Best Quote I Heard All Day
Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door--Coco Chanel

The next time you see someone knitting fugly, contribute generously. Give them a decent skein of yarn. Support their efforts to knit nice not nasty. Don't just point and snicker. After all, you wouldn't make fun of an armless knitter, so why ridicule the fiber-impaired?

Brought to you by Sistah Knittahs Against Nasty Knitting -- a foundation established to assist the profoundly damaged knitter. We're SKANKs because we care. Occasionally.

Danger, Will Robinson
OK, so it's not only fugly fiber that can kill ya. Yesterday while shopping in a new yarn emporium (more on that later), I was standing at the register, paying, when another customer came up and stood next to me in line.

I glanced over at her and here she had her purse wide open, so jammed with knitting that she couldn't close it.

And two needles sticking vertically from the bag, points out, ready to impale some unlucky slob. Scary.

Never mind that she stuffed the bag so that her knitting was probably wrinkled. So I said something to her. Like, "I really don't want your needles in my arm."

Ever since my daughter Jenn was impaled on a knitting needle stuck in my mother's couch (it was Mom's, not mine) at age five on Thanksgiving and we had to make a trip to the ER, I've always been careful to keep my needles in a proper bag so that the points keep to themselves. Straight needles are really the worst offenders.

You'd think people would be more careful. You'd think and you'd be wrong.

The New Yarn Place
I seldom write about local yarn shops because they really have no bearing on anything in this blog. However, I'm making an exception because yesterday, after lunch with Ma and Sissy, we walked down the street to check out an exceptional new yarn shop.

I grew up in Montclair, NJ, which is about 12 miles from New York City, as the crow flies. My mother still lives there and I do go back from time to time, although Montclair has become SoHo Lite in recent years. The new shop, Modern Yarn, is around the corner from my mother's apartment on Church Street, a once-shabby and now chi-chi part of town filled with expensive, mostly pretentious shops and bistros.

A new yarn shop on Church Street? The last new yarn shop there was run by a Teutonic Brunhilda who enjoyed bullying her customers and only sold her designs. She didn't last long, thank God.

This new shop reminds me so much of the late, much lamented Simply Knits, where Joe, Kathy and I hung out at the beginning of our friendship. Wonderful selection of yarn: Manos, Cascade, Cherry Tree Hill, Habu (yes, they've got Habu), Rowan, Hemp for Knitting, Cascade, Frog Tree---and they've only just opened.

Nice atmosphere, too. Light, airy, welcoming. I met Kristen Carlberg, one of the owners, and she was very pleasant, helpful and knowledgeable. So you know I couldn't leave without buying something.

The picture does not do the colors justice--muted shades of aquas, pinks, greens, browns variously plyed together. It's Diakeito Diamusee Fine, a 100% wool fingering weight, with an spi of about 7.5 and 239 yards. Made in Japan and distributed by Dancing Fibers.

I'll be designing a sock pattern for it--the Gansey Sock. In my, um, spare time. While watching CSI. I've got the patterns charted already. Stay tuned.

Change UP
I'm seriously considering switching the blog to TypePad. I've had this argument with myself on and off for more than a year and I actually have a prototype layout done in TypePad. However, despite my web dev background, I hate fucking with code these days. However, recently I've been having "issues" with Blogger's image uploading system. And it's pissing me off.

If I do decide to go to TypePad, I'll forewarn you. It won't change the URL but I may have to take the blog offline for a day or two. Don't know yet and I haven't made a final decision. However, I'd welcome comments and opinions from those of you who blog and use TypePad.

Blogging can be rare and handy but Blogger often is not.