Notes to Self

My sketchbooks for It Itches* are dotted with questions I jotted down while working on the rough cartoons, so I'd remember to research or puzzle out the answers later on.

As I enter the home stretch, I keep running across them as I flip through looking for the bits and pieces to be used in finished drawings.

Here's a representative sample:

• Miles Topeka to Kansas state fair?
• Where do breasts go?
• Length and curve of blade? Bloody?
• Number of panes in Shetland window?
• Lion? Unicorn?
  
• Bird and squirrel can be friends?
• Which fricking e has accent and is grave or aigu?
• Fat baby pajamas?
• Wolf toes?
  
• Would she say this to him like that?
• Mausoleum door locks?
• Ask Leigh how large ballerina ass?
• Ancient sheep face hair?
  
• Table can support bear? Two bears?
  
• How big should balls be?

Yeah. Just standard knitting book fodder.

Your encouragement in the comments to the last post is much appreciated. Please don't think I'm whining–the chance to publish a book is a blessing, and my worst day as a cartoonist is better than my best day trying not to smack rock-stupid university alumni across the face.

While the pen's busy the needles are idle, aside from occasional rounds on the second Primavera sock. I'm almost to the toe, and still loving the pattern. I expect to finish book and sock almost simultaneously.

I have promised myself that once the final packet of drawings flies off to Colorado, I may begin Sharon Miller's Wedding Ring Shawl. (Yes, I bought the pattern before it sold out. Nyah, nyah, nyah.) Mine will be worked in a handsome, red Merino laceweight. Of course, it's not as fine as the cobwebby Tinkerbell dental floss Mrs Miller recommends; so if I actually reach journey's end, the finished shawl won't slip through a wedding ring.

I wonder if that means I'd have to call it something else? If you call it a wedding ring shawl when it won't actually fit through a ring, does the Shetland lace cartel send goons to your apartment to shoot out your kneecaps?

Those chicks in Heirloom Knitting look pretty tough. I wouldn't put it past them.

* Internet fun fact: If you Google "Interweave Itches," the first result is my book.

Instead...

...of a real post, today I present a still life entitled, This Is Why I Am Not Giving You a Real Post Today.



The book deadline approacheth. Apparently there have been pre-orders, and not all of them are my mother, so I have to finish on time. Above you can see seven (out of seventy-five*) inked cartoons on the drawing table, each awaiting the finishing touches of watercolor wash as needed.

This isn't the sum total of my progress, of course. It's just that I'm having trouble sending the other finished panels to Interweave because once they go into print I can never, ever change them.

That's been the biggest surprise of this whole process–the realization that at some point, final art is final.

It's enough to make my hands shake, so I try not to think about it. Nonetheless, my usual creepy-crawly line may look a little creepy-crawlier when the book is published.

*Somebody asked whether the book will be new material or stuff from the blog. Both. Some of the cartoons will have appeared here, but the majority are previously unpublished and all but one will be completely re-drawn. Some essays will incorporate material I've used before but, again, I'm reworking everything and much is brand new. OhgodIneedadrink.

Notes

Holy $#@*

Kids, I am alive and awake but just about done in. Pulverized. Wiped. It's all I can do to write this brief dispatch from a horizontal position.

Yesterday, during an eight hour shoot at Wool Gathering, I photographed 131 knitters for the 1,000 Knitters Project.

My memory is scrambled like eggs at Sunday brunch but I recall an atmosphere of cheerful insanity and controlled chaos. Yarn was everywhere. Also cookies. And five pounds of very special candy. Then somebody threatened me with a crochet hook...

I'll have to sort it all out and write a fuller report from home. Right now I'm going to try to keep still and enjoy restorative quiet play time with Carol's daughter's Pretty Pony Princess Magic Castle.*

131 freaking knitters in one day. Dude.

*Staying in this room has allowed me to be the six-year-old girl I always wanted to be. Ooooh! Rainbow Brite!

An Interlude with Evelyn Clark

Last Christmas, I chose Evelyn Clark's Flower Basket Shawl as a present for my mother. It was a success on all fronts. Mom liked it, and I liked knitting it. I liked it so much, in fact, that I made a very public offer to feed Evelyn bonbons and tweak her dear little nose.

Now Evelyn's famed Swallowtail Shawl has been chosen by the readers of Interweave Knits as one of five designers to be featured in their new, free eBook, The Best of Interweave Knits Readers' Choice Awards. And in spite of my earlier statements, she was not too creeped out to answer a few questions about her work and her inspirations.

Q. You're best known for your lace designs, particularly your lace triangles. What was your first encounter with lace? Was it love at first sight, or an acquired taste?

A. I was really inspired by Robert Powell's lace shawls, and it was while knitting them that I fell in love with lace. The fabulous Icelandic Three-Cornered and Long Shawls book (Prihyrnur og Langsjol) by Sigridur Halldorsdottir* has many top-down shawls, and while studying the shawls in that book I realized I could use a top-down construction for a shawl I wanted to do as a result of the listing of the salmon. That became the Pacific Northwest Shawl, thanks to Bev Galeskas of Fiber Trends who was willing to publish my results.

Q. Tell me a bit about your design process. For example, do you like to start with sketches? By picking up needles and playing with yarn? Some other way?

A. I love to graph, and I do that with a pencil and a very large eraser. Then I start the piece, and start over if it does not work. Sometimes I have to knit the whole piece to see if it works and sometimes more than once. The beauty of being able to design for my own amusement is that I can take all the time I want.

Q. So many of your designs are based on natural motifs and indicate a very close, loving observation of the natural world. What's your favorite way to get back to nature?

A. I do like to garden and hike or walk. This year I also am able to travel more, and I am looking forward to finding new inspiration on those adventures.

Q. When you spin, what's your preferred equipment?

My favorites are the Bosworth mini spindles, and I have knit four shawls from yarn I spindle spun and plies. I love that spindles are so portable and highly recommend Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' book Spinning in the Old Way for anyone interested in spindling.

As a prize from the Wild Fibers Magazine/Buffalo Gold contest for the Heartland Lace Shawl, I got a Lendrum single treadle wheel. Having the wheel makes me acceptable at spinning retreats, but at home, I keep returning to the spindles.

Q. If you could be any fiber-producing animal, what kind of fiber-producing animal would you be, and why?

A. Some of the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest had a little wooly dog whose fur they used for fiber. Since I am not fond of standing outside in all sorts of weather, I think I would be better at being a dog that could creep close to a fire occasionally.

* * * * *

The Best of Interweave Knits Readers' Choice Awards will be available for free download from the Knitting Daily Web site until 5 pm MST on May 15, 2008.

To view and purchase more of Evelyn Clark's designs, visit her Web site.

This is the final stop of the week-long blog tour celebrating the release of The Best of Interweave Knits Readers' Choice Awards. For previous stops, visit:

Monday, April 14: Sandi Wiseheart on Smoking Hot Needles

Tuesday, April 15: Norah Gaughan on Lolly Knitting Around

Wednesday, April 16: Kate Gilbert on Moth Heaven

Thursday, April 17: Stefanie Japel on Chez Aristote

*Now available as a reprint from dear, old Schoolhouse Press.

So Many Knitters

I'm sitting here with my half-packed suitcase nearby. I can't quite believe it's time to travel with 1,000 Knitters again. The more the series grows, the more surreal the experience feels.

I know photographers with more training, more experience, more talent, and more money than I. And yet so many of them have projects that have been stalled or stunted for months or years. So why is this one flying along at such a startling clip?

The difference, of course, is all of you. It's your interest and support that power the dynamo. Without you, I'd have a ball of yarn and an empty frame.

With all that's happening I never got around to properly thanking Lauren (aka Knitter 0176) and the Windy City Knitting Guild for a splendid Chicago shoot, during which we added more than fifty sitters to the line-up.



We also achieved a milestone, though due to a miscalculation I was wrong about when exactly it happened. Ladies and gents, I give you Diane, Knitter 0500, who brought us to the halfway mark.



Lauren, who has the patience of three or four especially put-upon saints, managed to get me to a Guild meeting after only nine months of planning. It was wicked cool. I want to go back again as a private citizen so I can just hang out and knit.

And then, of course, there was a shoot during the Yarn Market News conference. I owe that opportunity to the magazine's intrepid editor (and conference planner), Karin Strom. Talking to so many folks who who keep us in yarn and needles and roving and wool wash and notions and cute bags and other necessities of life was a treat and an education.



(The only bummer was missing Cheryl Krementz, who couldn't come along with the team from New York. Cheryl's a smart and prolific writer–not only for YMN but other publications including Knitty.com; and she always gives me juicy illustration assignments for the magazine. One of these days, Cheryl.)

And that brings me to this past weekend, and what I was doing while Dolores was inflicting deep mental scars on those poor 4-H kids.

The folks from The Yarnery, who apparently don't require sleep like the rest of us, decided it would be nifty to schedule a visit from yours truly the day after a night of testifying and song with the Yarn Harlot. (Seriously, dudes. They sang to her. It's on You Tube.)

After such a night they would have been fully justified in being cranky and overtired, but no. Tim and I dropped by the shop to say hello and chat with the Yarnery's vigorous men's group, and I got a royal welcome. They had cookies!



These three guys from the group (Eric, Scott, and Sean) came the next day to have their portraits made.



Scott's the one who made the cookies. From scratch. Exceptional chocolate chip cookies. And he showed up for his sitting with more cookies. I like Scott. I wish I lived closer to Scott's oven.

The shoot was at Yarnover, a long-running annual day of fiber-related indulgences put on by the Minnesota Knitters' Guild. This is a seriously impressive event, folks. The vendor market was large and varied, although I totally didn't buy anything. Except some yarn.

And the classes–oh, the classes. What a list of instructors. I actually got to meet the Rainey Sisters, Joan Schrouder and Lucy Neatby; and I heard Chris Bylsma, Sally Melville and Melissa Leapman were in the house. And those are just the names I know about.

All told, 73 absolutely gorgeous knitters for the day. Here's a tiny smattering.



There in the center of row three is Lucy Neatby, who announced, "I'm going to put a hole in your scarf," and then did. You can see it clearly in the center of the bottom row, in the portrait of my buddy Robert. Robert was one of the first guy knitters I ever met, back at my first Stitches Midwest.

The final knitter of the day was Gerrie (0622).



Gerrie was scheduled in the last spot, but her goodie bag–crammed with toothsome fresh-baked treats from the Franklin Street Bakery in Minneapolis–was waiting for me at the shoot first thing in the morning. When I'm walking around Provincetown in a caftan this summer, Gerrie, I'll think of you.

I owe special thanks to everybody at The Yarnery, especially Maura (who deftly handled all my arrangements) and Mary Lou, Knitter 0620,



who served as my assistant during the shoot. She went above and beyond by running to Home Depot to replace a lightbulb that the airline managed to smash through a cardboard box, a metal protector and five inches of bubble wrap. Mary Lou, you were the perfect companion, especially when Lucy invited us to rummage through her case of samples and we discouraged each other from "accidentally" walking away with certain pieces.

I can't wait, my dears, to come back again if you'll have me. Even if you don't sing to me because nothing rhymes with 'Franklin'. (And nothing family-friendly rhymes with 'Dolores.')

The Rest of the Story

Continued from yesterday's post.

I heard nothing further from Dolores or Harry until late that night, when Tim answered the bell and found the two of them standing, muddy and rumpled, on the doorstep.

"You must be Dolores," said Tim.

"And you must be a master of deductive reasoning to figure that out, " said Dolores. "Do we get to come in, Sherlock Holmes, or would you prefer that we sleep outside so our frozen bodies can be nibbled by rabbits?"

"Or cows," said Harry. "You don't have cows in St. Paul, do you?"

"For the last time, you little drama queen," said Dolores, "she was just being affectionate."

"She ate my ball band!" Harry said to Tim. "I had to come all the rest of the way naked! And it's cold out there! I hate cows! You don't have any cows, right? I'm not staying here if you have cows!"

Tim just looked from them to me, and back to them, and back to me, and didn't say anything.

"Go back to bed," I said. "I'll sort these two out."

You've never seen a man move so fast.

While Dolores huffed around in the bathroom repairing the day's damages to her toilette, Harry sipped a restorative mug of cocoa and filled me in on the trip.

"Well I would have been done for except it turns out Dolores speaks Cow. She told Bonnie Belle–that was her name–to knock it off and take us to the closest road gong north. We had to walk through this huge field and whenever Dolores wasn't looking the stupid cow kept trying to bite me. I hate cows!"

"We've established that," I said. "Why didn't you guys call and tell me what was going on?"

"Well we were going to," he said. "But when we got to the road Dolores said she wasn't doing anything else until she had a martini. And then she spilled her vodka flask into her purse and it got all over the phone and we couldn't make it do anything but play her Thong Song ring tone."

"And then?"



"Well we sat there for a long time and she was real grumpy and then we saw headlights, and she stood up and started shouting and waving. And then it turned out it was this bus full of students from the 4-H Club going to Minneapolis for a big meeting, so when Dolores said can we please get on board they were totally cool about it! They even let me have some of their cookies!"

"Lucky break, that."

"I know! The cookies were really good! So anyway, the best part is tomorrow they said we can come with them to their big meeting, because this one kid said he has been working with livestock since he was just little and he never, ever saw a sheep like Dolores before. And guess what? They asked her to come up on stage for the presentation on sheep breeding and you know how she loves to be in front of people."

I don't need to tell you the rest, of course. You've doubtless seen the headlines everywhere regarding the riot that broke out at the regional 4-H conference, and the exhibit that was cited for disturbing the peace, public lewdness, indecent exposure, and corrupting 300 minors.

After much finagling and pleading she's managed to avoid the possibility of jail time. But if we get out of this without a humiliating appearance on the "Today" show I shall be very surprised indeed.

Tomorrow I'll tell you how my weekend in St. Paul went, in case anybody cares.

Help a Friend?

I have a good friend, Leigh Witchel, who lives in New York City and is hoping to catch a ride out to Kennett Square, Pennsylvania for the 1,000 Knitters shoot this Saturday at Wool Gathering. I know that's one heck of a trip, but on the off chance that anybody's either going out from the city or able to provide (for example) a lift from the train in Philadelphia, would you kindly be in touch with him? (If his name seems familiar, maybe it's because he's a regular contributor of features to Vogue Knitting and Knit 1. Also, he's clean and polite and a good conversationalist and cute.) His email is leigh (at) leighwitchel.com.

Life as Usual

I'm back from the photo expedition to Yarnover and had a splendid time. It was a chance to reconnect with my buddy Tim from St. Paul, who extended his hospitality and hoisted my bags; to meet the wonderful people from The Yarnery and a whole lotta terrific knitters; and to add a further 73 people to the 1,000 Knitters Project–sneak previews to come.

However, as Dolores and Harry decided they wanted to come along, you know that's not the whole story.

Those of you who tune in regularly will be not at all surprised to know that shortly after I landed in the Twin Cities on Friday, I got a frantic telephone call from Harry. He was jabbering a mile a minute and sounded oddly muffled, as though he were calling from inside a suitcase.

Which, in fact, he was.

"Slow down and speak up," I said. "I can't help you if I can't hear you. Now, what did you say?"



"It's terrible," he whimpered. "I was really having fun because I went to the café car to get a soda pop and I met this guy from Fargo and he said do you like Scrabble and I said sure and he said me and my sister brought our Travel Scrabble so why don't you come play with us and I said okay I have to go tell my friend first but when I got back to our seats Dolores was up in the luggage rack and three conductors were trying to pull her down again and she was screaming and yelling bad words and then she bit the one guy's hand–"

"She bit a conductor?"

"Yeah I guess while I was gone she started handing out campaign flyers and the man got all mad and said you can't do that in here lady and she got mad back at him and threw her purse and it hit this other lady in the head and knocked her glasses off and people started running around and I climbed in here to get out of the way and now I can't even find my soda pop and it's dark and I'm scared. What do I do?"

I sometimes wonder if Harry thinks I possess a little book entitled How to Handle Any Emergency that includes entries like "Train Travel: Trapped in Suitcase Due to Sheep/Conductor Fracas."

Before I could offer any advice, I heard a zip and a scream and Harry was gone. There followed a tense hour while I waited for news. Amtrak customer service, helpful as ever, hung up when I called to say I'd received word from a ball of sock yarn about a fight taking place on the Empire Builder between three conductors and the sheep who lives in my apartment.

Finally, my phone chimed: CALL FROM VANHOOFEN, D.

"If this is your one call," I said, "you've dialed the wrong number."

"Oh thank you, thank you so very much for your support," she grumbled.

"Where are you?"

"We're not sure. Somewhere in Minnesota. It's snowy and I see cows."

"It sounds awfully quiet. Is the train delayed?"

"We're not on the train."

"You're not? Well, what's the name of the station?"

"We're not at a station."

"What?"



"We're in a field next to the tracks somewhere or other. They slowed down and pitched us off the back of the caboose. If any of my hats are crushed, I'm going to sue."

I heard Harry scream.

"Harry!" shouted Dolores. "Just shut up! That cow is more afraid of you than you are of her! Smile and make friends!"

Harry screamed again. Louder.

"Whoa," said Dolores. "Gotta go."

There's more to tell, but duty calls. The rest of the report to follow soon.

Leaving, Apparently, on a Jet Plane

Yes, I'm booked on American Airlines for the flight up to Minneapolis today. However, the flight has not been canceled. My original flight was canceled yesterday, but I noticed it while checking my stock of frequent flier miles and managed to jump into the last remaining seat on a slightly earlier flight.

Minnesota knitters have warned me that the local forecast calls for rain, snow, hail, pestilence, earthquakes, dead arising from their graves, hay fever, and unattended toddlers, so I've packed accordingly. Unfortunately even my large suitcase isn't big enough for the collapsible harpoon, so I'll have to make do with a dpn if the situation arises.

Dolores and Harry are coming along, but they have opted to forego air travel entirely and will head north on Amtrak. Harry is excited at the prospect of lunch in the dining car, and Dolores is excited at the prospect of eight hours in a vibrating seat.

If all goes well, I look forward to meeting bunches of you tomorrow at Yarnover, although I'm skittish about following close on the heels of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's visit, which was also sponsored by The Yarnery. It's a bit like having the Rolling Stones open for the Jonas Brothers.

What I really want is to some day tour with Stephanie. You know, like that gaggle of blue-collar comedy guys who all tell jokes about living in a swamp and sleeping with their first cousins? For our finale we'd sing the bluegrass classic "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," with Stephanie playing the banjo and me on the bull fiddle, only with new lyrics about sock knitting.

Hey, Steph, you in?

And Now, A Little Message for China

Sometimes a Knitting Needle Is Just a Knitting Needle

I'm getting the gear ready for this weekend's shoot at Yarnover in Minnesota. (Thank you 1,000 times to The Yarnery of St. Paul for being my host; information is on their Web site.) In sorting everything I ran across the images of knitters–most of them yarn store owners or managers–that were made during the shoot at the Yarn Market News conference.

That reminded me of a sketch I drew while sitting in the back of the room during a marketing presentation. Sitting there and listening to the owners discuss their daily highs and lows gave me a new and visceral empathy for the folks in the business–particularly in the wake of so many Ravelry threads about how yarn shops that don't offer a free lunch buffet and foot massages simply aren't meeting their customers' needs.

I guess it spilled over onto my notebook. I've substituted a printed caption for my illegible pencil scrawl; otherwise this is the rough page as I left it.



Hope everybody's having a good week so far. I'm looking forward to meeting some of you this weekend.

Edited to Add: I must be distracted. I forgot to offer thanks to you for all the kind comments about the Tomten Jacket. My advice is that if it looks at all appealing, knit one. Have fun with it...play with the yarns you want to use...experiment. And don't worry if you don't have a kid to knit one for. One will show up. Or you can just make one for yourself; Brooklyntweed did a gorgeous adult variation I can't wait to dig into.

Practical Magic

It still needs a tassel on the hood (my mother's excellent suggestion) and a zipper in front, but for all intents and purposes the knitting of Abigail's Tomten Jacket to be found in (Knitting Without Tears, Knitting Workshop and The Opinionated Knitter) is complete.

As Houdini was wont to say, "Ta-daaaaa."



This was my first waltz with the pattern and it won't be the last. It's 100% pure Elizabeth Zimmermann: clever, useful, adaptable, addictive. As with most of her designs, variations are numberless and I humbly add mine, with all its flaws and fudges, to the pile.



Ages ago I promised a demonstration of the garter stitch jacquard technique and am now renewing that promise, although I won't get to it this week. I have so many deadlines to meet that I dare not contemplate them in aggregate or they'll drive me straight to the fainting couch with a bottle of sal volatile.

I can promise that blog posts will be thin on the ground this month, but don't forget me. I'll be back.

No Place Like Home

TO: franklin@franklinhabit.com

FR: fuzzyharry@yarnspace.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Subject: I think there will be a party

Hi I know you are busy I just wanted to let you know I think Dolores is going to have some kind of party while you are gone even though you said she was not allowed, I think so because just after you left this guy showed up at the door with a guitar case and tattoos on his face and he smells like Pabst Blue Ribbon and he said Hi I'm Snake where do we set up. Dolores told me he is here for a meditation group but I am not sure she is telling the truth. Please dont say I told you because you know how she gets.

TO: d_vanhoofen@franklinhabit.com

FR: franklin@franklinhabit.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Subject: Please advise.

Dolores, who is "Snake" and what is he doing in my apartment?

TO: franklin@franklinhabit.com

FR: d_vanhoofen@franklinhabit.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Subject: Re: Please advise.

Relax, cupcake. Snake is just his old prep school nickname from Groton. We know each other from my faculty days at Vassar. His specialty is viral marketing I've invited him to meet with my campaign managers to discuss party strategy and discuss the efficacy of new versus traditional media in the current political environment.

I see I must speak sternly to naughty little Harry about his tendency to exaggerate and jump to conclusions. Tsk, tsk.

TO: d_vanhoofen@franklinhabit.com

FR: franklin@franklinhabit.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Subject: Let me repeat myself.

Leave Harry alone.

If this "marketing discussion" results in a visit from the police, there's going to be hell to pay when I get home. No parties. 

And I thought you told me you were on the faculty at Johns Hopkins.

TO: franklin@franklinhabit.com

FR: d_vanhoofen@franklinhabit.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Subject: Re: Let me repeat myself.

I find your inferences insulting and unworthy of further note.

TO: franklin@franklinhabit.com

FR: fuzzyharry@franklinhabit.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Subject: I am so mad!!

Hi I left my copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond in the bedroom and I was just getting to a good part and now Snake and Dolores have been in there with the door locked for like four hours and they keep giggling a lot and then he was playing Free Bird and she was singing so loud the concierge came up and pounded on the door and I had to answer and I am so mad!!! Please call Dolores and tell her to get out of the bedroom I want my book!!!!!!!!!!

TO: franklin@franklinhabit.com

FR: d_vanhoofen@franklinhabit.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

RE: Sorry I missed your call!

Hello, you sexy thing. I'm so sorry I missed your call. Snake and I were just discussing the lessons to be drawn from Reagan's last campaign. We were in the middle of a role playing scenario (I was Margaret Thatcher) and my goodness, it got so intense I didn't even hear the phone ring.

I checked voicemail but there was so much static I'm afraid what you were saying wasn't clear. Do call again if it was important. Also, please tell Harry to stop interrupting us. I left plenty of food in the refrigerator and gave them all money to go to the movies. I think he's miffed at not being included in the meetings. So immature.

I hope you're having a lovely time with your dear grandmother. Won't you please give her my best? :-) :-) :-)

TO: franklin@franklinhabit.com

FR: fuzzyharry@yarnspace.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

Subject: Now I am really mad!!!!!

Dolores is out of the bedroom now but she locked all of us in here and Snake is out in the living room and I hear a drummer and lots of other people and they are playing Fight for Your Right to Party and I just heard something break I think it was the kitchen table. Can you please call Dolores again and tell her to let us out I have to pee and we wanted to go see No Country for Old Men at the Cineplex. THIS IS NOT FAIR!!!!!!

TO: fuzzyharry@yarnspace.com

FR: franklin@franklinhabit.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

RE: Hang tight.

I called the front desk. Somebody should be there in a few minutes to break up the party and let you out of the bedroom. Go ahead and take some money from the secret drawer in the base of the bust of Meg Swansen so you and the guys can get some pizza after the movie, okay? And leave Dolores alone, I'll deal with her when I get home.

TO: franklin@franklinhabit.com

FR: fuzzyharry@yarnspace.com

DT: Saturday, March 29, 2008

RE: We are going to the movies yay

Hi buddy! We are going to the movies and the guys all say thank you for the pizza! But the concierge is on the sofa with no pants on doing the funky chicken with Dolores and Snake's band is playing Let's Get It Started but I think they already got it started because wait until you see what happened to the carpet, ewww gross :-(

I hope you are having fun in Pennsylvania!!!!!

On the Road Again

This is a dispatch from the the Panopticon Mobile Unit, reporting from base camp at Grandma's kitchen table. I'm in Pennsylvania for a brief spell, gathering bits of this and that to be fashioned into an article for Piecework.

Of all the houses I knew as a child, this is the only one with doors still open to me. The others are long demolished or sold out of the family. Grandma, bless her heart, won't budge and I don't blame her.

It's a sweet little place, barely larger (excluding the cellar) than my apartment in Chicago. The single floor has a kitchen, living room, bathroom, main bedroom and second bedroom so compactly organized that there's no hall; the rooms just open into one another. I know folks who have media rooms larger than this. But my grandmother raised three children here, by herself, on her income from sewing and cleaning houses.

Behind me, on the door from the kitchen to the porch, there's a Colorform in the shape of Charlie Brown. I stuck it there  in the early 1970s when I was three or four years old, to remind Grandma of me and show her I'd come back again. She's never taken it down, and I do keep coming back. These days, it's being away that's hard.

Strictly Entre Nous

I have two drawings due at Interweave tomorrow morning. I'm supposed to spend the day at the drawing board, living on handfuls of granola and pausing only to pee into a bucket. So don't tell them about this, okay?

I finished knitting the three pieces of Abigail's Norwegian pullover earlier in the week. This morning, I felt compelled to wash and block them in preparation for sewing and cutting the steeks. And then I felt equally compelled to take a picture and show you.



I'm happy I decided to try out this sort of sweater on a small scale. It's fun as a barrel of Viggos, but I definitely need practice. Though my colorwork is fair-to-middling, there are passages I wouldn't want to submit for examination by a panel of feisty, armed Norwegians.

Alrighty, I'm going to go back to the drawing board. And if you squeal to Interweave, I'm sending Dolores to your house to deliver a lavishly illustrated lecture entitled, "Mary Had a Little Lamb: Fetish, Sensuality and the Erotics of the Modern Sheep" to your children.

Great Day

Well, zowie. After I pressed "Publish Post" and my recurring nightmare became public reading matter, I had a long moment of wondering whether I ought to delete it. As you know if you're a frequent visitor, this blog is seldom a venue for soul-baring. One ought to play to one's strengths, and frankly there are lots of people blogging whose naked souls have more to offer the reading public.

Still, I use this space to clear the occasional emotional blockage. It was indeed kind that so many folks not only indulged the momentary lapse, but also offered comfort, advice, and encouragement. And it's fascinating to hear from others who still break a cold sweat at the sound of "Clean up on Aisle Four!" over a fuzzy loudspeaker.

Today was a terrific day, spent in the company of yarn industry types (mostly independent shop owners, along with a sprinkling of manufacturers, distributors, and sales representatives) who gathered in Chicago for a conference hosted by Yarn Market News. I do illustrations for that charming and useful publication on a regular basis, and when they rolled into town on their Big Wheels they asked me and my little camera to come over and play.

I'm too zonked to do a full report with photographs and tap-dancing alpacas, but I'm too wired to fall asleep without first saying what a positive jolt it is to spend the day (and then dine well) in the company of people whose waking hours revolve around keeping us supplied with yarn, needles, and the sundry impedimenta of the fibery life.

I know well that not every LYS owner is a saint with an encyclopedic knowledge of Cast Ons of All Nations. Nor is every yarn shop the rose-covered cottage we might wish. But this group–they love what they do and are spending several very long days learning to do it even better. As they fly in the face of grim ol' American practicality by supporting creative work in the midst of a yawning recession, I salute them and wish them godspeed.

There should be a little drawing here of eighty shop owners storming the barricades with knitting needles aloft, or maybe raising a cable swatch over Iwo Jima; but when I start wishing people "godspeed" it's time to step away from the keyboard and go to bed. If my prose got any more purple it'd be on television group-hugging a chorus of child actors and singing "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmitz." Feh.

Good night, y'all.

Bad Dream

At my age I really need to stop snacking on peanut M & Ms immediately before I go to sleep.

Lately I've been mostly successful at stemming the craving, but last night I fell down hard in that aisle at Walgreen's where the Easter candy is on sale. At bedtime it was nibble, nibble in between browsing Heirloom Knitting for a new Big Lace Project.

So I had a nightmare. It's one I have quite a bit, about once a month.

I was back at my first (and worst) job ever, stocking shelves at a forlorn supermarket in a depressing corner of upstate New York. I was paid minimum wage, minus the usual taxes plus weekly union dues that were equal to about 50% of my take-home pay.

The official job responsibilities were what you'd expect. I lugged boxes to and fro. I wrangled shopping carts that were determined to escape from the parking lot. I cleaned up spills, wielded a price gun with little skill and less enthusiasm, and suffered the insults of a supervisor five years my senior who had been rejected by Harvard (which he knew I was getting ready to attend) and was not happy with his lot in life.

He liked to give me the heaviest lifting to do, particularly as I was the youngest and smallest of the stock boys. Sisyphean tasks were his forte:

Move these thirty ten-pound boxes from this side of the stock room to that side. No, you can't use a cart. Carry them. Shoot, you just finished moving the whole stack? I just realized they shouldn't have been moved. Put them all back where they were. And do it faster this time. I'll be watching the clock.

Annoying, but honestly no worse than stocking shelves. And it was good for my biceps.

The night supervisor, however, was a genuine sadist. He was a guy from my high school who'd been on two dates with one of my best friends, an enormously pretty girl named Candace. She'd apparently spent most of those two dates talking about what a sweetheart I was. Then she told him to get lost. He was therefore not inclined to look upon me kindly.

After his unfortunate affaire de coeur with the lovely Candace, alarming things began to happen on the shop floor. I'd be pushing a cart through the stock room and suddenly a full, heavy box of canned food would land with an explosive CRASH on the floor next to me. I'd look up, and he'd wave from the catwalk. "Oops!" he'd shout, grinning impishly. "Must've lost my grip!"

Six-foot stacks of boxes would topple as I passed. Full pallets would zoom down the aisle and knock me flat. I'd climb a ladder to reach a high shelf and find myself heading for the floor. "Wow," he'd say, smiling down at me, "You gotta be more careful about where you set up, slick."

I learned very early in childhood that it was no good appealing to authority about stuff like this. Rumors aside, I don't know what it's like to grow up as a little girl. But when you're a little boy, you discover fast that asking for help with bullies does no good. You get one of two stock responses:

1. You better learn to fight back.
2. If you're gonna act like a sissy, you deserve what you get.

Neither solves the problem, but such is the world's disgust with a male child who doesn't tend to brutality.

So I said nothing, and kept my eyes open for runaway cans.

And then–and here is the scene that replays in my dreams–there was a late shift when the box crusher jammed. The box crusher was a big, green cage into which empty cardboard boxes were heaped. When the cage was full, the contents were pressed into a compact bale by the machinery, then tied with wires and ejected for disposal.

There was a huge sign on the side of this thing indicating that nobody under 18 was even supposed to touch it. I was 16, but when I asked questions about the sign the day supervisor told me to shut up and do what I was told. I became fairly proficient with loading, crushing, and bailing. It wasn't especially scary or difficult. If I pretended my boss was inside, it was fun.

But the night it jammed, the late shift supervisor ordered me to crawl inside and fix it. I was, he pointed out, the only guy in the building small enough to fit through the opening. And once I'd cleared the jam, I'd have almost ten seconds for him to pull me out before I'd wind up as Flat Stanley.

I told him to forget it. He persisted. He called over the other members of the night crew, none of whom were terribly fond of me, and they insisted I was being a faggot and a sissy.

"Get the fuck in there," said the supervisor, "or I'll fire your faggot ass on the spot."

I'm sitting here typing this, so I don't need to tell you I ultimately did not wind up in the crusher. But it took everything I had to stand my ground and say no. He told me I was fired, and I waited out the remaining hours of my shift in the parking lot. The next day, I swallowed my pride and appealed to the store manager, who was appalled by the whole thing and reprimanded the night supervisor, though he didn't actually fire him.

Of course, that just increased the rate of falling boxes, but I managed to survive the rest of the summer with only minor bruises and a whopping $250 in my bank account.

The nightmare is very weird in that I always get stuck in a sort of loop where my moment of indecision plays and replays. I stand there in my ugly apron as ten guys call me a stupid sissy faggot and try to get me to climb into that crusher. And in that moment, I honestly don't know what to do.

Happy First Day of Spring!

Good Dog!

The 1,000 Knitters scarf is growing like a kudzu vine. There was another public shoot last night, at a meeting of the Windy City Knitting Guild.

This came, of course, hot on the heels of Saturday's shoot at Yellow Dog Knitting in beautiful downtown Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It's a pretty shop; I took a few snaps during the interlude of calm before the doors opened.

It was evident within minutes that this was going to be an unusual day.

Here is Jaci, Knitter 0414, the first person in the chair. Note the headgear.



No, Jaci does not habitually parade through town wearing a tiara. Turns out this one is shared among the august sisterhood known as the Yellow Dog Divas, who have achieved such status through a process shrouded in myth and mystery. All I can tell you is they seem to be a very, very happy group of women.

Even the non-divas at Yellow Dog are a jolly lot. Dixie, the owner, has a knack for turning customers into family. She issued a call and in they flocked, ready to knit.











Ironically, nobody said "Cheese."

These three came all the way from that other snowy state next door.



On the right is Nic, wearing the sheep yoke sweater she finished in the car so she could wear it for her portrait. But...hold on...is one of the sheep listing slightly to one side? And do I smell...vodka? And cigarettes?



Ah. That explains it. (Thanks for the photo, Liz!)

We had a steady stream of sitters from start to finish, but I nosed around the racks before I left. You know, just to be polite.

Yellow Dog carries handsome, hand-turned wooden needles made by local craftsmen,



and is also one of the fortunate few sources in America for Garnstudios yarns. I fell in love with this tweed.



I also got a crush on Dixie.



(I was powerless to fight it. She taught me Magic Loop and how to carry two colors in one hand, weaving the floats on every stitch, all in the course of one hour. Evil seductress!)

Sunday, as a bonus, I got to visit with the local spinning guild before it was time to head to the airport. My wheel has been neglected for far too long; here was inspiration to dust it off and get it moving.



And then it was time to head to the airport. I sat at the gate working on the Primavera socks and thinking about how funny my life is these days. When you let an idea loose in the world, you never know where it's going to take you. If you're lucky, you might even wind up in Eau Claire for a little while.

Greetings from the Land of Nice

The sky is blue, the air is clean, and everybody keeps smiling at me. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

I'm "chilling," as the youngsters say, after yesterday's 1,000 Knitters public shoot at Yellow Dog Knitting. We had about 65 knitters work on the Scarf That Ate America. I'm still not adept at this blogging-on-the-road thing; I forgot to bring my card reader so a fully-illustrated report will have to wait. But here are a few observations.

• Eau Claire is adorable, but not what you would call a metropolis. Martha Stewart could probably fit the downtown area in her backyard and still have room for a swimming pool. And yet I'd say 3/4 of the sitters listed Eau Claire as their address. This town probably has more knitters per square inch than anywhere else in the country.


• The knitters in Eau Claire are very nice. Everyone in Eau Claire is very nice. The hotel staff are very nice. The lady at the used bookshop down the street is very nice. The lady at the bakery across the street is very nice. The writer and the photographer from the local paper are very nice. I have a feeling if I'd been mugged on the way to the shop yesterday, the mugger would have wished me a pleasant morning.


• If you like meat, you can get it in Eau Claire. Last night after the shoot, my effervescent and charismatic hostess, Dixie, took me to dinner at a restaurant where I was able to order a hamburger with BBQ pork on top. Meat on meat. Love it.


• And how, indeed, can I not love a town where a little guy taking pictures of knitters is literally front page news? (Thank goodness I just got my hair done.) I'm tempted to have my books and yarn shipped north and just stay here forever.

It's a Knitter's Prerogative to Change His Mind

Have you ever started a project that absolutely should have worked, and then didn't? It just happened to me with the lacy Elizabeth Zimmermann baby sweater I'd started for Abigail, from the February chapter of Knitter's Almanac.

It wasn't the fault of the pattern. The pattern is delicious, classic Elizabeth. It starts out odd, turns strange and grows positively bizarre before what's coming off the needles finally reveals itself to be cleverly constructed and beguiling.

Neither was it the fault of the yarn: Jo Sharp DK left over from my Seneca Sweater and left over again from Abigail's Dragonfly Kimono. Susan loved the fabric in the latter, so I felt another little bijou in the same yarn would be a surefire hit. It's soft, lightweight, and firmly spun–it ought to show off simple lace to perfection.

In theory, perfect. In practice, more like a blind date where the two parties seem like a perfect match because they both love opera; but then one of them turns out to be a die-hard Wagnerian and the other one has a thing for Rossini and even before the salads arrive the waitstaff have to wrestle the butter knives away from them.*

So I frogged it just after I finished half an arm, rewound the yarn and let it sit. And then one morning, I woke up with an unaccountable urge to knit a sweater with cut steeks. Aside from a brief lesson on a swatch at Knitting Camp two years ago, I haven't climbed that hill.

By the time I got out of bed I'd decided that if Abigail could talk, she'd ask politely for a traditional Norwegian pullover, and by happy chance traditional Norwegian pullovers have steeked armholes. How could I say no?

So I picked up some coordinating yarn (Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light) at Arcadia Knitting and set off, with Elizabeth and Meg Swansen (via the Knitting Around book and video) as my sherpas.

It was extremely pleasant to zoom around the lower body, using both colors to create the tradition "lus" (lice) dotted pattern,



meanwhile daydreaming about what to put on the chest and shoulders. I've finished it now, and for a first attempt I think it will suit. The fabric is very slightly puckery, but I took care to strand the floats loosely across the back of the work and expect that a good wet blocking will smooth everything out.



Next, the sleeves. And then...the cutting. Yeehaw, baby.

This is why I knit, dudes. Adrenaline. Pure adrenaline.

*Based on a true story.