I(nspiration)-Cord

What an afternoon! Knitters! Lemonade! Kay Gardiner! Blankets! I-Cord! The Rogers Memorial Library and the Southampton Historical Museum invited everyone to a knitting party this afternoon, and Kay was the guest of honor.

She brought her Buncha Squares blanket and the Denise Schmidt quilt top that inspired it. They are both works of art; the fact that they are meant to be used and loved and maybe even used up is an added value that I wish more knitters would embrace in their own work. There is no Either Art or Craft in my creating world. Painters and knitters and sculptors and ceramicists are artists, and they practice a craft. I've been tired of that old argument ever since 1972, when I entered art school. Bah.

Anyway, I wish I had taken more and better photographs, but aren't those pieces brilliant? Kay's own photo shoots really show how magnificent the blanket is.

Not only did we have a great afternoon knitting and visiting (I haven't seen some of my library knitting friends since June), but Kay taught us all how to make her applied I-cord edging! We came with appropriate needles, and she let us choose dishcloth cotton out of the biggest zip-lock bag in the Universe. That thing was crammed to the top with dishcloth cotton. It looked like a sack that even Santa would have a hard time toting around.

We all made little garter stitch squares while Kay discussed Henri Matisse, Nancy Crow, how much heat a potholder has to withstand to be considered useful, and knitting houses; after a while she showed us the secret to applied I-cord. It's so easy it's hard to believe (sort of like Nona's Kitchener Epiphany), and in a few minutes most of us were picking up the edge stitch, rounding corners, and applying I-cord like nobody's business. Here's mine:


As the party wound down and we all chatted on our way to the parking lot (Kay needed helpers to get the Santa Sack of Cotton to her car), I began to get some ideas about that edging. In the checkout line at Schmidt's Market, I could feel the percolation of inspiration. I'd hardly gotten in the door or patted the cat before I had this brainstorm:


Applied I-cord is exactly what the Ripple Baby Blanket needs! Even though the knitting has been complete for a few weeks, and Baby G is here and growing like a weed, something about it just wasn't right. It seemed limp, or unfinished, or something I couldn't put my finger on.

Guess what I'll be up to for the next few evenings?

Thank you Kay! I had a wonderful afternoon, some much-needed time with friends out in the regular world, and inspiration (with shrimp) for dinner.

22 to go

I've often said that knitting saves me. I think that it just did. In one week, a week that lasted at least a year, I began and completed this pair of fingerless mitts. I finished the first one on Sunday night, and cast on for the second before I went to bed that night.

Each day this week I came home planning to knit a little. Some days I did a few rows or a couple of inches; other days I just stared at the television. On Thursday, which was my weekday off, I made good progress in between the errands and appointments.

Yesterday was a particularly long and difficult day at work, and when I came home I had some supper, fell asleep on the couch, and wisely hauled myself off to bed at 7:30pm. No knitting, not last night!

So when I woke up this morning after a record-breaking 11 hours of sleep, I was happy to to have the time (and the energy!) to knit. All that I had left were the last rows of lace rib and the thumb, and then I could soak the mitts in Soak and watch them dry on my little porch.

Pattern: Delicato Mitts by Anne Hanson
Yarn: Fearless Fibers Superwash Merino sock yarn, "Blue Rain"
Needles: 2.5mm/US 1.5 bamboo dpn's
Modifications: Not one

I really enjoyed having this little project to look forward to all week. The insanity of the store faded a little bit every time I picked up the needles. Now that they're finished, I wish it would get cold enough to wear them!

I'll need another comforting knit to help soothe me through the rest of the month. Only three weeks to go, but we're all tired and tense, and there's nothing to do but keep on. I've said it several (or too many) times already, but I do think that this is the most grueling August in the thirteen Augusts I've spent at the bookstore.

While other people are glancing at the calendar with a little sadness, I am counting the days until Labor Day. Then I'll start a big project, or really clean my home, or go to the ocean, or excavate my desk, or visit my family, or get a haircut, or go to Target, or just breathe.

Mood Swings

It's just August. There's no other explanation. All is well, and then all is not. I'm in no mood for any of it, and then I can take whatever comes my way. The weather is thick and the air is sour, then it thins and sweetens, and I throw open the windows and inhale till I am about to burst. Up, down ... sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. Where is that Mary-Chapin Carpenter CD?

I finished my test pair of Tilt and Whirl socks, down to the last little kitchener-ed toe. Have I mentioned how much I love Nona for posting her Kitchener Epiphany? Simple, effective, brilliant.

So now I would like to move on. I have socks on the needles -- beautiful blue-purple socks, socks I want to finish soon. I'm working on more sock designs, too. I have scarves -- two interesting scarves. However. But. I have some new yarn, and I want to start something. Starting a new project will satisfy me in ways that I'm not sure I can explain. It's complicated.

It's August, the hardest month of the whole year for me. Work is a non-stop roller-coaster ride from the 1st right through Labor Day, and this year it already promises to be the biggest, fastest, scariest ride ever. My days off are spent recovering from the intensity of the store, but anything I plan do out in the world will throw me into the middle of the fray, the craziness of August in a beach resort full of people with too much money to spend and not enough common sense or courtesy.

So I figure out ways to stay home and make my place a small sanctuary, if only for those two precious days each week when I do not have to be in the middle of everything, riding the roller-coaster. Here at home it is silent, unless I add noise. I don't even have a CD player at the moment (so Mary-Chapin Carpenter must be heard in the car). I watch less television than usual, because even that is too much sometimes. When the AC is on it's loud, but at least it's white noise, and that's good.

Wow, I make it sound like I'm under siege. That's not the case. I'm stretched thin by necessity and circumstance, and I need to preserve the bits of peace and quiet that I do get to have, so I hibernate with my knitting and my Annabelle. I make sure that I won't lose my mind this month -- because really, it's just a month, and it passes.

So back to that knitting that I want to start. This isn't the time to stick to a plan or follow through on a list of priorities. It's the best time, if ever there was one, to follow a whim or swing with a mood. I think I will wind a skein of Fearless Fibers sock yarn (should it be Sublime, or Blue Rain?) and start knitting Anne Hanson's Delicato Mitts. I should have enough left over to make a pair of socks, or even a little scarf.

I have to go now. I'm kind of excited!

A long short story

It seems no matter how good and earnest my intentions might be, I'm only able to post here every once in a while. I do stop by from time to time, as if I might discover that I have posted again. Silly me, of course that hasn't happened.

I try to file all the little ideas and thoughts that I would like to write about, and hope to keep them safe in some corner of my mind, but they're lost or pushed aside by ISBN's and lists and purchase orders. Oh, the stories I was going to tell...

It's full-on summer at work, and crazy busy. I place orders sometimes three or four times a day. Every time I turn around there is something else that has sold like crazy, all of a sudden (and I mean Since This Morning) so it goes on to yet another order to be sent in hopes of having it arrive the next afternoon. I'm good at anticipating most of what we'll need in advance, and I have the inventory in the basement to back me up, but sometimes Stuff Happens.

All these hours spent on High Alert might make the day fly by, but they make the evenings and the days off all that much more precious. I come home and knit.


(Some of) My Secret Knitting Revealed: Tilt and Whirl Socks! This is my design for next month's Spirit Trail Fiberworks' Spirited Socks Yarn Club. It had been percolating for a while (again, back there in the dim recesses of my brain), and when Jen sent me this beautiful yarn to knit with I knew the two would be a perfect match. I love the way the little blocks work with the way she dyed the yarn.

I have been a fan of Jennifer Heverly's yarn and fiber for a long time, and I'm so pleased to be working with her on this project!


And because I can't pass up a good yarn club, I joined Jen's other one: Yarns with Spirit. The first shipment is the same as for the Sock Club (the beautiful blue/green yarn above, a lovely pattern designed by Bess Haile, a pattern notebook, and some of the best coffee I've had in a long time). I can't wait to see what's in store for next time -- a scarf design by Shelia January, I hear!

This is where blog reading takes me: I've been aware that Anne Hanson is a lover of Fearless Fibers yarn, so one day last week I decided to stop on over at Deb's Etsy Shop. What do you know, she'd just posted a whole bunch of new yarn! I picked these two Superwash Merino sock yarns to try. The first one is "Blue Rain," and the second one is "Sublime."


They're both sublime, if you ask me. It was pure pleasure to order and receive these soft skeins so full of knitting promise. I'm keeping my eyes open for the publication of Anne's Rectangle Bee Fields Shawl and I think I'll order some Fearless Fibers yarn for that as well.

~:~

One of the most wonderful things about working at an independent bookstore, and for as long as I have, is that relationships with customers have a chance to grow and ripen. I am fond of many of the people who shop in my store (and believe me, they take the sting out of the Other Ones), but a few are just plain special.

So I was delighted to look up yesterday and see the sweet smile of B D, a wonderful customer and friend from the "old days" when I worked at the East Hampton store. She happened to be in Southampton, and wanted to take me to lunch. Of course!

We spent a wonderful hour catching up over delicious salads and iced teas -- books, politics, people, life, back to books, and more. As we stood on the sidewalk, me ready to head back to work and B about to turn the corner to the museum, she pulled a little red booklet from her bag. It was a story. One Story, to be precise. From the website:

"One Story is a literary magazine that contains, simply, one story. Approximately every three weeks, subscribers are sent One Story in the mail. This story will be an amazing read.

Each issue is artfully designed, lightweight, easy to carry, and ready to entertain on buses, in bed, in subways, in cars, in the park, in the bath, in the waiting rooms of doctors, on the couch in the afternoon or on line at the supermarket.

One Story is available only by subscription."

B is an enthusiastic reader, book collector, and supporter of all things literary, and I trust her. I subscribed the minute I got back to the store.