Spinning Terms

...that sound like positions left out of the Kama Sutra, if you are in the proper frame of mind.

• The Andean Bracelet
• The Bottom Whorl
• The Balkan Spindle
  
• The Swan's Neck Hook
• The Freestanding Distaff
  
• The Spiralling Cop
• Retting and Scutching
• Thigh Rolling
  
• Collapsible Maidens

Well, How About That?

This arrived for Harry while he was away at a three-week Winter Yarn Camp in Texas. Apparently the incident at Windsor is remembered fondly on both sides.



Dolores has been locked in the bathroom for six hours and is refusing to come out.

Fast Sock, Slow Sock

The first of the pair of self-striping Goth Socks is complete. I have deadlines circling like sharks, but I allowed myself to work on it as treat every time I crossed a quarter mile off the to-do list.



The skein-in-chief came with an assistant mini-skein of pure black, therefore the plain heel and toe. I appreciate the black heel and toe because I never enjoy what happens to self-striping when you hit the heel and the colors start to hiccup.



My only issue with the finished product is that it's so terribly cool, I fear I am insufficiently cool to wear it. It suggests a level of gritty urban élan I will only ever possess if I can develop a personal style that goes beyond slipping into whatever mud-colored sweater from Kohl's is lowest on the shelf in the morning.

I'll toss you the link to Goth Socks (catch!) but Steph is still replenishing her stock after rabid fans sucked her dry in forty minutes at Madrona. Please be advised that as of this writing, the cupboard is bare.

Also on the needles under the category "Socks, Assorted" is the blue Bavarian twisted stitch number I started a couple of weeks ago just for the sheer hell of it. Twisted stitch is not as easily picked up and laid aside as stockinette, so the growth is less spectacular, but I'm bewitched (yet again) by the technique.



The Pink Thing, in case you're wondering, has grown by leaps and bounds but I'm not going to bother putting up a photograph. At this awkward stage, it's all smooshed up on a circular needle and doesn't look like anything except a whole bunch of smooshed-up pink. If you'd like to get some idea of the effect, find a whole bunch of something pink and smoosh it. Smoosh it real good.

On the Air

In the last, frantic minutes of the marketplace at Vogue Knitting Live!, a pair of exquisite Canadian Podcasting sisters, The Savvy Girls, asked me for an interview. I was delighted, and they were delightful. The episode is here. It will be of particular interest to anyone who wants to know what I sound like when my body and brain are running on adrenaline, yarn fumes and cheap chocolate from the 24-hour deli on 53rd Street.

On the Road

Coming right up, I'll be in Madison, Wisconsin for a pair of appearances at The Sow's Ear prior to and following the dizzy whirl of the annual Madison Knitters' Guild Knit-In. I'll be hanging out and signing stuff at the famous Sow's Ear Late Night Knitting on Friday, March 18 from 6:30 pm–8:30 pm; and teaching two classes ("Photographing Your Fiber" and "Working with Antique Patterns") on Sunday, March 20. Check out the shop's Web site for details.

Looking ahead, it appears that Iceland won't be the only international destination on the calendar this year.

I've just been added to the roster for Knit Nation London 2011, the second coming of Cookie A's and Socktopus's brilliant idea in London from July 15-17. The schedule isn't up yet, but you can get yourself on the mailing list to be notified once it is. You know how I feel about London, and England, and knitters, so you'll also understand that now I have to go lie down for a while, because I feel one of my spells coming on.

Moments at Madrona

It has taken me fully a week to recover from the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.

It may be premature to speak of "full" recovery. I may never recover fully. I know I have been changed by the experience. I'm not sure I want to change back.

The retreat hurtled past with such velocity that I find myself unable to offer a fluid narrative. All I have are a sprinkling of moments, and a handful of dreadful photographs. (I know my limits. I can be a participant or I can be a decent photographer, but not both. I chose to be a participant. Carpe diem.)

Herewith, a small selection of the memories (sweet) and the photographs (otherwise).

Funny Moment: Meet Faye

I was prepping the classroom for round two of "Photographing Your Fiber" when I heard a student come through the door. I turned to welcome her, and was startled to meet a lady in dark glasses being led by a Seeing Eye dog.

Now, I've had students who've forgotten more about lace than I will ever know show up for my "Introduction to Lace" class, and I've managed to show them a good time; but I confess to a moment of panic at wondering how one teaches a blind lady to capture true color.

The lady in question was Michelle, and Michelle's guide was Faye.



Happily, Michelle can see well enough to knit and to make photographs; in fact, photographing objects makes them easier for her to encompass visually.

Faye, on the other hand, hadn't brought a camera. She settled herself under the table at Michelle's feet, with her furry derrière sticking out from under the cloth. Occasionally, while I was speaking, her tail would thump delicately against the floor. Or during a pause, I would hear a gentle complaint from her squeaky pony.

I'm thinking of re-writing my classroom requirements henceforth to include a desk, a flip chart, four thick markers of different colors, and a puppy dog.

Personal Note to the Universe Moment: Pocket Wheels

I rode on one of these and I @#$*!! WANT ONE. Just putting it out there, Universe.

Guess Again Moment: Mystery Knitting

A lady in my "Antique Patterns" class held up her half-finished mystery project and asked me, "Is it a vagina?"

No, it is not a vagina.

She's Pretty and Talented Moment: Sivia

I stopped by the Abstract Fiber booth and Jasmine showed me a glove design from Sivia Harding, so new it was still bleeding.



It's simple, yet intriguing. It's energetic, yet elegant. It's perfect. It's typically Sivia. If I didn't like Sivia so much, I would want to smack her.

Excuse Me for Drooling on Your Booth Moment: Retail Therapy



Churchmouse Yarns and Teas.



Socks That Rock.

No further explanation necessary. Moving on.

Sometimes It Pays to Have Puppy Dog Eyes Moment: Goth Socks

The night before everything started I got to peek around the marketplace and saw an entire booth of hanks by a dyer whose work makes my eyeballs knock together, Rainy Days and Wooly Dogs. This is she.



Steph dyes the increasingly famous Goth Socks–including the only self-striping I've seen in years that I truly want to knit with, if for "want" you read "lust with the fiery passion of a thousand guys fresh off a six-month deployment on a submarine."

By the time I got to the market the following morning, during the first break between classes, this is what all the shelves in the booth looked like.



Gone. Gone. That's not a rush, that's a feeding frenzy.

I grew despondent, until a gentleman to whom I'd just been introduced–the friend of a dear friend–took pity on me and insisted on sending me home with his own hank of Goth Socks "Dark and Twisty." And he's straight! He didn't demand sexual favors or anything!

The kindness of some human beings is not to be believed.

Sock one is nearly complete, and it is to die. Pictures coming soon.

Getting to Know You Moment: Karen and Jacey

At the teachers' dinner I sat between Karen Alfke and Jacey Boggs, and amidst the lofty talk and low (but delicious) gossip going on around us, we shared our personal experiences of public nudity, both first- and second-hand.

That's all I'm saying. And no, there are no pictures.

Lord, Let Thy Servant Depart in Peace Moment: Evelyn

During the Teachers' Gallery event at which we displayed the patterns we'd written, Evelyn Clark came to my table, picked up Sahar and said, "This is absolutely lovely."

Fanboy Moment: Vivian

I got seated at the banquet next to Vivian Høxbro. It turns out she has to eat food, just like a normal person. I always figured her to be the type who lives on pure mountain air and ambrosia.

I asked if she would mind having a picture with me. She did not mind.



Jeepers Moment: View from the Lectern

Anybody who goes to Madrona will tell you that among all fiber retreats, it is Different. The reasons for the difference are legion, not least the organizers' insistence on treating the faculty with enormous respect and courtesy. (At some events, the employer/teacher relationship is closer to that of, say, Pharaoh and the Israelites.)

When the teachers are happy, everybody's happy. We all came together–students, teachers, organizers, vendors–for a merry banquet on Saturday night; and I had the honor of addressing the company.

This (if you will tip either your head or your monitor to one side) is what I saw when I looked down from my perch.



It's enough to make a guy choke on his angora.

The warm energy in that room was enough to sustain me through about 365 days of swatching, ripping, re-charting, re-writing, re-ripping, re-knitting and answering e-mails with the subject line "I Think There's a Mistake in Your Pattern."

But I still don't know how I'm going to wait until it's time for Madrona again.

And So We Begin

I flew to Tacoma, Washington yesterday morning* to teach at the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat, which kicks off in just an hour. I'm so excited I could pee, and have.

It's a honor to be here, and heaven knows I love to travel; but when you do it a great deal–as I lately have–confusion sets in.

This is the sort of note I now customarily leave for myself on the bedside table before I go to sleep. It helps immensely when I wake up in a cold sweat and can't remember where I am, or why I'm there.



Speaking of travel, wanna go to Iceland with me?

*Dolores flew in later because there were no seats left in First Class on the early flight. Yup, First Class. She also has a rider in her contract requiring a chocolate fountain in her hotel room. I got a granola bar.

This Might Sting a Little

Stealth Knitting

Time was when I could have called myself a monogamous knitter: one project at a time. Okay, sometimes two; but the projects always knew about each other and agreed that an occasional tricotage à trois* added spice.

Now, much older and denuded of anything like wide-eyed innocence, I can no more claim fidelity to a single project than Empress Messalina could have sung “I Only Have Eyes for You” at karaoke night without raising a bumper crop of eyebrows.

I think it’s due to a difference in the way I approach my knitting. Once, I worked from patterns, and casting on was like cracking open a Dickens novel. The beginning was full of intrigue, the middle veered from high comedy to grim despair, and the end wrapped up with nary a loose thread. Off with one hat, on with another. Neat.

Working as I do these days, the clear narrative is blown to smithereens. I sketch, I swatch, I rip, and pieces have a disconcerting tendency to shape-shift in mid-flight. I’ve gone from Charles Dickens to William Burroughs.**

I already wrote about the winter hat. Was supposed to be for me, is instead for somebody with enough moxie to pull off a cloche. Since so many of you liked it (thank you!), I’m refining the pattern and I’ll be releasing it in a new yarn to be determined.

Likewise, Abigail’s Pink Thing started as a poncho and has become a cape and hood.



It progresses, by the way–or will, when the rest of the yarn arrives from the nice lady at Cascade. Turns out I didn’t ask for enough; I confess I’m being rather prodigal in my lavish use of 220 Sport. More fabric in the right places makes for a better twirl.

I still want to knit something for myself, and was going to attempt another hat. But a set of needles were thrust at me that changed the game. They’re called Blackthorns, and the suckers are made of–are you ready for this?–carbon fiber.

Things that are made from carbon fiber:

Stealth Bomber


Boeing 787 Dreamliner


My knitting needles


You know I’m not given to stereotypically boyish crowing over new industrial technology; but this gave me the shivers. Even adamantly non-knitting males in my social circle have been forced to concede that carbon fiber knitting needles are Pretty Freaking Cool.

And they handle, my dears, like a dream. Pointy. Light. Bendy as wood but not prone to snapping under the brute force of my manly fingers.*** And they have the perfect (to my mind) balance between slippy and grippy.

They’re US 00, which means socks, so I’m making some from Cascade Heritage Sock.



The pattern is a pretty little motif in Bavarian twisted stitch. It fit perfectly (one repeat on each needle) and is taken from Twisted-Stitch Knitting, the superb one-volume English edition of Maria Erlbacher’s Uberlieferte Strickmuster–an out-of-print trilogy revived with much loving care by Schoolhouse Press. (Dear, dear Schoolhouse Press–if you were not fighting to rescue these books that would otherwise be lost to us, who would?)

So, socks. I think. For all I know, next week they might have turned into a soft-sculpture giraffe. Harry continues to suspect this is the pernicious influence of Wool Pixies; but that’s another blog entry and I’ve got to go make dinner.

*I have no idea whether this is decent French or bullpuckey, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now. It will have to do.

**Without the sex. Not that some of the silks I’m playing around with haven’t tempted me.

***Hey, share the fantasy.

My Thoughts on the Super Bowl

Compare and Contrast

Letter from Texas

I know I’m in Texas, because I can see a Lone Star flag out the window. Make that four Lone Star flags. Query: Is it accurate to call it a “lone” star when there’s a caboodle of them?

Houston is the first place I’ve been to in four months that isn’t suffering from the kind of frigid weather that makes headlines: HUNDREDS IN METRO AREA DEAD OF SNOWFLAKE POISONING.

The weather here is just fine, thanks; yet nobody seems to notice. A nice lady from the café I’m sitting at as I type this came over and asked if I’d like to move to a table out of the sun. Get out of the sun? That’s like telling a famine victim he only gets one trip through the buffet line.

I tend to be slow on the uptake, so it’s hard to fathom that I’m sweating in Texas so soon after shivering in New York. Last weekend I was in Manhattan for the maiden voyage of Vogue Knitting Live!–me and something like 3,000 other knitters. The New York Hilton is a dim, grim Death Star of a hotel, but we warmed it right up.

Everybody was there. Tout le ever-loving monde. This was my first gig as part of an all-star cast; I almost went blind from the combined mega-wattage at the mandatory teachers’ meeting on Friday. Example: I was talking to Cat Bordhi when Stephanie Pearl-McPhee tapped me on the shoulder; so I turned around and almost tripped over Iris Schreier, who was sitting next to Carol Sulcoski and Cookie A, who were sitting next to Meg Swansen, who was talking to Beth Brown-Reinsel and Nancy Bush.

And there were donuts.

It would have made one hell of a picture, but I don’t photograph knitters I love at 7:30 in the morning, especially before the coffee kicks in. That's a great way to wind up with 23 needles stuck in your neck.

The last time I turned giddy from meeting knitters whose work I greatly admire (at TNNA), I caught flak from some folks (mostly guys, oddly enough) for the perceived sin of name-dropping. I expect that will happen this time, too. Know what? I don’t care. If you can meet Debbie Bliss, Mary Beth Temple or Catherne Lowe with indifference–good for you. This blog is my party and I'll squee if I want to.

Hit List

I have to get ready for tonight’s event (book signing, Twisted Yarns, 5:30–7:30, y’all come on down), but first a snippet of between-class conversation from VKL between myself and Melissa Morgan Oakes, noted author, designer, apiarist and chicken-killer.

Melissa has taught at the famous Knitter’s Review Retreats organized by Clara Parkes. When I mentioned that I’d like to do the same, she informed me (with a touch of nyah-nyah-nyah in her voice, may I add) that I have to wait for somebody to die before a slot will open up in the roster. It’s that sweet a gig.

I looked downcast. Melissa cheerfully suggested I could be pro-active and kill somebody, instead of waiting for the Grim Reaper to cull the herd. She then went down the list, teacher by teacher, trying to determine who should be the prime target.

“Not Cat Bordhi, obviously,” she said. “Ann Budd…no, definitely not.” And so on, until only one name, and one likely victim, remained: Melissa Morgan-Oakes.

“Wow,” she said wistfully. “I guess I’d be the one to kill. Dang.”

Never fear, Melissa. I’m Buddhist to the core. Plus, I hear from the chickens how good you are with that axe.

I'll just wait.

A Puzzlement

First there was some Shetland wool I liked very much.



I recall distinctly that I bought this yarn from two different suppliers (Schoolhouse Press and Churchmouse Yarns and Teas) with the idea of combining it in a splendid new winter hat for me.

Next came notes and sketches and especially charts, because I love making charts. Sometimes I make charts in Illustrator, sometimes I make charts in my notebook. (Harry loves notebooks, especially Moleskine notebooks, and he gave me this one for Christmas.)



Then swatches, calculations, more notes and more charts. All to make a new winter hat for me.

Then there was knitting, to make a new winter hat for me. Knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting. There was ripping, of course–because Life, as a wise woman once observed, is often Like That.

But there was more knitting than ripping. At last, there was binding off and blocking of the new winter hat for me.

So why, please, am I sitting tête-à-tête with what is plainly a roaring twenties-inspired woman’s cloche?



A hat that would, to put it mildly, strike an incongruous note if paired with my customary winter ensemble of biker jacket and jeans?



That a meticulously planned piece of knitting should transform itself, phantomwise, between cast-on and blocking suggests either that I am prey to the twilight machinations of wool pixies; or that I am apt to veer wildly off course because I am easily distrac

Where Was I? Am I? Shall I Be?

One of the strongest knitting Podcasts out there is Mike Wade’s Fiber Beat. I’m honored to be the guest for Episode 14, and to have a signed copy of It Itches offered as the prize for the latest contest. Dolores was less pleased. Certain of her tastes and proclivities are given a thorough airing at the start of the program; she was going to sue, until her legal counsel pointed out that this would mean getting off the sofa.

I’m excited as a cat at a midnight mouse buffet to be heading to New York City next week to be part of the first-ever Vogue Knitting Live! (the exclamation point! makes it even more exciting!!) event, after which I bounce back home long enough to chuck clean socks in the suitcase before heading south to Houston, Texas.

In Texas I’ll be teaching and speaking at both the Knit at Night Guild, and at Twisted Yarns–please follow the links for complete information.

I have to go knit a new hat now. My head's cold. I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do with the cloche.

Alright Already

Cripes, what a pushy bunch. I take time out from a rare family holiday to write a post with photos of a finished project*and what happens? Almost as one, the readers rise up and shout,

"BUT WHERE'S THE PONCHO?"

Perhaps, like global warming and the war in Afghanistan, it's my own fault. I mustn't have been clear that the pink poncho is not, and was never intended to be, a Christmas gift. It's taking far too long for that, and anyhow it can't be worn in this beastly northern climate until May at the earliest. Not to mention that I am enjoying taking my time with it–finding my own way to shape the hood, experimenting with lace patterns, checking out late-1940s couture draping to figure shaping for the cloak.

Yes, cloak. Not poncho. I know–she asked for a poncho; but there's a problem. I hate ponchos. Hate them. I intend no offense to those who love them; I simply do not share your taste. I find them graceless and droopy. And as I am a child of the 1970s, they are forever associated in my mind with aesthetic nightmares like gloppy terra-cotta pottery, tourist-market serapes and macramé plant hangers. I'll be damned if I'll expose my niece to any of that, even if she begs.

I'm turning out to be a very old-fashioned sort of uncle. No–a very old-fashioned sort of aunt. I find that I have nothing but gender in common with the famous, old-fashioned uncles who spring to mind: Remus, Tom, Scrooge. However I closely resemble quite a few old-fashioned aunts: Polly, March, and especially Aunt Alicia in Gigi.



Like Aunt Alicia, I adore my niece exactly as she is. And I intend to fix her. Indiscriminately catering to small children's natural sartorial whims is dangerous; it leads to college graduates who go grocery shopping in their pajamas. Noble savages are fine and dandy, but I have no intention of taking one to the ballet.

So though I wish dearly for her to love it, the Pink Thing will honor the spirit and not the letter of the request. For example, on my watch we do not wear clothing that sparkles unless we are going to an evening party. Therefore, in lieu of iridescent novelty yarn extruded from a unicorn's ass, I'm using a pretty but serviceable and sensible wool (Cascade 220 Sport) in pure pink.

We have just had a wholly successful fitting of the finished hood. I didn't want to proceed until I was certain it was the right size and shape, with enough drape to be romantic but not so much as to flop backwards and forwards willy-nilly.

A picture:



That's it, there ain't no more. I had to bargain to get this one, because the sun came out and the new (pink) snow saucer from L.L. Bean was calling. The client's response was extremely positive. She even attempted a twirl, but as there are still two balls of yarn attached you can guess what happened.

I hope this answers a bit of the curiosity. All kidding aside, I appreciate your interest in the progress of the design. It jolts me from the natural indolence that is my nature. More to come.

*Floradora V.1.0 made a successful maiden voyage today, carrying gift cards which I hear were used to purchase a hamburger.

Making Things

We have been making things.

Abigail and her mother have been making cookies. Those cookies.



I have already had it up to my proto-Gandalfian eyebrows with holiday baking so I kept out of the kitchen. Instead, I sat down with Abigail on Christmas Eve and (courtesy of a sweet little notion from Girl on the Rocks) did my best to further instill the home truth that Making Things with Yarn = Fun.



(You get to choose your own yarn. We chose Cascade 220 Sport.)

On Christmas morning, I presented Abigail with another yarn-based thing I had just finished making.





I've named the purse* Floradora. This is the beta, child-sized version. A grown-up version, larger and considerably refined, will hit the shops in January to herald the launch of a new class, "Cavalcade of Colorwork," débuting at the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat in February.

Now that I have made this blog post, I am going to make a trip to the cookie jar. (I said I was fed up with holiday baking, not holiday eating.)

*I forgot to mention it's in Cascade 220. I guess we're having a Cascade Christmas.

Cookies

If this post smells of butter and drool it's because I've spent about half the day baking cookies. The kitchen looks like Open House at the Keebler Factory, including the flour-covered resident elf who is typing this from a perch by the cooling racks.

I hope you can't get fat from inhaling near a pile of fresh cookies. I just got back into these jeans.

Oh, such a display. We have pinwheels, we have brownies, we have chocolate chips–courtesy (respectively) of Maida Heatter, Irma Rombauer, and Ruth Wakefield.

Piled highest, at the back, are the other cookies. The special cookies. You won't find the recipe for them in any published book; and don't bother asking for it, because after I told you I'd have to kill you. It's a family secret–as deep and dark as the one that keeps the Kardashians on the air, except ours goes better with coffee.

These are Grandma's Jennie's cookies.

Grandma Jennie, rest her soul, was my mother's mother.



She's on the right, in the bow. That's my mother on the left, and the howling lump in the center is me–a week old. (I was either hungry, or commenting on the prevalence of drip-dry polyester fabrics in early 70s fashion.)

We assume Grandma learned how to make the cookies from her mother. We don't know for sure. We never thought to ask. It's a bizarre recipe. I've got about 32 linear feet of books on cookery ranging from 1747 to the present, and there's nothing in any of them that comes even close. It starts out a little bit like shortcake, only without sugar; and then–

No, wait. Can't tell you. Would have to kill you.

These cookies were the first thing I ever baked. I was about ten or eleven, and my younger sister was my accomplice. Every pass of the rolling pin was an act of transgression. Mom wasn't home, we didn't ask permission to use the stove, and these were Christmas cookies. We made unsupervised, unauthorized Christmas cookies in May.

I know that seems piffling at a time when the second graders on "Gossip Girl" get their kicks by snorting cocaine and crushed Flintstone vitamins during little bitty orgies in the VIP room at American Girl Place. But back then, to us, it was thrilling.

My sister, once the sous chef, is now the master baker. She inherited Mom's gigantic yellow Tupperware bowl–you could take a bath in it–which holds the stupendous amount of dough produced by the full recipe. She has developed and perfected a system that allows her to keep one hand clean and dry while the other adds ingredients and kneads them in. And her cookies always have the proper amount of crunch on the outside, while the inside melts in your mouth.

We grew up rolling out the dough and cutting it into moons and hearts and trees, which is what Mom does. But we were surprised to learn during a visit to Grandma's that she didn't use cutters. She rolled the dough out into long ropes with her hands, then twisted sections of rope into curlicues, knots and braids.

Her hands flew. She twisted, we watched. My grandmother was a lovely woman; but she didn't like children mucking around in the kitchen. Baking cookies wasn't a game, it was work. Without interference she could produce six dozen in record time. If you were good, you might be allowed to help with the sugar sprinkles. If you got too enthusiastic and sprinkled the floor, you'd better run.



Susan and I still mostly roll and cut, but near the end of each batch we also make a few twists as a tribute. It's not a hospital wing or a fountain in Central Park, but there are worse ways to be remembered than through a cookie recipe. I think Grandma Jennie would have appreciated it. Especially with coffee.

A Queen Looks at Princesses

Sweet Sally Melville, can you believe how long it’s been since the last post? I’m appalled. I intended to chirp immediately upon my return from Loop in Philadelphia (it was marvelous, thank you for asking) but on the way home a nasty little microbe or virus or microscopic protoplasmic sonofabitch slipped past my defenses and landed me on the sofa, huffing decongestant.

While the bug was in residence I felt it best to keep mum, for which you should be grateful. I’m not exactly a bouncy ball of fun when I’m well, and when I get sick I head straight for Act III of La Traviata.



Alfredo…is that…you? Everything…everything’s going black…

I am such an ill-tempered, ungrateful patient that if Florence Nightingale had been put in charge of me she’d have quit and become a bus driver. If you’re in the room and I feel myself going down, I’m taking you with me.

Catastrophic sniffles aside, I’ve got a surprising amount of knitting done. The trick, I discovered, is to hold one needle in each hand while you knock on death’s door with your forehead.

In our household, works-in-progress are usually referred to by color, i.e. The Pink Thing, The Green Thing, The Blue-and-Orange Thing. The Pink Thing is the one I can write about, and you’ve heard me mention it before–it’s Abigail’s Bespoke Pink Princess Poncho, now in Version 4.0 (beta).

I think I’ve probably done more research and development for this design than any other. Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, I was never a little girl and have never experienced the desire to be, or dress like, a princess. This puts me at risk for turning out a poncho more suited to a marchioness. Disaster.

So I’ve been digging into primary source material, the better to discern the essential characteristics of princess gear.

Here’s what all I’ve been able to figger so far.

1. Go pastel or go home. Princesses don't wear tweed.



2. Put a swag on it. At least one. Swags are good.



3. Put flowers on it. Flowers are even better than swags.



3. Put swags and flowers on it. Simplicity and moderation are for peasants.



4. Fringe is not an acceptable substitute for flowers or swags. A princess who wears fringe will tank at the box office.



5. Drama above the shoulders is key. If there’s not a crown, there’d better be a tiara. If there’s not a tiara, there’d better be a big floppy romantic hood from which to peer with your goo-goo-googly eyes.



6. It had better look good when you twirl. The typical princess will twirl 87.23 times on an average day.



On days when a ball is given, the average rises to 149.25.



The above list is incomplete, of course. Research continues. Meanwhile I'll show you little bit of The Pink Thing in a few days, when I come back from a place where princesses, so I hear, are very thick on the ground.

No, not a private school in Lincoln Park. Somewhere else. You'll never guess.

Peek on Earth

Judging from the pile of comments, the little movie in the last post touched a chord in quite a few tender hearts. Mind you, whether that chord was major or minor depended on how the heart was feeling about this year's roster of holiday knitting.

I'm taking my own on the road (to sweet Loop in Philadelphia for classes on lace and photography, information here) tomorrow, but before I head for the airport I'd like to let you know that this year's edition of the annual Panopticon Shop Holiday Knitting Ornament, "No Peeking," is ready and waiting in the shop. I've put it on cards as well. I do hope you will like it.



Peeking at your presents is a time-honored holiday tradition. Our family had another, related tradition: a merry reminder from my mother that any child caught or even suspected of hunting around for hidden goodies would get to watch in silent horror as every last box and bag went back to Santa's Workshop. I was 23 years old before I could open a closet door between Thanksgiving and Christmas without having an anxiety attack.

An Animated Discussion

Halloween 2010 is but a memory–a hazy memory for some in this household. Between us and the gift-oriented holidays lies only the blip of Thanksgiving. Now dawns the sobering realization that we may already be too far behind to catch up.

I was talking about this with my therapist just last week. She suggested that I deal with my holiday angst in a constructive fashion by putting my heated inner dialogue down on paper so that I could properly analyze it. But I was out of paper, so instead I made an animated cartoon starring Albert Einstein and the Queen of England.

That will strike you as an odd coupling until I explain that whenever I experience a heated inner dialogue, that's who the voices in my head sound like. (Although sometimes instead of Einstein I hear Fanny Brice; but the animation Web site doesn't offer a Fanny Brice avatar.)

The result is that I still don't have my holiday knitting under control and I have to find a new therapist.

Anyway, here's the stupid cartoon.

Trick or Tweet