Best Quote I Heard All Day
Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.' --Erich Fromm

I read this the other day somewhere and I was blown away by it. Succinct. And very true.


No FibreFest North for Me
With huge unhappiness, I've had to cancel my trip to Wiarton from September 28-30 because I have to go to Dallas for the week of October 1-5. Well, to be more precise, Denton, TX, where I will be training a pile of our newest client's employees. I have not been to Dallas since 1995, when I spent an uneventful and rather boring January weekend in Arlington, covering a doll show at the Marriott across the way from the Rangers' stadium. Talk about drizzling ennui.

I have mixed feelings about this trip. On the one hand, it's always fun to go somewhere new. On the other hand, I'm not the world's most enthusiastic flier. I do it but I don't like it. I'll be taking the camera and the knitting, though. Susan, my boss and buddy, wants to learn how, so since she's going to be stuck with me that week in Denton, looks like she'll be my captive pupil.

But there are two trips that will not be canceled by any client, thank God: The Rhinebeck weekend. A one-day foray down to Baltimore for Stitches Market on the Saturday. Yeah, I'll be incognito in my Foster Grants and perhaps a fugly sweater, if my sister can find one, which I'm sure she can at some hideous garage sale.

Open Mic Thursday
Apropos of the upcoming fiber extravaganzas, here's this week's topic:

Of the three, which would you like to attend most? And if you have been to all three, which was the best? Stitches, Rhinebeck, or Maryland Sheep & Wool? Or would you rather stay home and go to some S 'n' B at an overpriced coffeeshop?

I have my preference, which I'm sure you already have figured out. I have attended all three.


The Squeeze
Loopy takes credit for this moniker, since I am not naming names so that I don't cause any untoward embarrassment. But The Squeeze sometimes reads the blog so he knows who he is. I'm happy to report that all is well in Squeezeland. The Squeeze likes my socks. And actually asked for a pair.

And I'm right now concentrating on that, knitting manly socks on the train because they can be shoved into a laptop bag without much damage. Which led me to thinking about redesigning a pair I did last year, making them in Cascade 220 so that they're heavy socks. Not usually my modus operandi but this weekend, I'll see how it swatches up.

No Obligatory Knitting Shit
Nothing this week. I'm lucky if I do a few rounds on the socks before I nod off on the 5:31 out of Hoboken. I have two unfinished projects that I'd like to tackle this weekend, along with the Cascade 220 swatch: the Magenta Diamonds, which needs two rows ripped out and the final top edging done, and the Lavold pullover that needs one sleeve finished.

Other than that, all I have to say this Thursday is: LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! SHE'S A HUMAN BEING!

My role model at 15 was Jean Shrimpton. Anyone remember her? You have to be of a certain age, I suppose.

I so wanted to be her at that age. And she was and is a very smart woman. She's 65 now but I bet still striking. And rare and handy. Not like the Twit Sisters, Britney, Paris, and Lindsay.

Oh yeah, and I'm putting this up before midnight, cheating as usual. Because I'm fucking tired, so bite me.

Best Quote I Heard All Day
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity--John Adams

Even in the godless, sin-ridden house wherein I live, Jesus can appear to a child eating Hawaiian Feast pizza from Domino's.

Yes, Liz has found Jesus. He appeared to her on her Chinet plate the other day.


You can clearly distinguish the beard, the long hair, and the beatific gaze. Liz immediately wept great tears of joy, smudging her mascara.


"Oh, Gram!" she cried. "I so want to put this up on eBay so I can make a million dollars and thus pay for my tuition to art school. Do you think Jesus would be OK with that?"

As I ate the crust she left behind, as she always does, I patted her on the head and said, "My child, you are blessed with artistic talent. So yeah, flog it and see what you can get."

But somehow, Jesus On The Chinet ended up tossed away, like some trash. However, it was suggested that perhaps the Virgin Mary might appear on Mommy's pepperoni slice.

Dominus vobiscum. Et tu, eBay.

In Lieu Of
Any other knitted item, since I have not yet received my Cotton Glace for Jenn's Camp Anula (story to follow), I managed to get a significant amount of work done on the Magenta Diamonds shawl.

Serious peanut-eating time. I can't put the damned thing down. Once blocked, I think it will be quite nice against my black uniform.

Interesting that I seem to drift towards diamond motifs. Note the chair fabric. So what does this mean, in the scheme of life? Not fucking much. Except that I like symmetry, I suppose.

I would imagine this will be done in the next week or so. Even Mammy admired it today, while we were knitting at the lake.

I was looking at a couple of other Sharon Miller patterns that I own, the Edwardian Lace Wrap, the Wisteria shawl, and the Lavender Garden shawl. While I knit Jenn's jacket, I'll finish up the Magenta Diamonds and perhaps start one of these. I really like working with Kidsilk Haze, which is used for the Edwardian and Lavender Garden designs. I realized too, that in the last entry, I didn't give the link for the Blue Diamonds shawl. So now you have it.

Crap Online Yarn Sites
OK, so I ordered Jenn's Cotton Glace two weeks ago. Received an e-mail confirmation of my order and then...nothing. No shipping confirmation as of last Tuesday. So I e-mailed the customer service department, requesting the shipping status. No response.

Fine. By Friday morning, I was pissed. So I called the 866 Customer Service number. Got voice mail. Left a rather stringent yet polite message that they should contact me immediately regarding my order and its status.

No response by noon. I searched and found the parent company, with a non-tollfree number for customer service and called that. Voice mail again. This time, I left a very strident message.

No response. At 4 p.m., I canceled the order via my credit card company and re-ordered from another place. I got a shipping confirmation within an hour, that my order would be shipped that afternoon via USPS. I should have the yarn by Tuesday at the latest.

So, shall I out the lousy company? Yes, I shall. Because they fucking deserve it.

It's Royal Yarns. I gave them more than a decent shot. Clearly they don't understand good customer service. As they say, if one person has a bad customer service experience, they will tell at least 9 other people.

Unless that person has a blog with a good readership. In that case, you're fucked.

Caveat emptor.

Fibrefest North
You all had better hurry up because rooms are getting snatched up fast. Ted has done a magnificent job organizing this event, I must say. He has just added a trip to the Lindenhof Wool Mill.

[Ed. note: The link to Fibrefest North does not seem to work. So go to Ted's blog and try it from there. You'll find it in his sidebar.]

I have a feeling that this weekend is going go damned fast. Check out the list of who's attending. Carol will be there with lots of BBF yarn and I'm sure other vendors will show up as well.

On the Loose
The kids left yesterday for the Outer Banks of North Carolina, so I'm alone, with my sole company Cleo, Buddy, Buster, Boo, and Blueberry the Bunny, who belongs to Jenn and is residing happily down in the basement, away from the Fabulous Four.

Lord knows what kind of egregiously wanton behavior I could display. The animals won't snitch. And the prospects are quite rare and handy. But I ain't talkin'. Yet.

Best Quote I Heard All Day

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society, except that which makes the road safer, the beer stronger, the old men and women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer—Brendan Behan

Haven’t really had much in the way of writin’ words in my brain this week. It happens. Perhaps I need to look into Behan’s approach. As he said, “Actually, I’m a drinker with writing problems.”

I’d rather write nothing than just toss up three lines or so. Perhaps it’s time for a blog vacation. Although I do need to do Part Deux of Finishing.

The few days I had off last week were spent mostly in the water, along with some knitting, a social event that included unbelievably good seafood cakes sans filler, and otherwise torpid behavior.

Blue Diamonds
Waiting for the Cotton Glace for Jenn’s Campanula made me itchy. Socks on the needles but no interest. Finished a piece for a surprise gift for a friend. And then I remembered: I have a bunch of Sharon Miller’s patterns and some Kidsilk Haze for one of them, Blue Diamonds.

Except that this is Magenta Diamonds. No blue. So here’s the start of it. As of this writing, I now have six motifs across.

Despite this appearing to be a fairly simple design, this is not for a beginning lace enthusiast. For one thing, you must have a solid handle on lace stitch formation when using a mohair blend such as Kidsilk. The self-edging is 16 rows, the diamond motif 14, so you need to keep careful track of where you are.

And because you work three of the edging points first before picking up along their edge to start the body, there’s a bit of fadoodling to start. If you look closely, you can see a slightly heavier ridge at the beginning of the body that is the picked-up edge.

As with all of Sharon’s directions, this one is wonderfully notated. However, for those of you who absolutely won’t or can’t use charts, you’re shit out of luck, even though she does give you the first 14 rows of the shawl body written out. You still need the chart, trust me.

Open Mic Thursday
I had another topic already written up but while I was working on the Magenta Diamonds tonight, half-listening to the TV, I thought of another one I liked a bit better.

It seems to me that the men who have meant anything to me in my life had their own passion for a particular interest. Indeed, if they have passion for an interest, they generally had passion for me too. Passion being what it is. It's the mutual understanding of each other's interest that I have found particularly important in a relationship.

Let's face it--one of the first things a guy notices about me, other than my tits and perhaps my winning smile, is that I am passionate about what I do, be it writing or fiberwork. If he has his own passionate interests, then he generally gets me. So here we go with this week's topic:

How important is it for you to have a significant other who has passion for their own interests?

And please, let it not be a justification for spending more money on yarn, eh?

Upcoming Events
I keep thinking about Fibrefest North, where I’ll be doing some impromptu finishing and spinning clinics, Rhinebeck and, yes, possibly Stitches East.

Graylagran posed this question in the Comments (note that I didn’t edit it):

let's say, that stitches east was just a few miles down the road from you (and you had hours of freetime, and lots of money burning a hole in your pocket) ... would yo go to the market (inspite of how you feel about the xrx "design team")?

Sure I’d go to the Market. What has that got to do with the XRX Design Team? OK, so I put $7 in the X-men’s pocket. I bought the Spring issue of Knitter’s, so I gave them some bucks for that too.

The reason I have not gone to SE the past two years is because I had no interest in going to Baltimore at that time and because I really felt more like spending money at Rhinebeck. The Market had gotten to be a bit stale, in my opinion. Tons of shops with booths selling the same crap. However, it is an excellent place to look at books you haven’t seen, and there are a few vendors who have wonderful wares.

So this year, I may in fact take a jaunt down I95 to B’more. I can do it in a day and if I want to stay overnight, I can find somewhere away from Inner Harbor.

Of course, in order not to be recognized, I may have to wear some fugly sweater and carry that damned Shaun hot-water bottle holder that my sister gave me for my birthday. That way, I’ll be most rare and handy in my incognito attire.