Flint Knits

I’m back! Well, sort of — I’m still adjusting to life off-the-road. Mostly, I’m catching up on work and on all the teensy mundane household and personal things you forget that you even do on a regular basis until you don’t do them for 6 weeks. You know, like washing your clothes, or feeding the cat — whoops!**

And I finally had to bite the bullet and hit “mark all as read” on the 1441 posts languishing in my Bloglines. So, in the interest of catching me up, please take a moment to comment to this post with a link to the most awesomest crafty creation you’ve seen in the blogging world since July 1. I’ll choose someone randomly from the comments to win a teensy knitterly trinket.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention a deadline for the contest! I’ll draw a winner from all the comments left before Sunday, August 26, at 11:59 Eastern time.

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One of several exciting packages I came home to after my weeks away was from Ann-Marie, my generous, talented Sockapalooza pal.

Not only did she knit some of the most perfect, precise socks I’ve ever seen, but she did it with her own hand dyed merino/tencel yarn! (Yes, it’s beautiful and soft and I want to touch it all the time.)

The yarn — her “grass” colorway — is dyed in springy shades of aqua and lemony yellow. And I especially love how the leaf pattern extends down the heel flaps.

For pattern details, check out Ann-Marie’s post about these socks.

And, as if the hand-dyed, hand-knit socks weren’t enough, she included a cheery pink/grey skein of her own wool/nylon sock yarn for me to play with. Yes, the colors are that vivid and gorgeous in real life. Thanks Ann-Marie!

**This is a joke. Wilma the Cat is actually safe and sound with the lover’s parents, where she’s been getting all the snuggles she deserves, and eating fancy canned food like it’s her job, for the last 6 weeks.

for all your support, sympathy, and good wishes
for your generous offers of computers and yarn and stress relieving bathtime soaks
for your righteous rage on my behalf.

Seriously, you have no idea how much you’ve all helped me get through this. The latest update is that I’ve got a sexy new computer, and my committee members and writing group colleagues are currently searching for any earlier drafts of my diss work that they still have lying around. And it looks like our home owners’ insurance will give us a bit of money for the computers. Plus, I’m writing from my hotel on Waikiki Beach. Life goes on.

As the lover works to cobble together a presentation for the conference tomorrow (the original paper was lost in the theft), I’m sitting with a glass of pineapple juice and a macadamia nut muffin. It seems like a perfect time to blog about the lovely meetups I had last week.

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We arrived in Philadelphia a whopping 8 hours before our show, so of course I headed straight for the nearest yarn shop. I found myself at Loop, where I was thrilled to find a beautiful display of Elizabeth’s sock yarn.

And then I realized that Elizabeth herself was there, working at the shop! She gave us all kinds of useful info about where to go for fabric and for veggie cheese steaks (yes!), and showed me the Charade socks she’s knitting with her Martha colorway. They won me right over, so I picked some Martha up for myself.

Speaking of Philly knitters, aren’t these your colors, Megan?

I also bought a tapestry needle so I could properly kitchener my Sockapalooza socks (you may recall that my pal requested both “crazy colors” and lace — I tried to deliver the best I could).

Later, I met up with some other Philadelphia knitters for a fabulous comfort-food dinner at A Full Plate. (Elizabeth led us there after the restaurant I’d originally chosen turned out to be a pizza stand with no chairs. Oops.)

Sarah and Krista are a smart, funny, adorable couple, both originally from Michigan. Specs was one of those quietly witty people that we motormouths so admire — when she talks, she’s always got something worth saying. I only wish we’d had more time to spend together.

After Sarah and Krista rescued a kitten from under a truck (no kidding!), Elizabeth came to our show at The Fire. The sound guy arrived 90 minutes late and completely stoned, so the show was pretty crappy, but Elizabeth stuck it out like a trooper, then hung around all night to drink beers and chat with me about knitting and music and so on. She’s just as kind and funny as she is cute.

Next up? The dish on my second date with Ms. Minty. For now, there’s a balcony off my hotel room just begging to be sat upon.

Dear Jerkface,

You must have been thrilled to break into our van and find three notebook computers you could walk away with. And such dedication you showed in ransacking the whole place — no simple smash and grab for you, no sir. Only a complete trashing and defiling of our belongings would do.

So, congratulations! You are now the owner of the only two existing copies of my half-finished dissertation, which are on the computer and back-up drive that you stole. If the dissertation bores you, please feel free to instead browse the hundreds of knitting patterns that I have painstakingly collected over the last several years, or the hundreds of priceless family photos I have taken. I’m sure the last surviving images of my dead grandmother will mean just as much to you as they do to me and my family.

My lover hopes you enjoy leafing through the rare primary research materials, clippings, articles, and photographs that you stole along with his computer, and which he has spent several months collecting for his dissertation.

My friend Jeff hopes you like military-themed gay porn — his computer is full of it.

And Ian would like to thank you for deciding that his belongings weren’t worth carrying, and for leaving his clothing, passport, and birth certificate in a trash bin, even though they would certainly fetch more money for you than my crappy old Dell laptop. It appears that you don’t know a good thing when you see it.

I mean, look what else you left behind:

So thanks for not stealing the yarn, or my sockpal’s socks, or Laura’s bottle of whiskey (which we were very happy to have once the police left). I truly hope you get some good money for our stuff, now that you’ve got it.

Take care, jerkface.

Love and kisses, Pam

***Also, a special shout-out to the apathetic asshats who sat up in their gazillion-dollar air-conditioned TriBeCa lofts and watched it happen. Because they are special, special people.

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To my online knitting buddies: I miss you. There are 482 new posts in my Bloglines, and I intend to read skim every single one as soon as I have my new computer up and running. I’ve also lost nearly all of your email addresses — so, if you have a moment, please leave a comment and/or send an email so I can re-add you to my address book.

And please tune in later this week for a wrap-up of some finished projects, and of this week’s lovely knitty bloggy meet-ups. My recent time off from blogging hasn’t been all bitterness and disappointment and grand larceny, after all. Life has been pretty good.

Plus, I’m off to Hawai’i today, and not a moment too soon. I need a fucking vacation.

Yep. I was sure I had a second skein of this lovely Dream in Color yarn, but it’s nowhere to be found. Sadly, I also can’t find the label to this one, so I’m not even sure what colorway it is. “Lipstick Lava” maybe?

Anyway, I’m going to sit on it for a while before I frog, because it’s so damn pretty and squishy.

In lieu of real knitting content (as I curse the yarn gods, as well as my own shortsightedness), please enjoy last night’s dinner:

Throw a few handfuls of arugula in a food processor or blender with garlic, basil, and a bit of hard cheese. Blend it up. Drizzle in some olive oil as you keep processing. Stir in salt and pepper.

Cook some penne in lots of boiling salted water. Throw in some chopped green beans (same size as the noodles) for the last 3 minutes of cooking time. Put it all together with some fresh chopped tomatoes on top.

Those of you in the US, enjoy your day off! I’ll be spending mine at Flint’s 2nd annual Lumberjack Fest. I missed the flapjack breakfast, but am hoping to arrive in time for the live music and feats of strength (log rolling, log splitting, log tossing). It’s really just a bunch of my friends having a cookout with a theme, but it’s tons of fun.

Thanks for your response to my tour schedule — I cannot tell you how fucking rad it is that some knitters might actually turn out for our shows!

Touring leaves little time for hanging out in any one place, but I’m hoping to put together some kind of pre-show or post-show gathering with knitters in Philly and/or D.C. Folks in those cities, let me know if you’d be interested!

So have you seen all the fiberliciousness cropping up on Flickr? Love it. Michigan doesn’t have any local tomatoes yet, but the ones hauled up from Georgia are pretty tasty. Also the ones shipped in from Purl, Soho.

The tomato-red Koigu from Purl was won on Ashley’s blog a while back. Koigu semi-solids — is there any yarn more perfect?

Now that the eye candy is out of the way, on to the … well, candy. My Secret Pal (STACEY!) revealed herself to me with one last awesome, thoughtful package that included some vegan gummies (apple lions and cherry sharks from Germany). I had already torn into one of the bags when I took this:

She also sent some lovely stuff from Bath & Body Works (including my favorite lip gloss), and HABU! — a cone of their silk and stainless steel yarn.

There’s 281 yards of the Habu, and it’s super lightweight. Any pattern suggestions?