Best Quote I Heard All Day

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times--Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

This month marks the 3rd year of The Knitting Curmudgeon blog. On July 25, 2002, I began writing into the void, little realizing what I was getting into. Heh.

From 1998 to 1999, I had a website through my AOL membership, also called The Knitting Curmudgeon. It was a patchwork of essays and a couple of patterns. But it was much too static for my taste and difficult, at best, to update. These were the early days of HTML editors and although I was pretty good at writing my own code, it was a major endeavor to add new pages.

In July 2002, I was six months a new widow, still grieving, and looking for an activity upon which to focus. Somehow, I don't recall how, I stumbled onto Blogger.com. And The Knitting Curmudgeon rose from the ashes. A fitting resurrection for someone who had been struggling with the death of their best friend. Jimmy would have loved this and no doubt would have been a frequent commenter. He always fully supported my fiberwork and my writing because he too was a craftsman and a writer. There was no hiding of yarn in this relationship. I think of him often when I write because in death, he was the true catalyst of this blog.

My inital intent was not to publish a day-to-day journal of what I was knitting but to write down my thoughts about knitting in general, be it the state of knitting magazines or a new product that I'd found or just a technique that needed clarification. Without mincing words.

Along the way, I acquired readers. From where, I don't know. Some were readers from the old website, some were Googlers who found me. Whoever you are, know that I am amazed and thrilled that you read my blog. It means a lot. You give to me far more than I could ever give to you.

Estonian Scarf
All I can say is that Nancy Bush must be a tad annoyed to see that the stitch legend to her Estonian scarf in the latest issue of Piecework is totally fucked up. When I picked up the pattern to read it, the mistakes were so egregious that they hit me right between the eyes. The chart itself is correct but God help you if you're a beginning knitter. You'd be lost by the time you hit Row 3. So here is the corrected legend. I did write Interweave to alert them of the mistake, but it will take them time to publish a correction.

The graphic is a little skanky. I did the symbols in Stitch Motif, exported the file to Paint, added the text and then shipped it over to Photoshop, where I cropped it. Looks like I lost the top line on the first symbol box, but what the fuck. You can read it.

I'm using Cherry Tree Hill suri alpaca on bamboo needles, which fiber is about as close to Nirvana as I've been.

I've started it on #1 dps, which seems to me to be the easiest way to handle the acrobatics.

If you've knitted lace, you'll know what I mean. If you haven't, try it. Not much here to show but I'm enjoying it. And ignoring Slainte, which I may fix this weekend.

Loom Enablement
Loopy is a true friend. She's sent along her thoughts about how I should absolutely go for the beeg enchilada instead of screwing around with a rigid heddle loom. Loop has the Schacht Mighty Wolf and recommends it. I can see why, at least from a storage point of view, and it's probably the one I will buy. I love my Schacht Matchless double-treadle, so I'm sure I can't go wrong with the brand.

Going East
And I need to consider storage, since Corinne and I have found a house for all of us, in Mine Hill, NJ. That's about 15 miles east of where I live now. I'll start moving stuff over beginning July 15 and we'll be permanently domiciled by August 1. At which point, John and I will take off for a few days in New England, where I plan on visiting The Fiber Studio and Halcyon, not to mention our friends Em and Mitch. As a rule, I don't plan my vacations around yarn shops but these two are special. I'd like to make it to Harrisville but that may be a bit of a stretch.

And now it's time for coffee. The deck may or may not be dry from last night's rain but a towel under the fat can will suffice to soak up the damp. Three days off. How fucking rare and handy. Happy Fourth to all us Amurricans!