Best Quote I Heard All Day

If there is, in fact, a Heaven and a Hell, all we know for sure is that Hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix...—Hunter S. Thompson

Although I can’t discuss it in any detail, TCI’s buyers have made me an offer I can’t refuse. I’m staying with the new regime.

And they’re headquartered in Phoenix. I’ll be staying in New Jersey. Thank God. But I fear some of my friends will not be kept on. And that makes me truly sad.

Frou-Frou Frolics
Jesus. The crap proliferates. Bad enough that I got the Patternworks’ Summer Update this week with multitudinous pages of crap, crap, crap and instructions on how to make scarves from crap, but today I had the frou-frou nightmare of a lifetime. Of course, it all began with a link that Loopy sent me from the Knit Flame list that you must see and to which I make reference below. A sweater of such hideous combinations (and wholesale swiping of patterns) that it’s not to be believed. But anyway, the horror continues.

Today I took Elly to a yarn shop she wanted to check out and didn’t want to drive to, blessedly not our regular shop but one that I occasionally venture into on the infrequent lunch hour. It’s actually a pretty nice shop but lately, the frou-frou ratio to decent stuff is about 100:2.

Elly’s shopping for a summer project and knows pretty much what she wants—something stupid to knit that’s light but not cotton. Like me, she eschews cotton for the most part. The store is quite crowded, with four women sitting at the table knitting, and several others poking about the bins. I grabbed some Rowan for socks for the book and was quite interested in the new Trendsetter Taos, a fashion yarn I could live with. Quite pretty. But I digress.

The women at the table are all knitting incredibly hideous “yarn.” As I wrote to Loopy earlier, “one of them delightedly held up a felted bag that was so incredibly ugly, I think it should be an accessory for this babe's horrorshow. I must have made a face (Elly who was in back of me of course was saying not-so-sotto-voce, ‘I'd never knit with that crap’) because the woman started to tell me that I should try knitting with it, that I'd really like it. I told her I'd rather chew nails. THEN she holds up this glitzy shawl-like thing and tells me she'd be happy to teach me ‘how to knit a triangle.’ At that point, I simply said to her, ‘I'm a traditionalist--I knit real shawls’ and walked out.”

I really should have bitch-slapped her.

I can’t stand this shit, I really can’t. I know, I know. The yarn shops need the revenue. But damn it, the stuff is butt-ugly. And it dumbs down knitting to the point of no return.

Maybe we all need to fight back. There’s more and more and more shit coming out, like a bad case of the runs. I keep hoping that the ScarfDweebs will get bored and go away. Which is worse? Knitting with Eros or knitting with Homespun. I honestly don’t know.

Widdle Kiddle Booboo Baby Shit
Now, I’m not a great believer in knitting baby stuff. Frankly, they outgrow it so quickly, it’s not worth the effort. I never even knit for my own kids until they were at least four or five, and I waited until Dizzy Ms. Lizzy was three before I made her a Minnowknits dress.

Joe has made a few things for babies, specifically two blankies, both of which were great. At least blankies don’t get outgrown. But I find them boring as hell, as I do afghans and the like.

So when my nephew (son of Jimmy’s brother) and his wife had a baby girl last Monday, my first thought was, “Fuck them, they didn’t even thank me for the wedding present AND I wasn’t invited to the baby shower anyway.”

On the other hand, I am nothing if not forgiving. To a point. And I thought, well, I’ll design a baby outfit for the book and if I really feel charitable, I might give it to the kid. After all, it’s not her fault her parents are ingrates.

So I now have three projects for the book: the linen stitch jacket, the Widdle Kiddle Booboo Baby Ensemble, and some socks. Each will end a particular chapter. And there will be more. Yep, the book is coming together, slowly but surely. And I’m pretty happy with it so far.

When it’s done, I think I’ll approach Running Press. Or self-publish it. I figure it will be done by next summer.

Boring Technical Note
I’m going to try to ftp the blog off of my domain, www.knittingcurmudgeon.com, tomorrow morning. Please don't ask me to explain what that means if you don't know. But I really need to give that a shot and get the blog back into shape so I can display graphics and photos. You should still be able to access the blog while I’m working but if you can’t, you’ll know why.

And then I’ll be off to AnnMarie’s for a visit. I’ve almost got her convinced to knit socks. Another rare and handy knitter in the making.