Flint Knits

Hellooooo!! from Minnesota.

Yes, Minnesota.

As some of you know, I spend about 4 months of the year living and working in Minneapolis. Which would be perfect (Minneapolis is a bitchin city and a terrific place to live) if that time didn’t include the three MOST MISERABLE MONTHS OF THE YEAR.

After a week of windchills in the -40 range (yes, that’s 40 degrees below zero), we had two days of 40-degree temperatures. Fabulous, right? Except those two days were like some kind of Zamboni Storm. The top layer of snow melted and, when the thermometer inevitably plummeted back down below zero, refroze. So my world is not only So Cold That My Skin Never Stops Hurting. It is now also covered with a superslick layer of grim death waiting to happen.

And what died last week was my camera. I fell on the ice, and crushed it mercilessly beneath my ass.

Fortunately, I was already saving up for a new one, and it arrived this week.

(Big fat thanks to Adrian, Ashley, Maryse, Minty, Scout and Vera, who all gave fantastic advice and suggestions for how to start taming this beast.)

Moving between cities this way, leaving loved ones behind in both of my homes, it was especially timely to get a reminder that friendship is a thing beyond the limits of cities or states or highways. The reminder? That “you make my day” award that’s been floating around the knitternets.

Alli, Ashley, Elin, Elizabeth, Em, Jennie, Jillian, Kirsten, Minty, Rangsiwan, Specs, Tiennie, and Veronique generously added me to their lists of bloggers who “make their days.”

Thank you so, so much. Seriously, you all did make my day. I mean it. You have no idea. (Ashley’s was especially touching, as she couched it in a Gossip Girl reference. Love.)

Anyway, I’m supposed to “Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland.” But, honestly, as much as I want to pass on this warm fuzzy feeling I’ve got, I don’t know how to choose. If you want to know which other bloggers make my day, check out my blogroll on the sidebar. Love ‘em all.**

Coming soon? many, many unblogged FOs.

** Does this seem like a cop-out? It’s not meant to be a cop-out!

When I saw that photo in my last post, it hit home just how sad and tired my old fingerless mitts are. I made them from some truly ugly acrylic yarn (I got 2 skeins free at a garage sale) when Melanie Falick’s Weekend Knitting first came out, and have worn them like a second skin ever since. And acrylic? Not so much with the hard-wearing.

Since these are the fastest, easiest mitts ever, I pulled Weekend Knitting back out this weekend and, in between grading midterms (will it never end?), got started on a new pair.

pattern: Fingerless Mitts, by Ann Budd, from Melanie Falick’s Weekend Knitting
yarn: 1.5 balls Rowan Cotton Tape
needles: 6.5mm bamboo

The cotton tape has been in my stash for years, after I found it on clearance for $2/ball. I bought the last two balls in this fabulous terracotta red, and have been staring at it ever since. No more. It made the sproingiest, squishiest mitts ever, perfect for Spring and early Fall, when you don’t quite need the wool yet.

(Are you knitting mitts too? Then join in the Fingerless Mitts for Fall knitalong. There’s a great list of free patterns on the sidebar.)

p.s. Why can’t I do a three-needle bind-off that disappears into garter stitch??

You probably already know that Ashley is totally awesome, and superbly talented, right? But have you seen her fabulous patchwork scarves? Because they’re, well, fabulous.

She and I spent Sunday afternoon together, in matching Rowanspun sweaters, and did some serious burrito eating (Chipotle) and yarn shopping (Threadbear). And she gave me one of her brilliant new scarves. I might be in love.

Check out her post, because she took all the sweet photos, and both her camera and her prose are vastly superior to mine.

Threadbear has a great stock of Dream in Color worsted weight right now, and just happened to have the color I needed to finish my Elizabeth Zimmermann baby sweater. So I spent my Sunday night not preparing to teach on Monday, but watching two new classics of American Cinema (Slingblade and Ghostbusters II), and finishing up the sweater.

pattern: Elizabeth Zimmermann, baby sweater on two needles, from The Knitter’s Almanac

yarn: Dream in Color worsted, in Cool Fire
needles: US7 Addi Turbos

Then I cranked out a pair of two-hour booties. I don’t much like the look of worsted weight booties, but jeez, they’re fast.

pattern: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, from Lion Brand.
[PDF from Dreamweaver Yarns]

Both the sweater and the booties are for my wee, adorable niece Claire who, as a twenty-first century baby, has her own blog.

They’re shown here on a table (actually one of a set of 5 TV trays) that my late grandmother Pamela Wynne (yep, I’m her namesake) made 30 years ago.

She was a photographer in the UK during WWII, and was one of the most talented artists I’ve ever known. She did everything — painting, sewing, knitting, sculpture, ceramics, home renovation, furniture building, dollmaking — and she did it well.

She was always game for any new thing (this led to some unfortunate periods in the 1980s that included plastic canvas needlepoint and puffy paint art), and she taught my mother and me everything we know about crafting.

This sweater is totally my grandma’s style — exactly the kind of thing she would have made, were she still around, for her great-grandaughter (though she would have used pale pink yarn and much frillier buttons, and probably added some matching satin ribbon).

Thanks for teaching me how to make stuff, Grandma. My life is much better for it.

I was very, very lazy with the blog world this summer. I mean, I didn’t even read — I made you do it for me.

But that ends today. My last bit of catching-up is to thank the three awesome women who have nominated me as a “Rockin’ Girl Blogger.”

Knittymama, Jillian, and Crystal are super rockin’ themselves, so the virtual love is much appreciated. Thank you!!

Sadly, my summer of actual rocking has also ended. When I got home in August, I had a bit of post-tour malaise — it was strange to wake up in the same bed every day, with familiar and mundane tasks (dishes, for instance. god, I hate doing dishes.) stretched out before me, instead of the adventure and surprises of the road.**

And now it’s back to teaching classes and trying very hard to get work done on the dissertation. The last gasp of my rock star summer took place over Labor Day weekend, when we shot a super-low-tech-low-budget music video. And I got to knit in one scene!

See that? It’s the back of my tweed sweater, which by now is almost done — just one sleeve to go!

But I was also irritated to see, yet again, Minnesota food and culture being only and always thought of as Scandinavian. Dude, they were in the Twin Cities, home to the largest Somali and Hmong communities in the U.S., along with a heap ton of Latinos and Native folks. And they chose, again, to feature effing ludefisk and smorgasbord?

And then, when that smorgasbord included a great big dish of native wild rice, they dismissed it as simply “Minnesotan,” instead of focusing on it as a food with a long and complex history, politics and culture (including current legislation! I mean, when was the last time a law got passed about ludefisk?). Maybe the Food Network should send a nutritional anthropologist along next season.

Happy Apolitical Picnic and Basic-Cable-Marathon Day, everyone! Thank Grover Cleveland for distracting us from the revolution, and thank god we’re not communists! [Shhhh. Yes, I know some of us actually are, but this is bigger than us, people. ]

Thanks for all the lovely comments about the wedding shawlette! I feel like a bit of a fraud, as it’s probably the easiest lace shawl ever. So, to live up to your kind words, I started a more challenging shawl that I’ve had in the queue forever.

Pattern: Peacock Feathers Shawl, by Dorothy Siemens
Yarn: Lisa Souza lace yarn in ‘Peacock’

Ashley has a category on her blog for “super nice internet friends.” I definitely need to create some equivalent, to properly tag all the kindnesses you all keep showing me. Most recently, Ashley, along with Elinor and Minty, sent a tremendous care package to comfort and hearten me after the great computer theft of 2007.

Except I was gone all summer, which meant that they sent it in late August, which meant that it arrived long after I’d been through all the stages of grief with the computer and settled in on ‘acceptance,’ which meant that it instead of a care package to give succor in times of crisis, it felt like a really decadent gift out of nowhere. Neato!

There’s two fat skeins of chocolatey Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock from Elinor, who took the time to go through my old posts and questionnaires to find out my color preferences.

And Runway Knits from Minty, which she and I discussed months ago — how frakking awesome is it that she remembered?

And this bitchin shirt from Ashley, which came in a little green silk bag.

And she’s got one too! We’re totally twins.

And, of course, they included the kindest, most thoughtful notes and cards. Seriously, I actually got teary when I opened this box. Thanks guys!

In other knitting news, I just started on a chunky little jacket/sweater from Drops/Garnstudio, and Nicole just posted her finished one. SO cute.