Will Write For Chocolate

Scheherazade, thiiiiiis close

Dear Blog-

Look! Look! I'm almost finished with the Scheherazade Stole! Last night I finished the final chart and began the edging. With a little knitting break before breakfast I now have two of the seven repeats completed for the final edge. Now how cool is that, I ask you? Ok, let's go back up to the top of the page and admire it for a bit... Isn't blocking amazing? The second half looks like something you'd yell at the cat for leaving behind the sofa. But impale it with sharp wires, pin it to a towel while stretching it mercilessly, spritz it with a little water and look what happens. Voila! You have lace!

Of course you know that I think that Melanie Gibbons is the dog's bullocks. And I mean that in the nicest way. (Yes, you, too, Yarn Harlot, I was just crowing over for once not being the last dork to find something or to figure something out. I love you, really. Please call off your goons. They are scaring the neighbors.) Not only does she design gorgeous stoles, but she is just a darned nice person, to boot. When I was working on getting my patterns into downloadable form so that I could sell them online, Melanie was incredibly helpful and patient with my several emails, pointing me in the right direction to payloadz. The LYSO where I work tells me that Melanie has been into the shop and that she is just as sweet in person as you would expect her to be. So it is wonderful to see the MS3 becoming a world-wide phenom, and to find that she has even been interviewed by USA Today! You rock, Melanie! Wave those needles over your head!

And I had promised myself that I wouldn't start any new projects while knitting the MS3, I was going to finish any UFOs first that happened to be languishing about in various baskets next to assorted seating, all over the house. And only then - when those were all finished - would I think about new projects. (Husband, reading this from the next room, shouts a loud, HA!) I mean, what better opportunity? Knit the next clue of MS3 on the weekend, then work during the week on clearing up my UFOs. Maybe, since I already have the jump on Christmas knitting, I should start my next Xmas project! Have one going all the time! Wrap them as I go! Heck, I'd be done before you know it. And then I could sit back and be smug. Or smugger, really. Yes, well, we all know what that particular road to hell is paved with.

The problem, really is my sister. Alright, maybe it started elsewhere. On a day that I was hunting through various craft and bookstores for the much desired Craft magazine. (We'll talk about books later.) Two people in two different shops went wild for my Summer Ivy bag, and I decided, on thinking about it later, that I really needed to start my own etsy store. But I was having a hard time deciding what to put there, thinking first that I would make a whole bunch of creative versions of my sock project bag, and then sell those. And I may do that yet. Yet what I really wanted was to come up with a basic bag pattern that I could do in a million different ways, each one unique and magically delicious. But I didn't yet know what that shape might be. Then it hit me yesterday, exactly what I need: the shape, the design, everything. Now I can't wait to make the first one. I can already see it. But, the problem is my sister. If she hadn't emailed me and asked if I had anything in my etsy store yet, I would still be living a tranquil life where I thought blissful thoughts of Xmas knitting that I would have finished in September, all wrapped and tagged and stored away neatly on a closet shelf, just like Martha Stewart. Note to self: Call lawyers in the morning, cut sister out of will. Leave all yarn to a home for wayward cats.

So now I must rave about new books - Craft magazine, which I love, love, love! I want the two back editions. I want a subscription. I told the above-mentioned sister that say the word 'craft' around me and I picture plant-holders made out of pop-sickle sticks, or those Xmas decorations that were made of hundreds of clear plastic medicine cups with their edges dipped in white glue and then glitter, and pinned all over a big styrofoam ball with a ribbon hanger at the top. Those kind of thoughts can give one hives. This magazine is not about that. At all. Think about artists - both formal and folk - and the craft of making their art. Lots of amazing ideas and how-to's. Then you get the idea.

The new Interweave Felting magazine. Great articles. The Lock Nest hat is pretty scary, but there you go.

And Nicky Epstien, who is one of my Knitting Goddesses, has a new book out - Knitting Never Felt Better. You need this book. Trust me. She is very inspirational, again.

Well, I can't write about knitting and do it at the same time. So off I go...

OH! Take a moment, if you would, and go check out the blog I am doing for the LYS where I teach, Kiwi Knits. Thanks!

Lynda

Yarn Harlot, Eat My Dust!

Me, Mad Trend-setter, first thing in the morning before I am fully awake, and therefore before reason stays my hand. Note camera position cleverly hides 'thing' happening between my chin and neck.

Dear Blog-

There! I've said it!

To the untrained eye, you might think that no one would look at me and say, Now there goes a mad Trend-setter! Now, in my younger days, I like to think that I did start more than a few mad stampedes to the Next Big Thing - Annie Lennox's crew cut? I had it first! - and yet I have hung up my fashion-forward hat in later years and settled down to a quiet life (the demands of trend-setting are just huge, really, and constant, as well. Quite exhausting.) rather cleverly disguised as a middle-aged woman. (See above.)

But that old Trend-o-Meter still emits a sharp wail now and then, and I hit on the next best thing with a fervor that recalls my old days as the person to watch. It's like observing a well-trained bird dog hit the scent: their whole body goes all stiff and quivery, and their nose points unwaveringly directly at the item in question, with their tail straight out behind them - probably to keep them from tipping forward in their eagerness. And while these days it might be in regards to yarn and all things knitting rather than the latest clothing trends and hairstyles, let me tell you, I still have it!

After all, I knew felting was the next big thing (may I just interject here: Nicky Epstein Eat My Dust!), and got the LYSO at the Evil Yarn Shop to order in tons of Cascade 220, and it was our (their) best seller until they later closed out their yarn dept. (Actually, it was an evil LYSO, not an evil shop. I mean, it wasn't built on an ancient Indian burial ground or anything.) I knew socks were the next big thing. I knew lace was the next big thing, and that lace shawls were hot on its heels. Right now I can tell you that this winter, or next summer at the latest, Kauni Effektgarn and patterns for it will be the next big thing.

But last summer sometime I was trawling the internet and found several mentions of the Mystery Stole KAL, and found Melanie Gibbon's wonderful site, Pink Lemon Twist, where she blogs and sells her incredible lace stole designs. Unfortunately, I found out about the KAL too late to join in (ok, so I missed that one, shoot me!), but signed up for the special notice when the next one came out, and bought the patterns from MS2 and MS1 (and yet another, I think). I am within a few measly days of finishing her Scheherazade design, the MS2, and it is gorgeous.

So roll forward to this year, earlier last month, when I made my way blearily to the computer one morning. Morning routine: Wake at 7 without benefit of alarm, don apparel, check peak flow, stagger over to other end of the room, go into loo and pee if required, if not, unplug air filter and drag it down to the main end of the house. Plug it in and switch it on, stagger past computer and switch it on, go to cabinet in kitchen and take asthma meds. Stagger back to computer chair and collapse, read news and emails. This one lovely morning when I found the notice from Melanie that the MS3 KAL was starting and that one could sign up as of that day, you can bet that I tossed off my weariness like an old Madonna hair-rag and raced right over there and was number 12 to sign up. Or at least, there were 11 members already when I went to the site to join. Who knows, there may have been a Miss Speedy Fingers already there, signing up at #12 and leaving 13 for me. It's possible. My point is, I was there pretty darned fast. I may not have made the Top 10, but I was like this close, really. And have watched in amazement as the group has grown by leaps and bounds every day.

I'll admit, I did go on Special Notices only about a week or two into the group as there was just an overwhelming amount of email, and it seemed that everyone was too excited to trim their posts, to ask themselves the essential email question, Does the whole world really care deeply about what I'm about to say? and other things that you hopefully learn when you join in groups with thousands of other list members. So instead I read my normal-people emails each morning, and then check into the messages on the group website and skim for things I might want to read there. This wise move on my part has preserved my sanity, my reputation as a fairly nice person in the knitting world, and my computer from crashing under the weight of 361 'me, too!' emails each day.

So this morning, as I was skimming the posts since yesterday at about 7:30 Pacific time, I see that Yarn Harlot has joined the KAL, along with many other of her Harloteers. I say welcome to them! Welcome to you all, the more the merrier! But hey, a pack of Johnny-Come-Lately's, or what? Now I know, as goes Yarn Harlot, so goes the nation, but hey, I beat you on this one! :-P

In the meantime I have printed up Clue 2, and since our LYS is closed this week for the holidays, I have no place I have to be and a clean house. I'm gonna be knittin today.

In other news, last nite DH and I were invited to go along with our market friends to the local comedy club, where a fine time was had by all. Ok, the MC was so not funny that it was painful to watch, but the rest made up for it. When we came out it was still hot and dry - we had been so hopeful, the skies were dark and ominous as we drove across town to the club, with a nice wind kicking up - usually good signs of an imminent monsoon storm on the horizon. Then we noticed that the dust on the windshield had that uniquely spotty appearance. And the very occasional puddle at the side of the dry streets. Cops with a whole block closed off. Cops directing traffic at darkened stoplights. A whole tree at the corner of River and First tumbled over into the sidewalk and road. More puddles, more tree debris. The phone book that some fool left at the foot of our mailbox now resting in the driveway of the house two doors down the street. And the final bit of evidence that we had MISSED the first monsoon of the season? Yes, Mr. Nightmare clinging to our front screen door when we got home. Too big, too hairy, and with far too many legs, he looks as though he must have dragged a whole cow down into his little lair before he went to sleep last winter. Oh, dammit, he's back. Did I mention that he's big?

But the monsoons have started. And I got the jump on the Yarn Harlot. Could life be better?

Off to wash dishes, self, and commence knitting-
Lynda