In between screwing up my knitting and complaining about my knitting, sometimes I get some knitting done.
“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
-Henry James (1843 – 1916)
“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
-William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee—”
-Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
Back to intense verbiage next week, folks.
Not to be confused with the male fairies, who have not, as a group, expressed an opinion about me to date.
This week has brought a bountiful array of mail-borne goodies to my front stoop. Most of them, unfortuantely, are simply on a layover on their way to their (as yet undetermined) final destination, because they are the prizes for several lucky Amazing Lace participants! Last week I wrote to four online yarn stores and asked them, out of the blue, whether they would contribute a prize for the knitalong. To my surprise and delight, three of them (Kaleidoscope Yarns, Jimmy Beans Wool, and Knitpicks) said yes! I think it’s pretty cool that they were so willing to make contributions out of their own inventory to enrich the activities of the very “grassroots” side of the cyberknitting world, and I will definitely be giving them more business in the future in appreciation for their understanding of the whole knitalong phenomenon. For now, though, take a look at this box that arrived from Jill, the owner of Kaleidoscope Yarns. It is bursting with literally hundreds of dollars’ worth of knitting goodies. Koigu, Cherry Tree Hill suri alpaca, thousands of yards of laceweight merino…people, do you have any idea how hard it is going to be to part with this stuff? (Also note the evil ghost cat lurking in the doorway.)
The one thing that kept me from yielding to the powerful temptation to plunder the prizes for my own personal use (which I suppose could be construed by some as unethical) was the arrival of one saving-grace package out of which poured yarn for ME ME ME! It seems that the lovely and talented and classy and generous and humble Laura got mighty tired of listening to my maudlin ramblings about how lucky she is that people send her yarn all the time and no one sends me yarn all the time and never mind that I never send anyone any yarn but it sure is unfair that I always read your blog and you’re always getting yarn and I bet it would be cool to get yarn from people and do you think anyone will ever send me any yarn and sure maybe I should send yarn if I want to get yarn but boy would it be great to just get some yarn…and eventually Laura figured that maybe if she just sent me some yarn I’d shut the hell up. Don’t ever let it be said that whining and complaining won’t get you everywhere.
Laura’s package contained two balls of Rowan handknit cotton, a skein of Knitpicks Shadow, a tweedy ball of Queensland Collection Kathmandu Aran, and some Reynolds Swizzle sock yarn, which is a surprise given that for some time Laura’s and my friendship was based on not knitting socks.
I know that some of these yarns must be left over from projects that Laura has made for herself. Very interesting considering that if you possess a ball of of yarn from a person’s hand-knit garment, you possess a bit of that person’s soul. It’s true. Look it up. Don’t be worried, Laura, I won’t use my control over your soul for nefarious purposes. Not after you were so nice as to send me yarn and all.
Let’s see, a few other odds and ends. I have been gratified, over the past year or so, to watch my Bloglines subscribers number tick up slowly. Since my last post, however, the number has dropped by a handful of people, which has never happened before. The only thing I can think of* is that I offended some of my religious readers by implying that I am — well, let’s not mince words — the messiah. Please allow me to reassure you that I do not, in fact, have any real evidence that I am the messiah. Should any come to light, I expect I will blog about it between healing miracles, but in the meantime, rest assured that I remain solidly non-divine. (Can I ask, though, how many more of you it would offend if, inspired by Rebekkah’s comment, I made myself a wristlet or felted bag with “WWJK” in intarsia?)
Next, my word verification for comments. I know it’s annoying and non-ideal, but a few months ago I started receiving an avalanche of comment spam. Like, 100s of spam comments an hour. While I appreciated the efforts of the very helpful entrepreneurs doing their best to educate me about my options for online gambling, it was taking a lot of time just to sort them out from the other comments, so I was forced to take drastic measures. If it really bothers you, I can offer one alternative: you can register with the blog and never have to see the word verification again. Just go over to the bottom of the sidebar and, under “meta,” click the “register” link. This won’t do anything except allow you to bypass the word verification in the future; it won’t put you on some annoying Lickety Knit email list or anything.
Okay, I don’t like this high a text-to-picture ratio, so I’m going to wrap this up. Merry Thursday to all, and to all a good night!
*Well, I suppose I could also think of the possibility that these people found me annoying/insufferable/pompous/poorly dressed, but I’d rather NOT think of that.
A few of you may recall that six months ago, my Knitting Olympics team (Team College Hill) was profiled relatively prominently in the Providence Journal. As a result, yesterday I donated 40 knitted infant caps to Operation Warm Head Start (good mission; cumbersome name) at Rhode Island’s Women and Infants Hospital.
“What?” you say. (Yes, I can hear you. A few of you said “Huh?” and a few more gave a Jon-Stewartesque “Whaaaaaaa?”) Well, perhaps I overstate the connection. But the publication of that article lead fairly directly to a number of interesting events and contacts, a couple of which I will highlight here. (I will NOT highlight the two different personal image consultants who called me AT WORK to offer makeovers to me and my teammates. I think one had some kind of anti-knitter bias that made her equate knitting with frumpiness and social awkwardness, and she believed we desperately needed her help to become presentable in normal society. “You four young ladies have so much potential, and you’d be surprised how easy it is to make a few small changes that will make you more confident and at ease socially and professionally!” What? Screw you, lady! You don’t know anything about my social and professional demeanor! Come here and let me jab you with my knitting needles with confidence and ease.)
Aaaaanyway, one of the more pleasant outcomes of the article was that I was recruited to lead a session on knitting baby hats for charity during my workplace’s annual staff development day. (”Recruited” is actually a bit inaccurate. Someone responsible for the day’s programming read the article and put me down to teach that workshop without technically mentioning it to me. The first I heard of it was three weeks in advance when I was asked for my course description for the registration web site. I was baffled but willing.) So I put together a little pattern, bought 30 balls of Knitpicks Shine Worsted, knit some samples, and introduced two dozen (mostly newish) knitters to the joys of double-pointed needles. I asked the participants to send me their finished hats along with their leftover yarn so I could make some striped hats out of the remnants, and that is what I’ve been doing for approximately 300 weeks now. (This is a big part of why I have had little knitting progress to show recently.)
I had never donated baby hats before this, and I admit I went into it thinking it was all a little pointless — how important could hand-knit caps really be to new parents? But then a higher-up in my office — a reserved, stoic man not prone to personal-life chitchat — heard that I was leading this session, and his face actually lit up and he said, “Oh, yes, I remember those hats well — we made great use of those hats, they were wonderful.” I recalled that his daughter had been 8 weeks premature and that he and his wife had spent endless scary and bleak days in the hospital; apparently those cheery little hand-knit hats actually made a strong enough impression on him that he still feels grateful for them five years later. I thought that was nice, and I hope a hat of mine provides a bright spot for someone in need of one.
Fun Thing #2 that happened as a result of my 15 minutes of dizzying fame was that my teammates and I were invited to be the guest speakers at the May meeting of the Ocean State Knitting and Crochet Guild. We had no idea that the Ocean State had a Knitting and Crochet Guild! Yet there we were about to be the guest speakers there. We even made it into their newsletter.
Going in, we wondered whether the guild would be made up mostly of people knitting scarves from eyelash yarn or people who had never heard of anything other than long straight aluminum needles (I’m not really trying to be snobby although it is totally coming out that way), but we needn’t have worried. These people were crafters. They had spun, dyed, and knit some phenomenal garments. And yet they all still listened quite attentively as Theresa and Katja (not pictured) and I talked about and exhibited our Knitting Olympics projects. Photos courtesy of Kristen of Audio Knits.
Speaking of listening attentively, look at how appreciative Theresa and I each look of the other person’s presentation, even though we’d both heard every single detail before.
After our talk there was general chattiness and comparison of projects and enjoyable conversation — the standard magic that always seems to happen when knitters gather over yarn and needles. It honestly never fails to amaze me how well this shared hobby can connect people of vastly different ages, backgrounds, and life situations and get them chatting as though they have everything in the world in common. The OSKCG is a great group of people, and we had a wonderful time. They sent us on our way with these adorable little gift baskets (sock yarn, stitch markers, hand cream, note cards, etc.), but not before I insisted on a group photo:
Is it just me, or does something about this photo remind anyone else of one of the world’s most famous paintings? If it does — and I’m not trying to get all God-complex on you here — please observe who seems to be occupying the Jesus position in the knitting picture. I’m just sayin’.
