The Last to Know, Of Course

Best Quote I Heard All Day
There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it--Dorothy Parker

And I do magnificently disregard my readers. Because I write for me. Always. I do not pander to the great unwarshed.

You know, of course, that subscribers are starting to receive their copies of the Winter Interweave Knits.

Unfortunately, that is not true of this writer. Ah, me. I have not yet seen this issue, wherein I have two articles, the interview with Kristin Nicholas, and the endpaper, Ravelings. I suppose if I were a subscriber, I would have done.

There was some very minor editing done on the interview, which I saw and approved. Didn't affect it much and frankly, once you write something and submit it, it ceases to belong to you anyway. However, I don't know if the Ravelings, originally submitted as "Brackets", was ever edited. I never received any edited copy. I sure hope it wasn't, too much.

My one sadness is that the person who inspired me to write "Brackets" has not yet read it. I hope they will.

But my mother is very proud of me. Even when you're 57, having your mom tell you that means a lot.


You May Have Noticed
Or not. But I have started using titles for the blog. Why? Well, because evidently Ravelry needs a title in order to present a screenshot of your blog on your page.

We'll see how long I last with this.

The Latest Blog Superstar and Greasy Kid Stuff
Ya know, Liz kills me. Whenever I put up her picture on the blog, she somehow thinks she's received her 15 minutes of fame. Um, not hardly likely. But few of you have ever seen a picture of my other grandchild, Ian, aka Birthday Present.

It's been said that Ian and I share the same impish eyes and smile. We almost share the same birthday. Ian was born on April 26, I on April 25. If his mother's labor hadn't been so gawd-awful long, he would have come a bit sooner.

Ian's with us this weekend. He's my favorite 10-year-old, bar none. Although I must admit, I don't get the fascination with Transformers. But Ian loves my spinning wheel, thinks it's very cool machinery.

I'm waiting for him to transform it.


Rhetorical question: Why do all toys seem to be two mints in one these days? Car into robot, robot into flowerpot, eggbeater into megamonster. Whatever happened to yo-yos, kites, toy trains, et al? I know. I'm an old fart, even though I'm a technogeek.

And don't get me going on safety considerations for playtime. I managed to make my way through childhood, riding a bike sans helmet, rollerskating like a dervish (without kneepads), walking across the jungle gym with no protective padding beneath me, without ever cracking my skull open or breaking a damned thing.

Of course, I did often get grass cuts, which I allowed to bleed down my leg, for maximum shock effect when presented to my mother. It was worth the blood drip to see her practically faint.

More Spinning Shit
Back by semi-popular demand. This is all I've been able to do the past few days. No knitting at all. I do like this Las Vegas Brights silk. It will be interesting once plyed.




I'm now finished the yellow bit, into the orange, and then it's back to the blue and the sequence starts all over again.

I will probably begin spinning the other roving at a different spot in the color sequence so that I get a blend of colors when plyed.

Re: Ravelery groups, I did join some spinning groups that I've found very worthwhile, Schacht Spinners and Spin Tech, along with the generic Spinning group. There's been interesting discussion about Scotch tension versus double drive tension, which is better.

The Joy is Scotch tension only; however, the Schacht Matchless can be set up as DD or ST. For this silk, I decided to fuck around with Scotch tension because I rarely use it on the Matchless. I rather like it, actually, although in spinning this silk, very little tension is needed, as is with merino.

The one thing that many newbie spinners don't realize is that once you set up for one tension or the other, you can't switch mid-bobbin. You've got to see it all the way through to the end.

I'm fast becoming a Scotch tension convert, though. I have always liked it on the Joy. No reason not to like it on the Matchless. It's true--you can control the tension much better than with a double-drive tension setup. And besides, setting up a single driveband is a lot easier than a double.

Enough of this. I've got a busy day tomorrow, a brunch at Stix-n-Stitches down in Montclair, a whirlwind visit with Mammy, and then up to E'burg with another load. This is the 4th time I've moved since Jimmy died in 2002. I'm sick of it. It's very unrare and extraordinarily unhandy. And I've been finding that I've been missing him very much lately. Despite my "new normal."