MD Sheep Shit and Mud

Best Quote I Heard All Day

To create man was a quaint and original idea, but to add the sheep was tautology--Mark Twain

God knows there were throngs of both at MD. I won't be going to MD again. Frankly, the thrill of insane women throwing themselves into already crowded booths, with or without strollers, has lost its charm for me. MD is far worse a venue than Rhinebeck. Why I thought it had perhaps gotten better in the ten years since last I attended is a mystery. 

I fully understand why newbies want to go. You'll never see such wares in one place. If you have not, then do so once. 

I'll stick with Rhinebeck, which is a far better festival.

None-da-less, I was happy to see BJ and Carol, albeit briefly. I bought what I wanted and got out of Dodge at noon. Here's what I bought. Not much.

Two Golding spindles. Bottom is the Celtic Knot, the top is Bali Sweetheart #8, which has a Russian insert. This is a one-of-a-kind. Below is the picture that the Goldings have on their website.

It's .87 ounces. Perfect for what I spin.

No, I didn't buy the Ladybug. Decided against it. Instead, today I ordered something else online from Halcyon that will be far more useful to me. When it shows up, hopefully by Friday, you'll see it.

The fiber at the festival seemed to be merino-heavy. I did find some lovely silk, though. The little bags below are about a half-ounce each. They'll be spun for a scarf similar to the one I made last year.

And here's some more silk. This is tussah. 

Of course, Jerry was with me. And he thoroughly enjoyed himself, asked lots of questions, and was blown away by the Golding Shepherdess wheel. Jerry gets the whole fiber deal. And finds it interesting. 

He wandered away frequently to look at something. Thank God he's tall. Otherwise, I would have lost him in the crowds.

Finally, on the way out, I spotted this stuff--70% wool, 30% seacell. I bought enough to make a short jacket or vest.

Of course, when I'm going to find the time to do all of this is a major question. But I'll find the time.

The good news is, I will be doing some writing for Spin-Off. Amy Clarke Moore has asked me to write for her, and I will. An interview with a secret celebrity will be forthcoming. And I have other articles to pitch to her, as well. I'll keep you posted as to who, what, when, and where.

I didn't take too many pictures of the event itself. What was more important to me than going to MD S&W was the event of the next day.

Will You Still Love Me, When I'm 64?

Or when I'm 59? On Sunday, the weather was so foul, Jerry and I headed down to Virginia to see one of my oldest and dearest friends, Peggy Carroll Fallon. We've been friends since 1965, when she was a freshman and I a sophomore at Montclair High School in NJ. 

We were the writing wunderkind back then. We wrote poetry together, played in the orchestra together ('cello for her, violin for me), and shared life beyond that, when we had our children Danny and Jenn, Melissa and Corinne, literally at the same time. Then Peg married Bill, her second husband, had two more kids, and they moved to Virginia, to an 1865 farmhouse. 

Sometimes, even though you haven't seen someone in three years, it's just a nanosecond. Prior to that, we had lost each other for 25 years. Now, we're together again. The only thing missing was the third piece--our Dottie. 

The love of a friend is inestimably rare and handy. Leaving her on Sunday was like ripping my arm out of its socket. But we'll be together again, shortly. Because I'm going back to old Virginny soon.

It's All Relative. Mommy, Daddy, Baby, President

Best Quote I Heard All Day

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.-- Albert Einstein

When my youngest daughter Corinne was tiny, she would identify her family as "Mommy. Daddy. Baby. President." I was never quite sure whether she was the Baby or the President. Perhaps her sister can clarify. But I doubt it. There's nothing better than a child's imagination. God knows both my children had imaginations that ran rampant, particularly Jenn.

Which is why I've decided that I will become even more childish than I am now. It's the only way to survive.

Happy belated birthday to my Sissyboo, Ms. Scrappy. She was my 12th birthday present. The gift that keeps on giving, as they say. 

Here's why Kar and Mar are glad that Mammy had them in April.

This picture was taken at Branch Brook Park this past Sunday, a county park in Newark/Belleville, NJ, that rivals DC with its cherry blossoms. Jerry and I were out and about, wanting to enjoy the sunshine, so he drove over and we cruised through the park. 

And then the weekend before, we drove along the Delaware River.

It's fucking 41 degrees and raining out, as I write this. Feh.

Obligatory Knitting (and Spinning) Shit

Well, almost one sleeve done on Jerry's sweater. As you can see, Cleo does not understand the concept of being nonplussed. She decided to step into the photo, something she never does. Little attention whore. 

If that isn't a look of disdain, I don't know what it is. Cleo is such a non-feline, I'm ashamed to call her a cat. I sat with my spindle last night, twirling it in front of her. She turned her back and walked away. No interest in yarn, no interest in cat toys, eats catnip and immediately falls asleep. Jesus. 

I've been fucking around with my Comet spindle again, this time using some Romney that I found in the fiber storage bin.

 It's actually spinning up nicely and I'm now satisfied that I can spindle. I still prefer a wheel, howsome ever. 

Panera Posse

I managed to make it to the Mt. Olive Panera last Wednesday for the knitting get-together. Only five of us showed up: Me, BJ, Linda, Jeanne, and later, Crystal. But I did take a picture of their gruesomenesses.

From left, it's Linda, Beej, and Jeanne. Crystal showed up after the photo shoot. I did admire Jeanne's bag that she made herself, of fabric called "Knitmare on Main Street." My favorite motif is the skeleton slumped in the armchair with the knitting. That's how I feel, most nights.

It's funny. I've never been much for groups, never joined much of anything other than orchestra in high school, dropped out of Girl Scouts because I was bored and the girls in the troop, other than Dottie, were annoying. But I enjoy going to this group when I can muster up the energy on Wednesday nights to make the 70-mile roundtrip after work. 

MD Not Cheap and Wool

Well, I'm ready. Got my pennies together, although I still haven't decided if I want to get the Ladybug. I am not usually so pussified when making a decision but the little schizo voice in my head keeps saying, "Do you REALLY need another wheel?" The schizo voice obviously mimicks my mother quite well. 

I'm bringing Jerry with me and my gut thoughts run to "do you really want him to know what you spend on this shit?" Of course, given fiber shoved into my eyeballs, Jerry will vanish for a brief time. You know he won't be any kind of shopping deterrent.

Twitz

I finally started using Twitter more often and stuck it into the sidebar the other night. As I was reading in e-Week, Twitter and FaceBook are now known as "mini-blogs." With Twitter limited to 140 characters, I'd say that was past "mini" but probably just enough for anyone's blather, including mine. 

I remember learning about stream-of-consciousness writing when I was a freshman in high school and thinking that it was a very cool way to write. I seem to recall that I tried my hand at it, possibly for a homework assignment. In fact, this blog is plenty stream of consciousness, when you come right down to it. I rarely think much of it through until I'm typing. I may take pictures, may use 'em, may not. 

So consider this true WYSIWYG kind of crap.

Hippo Bird-day

Friday will be my last day of being in my 50s because, as my mother so kindly reminded me yesterday, Saturday will be the first day of my 60s. I think she's enjoying the fact. Considering that she will be 86 in August but looks and acts like she's in her 60s, I figure I'm about 35 or so, really. What my mother knits would put a lot of knitters half her age to shame. She just finished the Mari Dembrow cardigan that I've been working on. And started another lace shawl. 

While I spent some time last week feeling a bit sorry for myself because damn it, I'm getting to be an old lady, I rallied and decided, fuck it. I'll never lose my attitude. Mammy hasn't, my grandmother didn't, I won't either. And I've passed this along to Jenn and Corinne, with Liz being the rarest and handiest budding curmudgeon of them all. It's all relative.

Sun? Flowers? WTF are those? GIMME SHELTER...on the beach.

Best Quote I Heard All Day

Spring is nature’s way of saying “Let’s party!”—Robin Williams

Party on, Mar. Party on, Tonant Weaders. Even though as I write this, it’s currently around 40 degrees Fahrenheit here in beautiful NEPA, the vernal equinox has arrived.

Ravelry Boohaha Feh-stival
I truly appreciated all of your comments re: the last post. Your support means more to me than I can express. Even though I do write for myself, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it makes me happy that others find something in what I write. I’ve still not bothered reading the thread. I left that up to you.

I’m not going away too soon. So the mean girls on Ravelry(I loved that analogy) are just going to have to take their pom-poms and perform obscene acts with cheap yarn.

So now, back to business.

Rock On
Jerry had a surprise for me on Saturday. He took me to see Fleetwood Mac at the Izod Center in the Jersey Meadowlands. Classic. Was that not a sweet thing to do? He’d been planning this surprise for a couple of months. And managed to keep his mouth shut, too. Nieces Kate and Michele came along and the four of us had a great time.

Fleetwood Mac was amazing. Especially since they are all over 60 now, including Stevie Nicks, who looked great. She isn’t doing her whirling dervish routine anymore, though. I suppose she has arthritis like me. I can still whirl, though, when the situation calls for it.

Besides knitting, music is a huge part of my life. Once upon a time, I was a musician...guitar and violin. I still play at the guitar, although not as often as I should.

The most important tool that a tech writer can have is an iPod Shuffle. In most places I’ve worked, writers are allowed to listen to them because music eliminates the office bullshit talking. No, I don’t have my own office. I have a wall. Not even a true cubicle, just a desk, with an overhead cabinet, and two foot-wide sides where I hang my calendar and other junk.

Here’s what’s on the Shuffle: The Stones, Tom Petty, Springsteen, The Grateful Dead, The Yardbirds, The Who, Warren Zevon, Talking Heads, Billy Joel, and a bunch of others. Rock is particularly inspiring when I’m making tutorial videos.

MD Sheep & Wool
I’m definitely going. And dragging poor Jeremiah with me, although he’s wonderfully supportive and has actually gone to Stix ‘n’ Stitches, my local yarn shop down in Montclair, NJ, with me (he fell asleep on Sheila’s couch, though). So I expect to meet some of you, right? And please, don’t give me that “I saw you but I was afraid to approach you.” Nonsense. My friends think I’m likeable, so don’t fear the reaper, OK?

I can't decide whether to buy the Ladybug or put money towards a new Mac laptop. Or maybe not spend it at all, even though I can afford to buy one or the other. My job is as secure as a job can be in this climate, but I've been loathe to spend money lately. However, I will buy something at MD, to be sure.

Jerry's Aran

Getting the back done. In fact, I should really be knitting and not writing. Halfway up the armholes, so it should be done by this weekend. And then, a sleeve.



I've decided to use the off-kilter braid as the center sleeve panel, offset by the three baby cables on each side. The braid is just wide enough to work for the saddle shoulder.

The Punk Princess Marches On
One of Liz's friends put this up on FaceBook. My little tin soldier had just hit her head while at the mall, how I don't know. And why she was in her band uniform is a mystery, unless they had just had practice and then she and her little gangsta friends made haste to their hangout.

Hard to believe she's going to be 17 this coming July. Still tiny, though. But quite the adult. Rare, handy, and a smartass to boot. Truly my blood. I was so much like her at that age. Brazen, artsy, and never afraid to run my mouth.

I Meant What I Said and I Said What I Meant

Best Quote I Heard All Day
Shorth is better than length.—Dr. Seuss

I think all knitting directions should replace length with shorth. Although I think it should actually be sherth.

Long = length. Short = sherth.

Catch the vowel consistency?

Today would have been Theodor Geisel’s 105^th birthday. I’m old enough to remember when Cat in the Hat was published in 1957. I was seven and had been reading since I was four. But the sheer goofiness of the book won my little heart.

My favorite Seuss book is McElligot’s Pool, a book that has been overshadowed by other Seuss works.

That book, and Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass, inspired my fertile imagination, which really needed no encouragement. I was a whimsical child and I identified with Alice, who rebelled against the boring and repressive Victorian lifestyle she lived by escaping into Wonderland.

Dr. Seuss offered me the same escape. So, what's your favorite Seuss book? I loved reading Green Eggs and Ham to my girls, particularly since Corinne only ate about five things as a child: hot dogs, steak, my chicken and cashews stir-fry, mac and cheese, and McDonald's hamburgers (she hated mine).

Knock, Knock. Who’s There? Aran? Aran Who?

Aran’t you glad I didn’t say Orange?

Sorry. An uncontrollable pun leakage. I’m not going to explain the original joke. If you don’t know it, Google it.

The Dale Falk for Jerry’s Aran finally came in on the slow boat from Denmark last Thursday.

My swatch showed me a few things. First, I needed to move the two tight plaits closer to the center motif—I had placed them a bit too far away and as a result, they seemed drifty rather than anchored. Second, the one baby cable was too weak to have any impact. So I added two more. Finally, it was clear that the single moss stitch added absolutely nothing and in fact, detracted from the baby cable. I decided to use simple seed stitch as a filler. It’s quietly innocuous and wouldn’t detract from any of the other stitch patterns.

Years ago, someone told me that an odd number of items catches the eye far better than an even number. This had something to do with flower arranging, as I recall. Back then, I didn’t know anything about the Fibonacci Sequence. Jerry’s Aran has 3 main design elements—the central panel, its tight plaits on either side, and the rambling braid. If you count the three baby cables as one element, plus the seed stitch filler, there are a total of five elements: Three major, two minor. An odd number. Think about how an even number of elements might appear. I don’t think they’d work nearly as well.

I can do the sweater calculations from scratch but I usually use Sweater Wizard because I’m intrinsically lazy and because it generates schematics too. Based on the swatch’s layout, I knew that I’d need at least 116 stitches for the bulk of the front/back patterning, excluding the filler stitches on each side. Once I plugged in Jerry’s measurements and the gauge, everything fell into place. My final numbers, 132 for cast-on and 148 for the body, works perfectly with my layout.

I debated on fiddling with the ribbing, maybe sticking some small cables therein, and then decided to leave it the fuck alone. There’s enough going on in the body of the sweater. Less is always more. I like 2/2 ribbing. Good elasticity and better than 1/1 to knit.

Being a tech writer means that I’m relatively organized when pulling together directions and associated stuff, such as the charts. Everything goes into a dedicated folder on my local drive, and then I plug all the pieces—charts, directions, and schematics—into a Word document. (Sweater Wizard will export to Word, although the formatting sucks.) The directions get a quick edit. I print them out, shove ‘em into plastic sleeves, and then into a binder.

As I go along, I’ll mark up the directions with any additional information that needs to be added.

Here it is—ribbing is done and 20 rows of the pattern, so far.

I've decided on the motifs for the sleeve. When I get there, you'll see how I've designed the pattern layout. It's going to have saddle shoulders, so I'm sure you can use your head and figure it the fuck out, right?

I've been asked if I'm going to publish this design. Yes. I'll sell it from here, probably. The old Cafe Press routing, most likely. I'll do the actual leaflet, .pdf it, and that's how it will go.

I miss being a magazine editor. Funny...I haven't thought about editing magazines in a long time, being up to my eyeballs in tech writing. But lately, doing these video tutorials for work, I've had a chance to screw around with graphics, editing the video, and trying to put a little artistic imagination into an otherwise dull corporate dealie.

Fibroid Events

Post Rhinebeck Retreat Survey

I’ll be talking to Ted soon about this. The results of the survey have given me a pretty good idea of what’s what and I wasn't terribly surprised at the high scorers. Here are the results, with 43 respondents so far.

Ted and I had discussed having this retreat at Easton Mountain; however, they would prefer a 4-day event. That doesn't matter, though. There are, I'm sure, plenty of places in the Rhinebeck vicinity, that would be quite suitable. I think that this survey is pretty indicative of what would fly. I know it's certainly what I would like: A 2-day, laid-back retreat, with some of us doing the teaching. I would certainly teach finishing and the computer bit, Ted and I could both do lace, and I'm sure there may be other qualified people who may like to teach. I was amused that only 9% wanted a "name" teacher. And that no one was particularly interested in an intarsia session.

MD Sheep & Wool

I think I’ve gotten Jerry to agree to go to MD S&W this year. We were thinking about going away for a long spring weekend anyway, so why not? Frederick is lovely that time of year—at this point, any place in the spring would be lovelier than this fucking mess.

It’ll be a good dress rehearsal for Rhinebeck, I suppose. Jerry is tremendously supportive of what I do, especially since he's the main recipient of my shit these days. I don’t know who’s going to MD, other than my friend BJ, but that doesn’t matter. It's not that I need more crap but I am truly jonesin' for that Schacht Ladybug.

So, despite the hideous weather, I've been doing and feeling great. Honestly, Jerry has made the difference. And it's so nice to have someone who loves those Raggi socks I make. I've got another pair on the needles that I'll try to finish this weekend for him. Raggi socks are truly rare and handy foot coverings. As Jeremiah is a rare and handy man--Lally columns and other construction projects around the house. Yikes.