Knitters-Knitters

A Post About Knitting Books (but you should read it anyways)

I have a lot

of

knitting books...

...but not that many that I've actually used.

I know, the line of people who love Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitters Almanac begins in Beloit.  The fan club for the February Baby Sweater is so huge it's not accepting new members.  Many years ago when the Web was young and we only had a shell account, I belonged to a knitting listserv.  I mentioned to the group that I was really fond of this obscure Wisconsin designer and that the rest of them would probably enjoy her if they gave her a chance, and was answered with a HAHAHAHAHAHA of a resonance not experienced since Charlie Brown's note to Little Red-Haired Girl was read aloud in class.  I'll save us time by not picturing the rest of EZ's books, all of which rank in my favorite knitting books of all times.

Here's my favorite issue of Wool Gathering.    Little cross-fronted baby surplice: how many times have I made thee?

I love Lopi.  When this book came out, I belonged to a knitting email group and several people got their copies of the book before mine arrived.  Oh, the anguish!  The envy!  It was worth the wait.

I've made this particular Lopi garment with hood and without, and have used the magic decrease formula for skirts and dresses.  This pattern also inspired me to crusade against the haters who try to insist the poncho is out of style.  Feh, I say!

I love Stefanie Japel's Fitted Knits.  I have made 6 of the garments in this book, and a few of them several times.  That's a lot for one book.

I'm so reverent of Fitted Knits that I made my row count hash marks on a separate sheet of paper, just to keep the book pure.  My febrile scrawl at the bottom says, "The interview.  Crane Misconduct.  The Closer You Get.  Vitus."  The significance of these phrases confounded me for about 20 minutes, and then I realized they were shorthand for episodes of Frasier I wanted to quote.

Knitted Embellishments has been used so many times it's lost its front cover.  You'd be surprised how often one needs a hand-knit carrot.

Look!  A pairing of the Lopi poncho pattern with oak leaves from the Nicky Epstein book.  And that's little Olive!  Squee! 

I've only made one garment from this Zoe Mellor book, but I've made it many times. In a row.  The pattern (Duffle Coat) calls for Magpie Tweed, and is responsible for the staggering collection of Rowan Magpie I now own and whose health and safety keeps me up at nights.  Sometimes I go check on it to make sure it's still breathing, and then it wakes up and I have to sing it to sleep all over again.  Fussy Magpie Tweed! 

Dale of Norway.  Need I say more?   I'll admit I've made very few of the actual garments themselves, but have used the color pattern charts extensively.

Poetry in Stitches is the prettiest knitting book I own.  Again, I've used the color charts more than the actual patterns.  Everyone who likes to look at pretty colors should own this book.  You should own this book.  Even if you don't knit.  Even if you don't like pretty colors.  Wait...

Ahhh.  LB got me Poems of Color for Christmas when we lived in Belgium, WI.  Reading it and looking at the pictures carried me through the worst cabin fever ever, when we were snowed in for 5 days and I took a solemn oath that once our lease expired I would never live out in the country again.  On the 5th day LB packed the van with provisions and headed South while the rest of us wrung our hankies and tried to be brave.  When he returned with news that the access roads were clear enough for us to brave our way to the booming metropolis of Saukville, I fainted with joy.  Finally, we could have coffee and pipe tobacco.  I could buy the children the horehound candy they'd been longing for, and perhaps a few yards of calico for myself.

But back to the knitting book.  I have yet to make anything from it, and whenever I flip through it, I'm reminded of this Woody Allen passage, from Getting Even (not technically a knitting book):

Musicology III: The Recorder.  The student is taught how to play "Yankee Doodle" on this end-blown wooden flute, and progresses rapidly to the Brandenburg Concertos.  Then slowly back to "Yankee Doodle."

Wendy Keele has spent a long time painstakingly changing these Bohus sweater patterns for a more loose, '90's fit, when now, the original body-hugging look is back in style.  If she prints a new edition  in which she works her way slowly back to Yankee Doodle the original fitted sweaters, I will buy it.

I believe I may have more to share with you on the topic of knitting books, but will save it for another day.

Stories of my Misspent Youth (Badger's Book Meme)

I'm jumping on the bandwagon with my own childhood favorites.  Is this officially a meme now? 

Several years ago, I went on Alibris and bought as many titles from my childhood as I could remember.  This one headed the list, along with Josephine and Hugo. I identified strongly with Josephine, the lonely little girl who was the youngest-by-far of her family, like me:

I was never a nature buff, but I loved this book.

And this one:

And let's not forget these (not pictured: The Saucepan Journey).  Yes, I have always wanted to be Swedish.

Lois Lenski.  When I was a child I thought I'd discovered her...

...and Edward Eager.  You can imagine my horror when I learned my sister had read these before me.

This series of novels destroyed my innocence.  Yes, it's where I learned how sausage is made:

I wanted to love At the Back of the North Wind, but could not, even with all the beautiful color plates.  I guess I've always been more of a meat grinding aficionado than a fairy enthusiast.

I had a very hard time tracking down this book, perhaps because I remembered it as The Sea Serpent of Trott, by Horse.

Some of my old favorites made it easier by still being in print, like this series. Who doesn't like a Moomin?  I don't want to know such a person.

I loved everything by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.  If I turn this house upside-down, I should be able to find The Egypt Game and Eyes in the Fishbowl, too.

My favorite series of all times, and the reason I had wanted to name Olive Gertrude.  It's a good thing LB won that battle: Olive is so very much an Olive.

My girls didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I did.  I can remember pouting as a 'tween about kids in the olden days having all the fun: I wanted to be exiled to Siberia, too.

Hey, how'd that get in here?

Sigh.  The Skyhook.

A Meta-Post, for Tom

Reader Tom in NYC writes: Why don't you respond to my blog comments in your blog comments?  Are my comments too off topic?  Perhaps you should blog about this very anecdote you've just told me, then I could comment and my comments wouldn't be off-topic. 

--TXC

Don't you like how I call him Reader Tom?  It makes it sound like he's someone who happened on my mommy-slash-knitting blog from way far away, as opposed to a friend I've known for close to 20 years.  I rarely comment in my own comment section, mainly because I feel like it would look as if I were hovering over my own post, eagerly scanning all comments that came in to see if a note had magically appeared there that never arrived in my inbox (I think that's happened once since July of '07).  Which, of course I am doing, somewhat obsessively, but I don't want you to know that.  Oops.  Now, the comment Tom is referring to is this one, on Lucia Princess Bride:

I was obliged to watch the Princess Bride at a MPW event, and the circumstances killed whatever pleasure I might have derived from it.  (It does have Wallace Shawn in it.)  Wait, weren't you at that event?  I had to give Heather a ride home afterwards, that's all I remember.

Ah, Heather--fellow MPW (Masters in Professional Writing) student who, like me and absolutely no one else at USC, did not have a car.  The very fact that Tom drove Heather home proves I was not at this event, because I would have been the passenger in that rusted orange Subaru known as the Sweetie-mobile: not Heather.  Los Angeles without a car creates a nightmare of dependence and Heather and I competed tooth-and-nail for the kindness of our fellow students--nice ones like Tom who did not consider the exchange rate for a ride home to be one hour of listening to the driver's angst over feelings of inadequacy, or a long and favorable critique of the driver's chapbook of poems about his penis.

Now, in my email response to Tom, I didn't mention Heather or the Sweetie-mobile, or the poetry of Jim L.  I had just spent 3+ hours watching the Golden Globes when Tom's comment sailed in, so I wrote:

I just watched The Golden Globes, and after Kate Winslet won for Revolutionary Road and thanked Richard Yates, I got to wondering where my signed copy of Revolutionary Road was.  I tore the house upside-down and finally found it in the children's playroom.  Now, for some reason, I can't stop sobbing.

If anyone's email was off-topic, it was mine, seeing as how Tom had not invoked DickYates, whom we both had the privilege of studying with in 1989 and '90.  He had not mentioned the cloud of smoke (Winstons--filtered, but not lites) that all but obscured Dick from sight by the end of our three-hour workshops, or the way Dick would begin to say something very important and would then collapse into paroxysms of coughing such that more than once, a student had jumped up to begin CPR before the coughing finally stopped.  He did not mention Dick's visceral way of critiquing our work (This sounds like it was written by a 14 year old boy in his underwear!) or how he always referred to the protagonist as "our guy" or "our gal."  How he hated the word "relationship" (it tells us nothing), the word "lifestyle" (stupid and modern), and the phrase "having sex" (stupid, modern, and tells us nothing).

Tom replied with, When I think of Dick Yates, I feel like sobbing myself, if I did that kind
of thing.  I have my signed copy of the book on the shelf within a few steps of me.

Smart thinking, Tom.  My copy is now locked in my strongbox, on the top shelf of LB's closet.

It's About Hair

There is no question that her new hairdo suits her, but the problem is-- having cut her own hair once--Olive has a taste for the scissors.  Everyone in this house with the exception of LB has a hobby involving scissors and now, apparently, Olive has one, too.  Now all scissors must live Up High, and this is very inconvenient.  If only Olive had a little hair vanity, this wouldn't be an issue.  And if I didn't have boundary issues about her hair and could accept the fact that what grows out of her head is indeed hers, then the big haircut (and the smaller, less noticeable haircut she gave herself this morning) wouldn't bother me so much.  But there it is--I live vicariously though Olive's hair, and now, my vanity has been bruised.

Thankfully, knitting cheers me up, and this project has been going swimmingly.  Every row is interesting.  I think this color combination is actually very springy, which is perfect, since Eleanor has magically sent some spring to Chicago.  See my backyard?

Only a week ago, it looked like this:

It's not exactly warm out there, but I blame that on Mr.Bob's untimely and violent death.  Were he still with us, I've no doubt we'd all be in bikinis.

Since you asked (you really did ask--check the comments) my first and second favorite short stories are 1) Dr. Jack-o'-Lantern, by Richard Yates.  It can be read legally and in its entirety here.  And 2) Dog Heaven by Stephanie Vaughn (in her collection Sweet Talk). 

I was lucky enough to get to know Richard Yates and take classes from him in grad school, and I heard him read Dr. Jack-o'-Lantern aloud. When he and I met, we had instant kismet because we'd both had negative experiences with a writer named... well, it wouldn't be right to say, but it rhymes with Shmobert Shmoover.  When I first mentioned Mr. Shmoover to Dick Yates, he blurted out Jackass!  In fact, any time Shmoover's name came up Dick would shout out Jackass! as if he were following a post-hypnotic suggestion and was powerless to do otherwise.

The Yates reading is forever linked with another event in my mind, an unpleasantness that occurred at the post-reading reception.  A fellow I'd briefly dated--we'll call him Scott--was in attendance.  He had ended our fleeting romance with the words, "Maybe my therapist is right and I am gay," and had, in fact, brought a male companion to the reading.  Scott made a big point of introducing me to the man we'll call Phil, and it was awwwwwwkward.   As I tend to do when things are awkward, I blurted the first thing that came to mind: Gosh, you two look so much alike!  I was relieved this was what had come out (groan) of my mouth, since if two people are attracted to each other then generally they'll both feel complimented by being told they look alike.  To prove my point, Phil smiled warmly.  He seemed like a nice guy and deserved better than Scott.

Later that night, Scott called me on the telephone, very angry.  He told me what I'd said had upset him, and that he felt I'd made that remark out of spite.  I was honestly confused.  "Aren't you seeing Phil?" I asked.  "Surely you're attracted to him--why would my comment bother you?"

Because, he snapped, I have way more hair than Phil!

Christmas and Consequences

I know what you're thinking--you've already seen my stuff.  This is the other stuff, stuff I got for Christmas.  Because we all like to see each other's loot, right?

Necklace, from Mom and OFD.

Beautiful alpaca in Olive-y shades from LB's folks.  I'm envisioning a full-length Smockulus for Miss O, one that goes past her knees, with a white collar, hem and cuff bands.

Mugs from LB's brother and his wife. Are these not the cleverest things?  I'm pointedly "green" now, in spite of myself.

Here's the progress I've made on the sweater kit I couldn't resist tearing open before Christmas.  The original version is a cardigan, with drop-shoulder sleeves.  I've decided to make it a pullover, since I've never successfully made a cardigan where the buttons stayed shut.  No matter how tiny I make the buttonholes in relation to the buttons, they always stretch out of shape and I end up having to sew the cardigan opening shut anyways.  Also, I'm going to do an Elizabeth Zimmermann style yoke, since Miss Olive has slim shoulders and drop-shoulder construction always leaves the line of demarcation somewhere around her elbows.

If all this sounds like a transparent attempt to justify my phobia of steeking, then clearly, I didn't ramble on long enough to make it convincing.

My Boxing Day purchase requires no explanation.  Thankfully, the clerk didn't say anything more than, "Stocking up, I see!"  This is where it comes in handy to like things most people don't like.  No one ever fights me for the last tin of violet pastilles, the last box of candied fruit slices, the last Kathy Griffin DVD, or apparently, the last five boxes of panettone with craisins.

Here's my gift from Sabina; an excerpt and illustration from my favorite poem.

Poe himself languishes in the upper corner, though he does seem a bit cheerier than one would expect.

Olive did many big naughties over Christmas, and one of them involved creating a situation where the only solution was a chin-length bob.  She's very amused by her new 'do but I'm still not over it.

Fitzgerald's Bernice Bobs Her Hair is my third-favorite short story, and I need you all to reassure me that this haircut won't have the same impact on Olive's social life that it did on Bernice's.  The line echoes in my head:  It was quite a new look for Bernice and it carried consequences.

Siberian Syndrome,and a Chance to Win Yarn

When I was a kid, my favorite book was a novel called The Endless Steppe. It was autobiographical, about a young Polish girl whose family was exiled to Siberia.  The book chronicled her experience from the day she left Poland until her return.  The funny thing was, as much as she missed Poland, when it came to be time to leave Siberia, she felt conflicted about going home.  She understood Siberia; she'd made friends.  She'd even, finally, gotten the cool kind of coat all the other Siberian gals were wearing.  And as can be expected, she felt no small amount of guilt over her reluctance to return to Poland.

Not to imply Chicago is anything like Siberia, but...as an exiled Milwaukeean, I can't help feeling a bit of the turncoat's guilt.  Is it okay to like Chicago?

Or does it represent a sort of brainwashed defeat, like coming around to loving Big Brother?

Hang it all, I'm beginning to enjoy it here.  And if past events are truly the best indicators of future occurrences, it must be almost time to leave.

By this point, you're probably wondering what the photo at the top--four pristine hanks of Koigu solids in a lovely shade of pale pink--has to do with Second City Ambivalence.

Well, the reward for accompanying me on today's outing is a little quiz, at the end of which there is the potential to win a prize.  The four skeins of Koigu will be mailed to the first person who can guess right about where this particular photo was taken (the one below, depicting a tapestry):

Now, I'm not expecting an address complete with cross-street, but ideally, I'm hoping for something more specific than "Chicago."  If you decide to play, please put your guesses in the comments section!