burnt offering, maybe?

O Wild & Wooly Knitting Spirit,

I beseech thee, accept my humble apologies. I cannot make the offerings of my time as I give so willingly in colder weather. May it please you that my warm weather activities involve getting my tush off a seat and using my hands to do things that leave no room for pointy sticks? Verily I have sat and knitted all winter on Sunday mornings while drinking coffee. And many evenings while watching movies. And other times that you may have toted on your cosmic stitch counter (or do you forget to turn the little wheel every few rows, too?).

I have served up knitting happy hours to increase your minions. While snow fell, I have sacrificed the hours, nay, the days looking at yarn on ebay, reading knit blogs till my eyes crossed and my fingers began a Clapotis of their own will.

But now the sun warms us and my hands are holding kayak paddles, or bicycle handles, or weeds, or sculling water. The yarn grows gritty with beach sand. Though I try to knit in a wet bathing suit, it pleaseth neither of us. May it please you that accordingly, my body switcheth from bulky to sportweight? No, I thought you care not about that one.

Rewardeth my cool weather allegiance with knowledge of a good yarn sale now, so I may plan for a return, via luxurious wool purchase, to your flock of the faithful. And, as long as you're at it- send me one more blogline subscriber, so I can round subscribers up to 30 by my birthday this Friday. Lo the subscribers total is verily less than my years, but it'd sootheth my ego when looking at stats.

return from limbo

Limbo: the week between school ending & summer activities starting. I work - well, normally you'd call it that- out of a home office. Which means this week, I call it SURRENDER. We hit the road to hang out on the beach in Delaware, one of my favorite spots on earth. With some of my favorite people: my parents, a niece & nephew. Sun, sand, crashing waves and the annoying habits in close quarters cherished company of family.

I finished the back of my simple sleeveless tank, and am loving this yarn. That 1% stretch gives it a jellyfish-like quality, you can mush it into any shape without distorting it. And its soft and airy while looking nubbly. Here's the see-through view:
That nubbly quality made me worry that the cable up the front will look like a big vertical sneeze, but so far, a couple of twists in, its looking well defined. I'll show it next time.

I'd have knitted more on the beach but a tetherball pinky injury slowed me down. Remind me that I stink at all activities with the word "ball" in them, please! That didn't stymie me. I read a whole book one day. And we amuse ourselves endlessly together.

What did stymie me: my niece, seen here at solataire, watching me knit and saying "oh, I can see you wrapping that yarn around. I don't knit like that, I knit like Granma".

This stopped me cold. My mom is an amazing knitter. She's fast, she twitches her index finger like a bobbin, you barely see it move, over the needle points. When I was a kid I thought it was magic that knitted fabric appeared, like she was waving her finger as a wand. But many people do that. The truly amazing part is she knits ambidextrously, knitting across and purling back without turning the needles and knitting around. And not just in stockinette, in any stitch combo. Without looking. I have tried, and tried, but I can't do this. No matter how hard I stare. It makes the hair thats still inside my scalp tingle. I'm sure its good for your left-to-right brain but you try it.

And if you can do it, don't tell me. That goes double if you're good at beach tetherball.

how hot was it?

Too hot. We who live on the shore take pride in being cold at night well into July. We act humble about cool breezes while others sweat just a couple of miles away inland. We keep a poker face at discussions of central air conditioners or really efficient fans. We don't need such things. And we try not to brag about it.

Think again this week. It was hotter than all of last summer. It was too hot to eat. It was too hot to knit. That hot.

You couldn't have found a crankier bunch than in our sticky abode. Not even a breeze on the beach last night, till the cold came in and chilled us all back to (our version of) normal. In an amazing science discovery, I opened the bread drawer this morning and found a loaf so molded from the past days' heat & humidity that it was actually fermenting. It was generating heat. The whole drawer was 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the room. Eeeeuw. Can we lay off the fossil fuels and heat with bread mold? Grant money anyone?

In knitting news- or non-knitting news- Saturday was World KIP day. New Haven this time of year is one happenin' place.
I was on the Green for the big drumming events as part of the Arts & Ideas Festival, with plans to swing over to the Harborfest and then to visit the local KIP'ers a few blocks away. But between the dancing precision drum corps, the salsa dancers, the african djembes, those huge Japanese drums, and the costumes, we never saw a knitter.

green thing

What is it about this time of year? Just when the weather screams "Go to the beach!" I'm overloaded with stuff: meetings (professional, community, neighborhood...you name it, its having a meeting this week), jobs & end-of-school and general life goings-on. Knitting & gardening, well... not so much progress. Here at chez sheep shots this seasonal transition time is never easy.

In all this busy-ness I realized something. I will knit wherever, no second thoughts, in anonymous public. Since I travel to locations (mostly by car, for the day) for my work I often take the knitting bag along in case I get to my destination early, or end up at a lunch break in a restaurant alone. Strangers around? No problem. But I don't like to knit at meetings of groups I belong to, unless its a very small group & everyone knows me well. Its like some weird shyness seizes me.

So, lets just say if I got over this, I'd have logged enough knitting time recently to have made some real progress in my green cabled tank, which I'm shaping a little so it won't be baggy on me. But I haven't , so I didn't. Instead of the ribbon yarn the pattern calls for I'm using the Classic Elite Star which isn't all that appealing as a skein. Its 99% cotton and 1 % spandex. You'd be surprised how stretchy 1% makes it. It knits into a nice soft cottony boucle, like this:


Twice recently strangers have commented that they liked the color, both times telling me "Its the hot color this summer!" which I'm sure is a compliment. Instead they saw fear in my eyes when I made a grimace-y smile to thank them. Panic. I'm not that up on things! Too much fashion pressure!