Home Again

I should have given you all fair warning that blog silence might be coming; I was positive I'd have time to blog on the road. Clearly not, so let's catch up a bit!

Mousie and I traveled east, spending time in NYC and Ocean City, NJ.

We saw knitbombing in Chelsea,

took a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty,

drank lots and lots of coffee,

saw Broadway shows on Broadway (!)

visited the New York Public Library (gasp!)

played in the Atlantic,

and came home with lots of Schriver's candy.

Improvising

As summer's bounty starts to fade, the amount of iffy fruit in the fridge is rising. I seized on a smoothie as the perfect way to use up some of this waning produce without having to think to hard about how it looked in the package, and was really warming to the idea of a peach-raspberry-strawberry combo when I discovered we were out of yogurt.



So I had to do some creative substitution. Oh, darn!

Calloo, Callay

This morning I woke up to rain. Oh frabjuous day! I needed this break from the heat, the sun, the muggy air, and more sun.

Don't palm trees look nice against a backdrop of clouds?

The morning had a very back-to-school feel: me, tromping through the rain with a fresh haircut, wearing stiff jeans and yet-to-be scuffed sneakers. Fingers crossed this the beginning of the end of a frumious summer.

:)

They say happiness can't be bought, but for the cost of peanuts, sunflower seeds, raisins, coconut flakes, and chocolate chips, I am pretty darn happy.

In Which I Throw Technique to the Wind

I am officially obsessed with my Vega beret.

The project began with a bit of trepidation: first the mathy acrobatics involved in getting gauge. I always need to go up a needle size for everything (use a 6?), but ribbing is usually knitted on needles 1 size smaller than the body of the project (use a 5!), but the ribbing on Vega is rawther snug to begin with (5 not working!), so I ended up going up to a size 6 needle.

With size 6 needles, the yarn finally felt right, so I sped through the ribbing with renewed confidence.

Then it was time for the Fair Isle. I will admit, it had not occurred to me until that point that I don't really do colorwork. A quick scroll through the blog archives will bear this out: I am largely a monochrome knitter, with occasional forays into (gasp!) striping.

So I stared at the pattern's little Fair Isle chart for a minute, wondered whether I should hit Google, and then remembered: I am me. Every single knitting technique I know I have learned from a combination of reading books & articles and ample fudging. Some time, in the distant past, I had done Fair Isle. I thought about it and sort of began to remember. Then I fudged the rest, and amazingly, my hat is looking quite a lot like the ones in Jared Flood's pictures.

And I simply adore it.

Unexpected Diversions

After a break so short that I didn't even get to wash my backpack, we are back to school. Over the weekend, however, Querido and I spent the weekend in a place I never thought I'd go: Las Vegas.

Mousie came along, too!



(muchisimas gracias, Querido, for helping Mousie pose just about everywhere we went)

The city was and was not at all like I expected. Expected: lots of people with little taste and less modesty. Unexpected: resort-style hotels.




The primary purpose of the visit was to see Adele, who is absolutely fabulous live, and such a sweet, engaging performer.

Although Mousie opted out of coming along to the concert, she did take every opportunity to pose with the (unexpected) artworks which were sprinkled around just about everywhere.





We saw the sights, ate a lovely dinner, perused the wares at the best store ever, and wham bang, the weekend was over and now it's back to the grindstone.

Good things in a Small Package

I simply love getting things in the mail. (We've discussed this before). The anticipation, the package, the return address to someplace far away with a name that evokes far-off hills, and sheep, and people in sweaters wrapping bouncy skeins of wool in cream-colored places and sending it to the far corners of the country (in this case, Portland, ME)



And then there's the opening. Yep, that's a Brooklyn Tweed logo. And a Brooklyn Tweed thank-you note.



For the purchase of Brooklyn Tweed yarn. (a treat for my completing a reviled and feared task: submitting job apps).



Here we begin Part One of my quest to Knit American. The seed of this idea was planted a few years ago with Blue Garter's praise of the wools of the Pacific Northwest. Crafting is yet another arena where consumers can use their purchasing power to guide the modes of production into sustainable channels, and have a lot of fun doing it. There are not really any wools truly local to where I live now, but buying yarns produced in my own country, or even on my side of the Mississippi, is a lot more local than buying yarn from half the world away. The idea of "Knitting American" expanded a bit with my joining a yarn CSA. And then both Quince & Co. and Shelter yarns hit the market. The idea became a PLAN: sample the yarns of a selection of companies that produce yarn in the US from American wool, make a vote for American shepherds and mills, and see how they compare to yarns spun who-knows-where out of wool sourced from who-knows-where.

As you can see, I'm starting slow, with a hat. But I have heard good things about Beaverslide Dry Goods' sales, and there are some sweater-dresses in Modern Top-Down Knitting that put me in mind of Quince and Co.'s aesthetic...

The beauty of knittinglessness is that it never lasts long.