Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Having a Ball....

This weekend I had an opportunity to listen to Ready, Set, Knit!, a radio program hosted by Steve and Kathy Elkins, the owners of Webs. A fledgling project the radio program, also available on iTunes in podcast form, is a well-paced blend of interviews, yarn scoops, hints and tips. Listeners can learn about new yarns coming into the store, hear interviews with folks like Norah Gaughan and Iris Schrier, and enter to win fab prizes, like gift certificates to Webs. Totally not shouting this out simply because they feed me; we all enjoyed listening, even Mr. Wonderful who is often affectiontely called "Poo-Head". If it can make him laugh, it's cool.
This is what my Monday looked like. Seemingly endless skeins of yarn being made into tidy center-pull balls suitable for swatching and knitting from. As each ball is made up, the yarn information is entered into the....HANNAH! Off the YARN!!...sorry about that. She seems to really enjoy the Schaefer Anne. Anyway, the yarn information is entered into an Excel sheet. This way I can keep track of weight, color numbers, yardage on hand etc. I wrote a couple of thousand words on Sunday. That was fun. Honey, if you're reading, I love you. But I said "I am going to write now." And then you came and you spoke to me. Frankly I don't even know what about. I heard noise, words came out of your mouth and I nodded assent. But to what? I have no clue. I am going to knit up a sign that says "Shhhh...Author At Work" or something. {giggle}Author.{giggle} Anyway, that's what Monday looked like and I am glad it's over. I have some yarns pending - particularly a Valley Yarns superwash hand dyed by Kangaroo Dyer sock yarn, and some Great Adirondack. They have a newbie, a heavier superwash called Caribou that MUST be in the book. Must, must, or I will cry. This is Tuesday and I don't know what it looks like yet. It is supposed to look like Swatch Day, but it started with "Take Girl to School so Her Car Can be Aligned Day", complete with first sticking snow, resulting in mass chaos, innumerable slippy spots, and the general Stupid Driving that accompanies said first sticky snow. On the plus side, Girl slid her car for the first time in relatively "safe" conditions. She hit nothing, and continued on her way, and now knows what it feels like. On the negative side, I now know that Girl slid her can and so it will probably slide again and so now I am all maternal and worried. I am glad we took it in for brakes and alignment in advance of snowfall. Driving her to the college was a riot. You wanna see some Stupid Driving?? Sit in a college parking lot during the first snow. Lots of slamming on of brakes, over-steering, it was funny as all get out. Poor little children.
While making balls I was reading over this little number that arrived in my mailbox this weekend. It's called "Threadbared : Decades of Dont's from the Sewing and Crafting World" and is an irreverent retrospective on various handmade fashion trends over the years. Mostly focusing on knitted garb, and spanning decades from 1950's to the 1980's the book takes a big poke at what we've worn, what we've made and finds no answer to the perennial question "Why?" that accompanies ugly knitting. Why, for example, would one try to create fur out of yarn? Why would anyone crochet targets for their breasts? (I am serious, page 91.) Why would anyone knit an Elizabethan collar or crochet a saggy baby bikini?? Why? Many of the images were familiar to me from inherited books. It's a funny read; Girl read it and laughed out loud, as did Mr Wonderful. An excellent gift for the knitter who has everything and loves to laugh. There's a lot of head shaking and a significant number of snorts, chortles and giggles emitted by readers. Show it to your granny - I bet she knitted half of it.
Knitwise, I managed to get this whipped out. It goes over my tank (as seen here.) and is shiny and glittery and I love it. The yarn it Filatura Di Crosa Gioiello, color #15,and the pattern is a freebie. If anyone sees me standing like that model?? Smack me, hard. It took about a day. Two reasonably priced (I think about $10 each) skeins made this adorable little ditty, the perfect dressy go-over for those of us who choose to keep our upper arms under wraps. I topped this off with a purchase of new make-up to replace my the ten year old stuff I had hanging around. I saw some article that said you should actually pitch the stuff every 3-6 months or something. Are they NUTS? Heck, I only slap it on about once every five years. And it still had color in it. But I decided not to risk it - there might be Dangerous Bacteria from that wedding I attended a few years back. I am sure the Divas of the world would faint dead away if they knew I bought make-up from the local CVS. Just like that, off the shelf. No makeover, no $200 out the window, just some cheap face paint from the five and dime.

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