New Year. New Sleeve.

In case you haven't noticed, the holidays are over.

Signs are everywhere. This morning, Dolores took down the Christmas tree. To be perfectly accurate I should say that she took out the Christmas tree when she landed on it at 4 a.m.; but in our house it amounts to the same thing.

The cookies are all gone. So are the pies. Mrs. Teitelbaum has put her menorah back on the top shelf and flown to Fort Lauderdale to wait out the winter with her great-nephew Maurice the Florist. And instead of my inbox filling with junk messages that say LAST CHANCE PRE-HOLIDAY SALE!!! my inbox is now full of junk messages that say LAST CHANCE HOLIDAY CLEARANCE SALE!!!

In America, your last chance is never really your last chance. That's one of the things that makes this country great.

Meanwhile, I'm able to knit for myself again. The lopapeysa (remember the lopapeysa?) grew another sleeve.



You may recall that I decided to just follow the pattern for this one, aside from changing everything about it. That meant coming up with a new chart for the colorwork about the cuff. Not a tall order, as the yoke contains elements that are easy to echo in a smaller circumference.

After the colorwork passage, I knew I wanted purple cuffs. I plan to wear this while teaching, and my flailing wrists + purple cuffs should = wide-awake students.

Notice, though, that there are no needles in the cuff; nor has it been bound off. That's because the photograph was made right before I ripped back the entire sleeve.

Lesson learned:

It does no good to try on a top-down sleeve repeatedly
if you refuse to acknowledge that the sleeve is way too tight
and correct your course.

That little voice in my head kept telling me it was fine, because I like a "snug fit." But this was not a "snug fit," this was cutting off the circulation to my fingers. Granted, the typical baggy generosity of an unshaped lopapeysa doesn't do a fireplug body like mine any favors–some shaping is a must. But lopi should never be expected to stretch like the Lycra in Kim Kardashian's Sunday drawers.

Learn Along with Franklin: Part I

In keeping with the theme of learning new things in the new year, I've decided it might be interesting and useful to share some of the lessons to found in my collection of antique and vintage children's books. This will be an occasional series–I'll post whenever I run across a particularly sparkly gem of wisdom.

For today, we have a word about multiculturalism/architecture from Health and Safety Series: Everyday Living by Brownell, Ireland, and Giles, published in 1935. This is from "Unit Five: The House You Live In."



Better you should live in a casino.