Maine Lining

Best Quote I Heard All Day

Babies don't need a vacation but I still see them at the beach.  I'll go over to them and say, 'What are you doing here, you've never worked a day in your life.'--Steven Wright

I always ran into the surf when I was a toddler and drove my mother nuts. She ended up putting a harness on me. 

Back in the High Life Again
Yo. I'm back from vacation in New England. A short but wonderful week. We stayed with Jerry's friends John and Mary Jean at their beautiful house on a small lake in Lovell, ME.

Ya can't be crabby on vacation. Every morning I sat on the deck and worked on a book project. Here's the view. It was hard to keep my eyes on the work.

Jerry and I had a fabulous time. I needed the rest. But I worked on the book project constantly. Here's a teaser picture. This is the scarf in progress, with one of the mitts that goes with the set. There will be a hat, too. I chose the Mini Mochi rainbow shade because it is reminiscent of my very first knitting project, the one that Ma started me on. I will include the original pattern too--dare I say that it was Red Heart? Yes, I have the original Red Heart color, so I'll be making that scarf too, illustrative of what I did when I was eight years old. 

The book will be littered with my designs that reflect different times in my life. At this point, the book has 15 projects that will be interwoven with the text. Some of the designs: the Winnepesaukee summer jacket done in a cotton/linen blend, a sweater tribute to Mary Quant, one of my first fashion influences, a few sock patterns, and Fair Isle Mania. You'll see. I'll give you some more teasers as I go along. 

One thing I've learned--doing your own designs beats the piss out of fucking around with someone else's stuff. I realized the other day that I have done nothing but my own shit for the past year and a half. And been quite happy with what I've accomplished. In a few weeks, I'll put up a short excerpt from the book. I appreciate the publishing suggestions but I know who the publishers are. Whether I go with any of them shall be seen. Interweave is a possibility, although I will insist that I see the final edited copy. The last time I wrote for them, I was not accorded that courtesy. As a former magazine editor myself, I know how to deal with writers. You keep their voice. That should not be edited out. The editor is not the writer. 

Song of the South

Well, I've been hearing nothing but Asheville from readers and from friends. Jerry and I don't mind the mild cold--it's the subzero crap that we hate. I can tolerate 40 degrees or so. Plus, New Jersey is ridiculously expensive and we both want out. Funny, because he was born in Brooklyn and I in Manhattan. Yet we're both country people. I guess we'll never lose our accents, and I'll always love being a snotty Jersey skank. This move won't happen for a bit--logistics, ya know.

New England Fiber Haunts

I did go to Patternworks. Feh. The shop in Center Harbor, NH, is just a regular place, not even half as good as my LYS, Stix 'n' Stitches in Montclair, NJ. Frankly, if you take a trip to New England, you can pass it by for Halcyon, in Bath, ME, Harrisville in NH, or the Fiber Studio in Henniker, NH. And of course, WEBS is a must. I made it to WEBS and bought some Harrisville Shetland for a weaving project that I've got on the Flip loom. We really didn't have the time to go to Halcyon or Harrisville. Jerry was a good sport--he went into WEBS and sat in one of their comfy chairs. When I dipped into Patternworks, he took a short nap in the car.

One of these days, I'm going to do another tour of these places--anyone want to come? There are other smaller places in New England that I'd like to visit. I did go to Keepsake Quilting, which owns Patternworks. I'd consider quilting if I had the time and the room. I learned how to quilt years ago and would do it again. I would love to do a reproduction Civil War-era quilt or perhaps a Depression-era quilt. I prefer the antique reproductions to more modern fabrics. It's my love of history, I suppose. I know everyone loves Kaffe's fabrics, and they are lovely. But not what I would use if I were to quilt. Actually, I had often thought of doing a whitework quilt, where the quilting stitch is the star. Fuck machine quilting. Give me a needle for my hand. Machine piecing is OK--machine quilting is a bore, to me. 

So it's time to put this entry to bed, as well as me. Going back to work today was not at all rare and handy. But they do give me money, so what the fuck.