off on tangents

Still knitting the grey mohair Airy Cardigan, it won't appear significantly different to you even though the body is done, so I'll skip a photo, and decorate this post with images from the high school I was shooting in Miami last week as part of a US Dept of Ed gig.

It's an arts & design urban public magnet school , the students are uber talented. It was inspiring, at times awe inspiring.

I love when the system works, don't you?

The Airy Cardigan is a pleasure to work on, a quick knit . Or would be if I put in more knitting time. I have some concerns about how it'll all go together. Now that I've got sleeve edges going, it won't be much longer till I find out.

Maybe the slowness is OK, I'm dithering over sweater # 6. Considering the Sage Remedy top, (Rav link there). It reminds me of an old favorite go-to, the Mexican blouse. In any photo from 1972-1980-ish you might find me wearing one. I used to save up babysitting money to buy them at a pharmacy that oddly had an aisle of hippie clothes. Hey, look they are still in business as a gift store, no more prescription counter & Vap-O-Rub near the patchouli incense and dashikis, I guess. (also, probably no more patchouli incense and dashikis. really, enough).

Ok going way off on a tangent but gotta love the web, clicking on that Parkleigh link , I learned my old playmate and neighbor is a star in the glass art world, and they sell her work. Now I want to get one of these small pieces from Gong Glass Works.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

But back to the Sage Remedy top, I'm thinking it'd be a fun knit, no sleeves and feather and fan- really who doesn't love a little f & f? Maybe in a cotton,one that isn't too dry on the hands. Or cotton/wool or cotton/bamboo? Suggestions? Definitely without the band along the hips , so not into creating a pouf in a naturally poofed body part, if you know what I mean. All this indecision! I need to get moving it I want to stay on my sweater-a-month schedule. Not that I'm committed to it or anything.

seat for one. again.

That was in Brooklyn last week.

Today I'm in Miami , a photo shoot tomorrow , and a zip back up north. Work had been quiet, which means lots of me being at the home office. This month kicked in, with me somewhere different every week. Just me , a hotel room, and time to kill for a few hours around the actual photo shoots.

But I never mind when it's Miami Beach. That's what went through my mind when I read Carole's Ten earlier. I was trying to mentally make my list but I got fixated on Miami. Even on an overcast and stormy day like today, I love being here. I can entertain myself quite happily: I hit the beach, I hang out in the North Beach neighborhood, at the south american cafes or bakeries and make believe I'm in another country.I swim at the hotel pool. I am easy to please.

I'd planned to walk around and photograph some of the juiciness but the weather didn't cooperate.

I'd also planned to get lots of knitting done on my Airy Cardigan but my level of goofiness from flying (er, I mean, what I do to avoid my goofiness) made it hard for me to be sure I could keep the floaty mohair on the shiny Knitpicks needles.

Fortunately the yarn followed me into my room, so as soon as I get this blogging done, there may be a some knitting before I conk out for the night. Seriously isn't that funny? After I made that last photo, I went back into my room, and noticed yarn stretching from the knitting bag. I opened the door and there it was, just getting ready to knock.

later in the week

I spent the last two nights in an oh-so-chic boutique hotel where NOTHING WORKED including the internet. It'd connect for spurts of 3 minutes once every ten hours, not very conducive to blog posting or sanity of any kind. I'm back in my not-so-chic home where at least I can get on the information highway, I bring you some knitting.

Sweater 5 in the dodecathalon , is moving along fuzzily in Sublime Kid Mohair (well named!). The color is Mouse (also well named). It's the Airy Cardigan. I know, you are looking at the fuzzy/fussy pink pattern and thinking, "really? why ??" . Don't judge! I saw a woman at a local yarn store wearing one she knit in a putty kind of non-color, with mismatched antique buttons. It was so wonderful and not femmy-fussy at all. I am planning sea glass buttons, and I am not doing the texture in the body of it, just plain stockinette.

A set of five single drilled seaglass pieces didn't sell in New Hampshire. I took all your advices and put them on the corners of the Gaia neck warmer, so when I wrap them around they hang in front on either side of the point. They're attached on short crocheted chains, I was going to trim the extra yarn ends from sewing them on but am leaving them as added tassels, hanging with the seaglass . Keep in mind this is all of 1 inch long, nothing too wild. It was just the right touch. Very happy these didn't sell!

In more Noro silver lining news, my 18 yo son, back home for a few months, had a ranting meltdown while I was driving him around looking for a job a couple of weeks ago, poor guy. Really, what are your parents for anyway? In a sign of hope for eventual maturity for all teenage sons, he apologized twice later that night and then, get this, actually went into a yarn store of his own volition the next day , and bought me this skein of Noro Silk Garden Chunky to let me know how truly contrite he was. I am thinking of using the Gaia pattern stitch, which is naturally corrugated and has a row of eyelets whenever you think the colors are changing, to knit a cowl with this. PS. after much searching he found what should be a good job for the duration, and even though he is almost always out, it is nice having him around again.
Wait there's more!

Before I left for 3 days, Meg McG did a drive by shooting (for real) with the Afghan for Afghans she sewed together. Is it not beautiful? Is it not odd that all the squares she received went together so well? In a world of random squares, there is my friend Mary Lou's square of Minnesota malabrigo, in my front yard.

And this one, I just love, is by Laura. Embroidery on Silk Garden. Another for the to-do list.

silver linings

While having a wicked good* day at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool on Saturday, I became aware I left everyone hanging on the outcome of my Dream Assignment. The fabulous news was you helped make me a finalist, in 24 hours. But, I'm not the winner chosen by the granting panel. Not even one of two runners up.

t's not so bad. The process of vote getting was amazing. It truly brought home the sense of community, values and committed brilliance of the knitting/fiber world. I reconnected with folks as disparate as knitters-you've -heard-of, knitters I'm lucky enough to be friends with, knitters who just jump in when they can help out an idea that sound interesting to them, the guy who lived next door in my freshman dorm (last seen at a Springsteen concert in the late 70's, I think of him with neck veins bulging, yelling " bruuuuuuuuce"), an art director friend who's now a bona fide star in the comic strip/ graphic novel world and discovering which friends are nutty enough to stay up past midnight emailing and calling me in the closing minutes, while threatening violence to the competition. I am attached at the hooves hip now to wonderful folks at Heifer. Through another photographer, I heard about and applied for a smaller grant.

So, back to crossed fingers.

This not from the festival, it's another Pennsylvania roadside sighting.

Anyways, in NH, I had so much fun meeting or reuniting with..well, just go over to Norma's links, I think she did it up. Got to meet Kelly, who I've been reading/exchanging emails with for ages, and I even photographed some socks she test knit for Mason Dixon Outside the Lines (she knew Ann in college , so now I know all the dirt. Ooooh, power!).
My ride home from the festival was in a rainstorm of such biblical proportions , I was wondering if I should have taken a pair each of alpaca, sheep, goats and Chris' bunnies to stow in my car. Exhausting but so glad it waited till the day was over. New Hampshire is a charmer of a festival.

I've got some knitting to show and blab about but I'll save that for a mid week post. Too bad because it goes well with the title, it'll have to be silver lining 2. I'm on the road again- this time Brooklyn NY .

* this modified adjective combo brought to you by seeing Carole & Dale again. mwah & mwah

unexpected

This establishment was at the end of the road where I was working in southern Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
I mentioned to a local that I was crazy about it, she told me to go to the next town over, to see this:

I was disappointed that it's only there to preserve a bit of history, no longer serving coffee.
Back home, I finished up the Gaia Neck warmer, using in total a half skein of Noro Silk Garden Sock,
you'll need to see it in person to appreciate the colors.
It's just the size I needed it to be, and I love everything about it--except, you know what? It doesn't need any embellishment.Plenty going on here.
So my plan to knit it just to attach and show off seaglass bits went out the window.
If you see me at NH Sheep & Wool tomorrow, Saturday, you'll see it in action. The seaglass bits'll be there too. Separately. Too much is just too much.
My next plan is to knit some beautiful , simple, gray alpaca yarn and let the seaglass do its thing on the endds, like my favorite RazorShell scarf.

PS. I can't rave enough about the Gaia pattern. You do a row of eyelets whenever you think the colors are shifting. So. much. fun.

double take

Here I am, in your basic hotel chain room near a small town where I'm working tomorrow, on the Pennsylvania/western MD border, and I figured I could show you what I've been knitting.

Huh??The curtains match my Noro Silk Garden sock yarn, S245 . Room decor by Noro?! Too crazy.
This is a small version of the Gaia Shoulder Hug Shawl, aiming for a neckerchief/scarf size I can wrap bandit style (point in front).

It's probably plenty large enough but I keep going because, you know, that next color is always just ahead .
This was a spur of the moment cast on, I was telling Miz Woolybuns how little seaglass pieces with single holes would look so great on the edge of a small neck scarf, and she said the best way to inspire people was to wear an example yourself. Which seemed like an excellent suggestion,since I'm going to be helping at her booth at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival on Saturday, and will have my seaglass buttons and notecards with me for sale .
Of course, the set of multicolored pieces I planned to use on this sold, so I'll need to drill new ones.
(Truth: I brought the drill and glass with me,figuring I could make some while killing the night in the hotel, but when the film crew guys I'm working with tomorrow checked into the rooms on either side of me, I realized I'd feel weird in the morning chatting over breakfast if they heard a humming vibrating noise for a few hours this evening coming from my room, if you know what I mean."oh, guys, if you heard a noise, that was just me and my dremel..."Right.)

.

Spring finally sprung in my front yard. I don't know where this tulip came from in the lilies, but I like it.

square, one

I put aside the sweater obsession knitting for a square, when the amazing MegMcG let me know she was organizing an Afghan for Afghans , in Noro Silk Garden. 10x10".

Because it was the only thing I could do for a friend in sad times this week, I went log cabin.
When I started practicing yoga, I was taken by the teacher saying to do asanas with the intention of [insert the full correct position: grabbing your toe, wrapping your arm fully around your back, whatever].

Love that, the idea that you can be successfully doing something, not because you have the perfect outcome, but because you are doing it with the outcome in mind, to the best of your ability and with full meaning. So useful an idea in this life. (Also useful in parenting teenagers. But that is another post.)

So I knit my square with intention. I didn't think it was any great shakes. Looked OK, love using my Noro yarn scraps, awfully glad for the final row of pickups and that last garter, (neither my favorite maneuvers). Off I swung by the Thursday nite shoreline SnB at a local coffeeshop.

Well. That's when I got it. We flopped down my pleasant-enough square with beautiful squares by three others . Right there, the power of a group knit, and its intent, just hit me. It's not about efficiency, or about collaborating for the sake of team effort. It's the handwork together, all that intention, embodied in different stitches in 10x10" squares.

Meg said she'd call me to shoot the whole thing together, she is somehow magically finding time to sew it up (she really is amazing- she has little teeny kids, a fulltime job, keeps up with the blogs & knits like nobody's bizness . And is always nice, too. ).

Wait'll you see it.