Flint Knits

It turns out nothing welcomes Fall like Rhinebeck. I went to my first New York Sheep and Wool Festival last week, and not only did I have a great time with good friends, but I also met some new folks, saw loads of lovely handknits, and got to hang out with Caro’s kitties.

I also got the chance to take advantage of Caro’s superior photo skills — along with the crisp New England weather, striking Fall scenery, and gorgeous afternoon light — to document Pickadilly, a sweater I designed and finished knitting just in time for Rhinebeck. (Literally. I made my carmates stop at WEBS on the way to the fairgrounds so I could buy buttons.)

Pickadilly will be for sale here, and on Ravelry, starting November 1.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek:

 
[RAVELRY LINK]

All of which fun has lead up nicely to what is clearly the bestest thing about Fall: Halloween. And while I’ll be playing a music fest in Florida over Halloween weekend, I had a chance to get crafty all the same — on behalf of my niece, who (with no encourgement or intervention from me) has decided to dress up as a lamb this year.

Lamb Ears tutorial (Ravelry link)

MATERIALS:

• chunky boucle yarn
• approx 20 yards of pink sport or fingering weight yarn
• small amount of pink flannel fabric
• tapestry needle
• embroidery needle

STEP 1: KNIT AN EARFLAP HAT! (Use the chunky/bulky boucle yarn. Thorpe is a great pattern for adults; Sandi’s Ear Flap Hat is good for kids 2 and up.)

STEP 2: EARS (make 2)

Cast on 16 stitches.
Work 5 rows in stockinette stitch.
Row 6: k1, ssk, k 10, k2tog, k1 (14 sts)
Rows 7-13: stockinette stitch
Row 14: k1, ssk, k8, k2tog, k1 (12 sts)
Rows 15-21: stockinette stitch
Row 22: ssk, ssk, k4, k2tog, k2tog (8 sts)
Bind off all stitches purlwise.

STEP 3: FINISHING:

Cut 2 matching pieces of pink flannel large enough to cover the ears, with about 1/2 inch of white showing around the edges.

Using the embroidering needle and pink yarn, affix the flannel to the wrong (purl) side of the left ear with a blanket stitch or whip stitch.

Using a tapestry needle and an 18-inch length of the main yarn, tack together the two bottom corners of left ear. Sew the ear to the hat as pictured.

Repeat the two previous steps for the right ear.

Happy Halloween!

NOTE: Most photos in this post are shamelessly stolen. Click on them to go to the photographer’s Flickr page.

Hi all! It turns out the perfect way to wrap up a Semester from Hell is to hit the road and drive cross-country to get together with a bunch of knitter-friends, drink beers, and swap cowls. Seriously, I’m like a new woman.

Ms. Specs (whose blog you should definitely be reading, and who is in possession of a most wicked, wry, trojan-horse wit that hides behind her quiet demeanor) made me a beautiful cowl, in my favorite bright blue-green, with the sproingiest sock yarn of all time, Colinette Jitterbug.

Thanks, S!! I love it.

And I got to knit a cowl for Ashley. This was exciting because I love her madly (this love has been documented thoroughly on her blog and mine. We do not need to elaborate at this point. Except perhaps to say that I now adore her even more because she turned me on to this dreadful/wonderful story of the sparkly, yummy-smelling, teenaged vampires of Forks, ND). ETA: er, Washington. Forks, Washington. Duh. Because there is no sunlight there.

This was also humiliating because, slacker that I am, I left it til the last minute and had to knit the entire thing in the car with her, while she drove us to Pennsylvania. (You might not know this from her blog, but Ashley has a cruel streak. She was so enraged by my irresponsibility that she forced me to spend a whole day with her 18 month-old nephew, who is, as Caro might say, “like a bee on a string”).

pattern: Mimosa Neckwarmer, by Tarja
yarn: GGH Aspen, from Threadbear Fiber Arts
needles: US8 and US10.5 circulars
button: from Rosie’s Yarn Cellar

Gorgeous photos by Ashley, of course.

The cowl swap has already produced a few patterns. Nova, Elinor, and Caro [Ravelry link] have posted free ones already, and Minty’s stunning cowl-to-end-all cowls pattern is forthcoming.

I cannot overstate how thoroughly awesome the weekend was. Ashley, Caro, Christy, Diana, Elinor, Jennie, Julia, Maritza, Megan, Minty, Nova, and Specs are people with whom I have heaps in common (besides knitting, obvs), and who consistently brighten my everydays with their art, wit, smarts, thoughtfulness, support, pies, and (some of them) unflagging dedication to online competitive word games. I’m lucky to know them and, now, even luckier to have met them.

Meeting folks in person that you already know and love through teh internets is a fabulous and totally unique experience. So go out and organize your own knitter meet-ups! Do it! And the next time you’re in the Flint area (okay, yes, stop laughing, please), give a holler! xoxo

For Minty’s 30th birthday, back in November, I offered to make her a shirt. Since she’s a pretty conservative dresser, she requested something slightly outside her comfort zone.

At Superbuzzy, I found some beautiful Japanese cotton gauze in a bold-but-hopefully-not-flashy print, and got to work.

pattern: Simplicity 4077 (again)
fabric: Nani Iro, by Naomi Ito, “Fuccra Flowers” in steel blue

The biggest challenge was that the fabric is laid out like a painting, rather than an allover print. I mean, there is a repeated print, but it only repeats every 3 feet or some such thing. So cutting the fabric in a way that worked with the pattern was no easy feat (especially considering that I’d bought the bare minimum yardage).

Otherwise, this is much like other blouses I’ve made from the same pattern. Simple design, modern fit, button placket, etc.

I used the 3/4 sleeve version this time, with pleats and open cuffs …

… and placed the buttons in pairs down the front.
It fits perfectly, and Minty looks fab. Success!
Happy (belated) Birthday, hon!

After spending the last couple of weeks exhausted and ill with pneumonia (I cannot overemphasize the exhausted — as in sleeping 16 hours a day), I was thrilled to get out of the Minnesota winter for a weekend. New York isn’t exactly tropical this time of year, but there’s a remarkable difference between 30-above and 30-below.

I arrived in NYC on Valentine’s Day and discovered that it’s Minty’s favorite holiday. And I mean Favorite Holiday. Like, ever. In a crazy, wild-eyed-yet-eerily-focused, single-minded, heart-shaped kind of way that is simultaneously (1) charming and (2) utterly terrifying. She approaches the big V the way I approach Halloween: with Intensity.

Do you see the concentration on her face? It is intense and total! She’s done a lovely job of documenting her own obsessive, fascist way of celebrating VD. What she can’t really express in her post is how completely won over I was, and how much FUN I had!

Because Minty’s enthusiasm? Totally infectious (even for a cynic like me, who thinks the Official celebration of Romance is an oppressive tool for sentimentalizing the patriarchal regulation of heteronormative monogamy in order to make marriage palatable for white middle class women so they will make babies for the Nation). But it’s HEART-SHAPED!!

Needless to say, Minty was the best Valentine’s Day date EVER, and I had the best VDay ever, staying up half the night to decorate cookies and make heart-shaped miso-glazed tofu. Have I mentioned that Minty is teh awesome?

And the next day, I met John, who took me to lunch in what was definitely one of the highlights of my weekend.

You know how he seems so smart and sassy and sexy on the blog? That’s not the half of it. We talked nonstop about all manner of things, most of which aren’t appropriate for even this knitting blog. And, with minimal pestering on my part, he gamely took this dorky photo of us in Union Square wearing our matching Frivol hats. *Love*

Later, Minty and I met up with some of the Spiders (Connie, Jess, Lisa, Marie, Veronique, and Virginia) at The Point where not only did I completely forget to take pictures, but I also LEFT MY BRAND NEW CAMERA BEHIND. Jess had to chase me out the door with it. Thanks, ladies, for letting me come hang out, and a big See-You-Next-Time to Ms. Gleek, Ms. Schrodinger, Jessica, Katy (congrats!), and especially Sandra.

That gathering was followed by a wonderful dinner with Veronique, who was wearing a version of her lovely and recently-published sweater design and who, like Minty’s take on Valentine’s Day, immediately won me over with her wit, intelligence, thoughtfulness, and style. (Plus, she was knitting on a Marigold sock!) If you aren’t a Tres Chic reader, you should be.

This was was followed by a wonderful Saturday with Minty, visiting the Met…

… and hanging out in our PJs and leaving silly voice mails for Ashley, and generally not feeling like this was only the third time we’d met in person.

I am still catching up on the 1300+ blog posts that have amassed during my illness and absence. This means many of you will probably be getting comments from me on, like, your last 10 posts.

And now please enjoy the following preview of my next post, which will hopefully appear relatively soon (i.e. not after what’s become a now-standard 2+ week interim) and will definitely feature the belated birthday gift I gave Minty:

yarn? check.
pattern? check.
stitch markers? check.
tape measure? check.
sock tote? check
needles? FUUUUUUCK!!

So I spent the four-hour flight reading trashy magazines and napping. I’d rather have been knitting, of course, but it could have been worse. On my last cross-country flight, for instance, they played Failure to Launch [shudder].

As soon as I got to the building where the conference was being held (Royce Hall at UCLA), I realized that it was the college home of both Buffy Summers AND Sydney Bristow (and also Rory Gilmore, if that’s your thing).

Don’t let my cool casual posture fool you — I am all aflutter. The TV nerd in me (which, if we’re being honest, is almost all of me) was really, really embarassingly excited. I mean, can’t you just picture Sydney sprinting out those doors after ditching her realistically depicted (snort) 19th-century American lit course, because her pager flashed a 911 from Spy Daddy?

I had a few hours on Sunday before my flight, and needed some needles for the trip home. The incredibly kind, funny, fascinating Jillian/Ms. Sknitty was good enough to meet up for some lunch and yarn shopping.

After a huge and tasty lunch at Jerry’s Famous Deli (where we noted that, in a city where no one seems to eat, there are some alarmingly big portions), we went to Compatto, where half the store was on sale and a cuddly chow/lab mixed named Gracie charmed our socks off.

See how Jillian is humoring poor Gracie with a belly rub, even as her eagle eye is on the sale shelf? She walked away with a heap of excellent yarn for an unbelievable price.

Then we headed over to A Mano, which may have been the friendliest, most welcoming big-city yarn shop I’ve ever visited. I bought my sock needles there, and a skein of Malabrigo for some more fingerless mitts (Dashing, perhaps?).

Finally, before I headed to the airport, Jillian took me and a friend to the beach near the Santa Monica Pier, where we saw the most beautiful fucking sunset, like, ever.

As it turns out, that lovely orange glow in the photos, which we initially took for smog, was the beginning of this week’s deadly wildfires. Thanks for a lovely afternoon Jillian — stay safe!