yarn n. 1: a continuous often plied strand composed of natural or man made fibers 2: a narrative of adventures
It’s going to be a good day for love - the first song to come up randomly on my ipod shuffle was “You’ve Got to Let Love Rule.”
Typed in “crochet heart pattern” into Google this morning and a slew of free patterns came up.
Plus, love the V-Day booty - candy & cards - YUM!
Aah, the zen state of mindful knitting and the actual progress. (Note to self - how to show more than one photo at a time?)
There’s only one way to welcome in a major Nor’easter - go to a bar in Chelsea!
Yes, I braved the blizzard warnings for a very good friend’s birthday at Bar Veloce. She is the recipient of the red/pinky yarns bought at Layers (Tiiti Fortelny’s store) and a talented designer & excellent sock knitter. And when I say designer, she is one-half of the bridal accessory duo of Bride’s Head Revisited.
Really, the snow wasn’t that bad last night, and when one has the 24/7 NYC subway, one can go anywhere. It was even running today, albiet slowly at times on the trestle in my neighborhood.
Much was accomplished today as the snow blew around at horizontal directions. I worked on the Lace Knit Scarf. It’s finally showing the simple pattern in the design, and I think I have gotten the knack of lace knitting - complete and full awareness of every little move. This is a new one for me. I have heard of mindful knitting and now I know . . . *ding* . . . perhaps I have reached a higher plane of knitting (yoga-like chanting music in the background) . . .
Snow is also a good excuse to cook — made old-fashioned beef stew while watching North by Northwest on 13. Love the old Hitchcock film’s! One of my favorite scenes is the double-entendre conversation between Cary & Eva on the train as she makes the move one him.
Knit Knote: Check out the knitted mushroom-like caps from Marc Jacobs during fashion week. Fabulous! How did he make them? There must be a frame or something in there to give it structure.
This is how much snow we got in Brooklyn.
Check out www.swaporamarama.org!
A friend e-mailed me about this. It sounds fantastic! Basically you bring in your old clothes, a $10 donation, add your stuff to a huge collective pile and then you swap! The best part is refurbishing what you find into something new at the DIY workshops — iron-on images, turn bras into bags, add buttons, beads, and other accessories — all the details are on the website.
I wish I could go but I have a good excuse — I am starting a machine knitting class that day. Don’t worry — I am not forsaking “the handmade.” Where I work has the benefit of free tuition for classes so I thought, since it is free, why not check it out?
As for the SNB - my boyfriend alerted me to a L.A. Times article on the fracas over the trademark of “Stitch & Bitch.” Read it here — “She’s Saying: Don’t Thread On Me”
Last week NYC had spring-like weather but the temerature has dropped this week. The usual backpacks and messenger bags that all New Yorkers must carry are joined again with the puffy down jackets that were brought back out of the closet. This makes space management on the subway harder to navigate. It can make the commute a leeetle interesting — people seem to take up twice as much space during rush hour. The only good thing about this is looking at knitted hats and scarves in close proximity.
This morning, despite the crush of bodies, I was able to distract myself by examining a man’s knitted hat. I liked the color combo (tweedy light brown, chocolate brown and olive green) and the stripe size/color ratio. I like stripes but I think I am stripe-challenged when it comes to finding a pleasing combo of colors and stripe size. I had enough time on the subway to even count the number of knitted rows because, fortunately, many people got off at a key subway station and I got to sit next to the man. (He was busy reading his paper so he did not notice me staring at his head!) I have a sneaking suspicion that which colors are next to each other make a difference as well as the even the hue of the colors when it comes to stripe aesthetics. The tweedy light brown was four rows and the chocolate brown and olive green were two rows each.
This is when I wish I could take photos on the sly!
If this was successful, you are now looking at my first attempt at posting a photo in my blog.
This is the boyfriend’s birthday hat that was the distraction (cough *procastination* cough) from the lace knit scarf. It’s called the “London Beanie” and I found it here (I haven’t figured out how to make a link yet but you can copy this and paste it into your URL address window):
http://www.knitting-and.com/knitting/patterns/hats/london-beanie.htm
Stats: I bought the yarn from School Products, called Marble by Karabella Yarns of 45% alpaca/55% wool. This is very soft yarn, a pleasure to touch and easy to knit. I bought two balls because at the time I did not know what type of hat I would knit. London Beanie only took one ball of 50 g/1.75 oz. yarn on 9 US needles or a gauge of 20 sts/28 rows.
No photo yet of the boyfriend sporting his new hat but reports are postive - compliments galore. He’s such a good guy. He even wore it throughout a musical performance in an overheated room. (Is that love or what?)
