Memories of an Old Fart...Still a Kid. Heh.

Best Quote I Heard All Day
"Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us." Oscar Wilde

I swear to God, the older you get, the more important life memories become. Last week I saw my high school boyfriend, whom I had not seen in 44 years. I remember the first time I saw him. Me and my friends were all hanging out at a club for teenagers called the IT, held in a local church . (God knows what IT stood for.) And in he walks, wearing sunglasses. Hot damn! What a handsome, cool guy! We danced and I knew he was sexier than any other boy at the club. This was 1967. I was 17, he was a year younger and when we began going steady...a dating setup that doesn't exist anymore...I got a lot of "you're robbing the crib" crap from people. But I didn't give a shit and told them to go fuck themselves. Our memories flew back at us last week. Yeah, we're in our 60s now but both of us ain't old farts.

This month has another memory lane for me. Thirty years ago, I began my publishing career. One Sunday in February 1983, I was reading the New York Times job classifieds, looking for a knitting job. And holy shit! There's an ad for an assistant knit/crochet editor at McCall's Needlework & Crafts. The next day, I called the number, they had me come in for an interview, gave me a sweater for which I had to write the directions, and within a week, they hired me.

This was my first issue. July/August 1983.

The only reason I got the job was because I was a knitter. Not an editor. Gina Rhoades, the knitting editor, who had been with the magazine for years, was more of a crocheter and needed me to handle the knitting. Neither Gina nor I chose the designs. Lola Ehrlich, a former Vogue Knitting editor, was our Fashion Editor who selected the knit/crochet pieces. And besides talking to readers on the phone, helping them with knitting issues, editing the pattern directions, I also had to do the page layouts for knit/crochet directions. Yes, this is where I learned how to publish.

Now I'm running back to my original writing and editing.

Another Memory
Believe it or not, Mammy Ellie is going to be 90 in August and she still knits constantly. At Christmas, I had my sister take a picture of me and her knitting.

I remember Ellie dragging me to the five and ten store to buy me my own yarn and needles. I was 7 years old, a kid who was always bouncing and getting into trouble. She taught me how to knit so that I'd stay out of her knitting bag. Loved those colored plastic markers! I wanted them!

Design Shit
So now that I'm busy finishing my lace sock book, I'm using Ellie as a model. Here's one of the book designs on her feet.

Using family members as models is nice. I designed this scarf using Universal Yarn's Garden 10 Egyptian cotton lace yarn. Check it out.

That's my daughter Corinne. I gave her the scarf. Anyone who models for me gets it. The Punk Princess, my other sock model, has more knitted socks from Grammy than anyone else.

So I'm working on the final lace sock for the book and have started designing the book layout. This is going up on Ravelry, hopefully next month. Still gotta do more design photos.

Anyway, back to a weekly entry. Writing became so rare and handy. Now it's back on my typing fingers. I do have Dragon Naturally Speaking, the app that takes your voice and types what you say, but can't write by talking into a mic. My brain needs the typing fingers.

Later, skanks. Come back next Tuesday.