how you invented a way to combine chocolate cake and socks – not just knitting socks and eating cake, but *actually combining them* through some kind of fantastic form baking-knitting fusion. Maybe there were cylons.
the lost images were all schematics for your trojan chocolate bunny–being constructed in secret and aimed at the U.S. congress. included was your colorful description of the bunny, who, when completed, would be clad in sexy knit lingerie (to interest the prurient among our congress critters) and its secret cargo would be very stealthy outraged knitters armed with handknit gags (soft and comfy, but very effective) with which to silence the uncivil and fear/race-hate mongering among congress.
I wish that today’s post was about the trip you recently took and a new spring sweater that you started.
It was about how you finished Joe’s gansey, the spinning and the knitting, and it fit perfectly and in gratitude he suddenly developed the ability to load AND run AND empty the dishwasher.
And also a surrendering squirrel. And some cherries. and…
I was hoping for this EXACT post, complete with nice day, a deleted entry, and a poll for missing content.. because, in my mind, I have been begging you for days to post about the best shoes to wear in order to not mung up your favorite hand-knit socks. My beloved birks, with questionable cork heels, positively eat my sock heels. Shoes must be next to over-grown big toenails and concrete floors, as sock enemies. If you have words of wisdom for shoes that will preserve the unity of your handknits while preferably letting them peek through here and there, please share!
Squirrel migration patterns and how they were going to miss your house completely this year so you could dry your fiber outside all spring and summer long.
I’d love to read about how “SOCKS” have taken over your life. Pictures of socks, posting about socks, meetings about socks, trips around the globe that involve socks. By the way, I adore socks, and I love finding new patterns to inspire my sock knitting adventures. You’re the best.
I saw this post last night after a day out hiking with my boyfriend and couldn’t think of anything except bed…. But this morning I work up to discover my dog has an ugly hotspot on his tail and I treated it as best I could and then headed to work and he’s all I can think about. So I wish the post had been about how to deal with pet emergencies when you can’t be home 24/7 snuggling with them. Because if they’d pay me to do that; I wouldn’t have left him today.
I think it was a post that was not accidentally deleted at all, but deleted because the world was not ready for your shocking revelation. I think you were about to reveal your true identity as a super hero who has been crossing the border disguised as a mild mannered knitter going to a weaving class, when in reality you have been foiling evil plots against Canada. You were about to reveal yet another successful mission in which you stopped a band of wild Arkansans from staging a coup against BC (code name Operation Leaf Blower), when one of those sneaky banjo playing nogoodniks remote accessed your computer and deleted it. I know this because I live in Missouri, and I know what Arkansas is capable of.
Some sort of hilarious alternative Easter story (in a godless heathen sort of a way) involving woolly lambs, yarn fumes, and thieving squirrels…
Since I’ve been wanting to learn how to weave – and would have loved to have been on your latest trip with you and your friends – doing just this – I would have liked for your post to be on how to set up the loom – with all the threads – before starting to weave. Then I would have liked to have seen pictures of the entire weaving process – row by row…. up to the beautifully finished project… which would have been a scarf to wrap around your neck to keep you cozy….
Linda in VA
I was going to say the return of the squirrel, but scanning the responses I see that many people beat me to it. I miss the antics between you and that squirrel!
So instead I’ll choose ‘how to grow yarn in your garden – in all weights, fibers and colors!’
I think a marvelous description of your beautiful new woven rug, and a comparison of it’s colors to the sprouting new flowers in the garden, or sunsets, or how it makes you think of all new ways to work with the little special bits of yarn in your stash.
Or just a post about how maybe it won’t be so cold for a while.
With coffee.
In my special little mind, you decided to have a Peep sword fight. Little colorful Peeps, armed with those fancy toothpick-size plastic swords, along with April’s socks, gorgeous, of course, and knit out of Dream in Color Smooshy in Butter Peeps, which I’m dying to try. Maybe in a nice springy pattern, Spring Forward is one that comes to mind. Loads of beautiful pictures with Peeps, socks, daffodils, and sun! Then you decided to put the Peeps in the microwave to fight! Swelling, expanding, and then POP! One of the Peeps aims and his sword takes out the weaker Peep! While you ate the gooey pile of Peeps & the sugar coma kicked in, you decided that since he gave you the Peeps sword fight idea, you’d love to knit my 4 1/2 year old his Cobblestone sweater that he’s been begging for since his baby sister was born 7 months ago! She’s also lacking a sweater, you know, if you had the time!
I would have liked to read about an April Fools joke you played on your husband.
It was a glorious post. The kind of posts that made knitters everywhere sigh with envy, then straighten their backs with fortitude, determined to knit faster, cable twistier, and always have the right amount of edge stitches at the end of a lace row.
It was the post in which Stephanie had discovered The Secret: the holy grail, the one bit of simple, obvious information we’re all lacking that would allow us to neatly store our stash, moth-proof and untangled. That would tell us how to keep projects with yarn, so clearly that we would never use one ball of that nice blue stuff to make a hat and then run out halfway through the last sleeve when we finally get around to making that sweater.
Oh, and that part about the lost needle finder? Brilliant.
It was like getting the Olympics all over again.
Underwear knit from quackmere.
Klingon lace patterns and why they make you think of spring.
I bet it was a post about all the little outfits you and your friends knit/wove for Denny’s rubber chicken. Enjoy the beautiful day!
LOL I don’t think you wrote anything at all. I think you are fooling us for April Fools day:)
I think you wrote about that sunny spring day, almost like today, when you were busily typing away on your keyboard only to look out the window and discover that a whole flock of hot air balloons were passing silently right overhead! Didn’t you say you just raced out, jumped in the car and followed their lead and ended up in that meadow where they landed! And for the knitting tie-in, you discovered that several of the colorful balloons were tied to their baskets with long lengths of sturdy, woolly icord! Who’d have guessed?
I’m betting you were writing about Google changing its name to Topeka.
Do you have any IDEA how long it takes just to scroll to the bottom of these comments on an iPhone? “play among yourselves,” indeed!
A bit late reading this — but my guess would be something to do with April Fool’s Day. How you have decided you have explored everything there is to do with socks and/or knitting — and have decided to change the blog over to something dealing with — auto repair.
This isn’t what I would wish you had written, but it would do: You finished Joe’s gansey. And he put it in the wash and shrank it.
Beer and knitting!
It should have been about absolutely nothing as it was way to gorgeous a day in TO to be inside on a computer if you can avoid it.
Your post was going to be all about how your family woke you this morning with your favorite coffee – brewed and hot for you. And they proceeded to give you a tour of all that had accomplished through the wee hours of the night to show you how dearly they love you – laundry washed, dried, folded and put away, dust bunnies swept away, dished washed, breakfast prepared for you and cleaned up afterward.
………………then you woke up.
If all knitters’ stash of yarns were combined – how huge a mountain would we have and what would we do with it? What happens to a knitters’ stash when they are no longer here – should this be given careful consderation in one’s will!
I want another post about how clever knitters are and therefore how clever I am in spite of the fact that I may (hypothetically of course) have to rip a sock back 5 times before realizing that 28+28 actually equals 56 and not 54. And that being able to add 28+28 correctly on the first sock and not being able to add it correctly on the second sock doesn’t necessarily mean that I am losing my marbles and that it’s probably more that fact that I own 5 children, 3 of them teenaged boys. Somehow, I am still clever and brilliant simply because I figured out the mistake all by myself without giving up, burning the socks or hitting anyone. Clever. I want to be told I’m clever. Because honestly it’s way to easy to forget that when you’re 45 and half way to dead.
Thanks for your blog. Totally makes me smile.
The ghost post: you had been enjoying the spring flowers and looking over your knitting books looking for a pattern for the next project, and noticed how the really great designs, like the Wild Apple sweater or something from Alice Starmore’s Fair Isle book seemed to be rooted in the designer’s cultural heritage and immediate surroundings. And you thought of all the knitters you had met at workshops and book signings, and how every one of them came from somewhere with its unique history, plants, animals, weather…(you had the pictures, after all).
And you thought how great it would be if every one of them had the confidence and skills and an awaiting audience for their own experience to be turned into knitting designs. And so the idea for the next event for Knot Hysterical productions came into being—going beyond the Sock Summit to a Design Summit. Then the computer ate your post, and on reflection you wondered if this latest brainwave wasn’t biting off a little too much even for you. So you mentally put it on the back burner, where it continues to simmer.
I think your post would have been sharing various pictures of unusually beautiful Canadian skies with knitting juxtaposed against them. That or something about the premiere of the new V series which I am nerdily anticipating!
KARMA!!!! The universe called and you listened!
“The mind of man plans his way,
and God directs his steps.”
?? proverbs??
You would have told us about a dream you had where you became the Queen of “Skeins” – a magical lost kingdom full of yarn stores and pubs, where all knitters are revered.
Handknit coconuts.
And, no, I really don’t know where that suggestion came from.
I think you were going to announce a new partnership with Virgin Galactic in which you and Tina would lead a sock cruise in space. The kick-off year would merely be a cruise around the Earth, but as the years go by and the Space Station is completed, that venue would also be added for subsequent sock cruises. The name? Socks in Space.
When you returned home, the house was clean and there was fresh food in the refrigerator, nothing was in drama mode and you could happily knit the April socks. To further this illusion, the gansey was finished as well as the Wild Apples and your daughters told you how much they appreciated you and missed you. Joe swept you off your feet and into adultland, and wool didn’t matter. And then it snowed.
The panic that you feel when things are going too well and you waste all your time waiting for the other shoe to drop, which, ironically, only does in the form of you wasting your time and worry on waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You have got to be the FUNNIEST blogger I have ever read. You should read the Maximum Ride book series by James Patterson. I think you would be a dead ringer for Max!
Brenda
It was such a beautiful day, and your brain was in prime creative mode, so you decided to block a lace shawl while skydiving. The lace is blocked dry to perfection in the 60 seconds it takes to fall from 10,000 feet to 2500 feet, then you finished the job with a lovely smooth flight under canopy to a perfect landing.
And then it was time for lunch. 😀
This is a late entry, but since I’m raising my flu-ravaged body to the computer for the 1st time in a couple days I just have to enter . . .
I wish you had written about the socks you just started knitting with Bearfoot yarn in color “Yellowstone” from Mountain Colors and that you couldn’t remember where you got the yarn but you LOVE it! And then I could write and say that Jan, Shelley and I are THRILLED because we gave it to you when we drove 500 miles from Billings, Montana (through which the Yellowstone River flows) to Salt Lake City to see you in September 2007 – or was it 2008?
So, that or some April Fool’s thing. 🙂
Little green things. I’m sorry if someone else has already said it, but it’s too pretty a day here for me to read through everyone’s comments.
About how, when you packed for your last trip, you spent a lot of time packing weaving supplies, knitting supplies (because the car can’t go without an active knitting project in the front seat), yarn, etc. But when you got there, you discovered you forgot to pack any clothes or shoes…
Silly, you blogged about the socks you just started knitting for me.
Maybe how your cat discovered your cut pile weaving and decided to claim your work for her own with pictures of kitty sleeping on the loom?
This is a April fool’s joke, right?
It was about the fact that all the squirrels suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth. So you gathered all the knitters/spinners/crocheters/other fiber artists you could find together and sang and danced around a pile of yarn that you’d put in the backyard without any fear of it being stolen by rabid evil-doers.
Squirrels and the return to the yearly conflict of Fiberistas vs. Furry Commando Tree Rats.
You poor thing. That is very frustratind. I just put a picture of a cat on my blog. The problem is that I don’t have any idea whose cat it is but I was so happy to have figured out how to put a picture on my blog that I left it there.
Peace on earth…isn’t that what “everyone” wishes for…you wrote about it.
Second topic,( I am from the U.S.) that the new health care plan will make it possibly for every person, man, woman or child gets needed medical attention, if they should every need it.
What a world we could all have if we could only let go of our greed.
Watching the tiniest little leaf poke through the earth and how it’s like the beginning of a new knitter’s interest.
My 9 year old niece Abigail always says she’s not interested in knitting, but she’s always watching me knit, and she does occasionally pick out patterns and yarn for me to make something for her.
Yesterday I had her for the day as there was no school. I paid for her to have her first manicure ever while I had my hair cut, she met several dogs that live at the hair salon, we had lunch out, and after supper she went with me to my knitting group.
Today she told me the best part of her day off was (1) meeting the dog that belongs to the host of the knitting group, (2) meeting the knitting group, and (3) she had lots of questions for me to ask them — would they let her join? could we make up a knitting bag for her? would we teach her?
It was the best part of my day, too.
I think it was about how our everyday jobs and responsibilities leave no room for avoidance, mistakes, sluggishness, or foul moods, yet knitting allows us to put it down when it gets frustrating or boring, redoes when stitches don’t meet our needs, how no matter how tired we are, we have to knit, and how knitting lifts our spirits. You added how I have hours of paperwork ahead of me when I arrive back to school on Monday, yet, it’s okay to have hours of knitting ahead of me. You wrote about something that we could relate to, no matter what it was, because we have to knit, we could relate.
You suddenly start hearing strange creaking in the night. Soon add in the sounds of water dripping…and some spinning…YOU’RE BEING HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF SIR WASHIE!
And then throw the squirrel in there somewhere. Maybe he exorcises your house for you?
I love it when you become philosophical and write about the positives in life no matter what else is going on around you. You might have written about how Spring is the year’s sign of new beginnings maybe a new rug, new socks and new friends and experiences to look forward to..Whatever you write, it’s always good to read.
April Fool’s Day…
I think you might have written about Sock Summit II coming to Toronto!!!! April Fools!
That faboulous Noro knitted skirt that we have not heard a peep about for (dare I say) years?
sweet satisfaction
you wrote about the beauty of the day, posted pictures of your weaving around the yard and were about to put your furnace to rest until September 25th!
You would have written how you were going to buy the house right near mine and we’d have days where we’d laugh and laugh and laugh over how crazy we are about knitting socks and how much we look forward to learning all of the wonderful fiber crafts available ! 😀
I was hoping for something that was going to make me laugh, after all, a major appliance died yesterday. I could have used a laugh.
Wanda
Okay, I zipped past the others really quickly, even though I’m sure they’re hysterical. I’ll read after I post.
I would have loved to have read a blog in which you earnestly tried to teach the GPS in the previous blog to knit and it earnestly tried to get you all back to the correct road. However, you both got sidetracked with a philosophical discussion about what it means to “spread the disease” known as knitting.
The Bohus. For serious.
Stash weasels.
I hope it was a fully illustrated step-by-step guide to how to dyson a bison.
It was about the dream you had where you finally used the squirrel voodoo doll, and the dark spell you cast, and its effects on the squirrel, nay, legions of squirrels, who trooped to your house from all over Toronto, returning precious wool by the mouthful, and, just when your house was overflowing with fiber-bearing rodents, Dr. John and the Neville Brothers’ tour buses simultaneously broke down in front of Lettuce Knit, so they did a free concert — with Mac doing a special extended version of “JuJu Man” just for you after he heard about the squirrels — but then you realized everyone was HUNGRY, and you were frantically on the phone calling me to ask if I could come up and, pretty please, cook enough gumbo for eleven thousand people immediately … but you woke up and it was only a promo for the new HBO show, “Treme,” which you overheard on the TV in the other room, and it somehow got into your dream, so you got up, cussed at the squirrel chattering outside your window (who had also worked his way into your dream), made a good cup of coffee and finished Wild Apple instead.
You had lovely pictures of the Bohus, completed. The cut pile weaving, beautiful by the way, is finished and has you digging through the stash with another project in mind… weaving. The family and house were neat, tidy and ready for you to hug and let you start playing with all the weaving techniques you learned.
And yes you can dyson a bison.
The crocuses smell great and the coffee is hot.
Today you would have written about how you landed the job of Knitting Instructor/Encourager Extraordinaire on board the Federation Starship U.S.S. Enterprise (only short missions at a time because you don’t want to be away from your family for too long). Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy and Eric Bana and Karl Urban and John Cho and Chris Hemsworth (what more could you ask for??) are all there and you all have such a good time knitting socks for all the crew members and laughing and drinking Cardassian Sunrises.
You wrote about the new circular loom that you bought… it makes lovely, colorful socks that last forever! April’s sock is a weaved sock!
Guess: how cut pile weaving works. Or not… because we should all go take the class ourselves.
I think it as about how the Fleece-Stealing-Squirrel played a nasty April fools joke by returning a fleece to you in the morning….and taking it back immediately after your rejoiced. Either that, or a story involing all people living in your house offering extra space in their rooms for your stash…and then crully laughing as you find that those spaces do not exist…
Everyone missed an explanation of how to use yarn ends as building materials.
Spread pieces of yarn – no longer than an inch – outside on the ground.
The birds are now looking for building material and will be grateful.
The yarn will be re-cycled and re-used – only not by humans.
I’ve been waiting to hear the madcap (mis?)adventures of getting ready for sock camp.
I bet your post was about the best April Fool’s joke you ever played on someone.
You were going to knock the knitting community off their needles when you announced that you were giving up knitting for crochet. The Yarn Harlot would become the Yarn Hooker.
the owl box.
http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox
random, feathery and maternal, as well as a little grusome thrown in for fun!!!!
It has to be something to do with April Fool’s Day – or is that too obvious?
Have fun
L
That it’s really a big joke that winter is on its way in the southern hemisphere while the northern hemisphere celebrates Spring. It’s actually the other way around and the daffies are just started to bloom outside my window.
Cheese. I was really hoping that you were going to finally write something about cheese. Sigh.
Perhaps a wee story about Joe taking a walk wearing an exquisite fair isle hat, board shorts, cashmere sox and birks. Also with him – 2 beautiful Leicester Sheep (who are slowly adapting to living in Toronto).
The sheep – a recent present to Steph from a fervent admirer – are learning to live in a wool house (they sometimes flinch when they think Steph is knitting a sweater out of their aunt and wonder if they are next), drink coffee and watch Battlestar Galactica.
You were going to tell us about the grey squirrel mother pointing to your backyard and instructing her new brood as to how to go about scrounging some soft material for nesting. It is generously provided by the human who occupies the house that they’d like to move into.
Well the way such things go, I imagine you were writing a post about the joys of multi-tasking. The coffee was brewing while you jumped in the shower, you got the family’s day organized while tidying up the kitchen, knit a few rows while on the phone with a friend, got lots of work done while pet-sitting the neighbour’s well-behaved puppy, a few more rows while working on the blog post and listening to old phone messages, then the phone rang and … oops!
Imaginary yarns?
I think you were going to post about ‘what if…’
What if I won the lottery, what if I could teach everyone to knit….
I am hoping that you were writing about the Infinite Monkey Theory. If you put a bunch of monkeys in a room with some knitting needles and some yarn, that through random occurrence, at least one of them would knit a Faroese shawl, given enough time.
Either that, or that it’s a bad idea to give garden gnomes champagne…
I think you were going to write about how much blogging has changed your life into something better. You’ve made friends, influenced people, and met people you would never have met without being “The Yarn Harlot”. Spring is here, and really, this is the time to look around and take stock of your life… Your house is fixed, you’ve had a great workshop, knitting is going well, you have happy, healthy children and a wonderful husband. 😉
Hugs,
Nancy MM
I think you had a fit of the crazies and knitted Joe an Easter Bunny suit out of white and pink chenille to wear around the neighbourhood this weekend, complete with proud pictures of you wiring the ears to make them stay upright.
I am sure of it in fact.
How tiny knitted things can help a mama through the death of her unborn baby.
I think waxing eloquent about Quackmere and all its funniness of anme and softness would have been fun. Did you see the price on that stuff? And some of us are crazed enough about yarn to actually entertain the idea of wanting some!!!
How about April Fool’s Day isn’t necessary at your house ‘cos its that way all year long?? Hmmm… am I hoping that I am not the only one who has that experience LOL
What do I wish your blog post had been about? Prince, of bloody course. More of your torrid fantasies about Prince. Perhaps with musings on the things you’ll knit for him when you two are finally together. To hell with philosophy and such, I simply need more Prince in your blog.
You wrote about passing over the Border into the US. The border guards were so enthralled by the craft stations in the back of the car that they didn’t knotice that you had snuck out of the car and yarn bombed the border station in yarn that was violently glowing neon colors.
After you were safely away, you decided to re-enter Canada at another border station, just in case…
You were going to show a bungh of finished pictures of Joe’s gansey, right?
I would’ve loved to’ve heard about your best practical jokes! I know your family is close-knit and I bet there’ve been some pranks over the years.
My boys (6 and 8) insisted that I set up the kitchen sprayer with a rubber band so it would spray Daddy when he came home. They waited ALL DAY for it and giggled themselves into fits when he sprayed himself.
Dear Steph,
I started to read the comments to see what people were coming up with and good god! There is miles of input here! I remember reading that you read all the comments, and I wonder if it ever gets daunting? Does it take you three hours? Are you a speed reader? Even if you don’t read it all, in this age of information overload, it still seems like it sometimes could be a gargantuan endeavour.
Just wondering, from someone who finds herself often musing the dilemma of way more to do than time to do it, particularly in dealing with information. Thoughts, secrets, suggestions welcome.
p.s. In looking up “gargantuan” to check spelling, I was surprised to come across this 16th century quote (from the intro to the book on the giants Gargantua and Pantagruel):
“Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there’s nothing here that’s outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you’ll find is laughter:
That’s all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I’d rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.
BE HAPPY!”
p.p.s. And if you don’t get to this comment, I’ll understand!
Socks 🙂
On the intertwining histories, and comparative possible analogies of: cut-pile rugs and mulching for one’s spring garden.
Dear Stephanie,
On Wednesday, I had a bad dialysis session. This meant I was up all night with cramp, followed by what we call an upset stomach, my first migraine for 7 years and the last straw was finding the extra yarn I had been promised would be the same batch number and wasn’t so I had to rip out 18 inches of a difficult aran jacket pattern.I was not happy, but reading what you did post made me feel much better. I love whatever you write, thank you, you keep me sane.
You were going write about this new stitch pattern you had come out with, wondering if anyone had ever seen it before, and the fact that you were trying to make it again from the pictures you’d taken since the cat had ripped the whole thing before you had time to take notes… and you couldn’t.
how you have just got the funding to create a tablet that completly combats second sock syndrome, and are about to go into production, and how it will be packaged with two patterns and beautiful hand dyed yarn so you can check it for yourself
You could have written about how the easter bunny in a fit of wonder, saw some drying fiber in your backyard and took it home with him. He consulted with the other easter bunnies(you know there has to be more than one, perhaps it’s like the mafia and it’s one big family), learned to spin and dye and deposited easter egg shaped yarn eggs at your door the next morning. They were beautifully dyed like easter eggs and ready to be admired.
YOu were going to write about how excited you are for Sock Camp and getting to meet my little Maggie!
I think it was a tie-in with your previous post, about how one craft leads to another. As you gain skills in one area it naturally leads to to look at other things with a new eye. Knitting leads to spinning leads to weaving leads to…?
If you have one interest, and an open mind, you will never run out of things to do and to think about, and that keeps you young.
Also, the constant search for containers for all the supplies can be a form of exercise.
Spring, sunshine, flowers, and knitting. Also a little bit about charming philosophers who moonlight as cab drivers maybe 🙂 …
Spring, sunshine, flowers, and knitting. And also a little bit about charming philosophers who moonlight as cab drivers :)….
ps. the blog machinery just ate up my comment and left NO trace.
You might have written about your socks. The yarn. Where you got it. Where you are knitting it (outside) What you might be drinking with it. How it looks. The pattern. What you think of the pattern. How you expect the yarn to look done up.
And of course how much you love socks.
For some unknown reason I went back to your very first blog page ever – January 31, 2004 – and read about your Major Score from your local Value Village. No less than 10 minutes later my wife returns from shopping with an expression of supreme joy and satisfied superiority! She stopped in at a local thrift and got a 1lb cone of Beaverslide single-ply fingering-weight, 100g of Cascade 220, 2 balls of Kathmandu DK, 1 ball Drops Angora tweed, 2 hanks of Alpaca Elegance, 1 hank of Berroco Ultra Alpaca, 1 of Savannah DK, 1 of Malabrigo worsted, 9 balls of KnitPicks Palette, 1 ball Misti Alpaca Lace, 1 of Rowan pure wool DK and 3 of Karabella Aurora 8, and 5 hanks of various sock yarn. In addition, she scored at least two more pounds of Malabrigo and other yarns! All for the insanely inflated price of $32 US. Did Obama’s stimulus just hit our house? Just the cone of wool alone should be more than $32.
PS no – this is not an April Fool’s post (well, if it was April’s Fool Pricing I suppose we’ll find out when someone comes to the door for more $$$ !).
Beer. And the best container to drink it in while knitting. Featuring a lovely photo of a newly cast on sweater.
haha quacks me up………….
I believe that you were going to share the recipe for putting together a newly knitted sweater – all the necessary information and tips. It was a quite involved post, but a necessary one.
Lynn
I wish today’s post was a story about how the knitter from the Olympic curling match actually contacted you and revealed her true identity. It would be even cooler if it was because she’s in the STR club and what she was knitting was actually a sock club pattern.
That, or you had a dream last night that you wanted to move to Kentucky to be a doula. If that’s the case, I’d be your first client!! Nothing like a little knitting humor to take the edge of labor…
Spring is in the air. A girl’s thoughts turn to Antonio Banderas. Enough said……..
Eggs. The acquisition of, the process of dyeing, the deep philosophical considerations of…the colorways…..
You were writing about this one time that you were on the bus on the way to work and when the bus driver got shot you had to jump into his seat and drive the bus. It couldn’t go below 55mph because there was a bomb on board, but then Jack showed up and he helped you out and came up with a plan to disarm the bomb. Everyone made it off the bus safely, but then the guy who planted the bomb kidnapped you and handcuffed you to a subway train to bait Jack. Jack saved your life again.
I’d like to see on your blog how you have finally caved and started a wedding ring gossamer shawl.
maybe your post could have been about a queen wanting a pair of enchanted socks and she summons you the best knitter in the universe to make said magical enchanted socks these magical socks flew off the needles and you quickly got done and presented them to the queen who had the kindness to give them to you instead.
Spring and warmness have arrived in your neck of the woods…
I think the post could have been about all the things that you were glad you didn’t do (chores, work, cleaning and so on) and instead enjoyed a beautiful natural fiber skein of yarn which you made into a lovely present for some small child-who cherished it with great joy. something to think about. 🙂
I wish you had done a collection of photos of bird’s nests near your home that have included scraps of your yarn. Don’t you throw yarn scraps into your yard to see what the birds will make of them? And it has been such beautiful weather to see the results.
I’m sorry I missed your deleted post – I would have enjoyed reading about your trials and tribulations while swatching Quackmere, as well as seeing your new I-gotta-have-it design for the new ethereal, wispy and impossible fiber.
About how you were moving, lock, stock and yarn, to South Florida.
Koigu’s new line of Targhee roving.
It was probably a piece on the dastardly mutant typo dust bunnies who live under your computer (or if you’re like me, under everything). These fuzzy grey felons delight in causing typos, and apparently also in deleting brilliant blog posts. See, you just had to tempt fate by writing about them v it’s almost a guarantee that smoehting wlil hpapen!
Uh-oh… they’re multiplying like, well, rabbits!
You won an all-expenses paid trip to New Zealand with all the yarn, fiber, spinning wheels, good beer and food you want plus you get to take 100 of your closest friends…
Perhaps a post about how you are done with knitting and will never pick up a needle again?…and then say April Fool!
You know, speaking of April Fool’s Day, I went to a book signing of yours with a friend of mine. I wanted you to sign ‘happy knitting’ and so my friend went with that too. Somehow, _she_ got ‘happy knitting’ and I got ‘happy birthday’. It makes me laugh every time I see it….
Your post was perfect. I read Clara’s piece, and it actually made me laugh out loud.
Thank you for a great day, (even if I don’t get a gift in the mail! LOL)
I think you wrote about tomorrow and then decided you couldn’t possibly predict the future and you didn’t want to spoil anyone’s surprise on what it would bring….so you deleted it…and went outside to enjoy the spring.
You lead us to believe you deleted your post and then ask for “stories” and you post those as your entry. We get to find out just how witty some of your readers are and we all get to be the YarnHarlot for the day! Yay!
A recipe for world peace, the way to implement it and it includes knitting. Hey, if we/they’re all knitting, we/they can’t be bombing and shooting and so forth.
I’m guessing it was an April Fool’s Day joke that you were donating all of your yarn, fiber, knitting, and spinning tools and supplies to charity, shutting down the blog and becoming a hermit for the rest of your life.
Some horrid April Fools joke… that you found out you enjoyed something much more than knitting/spinning/playing with fiber (as if that is at ALL possible) and you had decided that it was time for a career change…. wanted to thank all of us for following you, laughing with you and spinning stories (as well as fiber) with you for the past few years.. It’s been fun, but….
Of course, all of us would be horrified and beg you to reconsider at which point you could ‘out’ yourself as the trickster.
but whatever you write about, its a vacation for all of our minds to be with the yarn harlot for a day in the life…..
Enjoy the holiday… take some time and relax, oh and make sure your needles are nearby 😉
Quackmere yarn or feathers as yarn. Ducks? Geese?
Maybe you wrote about chicken feathers. Baby chicks? Baby bunnies. Chocolate? Yarn made from
chocolate or beer or coffee?
OK, either I am hallucinating or I actually saw it during the nanosecond of time that it was posted. It was about your trip, the lovely bit of silk you were given, Denny’s duck, and how much cut pile weaving you had accomplished, complete with pictures. I don’t think I could make this up!
Stephanie, you and Clara are the best birds of a funny feather, quacking me up with your April Foolery. If I am going to get wool pulled over my eyes (even for a minute or two), it should be cashmere, n’est pas?
In honor of April Fool’s Day – something crazy — perhaps — you found a much better use for wool, insulation, and that all the yarn would be repurposed to keep college dorm rooms quiet. Therefore you would retire from the fiber world and take up accounting.
Teaching Ann Coulter to knit a gag and matching blindfold for herself.
The meaning of life….and how hand knit socks fit in. It is such a profound piece of writing, that people all over the world, as soon as they hear/read what you said will spontaneously stop what they are doing and go to their nearest yarn shop to learn how to knit…..in particular socks. This will have the ripple effect of causing world peace due to the fact that everyone would be too busy knitting to fight!
Since you had a lovely sejourn with the girls, you’re cup might have been running over
You might have waxed poetic just a tad and said something like this:” May the new life and new hope of spring be reflected in your happiness at Easter.”
Rita
Knitting amigurumi chickens and bunnies in celebration of Easter.
Your most memorable April fools day! Rosalia
Well, I think you were just about to announce a new contest……!!!!
Your post was about how every year around this time, no matter what your particular religious/spiritual leaning, the sight of wee buds on the trees and tender shoots of daffodils and jonquils making their way out of the cold cold ground gives you hope. hope that for just a little while the kids will get along and the sleeves will turn out the same length and that complicated lace pattern will pull together on the first try and the various dishes will be ready more or less at the same time.
Or that at least the chocolate bunnies won’t suffer when we bite their sweet little heads off.
I wish your post was about how you have learned a brand new sock knitting technique that allows you to knit a complete pair of woman’s socks on size 2 mm needles in just a little over an hour. And I wish your post was telling us all how to do that too. And I wish that I tried it while I was reading the post and before I even got to the bottom of the post, I had one sock almost ready to bind off. Wowza. Amazing.
I wish then, that you were explaining how you had reset your goal to knit one pair of socks a day for the rest of the year, which would bring your annual total to something like 278 pairs, give or take a couple.
Meanwhile, I wish you were telling us about the sweaters you were going to knit concurrently with all those socks and the shawls, and the hats and a few mittens and other odds and ends to boot. I love it when you tell us about really great patterns and show us how you have knitted them and loved them in your life.
I am sure it was about the simply amazing bag of fiber that you found while you were looking for the April sock – you would have told us all about the incredible color and feel, what you originally planned to spin it for, how you could have forgotten such a fiber find. And how you will probably use it for a new weaving project.
About how much fun your kids had dyeing Easter eggs, your trip to the grocery store and how you decided which yarn to use for April’s socks.
I hope you found your lettuce! We had trouble finding plain yogurt in a SMALL container.
You wrote to explain that squirrels had finally redeemed themselves. How? An industrious spinner in northern Maine has started a business making luxuriously soft yarn from fur (more hair than fur really) shed by squirrels. This new yarn comes in a range of colors from frosty gray, to rusty brown and even the occasional charcoal black.
I want project bags . . . would you tell us, please what makes the best project bag and why? Thanks.
Happy Easter to you!!!
I was going to say your post was about the Squirrel Nation gearing up for Fleece Wars III, but then you said it was a happy day…so that couldn’t have been it.
It must have been about your love for 1)Joe, 2)knitting, 3)the Knitters, 4)the Blog, and 5)your somewhat arrogant yet charming cat. Perhaps not necessarily in that order.
Well, I think you were talking about your lovely Easter eggs and how you got them just so perfect. Of course the irony of your deleted post is that it’s April Fools Day. So perhaps it was as simple as some slightly warped methodology of Easter Egg Dying (oddly, it seems a lot like hand painting wool to me) and how that process caused you undue stress, which then in turn led to the overconsumption of coffee, which of course, only increased your stress level as the caffeine jump started your heart, giving some irregular runs of ventricular tachycardia which caused a little ‘fogginees’ of your brain, and ‘delete’ seemed awfully alike ‘save’…..
So your lovely easter egg dying post and how it parallels wool dying, and how easter eggs make some marvellous colourways suffered a certain death when you let stress and caffeine get the better of you. Makes sense to me.
And for the record, if your caffeine really does give you irregular heart beats, then those random beats probably are pre-ventricular complexes which strung in a row like stitches on a knitting needle, can indeed be ventricular tachycardia and also potentially lethal. Might want to cut back on the coffee, that’s all I’m saying ;-).
Hmmm, that was fun, fantasizing your post!
An internal debate about the intricacies of daughter-daughter relationships and how the urban ecology of your front yard would be perfect in which to situate a microflock of hens that you would name Spin, Knit, Weave, and Denny.
I wish your post was all about your advice to another knitting mommy who is based half way around the world as to whether or not to send her child to a Canadian university.
I believed every word of Clara’s piece up until the blends section. She got me!
I wish today’s (well, retrospectively of course) had been about a sudden urge you had to visit Western New York to have a cup o’ Joe with your good ol’ pal firefly on a farm out near Lake Ontario. (You know, we can see Toronto from across the lake near our place, so it stands to reason you would get a hankerin’ to come down this way.) You would have told your readers about the the tractor cozy I knitted for my husband’s tractor a couple of years back on this very day (well, retrospectively of course) in 2008. You would describe how you told me a yarn or two and I yarned right back at you and oh, of course there were homemade biscuits involved in our chat, and some of the wild raspberry preserves I made with the berries that grow all around the northwest corner of our barn. Today’s post would have made your readers’ mouths water as you described those biscuits. Now that I have imagined all this up, I want to thank you for such a lovely post.
~firefly
It would be a sensitive post about living with humor and grace, much like the post you wrote only with more knitting and more life content.
Either that or it would be able people celebrating their wedding anniversary (it was our 5th – we love our April Fool’s wedding date).
I think you wrote about the splendor of nature and how though it can be cold in Canada, when it starts to warm again and things come back to life it can be beautiful and inspiring. I live in Georgia myself but was born in New York and I miss the drastic changes.
Hi Stephanie, I think your “blog post gone poof!” had to do with a recap (read: glorious misadventures!) of your recent trip over here to The Spinning Loft, in my wonderful state of Michigan … the rancid horrors of Caribou Coffee, but the gently rolling hills and dairy farms of the Howell, Michigan vicinity … the quaint little town of Howell itself … the wretched traffic of metro Detroit (which makes Toronto seem tame by comparison) … or if you came over by way of the Bluewater Bridge at Sarnia, how there’s absolutely NOTHING to the so-called city of Port Huron, MI … your adventures home would be rather replicated in-reverse, but leaving the tainted coffee-wannabe substance far behind!
At least that’s what I would write about, and I LIVE here, LOL!!!
I think you wrote a lovely post about intuitively dying yarn and roving using PAAS Easter Egg Dye Kits.
As I am knitting your “go-to” sweater, I think it most appropriately would have been about how a piece of clothing, put together with sticks and string, can change your life/the new life (Spring theme, of course) that can come from an inspired work of art! 🙂 (I LOVE your blog, by the way!)
How about a story about the strangest event you’ve ever witnessed at a coffeeshop?
A POST – FROM THE FUTURE!
You received a premonition of the future and posted from 2025. You wanted us to know how happy and content you were. You wanted us to know how wonderful your girls turned out and what interesting careers and families they had. You’re retired to a little cottage with Joe, a little garden patch, your own knitting room and office. Basically, you get your happily ever after. And you were encouraging everyone else to start now chasing their happily ever after.
That post was about how you are inventing ‘The Clapper’ for DPNs!
the post would have been an april fools joke about how you were giving up everything having to do with writing and yarn and knitting and spinning and that you and joe were gonna run away to France to be mimes in the streets of Paris.
A new sweater you are knitting…
i think you wrote about what a lovely day it was and how enjoyable it was to spend Easter with family. plus something about your latest project.
I think you would have written about how wonderful life is …in spite of the occasional setbacks…and how the the eggs pictured are a representation of new life, and all the potential that it has. Celebrate!!!
Hmmm… Well it’s April Fool’s today, so I imagine that you took a little drive down the south shore of Lake Superior to visit some knitters in Duluth MN. It’s my imagination, so I’m going to imagine that you could actually drive this in a morning and stop in Two Harbors for the world’s second best Swedish Pancakes (my grandmother’s being the first best). You’d get into Duluth in time to hang out and knit the day away with some really fun knitters. Thursday Night is Knit Night in Superior WI (across the bridge from Duluth) at Fabric Works so of course you ended the night there. People threw large amounts of yarn at you and didn’t force you to sign large amounts of books unless you wanted to.
Rights of spring, families being together, the generations sharing old, and new. Enjoying the warmth of family, the season, and good knitware.
how to knit with your fingers, so when you are caught (heaven forbid) without needles or bording a plan, you can find some yarn and create a beautiful thing…and while knitting black holes do eventually release projects, why they still hold onto to knitting needles (and always tape measures.
may the easter bunny have left you loads of chocolate
The missing post?… that you had finished Joe’s gansey… (isn’t the poor boy getting chilly without his gansey to keep him warm?)
The irony of being a vegetarian et Easter??? (did you know that the name of the holiday in Hungarian is literally translated means “taking meat”?
But then again I would love to see a post about the finished apple sweater.
Waxing poetic about the gorgeous weekend we just enjoyed…birds chirping, buds budding, etc.
how to knit something transitional like from winter to spring!
And the answer is……??
C’mon, it’s April Fool’s Day!!! That was the post.
If it hadn’t been April Fool’s day, I’d have said that your post was all about the similarities and differences between dyeing eggs and dyeing yarn… with pictures of both, including eggs, yarn, and fleece dyed with the same dyes.
But… it WAS April Fool’s day. So if there WAS a different post, it would have had to be about a magnificent April Fool prank that you, your extended family, or your local knitters pulled…. like a door cozy for Lettuce Knit’s door that blocked access to the keyhole…
I think this is an April Fool’s post and that you didn’t lost anything!
I love folks ideas, but nobody’s gotten down to the knitty gritty. If you’d meant to post anything at all, you’d have told us a bitmore about how your new weaving’s going, and then you’d have told us how it’s so incredible outside that you need to set-up outside with a beer.
Either that or you were planning to tell us about how you were looking forward to a wool bunny hiding several pastel colored, egg-shaped, center-pull yarn balls all over your office.
“Do you have any IDEA how long it takes just to scroll to the bottom of these comments on an iPhone? “play among yourselves,” indeed!
Posted by: Rams at April 2, 2010 3:55 PM ”
Believe me, a netbook is not that much faster, especially when you left the post alone for 7 days – and hundreds more ideas poured in to be pored over (language geek here – I love using those two words in the same sentence /end threadjack)
“Do you have any IDEA how long it takes just to scroll to the bottom of these comments on an iPhone? “play among yourselves,” indeed!
Posted by: Rams at April 2, 2010 3:55 PM ”
And a netbook is not much better, particularly as I’ve left the post for 7 days! Hundreds more ideas have poured in, to be pored over (Language geek: I love to use those two words in the same sentence / end threadjack)
well as it’s raining here and we’re well on the way into Autumn I think I would have liked to see a nice Spring post with an appropriatelt green project – but then as I’m reading posts backwards I know that you’ve already taken care of that requirement.
Think I need to cast on for some nice cabled green legwarmers!