Two Buffalo Kids: A Sunday Edition!
If Tim Russert hadn’t died this week, I probably wouldn’t be writing the obligatory Father’s day blog post. This is a knitting blog and my dad, well…I’m sure that if I knitted something for him, he would wear it. He’s the type of person that would wear and rewear the same knitted hat or scarf for years and years. But my dad will never knit. He will never crochet. Rosy Greer notwithstanding, he will never embroider, either.
But this week, Tim Russert did die. It was plastered all over the internet, trumpeted on the radio. Died at 58 years old. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, devout Catholic, working class family, loved the Buffalo Bills, good father, good man, died at 58. After the radio host repeated the same ancedote about Tim for the fourth or fifth time, Dad switched off the radio.
We said, “It’s too bad, he was a good person,” the kind of stuff that you say about someone that you never even met, but cosmic guilt forces you to apologize, somehow make up for an early death. But…it’s a little different, this death.
My father, my non-knitting father, was born in Buffalo, New York. (I was also, but that’s another story) He is 57 years old, the only Protestant shoot from a Catholic family. Every time the Buffalo Bills have a game, our family still groans when they lose again, even though we’ve lived in WV for years now, and even though we know that they’ll lose anyway. He and Tim attended different schools in the same town. Maybe they crossed paths as kids, though Dad never knew him personally.
And then this week, Tim died. A year older than my father. A year older.
Tonight, he pulled some salmon from the fridge, the frozen fillet kind, not some fancy, whole organic fish that swam in blessed waters. Dad doesn’t knit, but he cooks; he cooks better than my mother does, especially breakfast. I stood at the sink, rinsing a couple of dishes, letting the heavy cast iron skillet drip-dry. He tossed the fillets into the microwave and set the skillet on the stove top, turning it up. I grabbed a towel.
”It’ll dry off,” he said.
I dried up the water anyway.
He tossed a fat pat of margarine into the skillet and I continued to rinse dishes as the margarine melted into itself. I paused, the smell of faint burning in the air. The margarine was all melted, the thin golden pool beginning to scorch as my dad started to defrost the frozen fillets.
”It’s burning,” I said intelligently and then when he didn’t move, I grabbed the handle and moved the pan off the burner, turning the heat lower.
”Maybe I wanted it burned,” he grumbled, starting to shake pepper and salt into it.
”Well,” I said sagely, “You can always burn unburned butter, but you can’t unburn burned butter. Or, as Yoda would say, ‘Unburn butter, you cannot!’.”
”Has it ever occured to you,” he said, still continuing in his ‘I’m not really irritated but I’ll pretend to be,’ voice, “That I could do this myself?”
I finished the dishes. A sudden thought suddenly came into my mind and I half-smiled at the reversal of our roles. As a kid, my favorite saying was, “I do it self.”
”Barbara, get down from the back of that couch!”
”I do it self!”
Sometimes, this phrase was repeated in tones that escalated as I foresaw an adult trying to come to my aid—”No, no, I do it self, I DO IT SELF!”
Like father, like daughter, I thought. Dad took the fillets and tossed them into the slightly scorched margarine, the pepper, the salt and a touch of garlic. I smiled, and put down my towel. I decided that Dad could definitely do it self. After all, he’s a much better cook.
I hope that he does it self for a long, long time.
RIP, Tim Russert.
Weekend Trip: Dyed In The Wool Yarn Store!
Whenever I travel, I am reminded of a few things.
- People who splatter their urine all over public restrooms: I hate thee.
- People who do not flush the urine splattered toilet left behind them: I hate thee
- Hotels usually suck, but not always—Holiday Inn Express: I love thee
- If you’ve been traveling for a few hours and decide to eat, you’re suddenly in the middle of nowhere. Brigadoon restaurants, I hate thee.
- If you can persuade your parents to visit a yarn store, this suddenly becomes irrelevant: Dyed In The Wool yarn store? I love thee.
The distance between Alison, PA and my bit of West Virginia isn’t that big; maybe 3 hours traveling time. I sneakily typed the address of a yarn store into our GPS. Dyed In The Wool yarn store is a little store, nestled into the green, green land of PA—probably not too far from Amish folk, but far enough away from the farms that I didn’t have to enjoy the pungency of a large dairy farm.
Look, I’ve been into Amish country. I’ve seen the little girls in black on bicycles, the 80 year woman pulling groceries in a wagon up a 90 degree slope and enjoy the nostalgia, blah, blah. But I hate the farm smell. I’ve milked cows, fed chickens, chased a cow, ridden a bucking horse, blah, blah, OK? Still hate the way that a working farm smells. I envied my friend with the horse (even though it did try to buck us off) but I didn’t want the smell.
Wow, from yarn stores to Amish farm smells. Cough. Back to the yarn. It didn’t take too long to find the store.
Walking into the store, as it is with any yarn store, is sensory overload. I want to instantly touch, know, feel, name every yarn in the store. Carol owns the store, a slight, friendly woman with a touch of an accent—she told my sister she comes from Scotland—and Linda, who immeaditely told me to ask if I needed any help at all. I nodded, a little numb already from the overload.
Carol (on the left) and Linda (on the right) caught unawares!
Remember how I said that I fell in love with Seascape, the lace wrap from this summer issue of Knitty? With that pattern in mind, I started to poke through their laceweight, wavering between Lacy Lamb (wrong weight, but so soft!) some beautiful lace boucle and others.
There was plenty to distract me. I dithered between the yarn, as my younger sister learned I-Cord from Linda and my brother confided that he knit a little, too. (He’s 12, and working on a garter stitch scarf)
Linda again.
Yarn, yarn, & more yarn.
I love the shawl that this manikan is wearing, it looks so subtle and graceful.
The overwhelming feel that came from this shop was creativity. Shawls everywhere, sweaters, a sock here, a scarf on the needles, and a half-finished sock lay on the counter. It made my fingers itch. Again, I dithered. Carol shared their shop philosophy: they like to focus on smaller operations run by a few people, and I love that. I love that kind of intimate feeling when you pick up a skein of yarn and know that if you buy it, it goes to the same person that dyed and wound it. Dad fell asleep in the car. Like a bird, circling back to its nest, I kept coming back to same yarn over and over again.
Subtle greys call out to me like siren calls. Two skeins of Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace somehow hopped into my hands.
My Seascape shawl will be a gray sea. This yarn is absolutely incredible. With 70% alpaca and 30% silk, you might think that the alpaca might have that slightly hairy itch that it sometimes does. This doesn’t. The alpaca just gives it a delicate halo that it is lovely. When I finally, reluctantly, tore myself away from the store, I put one of the skeins into my Dad’s hands.
”Wow,” he said, “This really is soft.”
There’s 460 yards per skein, so I will have enough left over for a scarf. For $20, I’m getting enough yarn for an alpaca-silk shawl and a scarf. All the way home today, I kept fondling the soft fibers. Tomorrow, I’m going to my local yarn store for Knit in Public day.
I’m considering bringing in this yarn, to start Seascape, but I’m a little shy. I can’t work on any projects that are from the store, because I’ve misplaced my straight size 6 needle, and the only other project that I have is my sweater, still in pieces. I wouldn’t want to bother LeAnne by asking her to help me when we’re all having fun celebrating, but I may just have to—every time I look at all those pieces, I start to cry inside.
In all events, we’re going to have a blast—and there will be cookies, and I am bringing cupcakes. Food & other porn will appear on this blog in the near future—have a great weekend knitting in public, and come back Monday!
Summer Knitty: Lace, Lace, LACE!
The new summer issue of Knitty just went live!
One of my favorite things to when new issues are published is predicting what patterns will be hot. I’ve picked out 3 patterns in paticular that I like and that should be sending knitters everywhere scattering to their yarn stores.
My Top 3 Picks and Predictions for Hawt Popularity This Summer!
- Seascape, a breathy lace shawl knitted with the light-as-air Kidsilk Haze. This is my personal favorite and I am heavily considering knitting this. I adore Kidsilk Haze.
- Ziggy, is a clever sock pattern that takes Noro sock yarn to the next level of cool. I have fallen in love (very hard) with a paticular colorway at my yarn store, and this pattern looks like it would make the most of it.
- Shetland Shorty, a cute, cropped lace cardigan that will probably not get the attention that it deserves, but it is definitely a lovely knit and great for summer.
What are you waiting for? Get you to a yarn store!
Sea Monkeys
Yeah, cheap shot. But you get to see my legs (woohoo!) and part of our rather dirty pool. Important note: I only knitted 4 lace repeats, I did not knit 6, and I don’t think that I would have been able to get all 6 out of 330 yards of sportweight. However, I wanted them to be a little shorter.
I’ve gotten a LOT of favorable comments on these socks. I have to warn you—this is a limited edition color, produced in ONE skein for the teen party. Kate is considering releasing it this fall, along with the new colorways, because she did keep notes on how to reproduce it—it is called Spunky. If you really like it, you can contact her at:
- Her Ravelry profile: YarnLove
- Comment here! I’ve asked Kate to keep an eye on the comments here, and I’ll be letting her know if there’s people interested in this colorway!
Very interestingly, at Kate’s blog, she mentions that she was considering releasing sock blanks in her yarn. Knitpicks, however, has just released their own line of sock blanks and she muses if people will wonder if she’s a copycap.
I’d say, I would rather get sock blanks from her because I’ve heard from MANY yarn dyers that their sock yarn pills. Why would I go to the trouble to dye a sock blank when it’s going to pill in a few days? Anywhere, here’s her blog post about it and if you’d like to encourage her, head on over and comment!
Stealing Her Thunder: KnitDweebs
If someone has taken a brief wander around the knitting blogosphere—by the way, I hate the word blogosphere—then they’ve probably run across Marilyn’s blog. However, I always think of her by the name of her blog—the Knitting Curmudgeon. In her latest edition of Open Mic Thursday, she asked;
- Are you still using Ravelry? If not, why not?I continue to see the value in Ravelry, although probably not for me. One friend, who shall go nameless, says that it can be an enormous time waster. Another friend is convinced that it has become KnitDweeb Heaven. Well, that was rather easy to predict. It is what it is, and you can use it as you wish.
I love the phrase KnitDweebs. After being mauled by a panting, frothing mass of irrational knitters, KnitDweebs is a comforting term. I briefly answered Marilyn’s question with 3 easy ways to avoid KD, but it got me thinking, about Ravelry and dweebs in general.
The funny thing is that good old fashioned trolls bother me less than some of the dweebs that I see on Ravelry. Having someone post, “Acrylic is for dirty people,” is less disturbing than the Nice Nazi. The first person is simply stupid. The second group is everywhere and they are CONVINCED that anything less than sugary heaven means that Ravelry will fall apart.
This means that even reasoned discussion is immeaditely followed by a thread entitled, “The Hand-Holding Thread” or, “The Lovey Thread,” or something similarly saccharine. That irritates me. Irritates the heck out of me.
That may simply be because I am not a naturally nice person. Sarcasm, a quick retort, snotty quip—come on, I’m a teenager, you’re surprised at that? But overall, I think Ravelry helps to tone down the loudest dweebs. The worst forums are inbred little enclaves of “regulars” who all have labels next to their names like “Permanent Resident” or something similarly patrician. Ravelry is too huge for that to happen easily. The few people that get noticed are noticed because they’re nice, not because they’re trolls.
As a teenager on forums other than Ravelry, my regular posts get pats on the head. My opinionated posts have gotten me into some of the weirdest, nastiest discussions that I’ve ever had, barring the fanfiction emails I once exchanged with a fanfiction goddess and her outraged fans. (That story LATER) That exchange left a bad taste in my mouth, so I very rarely frequent that forum anymore.
My absolute favorite was when I posted about a certain yarn that I liked. This was after the first incident and I decided to give the forum another go. I did not start a new thread. I added my thoughts to an already existing thread. One person was virulent about their dislike of this yarn. Whatever, I didn’t respond to that.
Imagine my surprise when a little message arrived for me–from that same person telling me all about how horrible this yarn was and how since I was a “new knitter” and all stuff that I probably didn’t know how this yarn was just full of knots, etc.
I politely responded that our experiences differed and our exchange ended amicably enough. No harm, no foul. But it reminded me of how incredibly…incestous it all felt.
So, yes, there are definitely dweebs on Ravelry. Can we possibly hope to avoid them all? But it’s certainly far more valuable than the few trolls. Stick to the knitting, or crocheting or spinning—it all works out.
Porn Is Slowing Down My Yarn Marathon!
I blame porn for the lack of pictures in this post. No, not yarn porn, the real kind of porn. Naked ladies and all that stuff. My dad (who was briefly mentioned in the Nyquil story) is waging an all out war on any possible porn. This means that
- A lot of nasty sites get blocked by the filter–yeah!
- I cannot access Flickr, which means that this post will have no pictures
- Result: irritated readers!
I do have some beautiful pictures, too. Endless sweater and t-shirt knitting resulted in a knitting breakdown and a complete Monkey sock (from my Marianne Dashwood sock yarn) has resulted. I am nearly finished with the leg of the second. I even learned the Kitchener stitch.
But, due to my father’s WOP (War on Porn) you can’t see any of this. In fact, the only picture is the studious looking Tolkien, who looks slightly miffed this week–due to my Monkey obsession, he has not gotten any love from me this week.
This makes it difficult to persuade you when I say that this yarn is very nice indeed—in fact, Kate is considering making it a permanent colorway to be released this fall along with her other new colors—and it makes a rough start to my Yarn Marathon.
Let me explain: this has nothing to do with knitting down your stash. My modest stash doesn’t really need to be reduced anyway. The Yarn Marathon is basically a customer rewards system devised by Eat, Sleep, Knit, an online yarn store devoted to some of the more popular yarn lines, including Yarn Love. The first goal is 1 mile, and you get a marathon welcome package then. Other goodies include scratch-off prize tickets for $5 in store credit and various little notions.
One of the ways that you can earn miles is not just by buying yarn—full disclosure here—but also by linking to their website. This means that every time someone clicks on a link from my blog, I earn 5 yards in my marathon. If someone clicks on my link and then buys something, I earn $5 in store credit. This is nice for me, but please don’t feel obligated to click or buy or anything. This blog is not going to be a giant eatsleepknit advertisement–I value my readers, and I refuse to spam you with junk!
All yards or rewards aside, I have fallen head over heels for one paticular colorway of Marianne Dashwood—it sounds delicious and it looks delicious, too. It’s the Turtle Cheesecake colorway and it is the only yarn that I have seriously considered eating. The next $21 that I have is going to this yarn. Sadly, my obsession with sportweight means that I will only be 330 yards into the first mile, but I am extraordinarily lazy. And now i’m hungry.
Sometimes, when I step back from the yarn and the knitting, for a moment, I see all the insanity. Yarn marathons? Eating yarn? Knitting…knitting all those thousands of stitches!
Then I am overwhelmed by the fumes of cheesecake and happily succumb.
Mysterious Gifts & Honest Boys
If you’ve read any old literature at all, you’ve run across at least one of these stories. Possibly originally published in a Sunday school paper in the early 18-19th century, they revolve around the Poor But Honest Young Lad. The PBHYL usually has a saintly mother who washes clothes for a living, rubbing her Christian knuckles raw across the dirty linen of the town. This boy doesn’t swear, smoke or drink and he spends 18 hours every day sweeping the streets or selling papers.
Suddenly, a Secretly Wealthy Man shows up on the scene. Maybe his horses bolt and the young lad boldly seizes the reins and stops them from killing their master. Or maybe the SWM hires the young lad as a clerk to check his books.
Usually, this Rich Man arranges some kind of weird morality test. He leaves $500 in cash on his desk and leaves the poor clerk all alone in the office with it. Or he says, “I know I can trust you, here’s the key to my safe deposit box. Take this large lump of gold and put it into there, please.”
Now, in Real Life, the young man would do the moral thing. He would steal the $500 and save his mother from the drudgery of being a washwoman. However, in these stories, the young man valiantly resists temptation—although one wonders how stupid you would have to be to seize such obvious bait—and suddenly, the Rich Man realizes that this is the honest, good boy that he has been looking for.
”John,” he says, laying a fatherly hand on the young lad’s shoulders, “I’ve made a lot of money in my lifetime. Never had time to have my own family. I want my money to go a good person, the kind of person that I know will do good with it. You’ve proved yourself to me, and now you’re heir to my millions.”
I love these stories. I’ve always wanted to have some rich person randomly leave me their fortune because I held the door open for them or because I smiled at them. This lovely vision provides a lot of incentive to be kind and good, even though these fantasies belong strictly to the realm of, “It only happens in books,”.
So, when I first posted in the RAK group on Ravelry (Random Acts of Kindness) I didn’t really expect anything to happen. I simply said that I wanted a spindle or roving, and that Little Si looked nice. Suddenly, I received a message from a lovely woman called knittinggalore sent me a message. Not only did she have a spindle, she had a Little Si that she didn’t want to use anymore!
But the story doesn’t end there, although it certainly brightened my day! I’m waiting for it to arrive. THANK YOU, Heidi!
Continuing on: in my Thursday post, I included some pictures of my local yarn store, Market Street Yarn & Crafts—check out the new website! I sent a message to Jamie, the person who is putting the website together and told her that she could use any of my pictures on the site. She sent a quick message back, saying that next time I dropped into the store, I would have to sign a form stating that I gave her my permission, etc, just to have everything proper and legal. I said, of course, that’s fine.
So when a large envelope came from the yarn store, I immeaditely assumed that Jamie had mailed me the release/permission form. I slid my finger under the seal and promptly cut my finger on the metal tab. I yelled, handed the envelope to my older sister, and ran to dab at the cut with some tissue. The Artist (my sister) opened it for me and handed me a sheet of paper. Still holding the tissue around my finger, I grabbed the picture, ready to affix my signature to wherever it needed to go.
Then I paused.
This wasn’t a permission form.
Across the top was emblazoned, “Market Street Yarn & Crafts Gift Certificate.”
I sucked in my breath. Under Gift Certificate Amount was not an amount of money. It simply said two words.
Spinning Class
Yes. That’s right. In my bloodied and trembling hands, I held a certificate for the Beginner Spinning class that is starting next month. The Beginner Spinning class. The spinning class that costs seventy-five bucks! The class that I’ve wanted to take, but was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to afford.
There was nothing on the certificate to tell me who sent it. I sent an incoherent message to Leanne (aka: Elrond) asking if she knew anything about this. In the midst of my wild hope, I somehow wondered if there was some trick involved.
Leanne sent back a discreet message, stating simply that the gift certificate came from an anonymous donor, not associated with the yarn store. Not someone that I knew from the yarn store. It was, in fact, a genuine mysterious person.
I have been in shock all day. I still can’t quite believe that this is true. I have racked my mind, trying to pinpoint who it could be. It’s not my parents, I know that. It’s not from my knitting buddies. I have no idea who gave me this very amazing gift.
So, Mysterious Person, if you read this blog, you know that I’m saying THANK YOU. Just…thanks.
Sweater Pieces: Some Assembly Required
Yes, at some point, I did realize that I would have to sew together all 5 pieces of my Basic Black cardigan. However, today I blocked all the pieces. I pulled out my beautiful, heavy, blunt seaming needle. I took a deep breath.
Not much happened after that. I looked from my book to the two pieces of fabric in my hands. I tried to follow the directions. However, everything looked very lumpy and awkward. Nothing stuck. Suddenly, all the yarn in my stash became immensely attractive. Patterns and needles cried out to me.
Tonight is Poetry Reading night at the local Borders. I’ve worked over some pieces. Matt DeVore, a genuine genius with poetry (and only 19 years old) has taken over the organization and so I want to be able to bring 2 or 3 decent poems with me. There’s nothing quite as embarassing as when 2 people stand up to read, and it’s the same two people who stand up to read every single time—or when it’s a mother, reading a poem about her bipolar daughter, while said daughter squirmed in the audience!
There’s a PG rating for the meetings. Usually, this rule is left unsaid because most people don’t fill their poems with swearing. However, our Memorial Day reading became more interesting when a Vietnam vet pulled out his poem and proceeded to f-k everything to h-ll. Borders doesn’t really want to have to deal with irate parents whose innocent children want to know what f-k means.
My fingers are itching a little because I have so much to tell you, but I have to wait. One of these things is so exciting that I am nearly hopping out of my skin. However, I will say that future posts will include new yarn (lucious yarn, I might add) more spinning/fibery posts, and a Lumpy garter stitch scarf with a story—and one of my siblings—behind it!
However, in the meantime, go to the Three Irish Girl’s blog contest—you have until 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time to enter one of the most awesome contests ever. Just tell them WHY you knit, and you have a chance to win a membership in one of their yarn clubs!
We’ll Go No More A-Roving
The title of this post belongs to the kind courtesy of Lord Byron, the original playboy* and author of this poem. However, the impetus comes from this delightfully fluffy stuff.
Never trust people who give you free things, or give out coupons. This is evil. Molly (nerdclub2000 on Ravelry, who I mentioned before) sent me some lovely stitch markers, because I happened to mention that I usually use rubber bands.
Soon after that, she posted a 15% discount for any members of the Teens Knit & Crochet group for some handpainted rovings of hers — 4 ounces of superwash wool in the colors Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Slytherin and Ravenclaw and some others. (Her pictures and spiel here, although no pictures of the Slytherin colorway) I immeaditely lusted after the Gryffindor.
My first step was denial. The following are my posts, my pre-roving posts!
- OMG, so beautiful! Wish that I could spin; that Gryffindor is lovely.
Then, helpless anger.
- Question: what’s the fiber content of this fiber? I am being slowly sucked in…nooo…cannot…spin…nooo, must…resist.
Slow acceptance. I think I’m messing up the steps here.
- Also, when it’s spun up, will it be reddish orangey or striped or what? I’m kind of ignorant when it comes to this stuff!
Still weakly resisting, I posted a few moments later.
- OK, could you “put it on hold” just for a few hours because I have enough money for this, but I have to wait for my mom to come home before I can be totally sure that I can get it. If you would rather not, that’s fine.
The package arrived Saturday.
It is so soft. I kept petting it. And fondling the amazing stitch markers, which I showed off to everyone at the Thursday Knit night. She asked me a few questions and I think they are very chic and sophisticated.
The huge demand for the HP rovings surprised Molly and since there’s obviously a market out there, she’s accepting “pre-orders” and would like a private message within the week. (She posted that on Friday, so get moving!) Again, she’s nerdclub2000 on Ravelry, and there are much more details about how to do this in the Ravelry HP group.
Now, to learn to spin, that would be nice. For now, I’ll settle for just petting my roving. My much-envied and coveted-by-many-others roving. My…preciousss.
*Byron is not the original playboy by any means. I actually prefer Alcibiades as a candidate for that dubious honor, but a heck of a lot more people know who Byron is than Alcibiades.
