Hello fellow Americans who are possibly still sans Rowan! I received my Rowan yesterday in the mail, hopefully you guys did too. And let me say, it...was kind of sort of only slightly worth the wait...? Maybe? The two items that caught my eye, besides the crazy KSH ballgown "Arwen" which no way would I ever make, is Aelf and Lorelai. The others are nice but just how nice I'm not sure yet.

It just doesn't quite compare to last year's issue, Rowan 38. Even though it was better known as The Issue That Was Universally Vilified, it was responsible for really turning me into a Rowan fan, whereas before I was frankly puzzled by its popularity.

In fact, while waiting for 40 to arrive, I took another good look through 38, and find I love it even more. Aside from finally finishing Kooch (and I'd really really REALLY like to finish it. I was in anthropologie yesterday and sweater coats were everywhere), I want to start Miss Maple. Yes that beautiful sweater-poncho-cardigan enigma that will do nothing to accentuate my non-existent curves but whatever I still love it. It's trendy yet classic at the same time. No? Maybe.

Instead of Felted Tweed I could use the mounds of Peruvian Wool that has been sitting in my stash for nearly 2 years. So all I need are a couple of skeins of KSH. Which I will purchase at WEBS this weekend when we are in western Mass for a BBQ (this has been a fantastic summer, by the way). Damn you WEBS for carrying Rowan now! I am weaker than ever in your yarn-filled presence!

Anyway. I think I just reviewed Rowan 40 by reviewing Rowan 38. That's really helpful. I'm such a good knit blogger. And didn't I make a promise not so long ago that I'd blog daily? I should quit saying things I don't mean. Like "I'll call you right back" or "Yeah I'll do the dishes" or "I'm going to finish Kooch." Oh well, I've been really busy. I mean lazy. Sorry.

But I've been knitting! Check out what's been accomplished just in the last week:

Boston Red Socks
I am LOVING the way these are turning out, like ACTUAL, official team-sanctioned socks!

The pattern I'm using is the Madder Ribbed Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks, and the yarn is Baby Cashmerino. I'm using US2 needles and have adapted the pattern for this gauge.

The Horseshoe heel looks interesting, like a coffee bean.

It's sad. These Red Socks are better than the actual Red Sox.

Clapotis
I needed something "brainless" to knit and this fits the bill, although what's great about this pattern is that it's not so brainless at all. I can see why it's been so popular. It's witty, if a pattern can be called that. I love the part in the pattern where you drop the stitch. The first time I had to really think about how to do this. I mean I've dropped stitches plenty of times by accident. Having to do it on purpose sort of messed with my brain. Knitting on the bias did that too.

I'm making this half the called-for width but it's still wide enough to be more stoley than scarfy. The yarn is Noro Silk Garden in #34. So pretty. So so pretty.

Comments [10]
Filed Under: Clapotis | Rowan | Socks | Red Sox

Where's my Rowan?

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Hey. I just realized Rowan 40 is out, maybe for a couple of weeks already, but my mailbox is still empty. Have any of you Rowan subscribers out there received your latest magazine yet? It looks to be really good too, just the thing to get me into sweater-loving mode again.

So where is it? I wait impatiently.

Comments [16]
Filed Under: Rowan

Mahtha's Vinyud is Mahvelous

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Looking ahead to more shellfish

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Everyone, say goodbye to Rose of England. I've finally decided I could no longer work with cotton thread. And even though the lace looks super complicated on paper, it has been rather a snooze to knit, what with all the repeats that just get more endless as the circumference gets bigger. I might try again with some lace-weight cashmere/silk I have...some day. Some day.

Guess what? It's hot. It's global warming. But just found out that we have not one, but TWO more AC units that came with the house (or the that previous owners just left) that are sitting in the attic. Duck dragged it down all by himself this morning as I lay drooling in bed. Like I had gotten enough sleep and wanted to get up but just could not do it. There were greater powers at work. *The heat lulls my eyelids shut every time I open them and that's when I'd have about 3 to 5 minutes worth of crazy wacky heat-induced dreams that eventually wake me up.

Repeat from * 10 times.

The AC unit died after running for a few minutes. We're too hot to retrieve the second unit from the attic.

Things are looking up though! First, it is going to cool down considerably tomorrow, so we don't need no stinkin' AC, take that.

Second, we're going to spend the pleasant weekend in Martha's Vineyard, wooooooooo! Woo! Woo woo.

Have you heard about Netflix's Roadshow? That's the impetus for us going - watching Jaws at the beach! Where they filmed it! - and going biking, which we haven't done nearly as much as we should have so far this summer.

Duck has never been to MV. I went once with a friend when I first moved to Boston. We rented bikes, and at one point he skidded off the road and had his face nearly run over by the car behind him. A nice, rich man across the street witnessed the near tragedy and invited us into his beach house so Rob could clean his scrapes.

While he did that, from the living room I took in the disgustingly gorgeous panoramic views of the ocean, and then took off my clothes. I only had a few minutes to seduce the nice, rich man well enough to get at least an invitation to the clambake I was sure he was going to have that night. Because if I lived in Martha's Vineyard and had a house like that, you know I'd be having a motherfucking clambake every single day.

I'd do just about anything for a clambake. A REAL clambake, the one where you dig a ditch in the sand and cook with ocean water and seaweed and all that magic.

But alas. It didn't happen that day.

Maybe I'll have better luck this weekend. A waterfront Sugar Daddy for Duck and me sure would be nice.

Comments [6]
Filed Under: Lace | Rose of England | Life

Crabby

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

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

Friday, July 28, 2006

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:

catch in the handles of plastic bags. The faster he runs, so louder the plastic bag.
close doors as he walks by
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
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.)
swivel 'round and 'round at the base when he's mad.
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

Thursday, July 27, 2006

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