Crabby

How did it become August already? I hate August. I've been out of school for a hundred years now but everytime August rolls around, I get that pang of Back to School anxiety and imagine the weather is cooling enough to start worrying about the onset of winter. Even though right now it's about 99F degrees and winter wouldn't be so bad. Did I mention the AC unit in the house has broken?

We had a really good, social weekend. We basically ate and drank the entire time, neither which are really good for keeping cool. After we spent an afternoon at a friend's BBQ, my college friend Raj in Providence invited us down to help him with a shellfish situation. He calls up and goes, "Mike [another college friend] overnighted me a dozen crabs! From Baltimore! I can't eat all these by myself! Help!"

I don't think it is an everyday occurance that one guy sends another guy 12 crabs just cuz. It is the sweetest thing ever. And really quirky which I like. 

After that bbq of hotdogs and pulled pork and cupcakes (filled with peanut butter!) in the smothering heat, the LAST THING I wanted to eat were crabs. But I couldn't say no. Because those crustaceans were sent with love.

His place wasn't air conditioned either. By the time we were done eating, his apartment reeked of an oceanside landfill and our faces had melted into our shoes. Seagulls uulated overhead over all the crab guts and broken shells. Oh the humanity. We were sweaty and the salty shellfish smell just stuck to our every salty pore.

But oh they were tasty. All heavy and meaty and sweet and delicious. Those crabs were once full of life, you could tell.

We cooled down afterwards by going to WaterFire. And by "cooled down" I mean "remained uncomfortably warm." Everyone should visit the phenomenon that is WaterFire. It's a funny thing. Someone decided to light the narrow little rivers with a string of pyres, play some world music over the loudspeakers, serve some lemon slush, maybe some wine, and foosh! it's the best thing since sliced bread. They've got a couple of gondolas going on, and masked "nymphs" rowing up and down tossing flowers into the crowd. WaterFire is every weekend in the summer and you'll be surprised the number of people who show up just to watch fire burn.

I guess it's the equivalent of lighting a ton of candles around your bathtub. No one argues that a candlelit bath is romantic. It is. So when you imagine WaterFire, picture a placid river instead of a warm tub, crackling bonfires instead of flickering candles, and bam you've got uber, SUPER-SIZED romance, no? More romance than you can handle so that you invite all the neighbors to join in.

Providence is really pretty. There's the quaint, colonial backdrop of the RISD campus and College Hill on one side, and the quaint metropolis on the other. I never used to think much of the place when I went to school here.

But all it took was a good exfoliant - the kind with microbeads -  a little makeup and some pearls and suddenly she's got all this grown up sophistication that I hardly know who she is anymore. So proud and wistful at the same time...

I wish knitting would keep me entertained these days, but as it turns out I haven't knitted a stitch in a whole week. My mom called yesterday, and asked if I wanted her sewing machine, as she is upgrading. A sign perhaps?

Comments [7]
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Providence

A funny tail

Guess what I did just now, in this here 10000 degree heat with no air conditioning to speak of so that I have to retreat into the cool but moist basement where I can smell the mushrooms sprouting?

Kooch! I picked up my long-abandoned Kooch and started fiddling with it again!

To go from exclusively knitting on size 1, 2, 3 needles since March to knitting on size 10 overnight must surely be the CRAZIEST thing I've done all year! My hands were like, mmmmmGAAH! Knitting...with lumber...it...hurts...

Well, that's about all the knitting content I have for you this week. I will now fall back on us fellow knitters' usual blogging crutch and fill the rest of this white space with content about...my cat. You're in for a special treat though, because today I don't have just any ole cat pictures, I have a thrilling exposé on my cat and his little Oddity. With pictures.

Exhibit A: Bunny from the front. Normal and cat-like by all accounts.

Exhibit B: Bunny from the back.  Sweet baby jesus what IS that?!

Perhaps an aerial view will help us understand better:

Or maybe a collage?

Do you see? That is Bunny's claim to fame - the crunchy, stunted, malformed tail! If you were ever a first time guest at our house, you'd have to touch that tail before I let you in. And when you touch it, I mean really really touch it, because you'll have no choice, I'll totally make you do it, you'll find that the base of his tail is a ball of unpleasantly twisted bone, as if someone took his long, normal tail and just jammed it in like it was an accordian.

But of course no one did that. By all accounts, he was born that way (we got him and his brother at a pound). It doesn't hurt him to have his tail like that, although it does get him into trouble that normal cats like his brother Veebs, with their luxuriously long tails, don't get into. That thing is like a grappling hook!

Bunny's tail nub has been documented to:

1. catch in the handles of plastic bags. The faster he runs, so louder the plastic bag.
2. close doors as he walks by
3. catch on yarn, which are attached to needles and the precarious beginnings of LACE, and travel off the couch, across the entire living room and up 13 flights of stairs
4. catch on the cables plugged into the desktop CPU. As Bunny struggles to escape, he pulls the CPU about 5 feet across the floor like a strongman and all the USB cables attached bend 90 degrees. (That must have really hurt the poor rabbit. Sad face.)
5. swivel 'round and 'round at the base when he's mad.
6. brush under Veeb's nose and flick his face as he walks by.
   I need to catch that on tape sometime, because hahaha there's such a human look of disgust on Veeb's face when he gets slapped by that quasi-tail.

So that's our little Bunny with the curious tail. If there were ever Mütter Musuem for felines, I'd totally have him on display. Next to that jar of Veeb's perfectly BCB's.

"Ew."

Comments [8]
Filed Under: Cats

Summer

Tanglewood last weekend was not quite the concert I expected it to be. The idea was to spread a nice, wide blanket on the thick lawn, drink a few glasses of wine, eat a little, knit a little, lay back as the sun goes down, wait for the stars to materialize as the sky grows blacker, and get lost in sad, morbid fantasies as if Mozart's Requiem was the soundtrack to my own funeral.

Either I misread or the web site information was incorrect, but the Requiem was not playing that night.

And I couldn't knit in the dark.

There was however the scent of citronella candles to keep mosquitos at bay. There was the soft blue night, the blinking stars and satellites, the flash of a few meteors, music floating by from somewhere over there, a warm hand in mine. Nestled in this familiar backdrop, long quiet feelings stirred and stretched, slinked and swelled into that space between my lungs.

There was a two-week road trip exactly ten summers ago that took us from our hometown of Atlanta up to Quebec City and back, with numerous stops in between that included the soft square of a lawn I was laying on tonight. We were taking a break from driving, we were trying to slow the time. We were 1,000 miles away from home, me with the boy I fantasized about one day marrying, not knowing that ten miles away lived the boy I would.

I gave that warm hand a squeeze. Things turned out the way they should have, but man, sometimes...Those two weeks on the road ten years ago just did not seem like enough.

That was a good, good summer.

Comments [3]
Filed Under: Life

Finished (400th?) Jaywalkers

Pattern: Duh
Yarn: "Three Rivers" by Yarntini, sport weight
Needles: US3 dpns

These socks are for wife of brother-in-law, who made it a point to tell me the last time I saw her that she is a "big fan of socks" and that she "always wears socks, even in summer." Well, maybe she didn't make it a point to tell me, but I flattered myself into thinking so, so that I would have a good excuse to buy more sock yarn to knit another pair.

I modified the pattern so there were 13 stitches on each of the 4 needles = 52 sts total. I probably could have done 15 stitches per needles as these socks fit me pretty well, but they're destined for feet much bigger than mine...I'm counting on them to stretch to fit.

After knitting many pairs of socks toe-up/short row heel, I finally thought I'd give the ole cuffdown/heel flap number a revisit. And you know, knitting the heel flaps/short row/gusset takes three times as long, and three times more yarn, as it does to just do a short row heel, but guess what, I think I DO like the construction of heel flaps better.

The yarn is great, soft and perfectly stripey. I've never finished a pair of socks so quickly - thank you sport-weight yarn!

...But now instead of feeling satisfied and fulfilled from the instant gratification, I feel empty and lost. What do I knit next, yet another pair of socks? I squint and look into the knitting horizon and see...nothing. Nothing! I need a break from socks, but I don't want to finish Rose of England, I don't want to restart my mom's sweater, I don't want to finish Cate (remember her? No? Me neither), don't want to do nothin.

I'll feel better if these socks are grumperina's 400th finished Jaywalkers, heh.

I feel a sudden attack of the Knitting Slumps.

I just want to go swimming.

Comments [11]
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks | Jaywalkers

J-walkers in 3 rivers

I have to knit socks with sport weight yarn more often. Only a few hours and I'm nearly done with an entire sock. Woooo.

Taking off soon to western Mass. again for a concert tonight at Tanglewood with the siblings-in-law. Mozart's Requiem is on the menu, as are deviled eggs, grapes, cheese, and wine that we're going to chow while out on the lawn. It's the perfect venue for knitting too, to be relaxing outdoors under the stars with your family, surrounded by music and fireflies, drinking your wine, knitting your sock. So many enjoyable activities to do, all at the same time.

Comments [9]
Filed Under: Socks | Jaywalkers

Pomatomus anklets

Pattern: Pomatomus, modified for anklets
Yarn: Koigu KPM, Dye code P823, one skein, plus just a tiny few yards of a second. So close to keeping it at just one!
Needles: US2 dpns

Shake your love. I just can't shake your love. Shake your love. I just can't shake. Your love.

I tried several times to knit something other than Pomatomus. Started various sock patterns, experimented with different stitches, only to rip them out and return to Poma. Why mess around when you've got something that works? Poma's beautiful shells flatter any yarn, and pair that with perfect levels of ribbiness and you've got socks the whole family can enjoy.

But WHO in the family will be receiving this? That is to be determined... 

Again I knit this toe-up with the Sherman short row method. Same approach as for this pair, except this time I knit on US2 instead of 1. 

I didn't like how the holes looked at the edge of the instep, so this time I replaced all the beginning YO's in Chart B with a ktfb (for the first YO on the first row I did a M1).

After working the toe, I did two repeats of Chart B, knit the heel, then did half a repeat of Chart A (rows 1-12 only), then knit 3 rows of 1x1 ribbing, then did the knit1-purl1 cast off with a tapestry needle.

So fast, so satisfying! I've knit Pomatomus so many times now that I can finally spell it correctly the first time around without having to look it up!

Thanks so much for the advice on how to neatly join a round. I will try this out later when I cast on for Jaywalkers. YAY!

Comments [2]
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks | Pomatomus

Latest mid-season acquisitions

On the left: GEMS Opal merino yarn in teal, bought at a lovely yarn store (Loop) in Philadelphia. They stocked a variety of colors but this one was the only I came away with. When faced with so much variety, I freeze instantly with indecision, until of course I get home, 500 miles away, and then do I think, Oh why didn't I get that or that or that when I had the chance? I'm wishing I picked up a skein of red to make my Boston Red Socks. This is some nice yarn.

On the right: Self-striping sport-weight yarn from yarntini in colorway "Three Rivers." Yay! I've been coveting yarntini's goods for awhile, admiring from afar...Finally broke down and asked her to dye me up some in sport-weight when all the stock from her store and pureknits were gone. That's of course when I wanted it the most. What a pretty, pretty skein, so pretty I could eat it.

So now that I have more than enough inventory (including these yarn here that I haven't yet touched - except for the blue Koigu) for Christmas socks, I have to go through the task of determining WHO is worthy of receiving socks made from which yarn. The obvious answer is ME, but me is not the right answer.

I started knitting another Pomatomus with the Opal, and since it's sport-weight, I had to adjust gauge and rewrote the chart to be a 8-stitch by 14-row pattern repeat (as opposed to a 12x22 pattern repeat). I decided I would finally do this one cuffdown for once.

Help me.

But look how ugly it is. I always have a problem joining the round after casting on. I can't avoid the little gap or a having a sort of tier form between the first and last stitch on the cast-on round. Usually I go back with a tapestry needle and sort of tighten it shut, but it still doesn't look clean, and this tier here is particularly bad and annoying. Waah.

I cast on long-tail, and usually doublestrand with the long tail for the first two stitches when joining the round...what else can I do neatly join a round?

Comments [11]
Filed Under: General Knitting | Socks

How to make a Sidecar

Because it's just too damn hot to make with the knitting.

Comments [12]
Filed Under: Cocktails | Life