All the Young Dudes

Best Quote I Heard All Day
Color is music to your eyes—Kaffe Fassett

As ever, Kaffe has nailed it. Little wonder that so many knitters I know are or have been musicians, including me. Or at the very least, music aficionados. Ted knows more about classical music than almost anyone I know, except for my friend Chris Gately. I’d love to see the two of them compete on a Music Jeopardy.

Yes, all the young dudes were at Easton Mountain in upstate NY this weekend for the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat. I think it’s wonderful that the guys get together, without the chicks, to enjoy each other’s company, learn from each other, and run around naked. Yeah, they do. I have that on good authority. I am sorry I didn’t Joe, Ted, Lars, Stephen, Sean, and whoever else is going. But I’m going to meet Peter Jobson on Thursday! Nanna and I have been “cyber friends” for years and I’m excited that he’ll be passing through my neck of the woods on his way to Philly. I missed out on meeting Mary Helen two years ago so at least I’ll get to meet one of my Aussie friends.

Death Cab for Cutie

Great name for a band. Some of my favorite band names are Talking Heads, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and the Dead Kennedys. I was thinking that the perfect name for a knitting list would be Death Cable for Cutie.

Except that the lists are all traveling in their own death cabs. Little wonder, given the social networking that has become the trademark of Web 2.0. Folksonomy. That’s a word you may not yet know but is a portmanteau of folk and taxomony. Social tagging.

I’m guilty of being a Twit and a FaceBook addict, although I rarely IM anyone and I never text-message, leaving that to Liz, who seems to have spastically magic fingers as only the young do these days.

Ravelry has certainly become the gigunda list of all time, encompassing the KnitDweebs and the rest of us with functioning brains and modicums of taste. In fact, I have not been on Ravelry in almost a year, for many reasons. One is time. I can shit Twits out from my BlackBerry but I can’t access Ravelry from work, since my work laptop is tightly controlled by the company for which I consult.

In some respects, the impending death of the lists isn’t a big surprise. For many people, writing an e-mail these days lacks the immediacy and the exposure that the social networking sites give to users. I’m talking about instant gratification, the disease that affects many of us, me included. I’m not predicting the death of blogs yet; however, FB entries are known to tech peeps as mini-blogs. There is a lot of truth to that. I can nail an FB or Twitter “What are you doing” in a nanosecond at virtually any time.

Where I used to get several Socknitters digests a day, now I might get one every couple of days. Frankly, I rarely had time to read them. If the lists want to survive, they will have to move from Yahoo Groups to FaceBook Groups. Otherwise, the old-time lists as we knew them will take a death cab trip into cyber history. Where they belong, I think.

Sit ‘n’ Spin

For some reason, I’ve been more interested in spinning recently than in knitting, although I’ve picked up my knitting here and there. I suppose spring and MS&W purchases have something to do with that.

I’d like to spin some silk to knit another scarf like the one I made for my friend Susan last year.

The pattern stitch came from Heirloom Knitting. It worked well with the handpainted silk and it was enough of a challenge to keep my interest piqued (not “peaked,” which is how I’ve seen too many people spell it). This is some of the silk I bought in MD. I'm hoping to get it all spun by the end of next month so I can get cracking on the scarf.

Granddoggie Bailey

Yes, I'm a Grammy again. To a petite canine who charmed this cat lover to the nth degree.

That's Bailey with his momma Jenn. Bailey's a Pomeranian. Fluffy, foxy, and teeny. We loves Bailey, preciousss. He's quite rare and handy. Must off to bed go. It's after midnight, I've been fucking around with FaceBook, playing Bejeweled and doing badly, and now my allergies are screaming "Zyrtec."