Best Quote I Heard All Day
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. --Oscar Wilde

Now, is this a good-looking man, or what?


Mr. Knitted Condomhead. Sublime. Ridiculous.

I love my gay brother and we had such fun together this past Saturday. It was time for a road trip to New Hope, having missed out on going down to see Carol in Cape May due to crummy weather.

The world's best espresso, made by Thaddeus, then lunch at our favorite Thai place in Lambertville, Siam, and then. Twist. What else? (We left Thaddeus at home.)

Deb was on vacation but Steve was there, always witty, always sweet, even when he manages to screw up the shop swift.

Since I'm on a fairly tight budget, it was a sock yarn diet for me. I bought the same Regia KF sock yarn as did Joe. Despite my reservations about the striping, it's still nice yarn. Joe likes the stripes. I dunno. The jury is still out.

What the fuck. They're only socks. Not objets d'art. I do like the colors.

Twist and Stix-n-Stitches are my true local yarn shops, even though they're not exactly local. (Deb needs to get herself a web site.)

Ravelry
Well, I finally gained admittance yesterday to the beta site, so if you're looking for me, I'm Knitcurmudgeon. How fucking original.



Although I won't go to the lengths of listing my stash--that's more work than it's worth--I think this site has a lot of value to knitters, particularly in connectivity. I belong to LinkedIn, a similar type of community for business, where you can network with business associates.

This is the future of the web. For those of you in IT, we know it as Web 2.0. Now, the Luddite part of me says, I just want to be left alone to knit and spin. The techie part of me says, this is incredible technology.

There is so much information floating out there on knitting, I doubt that it can all ever be consolidated. However, that's OK. Ravelry is a step towards this goal and I hope that it may rise above being a repository for KnitDweebish knitting projects. Reading the forums, though, tells me a couple of things.

First, from what I can see, this is a very young crowd. New knitters, mostly. Haranguing against "yarn snobs." Defending knitting with acrylics with the kind of passion that should be directed perhaps at the state of our government, rather than at knitting.

Second, these forums tend to attract the RAOK types that I can't be bothered with, being a cranky old bitch. In fact, I don't ever post to forums. And don't read them either, as a rule.

So I'll use Ravelry to the degree that I need to. But the blog remains my forum. And yours, if you care to comment.

Happy Birthday, Mammy!
Tomorrow, the Senior Knitting Curmudgeon celebrates her 84th birthday.

I love this picture of my mother, knitting in hand, spouting an opinion on some damned thing or other, taken at my sister's last Christmas.

Now, for those of you who follow our Maroon-in-Chief's lead and whine that it's "too hard," this woman has just finished a complicated Jean Frost jacket and is ready to embark on an equally complicated Lavold.

As Ma puts it, she keeps planning projects because as long as she knits, she ain't going to the LYS in the sky. As it is, she's got 2007-2008 mapped out, pretty much. The doctor figures she's good for another 20 years. From his lips, etc.

I've always been fearless but Ma certainly encouraged that quality. Well, as long as I didn't bleed profusely. She hated the blood stuff. I would frequently let a grass cut dribble down my leg until it was sufficiently bloody to upset my mother. In fact, I did many things that sufficiently upset my mother. But as long as it did not include bodily fluids, she was usually cool about it in the long run.

Love ya, Mammy. You're the true rare and handy person in our family.

Best Quote I Heard All Day
Kilometers are shorter than miles. Save gas, take your next trip in kilometers.--George Carlin

The 503 mile roundtrip from Wharton, NJ to Reston, VA is 809.5 kilometers.

Now doesn't that sound exhausting?

It's so good to be home again, back in Morris County. I gotta say, Reston and Herndon are two of the most soulless places I have ever visited, including Toledo. All concrete, impossible traffic, and more malls than God intended anyone to build.

If I've offended any Restonians or Herndonians, tough shit. I'm a Jersey girl, whaddya want?

No Hope Sunday
I refreshed my jaded palate by visiting with Joe and Thaddeus yesterday down in New Hope, PA, one of my favorite places and definitely two of my very favorite people. Not that I needed to drive more but it's a mere 57 miles from my house to theirs. And certainly far more fulfilling a trip.

Naturally, Joe and I went to Twist first. Naturally, we both bought stuff. Every time I walk into that place, I buy stuff. Deb Brady just knows what to stock. So here's the damage.

Two Elsebeth Lavold books. I haven't seen any of her more recent books, not since the second one, which I didn't care for. But these are gold.

Naturally, I had to buy some Silky Wool to make this sweater from Book Nine.

And yes, as ever, the ball of sock yarn to add to the collection.

(I did not bring my camera, so if you want to see a lovely mugshot of moi reveling in my purchases, Joe put one up on his blog.)

I love to shop with Joe. We have almost identical tastes so we're terrible enablers of each other. Which makes it all the more fun. Read all about the folk-art fish on his blog. I'm really tempted to go back there and buy it, if it isn't a gazillion bucks, which knowing New Hope prices, it probably is. And I have no idea where the hell I'd put it. But I want it.

Boyfriend Myth Solution
I don't believe that crap. However, I think that if you feel a pressing need to knit for your boyfriend, the solution is a pair of socks. For starters.

After all, not everyone LOVES handknit sweaters. My brother won't wear them.

Blasphemy. So bite me.

I had started this design last year and then it got lost in the shuffle. So I resurrected it, got some Soft sock yarn and started a pair of socks for JT. He doesn't know he's getting them yet, but since he does read the blog when he thinks of it, he'll find out. This is his reward for keeping me electronic company in VA so I wasn't too lonely.

I worked on these socks during the little downtime I had. As Joe says, if you don't travel for business, you have no idea how little free time you actually get to knit.

Now, this is a type of broken rib pattern, based on a 2/2 rib. The purls always remain constant, but the knit stitches are broken with purl, alternating every other unit. I stretched out the sock so you can see what I mean.

The nice thing about this stitch pattern is that the purl breaks do not diminish the rib's natural stretchiness. And being an 8-stitch repeat, it works nicely for socks.

If JT's a really good boy, he might get a sweater next. But only if he asks.

More Small Shit
The Julia yarn that Kristin gave me when she was at my house was burning a hole in my bag this week but all I could do were the socks. So today, I started my pillbox hat design, for which I had done the charts. This is lovely yarn to knit with.

Obviously, I haven't gotten very far but I'm liking it. It seems to me that for the past year or so, I've moved away from the bright colors that I generally seek, like a magpie seeks shiny things.

It's time to go back to my colorful roots. Heh. I think I need to think outside the box, to use an express I generally abhor.

Do you all find yourselves stuck in a color rut at one time or another?

(I'm even thinking that my hair color is in a rut. I'm tempted to go a bit darker. After all, I've never made any bones about being a bottle blonde.)

So maybe just because I'm going to be 57 (or 37, as I believe I am mentally) next month, perhaps change is in the wind.

Just sayin'. Alert the media. Oh, shut the fuck up.

You Read It Here First
I'm going on record to say that I will absolutely warp the loom within the next 10 days. If only to shut JT up. He's been razzing me about it.

I'm going to put aside the Morehouse warp and go back to the cotton warp for the kitchen towels. And just try to get something on the loom.

Will tatting be next? Now there's a rare and handy craft for which I have no talent. And no use.

Postscriptum: I want to go on record by saying that the Men Who Knit and the Dogs They Knit For, or whatever the fuck that book is called, is filled with the fugliest designs I've ever seen. Yeah, I know. It's a Modesitt creation. It's totally hideous. Gets my award for the worst knitting book of the year, bar none. So have yourselves a flame-o-rama. Ugly is as ugly does. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, as I always do.