Dogs Steal Yarn

Knitting the sacred stash...

Do you have yarn in your stash that's "too good" to use? That extra special stuff that no project seems good enough to merit? For me it was the Silk Garden (# 34) that I bought from the boys with a birthday gift certificate last year (thanks, Andrea!). For almost a year now I would pick it up, smell it, fondle it, arrange it in an attractive pile in a yarn basket or on a shelf. I thought it would maybe become a cardi or a retro prep pullover, but I could never bring myself to actually use the stuff. I know.... As if it were the last Silk Garden on earth, as if I couldn't ever buy more.

So I got over it. On Friday I met Em and Iris at KnitNY. All my other projects were at points that were't conducive to conversation (counting, short rows, etc), so I brought the Silk Garden, and cast on for the Dolman Updated sweater (the cover sweater) from the Winter 2003 issue of IK. I'm loving knitting with the Silk Garden so much that I'm already half done. Here's my progress so far (that's the right back and the left front).

This project is going so quickly that I think I'll just stick with it to the end before I pick up any of the other WIPs again. Of course it'll be months before I actually get to wear the thing. Ah well. Something to look forward to. (And now incentive to finish up those other WIPs. The sooner I work through a good portion of the stash, the sooner I'll "need" to buy more Silk Garden.)

And here's a photo of Diego, just because.

Rushing headlong into summer with a lapful of wool

Knitting...ah, knitting. Remember that? (You know...that thing we do with our hands while we read...No, not that. The other thing...) It hasn't been getting much press around here lately. That doesn't mean it hasn't been happening. I had no time at all, basically, to knit this past semester. (Yes, yes we know, Cari. We heard all about it, pretty much constantly. Tragic. We wept for you. Move on.) Well, I've now fully recovered from my first year in MFA land and have thrown myself back into the world of yarny goodness. Thrown myself back into it in my usual way. You can call it ADD. I prefer to call it fiber polygamy. Yes, I can love more than one sweater at a time, and even some socks.

The Debbie Bliss Rosy jacket is coming along nicely. I'll probably finish the back tonight and cast on for one of the fronts. Perhaps that's what I'll bring with me when I meet Em and Iris for coffee and knitting at KnitNY tomorrow. Iris has threatened to throw yarn at me (it's a long story) but I'm going to show up anyway. The yarn I'm using for Rosy, a cashmere merino blend from School Products, is fantastic. I see many more cones of it in my future.

The DB Ribbed Jacket is exactly where it was two weeks ago. I finished the back and one front and haven't touched it since. I should probably cast on for the other front soon, before I lose momentum. But all that ribbing, in slippy, splitty yarn (cotton cashmere) on size four needles... well...it feels like a lifetime from casting on to casting off for each piece. Gotta get back to it, though. I really want to wear this sweater (the only thing that makes ribbing worth doing).

Last week I cast on for the Polka Purl Dots wrap top from the most recent Interweave. Two hundred and eighty-some stitches. On size twos (switching to fours after a seed stitch edging). Those three rows of seed stitch took me forever. I'm only a couple rows past the seed stitch now because the cashmere of Rosy distracted me. I'll probably pick this one up again next week. I'm using Filatura di Crosa Brilla.

Then there's the LL Flames socks, still, for my mom. And my mom's sweater that I started like two years ago and really should just finish up already... And STILL that damn baby sweater just waiting for me to finish the second side seam... My plate is plenty full...

And yet...

It's summer, and I want to make tanks. So there will be tanks. Patterns and yarns to be determined.

Fascinating, hmmm? I forgot how dull an all-knitting post can be. And no pictures, no less. Well, I'm tired and don't feel like taking any. Check out the recent post with pictures of the two DB jackets. Make the Rosy piece twice as big and keep the other one the same and then you've pretty much got the picture.

Oh--and Sadie doesn't steal yarn anymore and Diego never did. Does that mean I have the change the blog's title after all this time?

The Knitter's Reading List

Here is the list that you helped to build. [Updated 6/23] The books that changed our lives, our way of thinking, or that moved us in some way... The books we love. (Yes, I’m getting a bit sappy but few things on this earth mean as much to me as books—specifically novels...) There are so many fantastic books here...too many for any of us to have read all of them, I’m sure, so hopefully everyone will come away with at least a few new titles to check out.

Woolf and Atwood are heavy favorites, winning multiple votes. Literary fiction (and literary fiction by women) is alive and well in the knit-blogger/knit-blog-reader world. (Encouraging indeed for this female writer of literary fiction. ) It’s also great to see quality genre show up on the list, like Ursula K Le Guin. We love her. I must admit I was THRILLED that Hemingway didn’t make the list at all. Screw Papa. I hate Hemingway. There. I said it.

It’s cool to compare this list to that Great Books list, to see what thinking folk are really reading. There are many overlaps, because, yes, the Great Books list has many great books on it. But fiction is a living, breathing thing. It moves and changes. And so this list has many more modern writers, many more female writers, many fewer dead white guys. (Not to take anything away from the dead white guys. It isn’t their fault they all get grouped together all the time...I mean, they’re DEAD, so we can’t blame them. I blame Reagan. Yes, he’s dead, but let’s blame him anyway.)

I included all suggested books, whether I liked them or not. Oh that hurt! It was interesting, actually, to watch myself as I compiled the list, and to see myself react to this book or that one, to think “How many damn books by Toni Morrison do we need on this friggin list?” or “Oh, that’s just a terrible piece of trash” etc etc... (no, of course I didn’t think that about any of the books you suggested. It was someone else’s suggestion.) But then I also thought “oh, I forgot how much I loved that one!” and “I’ve always meant to read it” and “Hmmm, never heard of that one. I wonder what it’s like”...which actually just underlines the whole point of starting this list in the first place. The books we love to read, the books that affect us... it’s such an intensely personal, subjective thing. So I do not endorse all books on this list. I make no promises that you will love all of them (I sure don’t). I do promise you’ll love at least one of them, and have a good time with many of them.

Freed from my self-imposed ten-book constraints, I added a few books (only three, and anyway it’s my blog, dammit). Added The Hours and A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham, not because he’s my fantastic and beloved teacher, but because I loved those books even before I knew him; and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by the mighty Grace Paley. It’s a short story collection. If you don’t know Paley’s work, do look into it. She’s truly wonderful.

I didn’t have time to fact check, so if titles are off or author names misspelled on those that I wasn’t familiar with, let me know and I’ll fix it. If you didn’t include an author name with your entry, and I didn’t know the author, I didn’t include it. Likewise, drop a line and I’ll correct that.

There are many books on this list that I haven’t read and, on your recommendation, am now very much looking forward to. Thanks to everyone for sharing your lists!

Absalom, Absalom! -- William Faulkner
Accordion Crimes -- E. Annie Proulx
Ada -- Vladimir Nabokov
Alice in Wonderland -- Lewis Carroll
All New People -- Anne Lamott
All the King's Men -- Robert Penn Warren
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay -- Michael Chabon
The Ambassadors – Henry James
Animal Dreams -- Barbara Kingsolver
Anna Karenina -- Tolstoy
Bastard Out of Carolina -- Dorothy Allison
The Beach - -Alex Garland
Beloved -- Toni Morrison
Bleak House—Dickens
The Bluest Eye -- Toni Morrison
The Bone People -- Keri Hulme
The Book of Ruth -- Jane Hamilton
Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley
Bread Givers -- Anzia Yezierska
The Brothers Karamazov -- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Catcher in the Rye -- Salinger
Chilly Scenes of Winter -- Anne Beattie
The Claudine Novels -- Colette
The Collector -- John Fowles
The Color Purple -- Alice Walker
A Confederacy of Dunces -- John Kennedy Toole
Crime and Punishment -- Dostoevsky
David Copperfield -- Charles Dickens
Death in Venice -- Thomas Mann
Dogger
Dreaming in Cuban -- Christina Garcia
A Dubious Legacy -- Mary Wesley
Earthsea series - Urula K. Le Guin
Eating Chinese Food Naked -- Mei Ng
Emily of New Moon – L. M. Montgomery
Emma -- Jane Austen
Ender's Game -- Orson Scott Card
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute – Grace Paley
Everything That Rises Must Converge -- Flannery O'Connor
Experiments With Life and Deaf -- Chuck Rosenthal
Falling Leaves
Far From the Madding Crowd -- Thomas Hardy
Fight Club -- Chuck Palahniuk
The Flounder -- Gunter Grass
The French Lieutenant's Woman -- John Fowles
The Futurological Congress--Stanislaw Lem
The Great Gatsby -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Geek Love -- Katherine Dunn
The God of Small Things -- Arundhati Roy
Goodnight Mr Tom
Great Expectations -- Charles Dickens
Herzog – Saul Bellow
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
The Handmaid's Tale -- Margaret Atwood
His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman
Hopscotch -- Julio Cortazar
The Hotel New Hampshire -- John Irving
The Hours – Michael Cunningham
Howards End -- E. M. Forster
The House of Mirth -- Edith Wharton
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream -- Harlan Ellison
If I Told You Once -- Judy Budnitz
In Search of Lost Time -- Marcel Proust
In the Skin of a Lion -- Michael Ondaatje
In The Spirit of Crazy Horse--Peter Mattiessen
Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Bronte
The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
Kitchen -- Banana Yoshimoto
Ladder of Years -- Anne Tyler
The Lathe of Heaven -- Ursula K. LeGuin
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis
Little Miss Strange -- Joanna Rose
Loop's Progess -- Chuck Rosenthal
Lolita -- Vladimir Nabokov
The Lord of the Rings -- Tolkein
Love in the Time of Cholera – Garcia Marquez
El lugar sin limites -- Jose Donoso
Madame Bovary -- Gustave Flaubert
The Man Without Qualities -- Musil
Matlida
Midaq Alley -- Naguib Mahfooz
Midnight's Children -- Salman Rushdie
Middlemarch -- George Eliot
Middlesex -- Jeffrey Eugenides
Mists of Avalon -- Marion Zimmer Bradley
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Motherless Brooklyn -- Jonathan Lethem
Mrs Dalloway -- Virginia Woolf
Naked Lunch--William Burroughs
Niebla -- Miguel de Unamuno
Nights at the Circus--Angela Carter
On the Road -- Jack Kerouac
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Garcia Marquez
Orlando -- Virginia Woolf
Our Lady of the Flowers -- Jean Genet
Pale Fire -- Vladimir Nabokov
Palm Latitudes -- Kate Braverman
Palm Wine Drinkard -- Amos Tutuola.
Persuasion -- Jane Austen
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard
A Prayer for Owen Meany -- John Irving
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Princess -- Jean Sasson
Rebecca -- Daphne DuMauier
A River Ran Through It -- Norman Maclean
The Robber Bride -- Margaret Atwood
Rocket to Limbo -- Alan Norton
A Room of One's Own --Virginia Woolf
Salt and Saffron -- Kamila Shamsie
A Scanner Darkly -- Philip K. Dick
A Severed Wasp -- Madeleine L'Engle
She's Come Undone --Wally Lamb
Slaughterhouse 5 -- Vonnegut
The Sleeping Father -- Matthew Sharpe
The Small Rain -- Madeleine L'Engle
The Solace of Open Spaces -- Gretel Ehrlich
Son of a Circus -- John Irving
Song of Soloman -- Toni Morrison
Sons and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
Sophie's Choice -- William Styron
The Sot Weed Factor -- John Barth
Spider -- Patrick McGrath
The Spiral Dance -- Starhawk
The Stone Diaries -- Carol Shields
Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein
Surfacing -- Margaret Atwood
The Tale of Genji -- Murasaki Shikibu
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion -- Yukio Mishima
Tess of the d'Urbervilles -- Hardy
A Thousand Acres -- Jane Smiley
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Trial – Kafka
Tristram Shandy—Laurence Sterne
Tropic of Cancer -- Henry Miller
Ulysses—James Joyce
Unless -- Carol Shields
Valis -- Philip K. Dick
Vernon God Little
Vile Bodies -- Evelyn Waugh
Waiting for the Barbarians -- J. M. Coetzee
The Waves--Woolf
The Weight of Water -- Anita Shreve
Where the Red Fern Grows
White Teeth -- Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea -- Jean Rhys
Widow For One Year -- John Irving
Wild Swans -- Jung Chang
Wine and War — Don & Petie Kladstrop
The Woman Warrior -- Maxine Hong Kingston
The Woman Who Walked on Water -- Lily Tuck
Wuthering Heights -- Emily Bronte
Xenogenesis Trilogy -- Octavia Butler

Reading lists...

So lots of people are posting that "Great Books" list and bolding the titles they've read. I was tempted to do it too. I went through the list, bolded my titles and all that... But as I was doing it, I was thinking Who MADE this list? And why One Hundred Years of Solitude when Love in the Time of Cholera is a better book? Why is it acceptable to read only one sixth of a novel (Swann's Way)? No, no...of course it's fine to just read volume one, but shouldn't a great books list include the WHOLE book?

The list, it reads like it was compiled in the fifties. I call for a recount. An overhaul. Things like this are so subjective...but that's what blogs are for, yes? Rampant subjectivity. So here's what I propose. I will tell you what my top ten books are that I've read and that have impacted me. The books that changed my life, or my thoughts for a period of time, or that just moved me... only ten though. And then I want to hear from you, want your top ten. And we'll see what we come up with.

So here goes. My top ten books (at the moment. Subject to change as soon as I read another fantastic book.)

1. Hopscotch -- Julio Cortazar
2. In Search of Lost Time -- Marcel Proust
3. Midnight's Children -- Salman Rushdie
4. Middlesex -- Jeffrey Eugenides
5. Death in Venice -- Thomas Mann
6. Lolita -- Vladimir Nabokov
7. El lugar sin limites -- Jose Donoso
8. Mrs Dalloway -- Virginia Woolf
9. The Flounder -- Gunter Grass
10. Niebla -- Miguel de Unamuno

Oh...that was hard. So many books clambering to get into that tenth spot. Maybe I should have made it a top fifty. Anyway...those are mine. How about you?

Debbie Bliss, I love you. I hate you.

You are my nemesis. How many times have I been tempted by the beautiful simplicity of your designs only to be smacked in the face by your woeful quality control when it comes to tech editing your patterns? And yet...and yet...

I keep coming back. She designs things I want to wear. Simple as that. So far so good with the two Debbie Bliss jackets I have on the needles at the moment. No horrific errors or ambiguous wording in either pattern so far. We'll see. It's one thing to read a pattern through before starting, and another thing entirely to read it while executing the stitches, yes?

I'm knitting this from her Simple Living book. Using the same yarn and color as shown in the pattern photo for the first time ever. I couldn't help it. That color is perfect. And I don't even like blue. Go figure. It's Cotton Cashmere. Here's my progress so far (the back and left front done):

I'm also knitting this little wonder from the new Cotton Angora book. Can you guess what this oddly shaped lump o' yarn is growing into?

It's the back, which is knit from the left side seam to the right, using short rows for shaping. The pattern calls for short row shaping, knitting from side to side, shaping by changing needle size...it's brilliantly engineered and--forgive me--doesn't seem like a Debbie Bliss pattern at all. Does she have some fantastic new designer on her staff? One has to wonder... I'm loving knitting this thing, watching it grow in its odd sideways manner, one edge reaching out way past the rest like a strange tenticle. I'm just plugging away and trusting that the pattern will lead me to the intended final shape for the back. It's been SO much fun to knit.

I also love this yarn I'm using. It's the cashmere merino that I bought at School Products when Rachael was visiting. Soft and chunky. Perfect for this jacket. I can't wait to wear it.

Yes, I still have that baby sweater waiting for just the last side seam and some buttons. And yes, my mom's LL Flames socks are stalled four inches into the leg of the second sock. I'll get back to those soon. Really. But for now, for today anyway, it's just me and Debbie.

Oh...and work. Yeah, guess I should do some of that too.

When writers can't sit still

So today was to be a work day in the morning and a writing day in the afternoon and evening. Well. Work was done. Fine. But the writing? I felt plenty creative, but too amped up to sit still at the computer, too edgy to filter it all out into language. Okay. No problem. I have a solution for these moods. I painted instead. Painting still counts as writing, in a way, because I'm still dealing with the themes, emotions, colors of my novel, even if I'm not adding pages to that page count.

First I finished up this one. Well...I say finished now, but I might decide it needs more at some point. I need to live with it a while before I'm sure.

I like the story behind this painting more than I like the painting itself. See, the background is actually a half-finished abstract of my mom's. She started and abandoned it in 1965 because she wasn't happy with it. She gave me the canvas to Gesso over and use for a new painting. Rather than cover hers up, I decided to incorporate it into mine. The result...a co-authored painting with my mom. We're both rather pleased.

And then I was messing around with the paint left on my palettes from that painting and this came out.

Cadmium reds and yellows, my friends. Yes, they're carcinogenic, but color that rich is worth a little risk. I'm not sure if it's going to be a red and yellow summer or if it was just a red and yellow kind of day. My novel, too, is lousy with reds and yellows.

And now I feel nicely settled and ready to translate it all into words. Gonna write tonight. Sigh. I'm a happy, happy kid.

I haven't been knitting much at all this week or last. It's just not what my hands or brain are craving right now. Now I want word and image and the smell of linseed oil. When I haven't been working or writing or painting or sketching studies for paintings or notes for writing, I've been reading. Devouring books I wanted to read but didn't have time for this past school year. Finally read Motherless Brooklyn. Am now reading Middlesex. Also reading and re-reading Rilke. If you haven't read the First Elegy from Duino Elegies it's really worth checking out. Here's a chunk of the beginning, because I'm in that kind of a mood:

There. Lovely, yes? Goosebumps, maybe? Yeah, me too.

Happy weekend.

eh...

I suppose I should share some knitting photos. It has been quite a while, hasn't it? Thing is, I don't feel like taking pictures of WIPs right now. Maybe tomorrow or the next day I'll come through for ya with some photos of the DB jacket progress.

Today is for planting annuals in pots around the deck, and for starting the 910-page copyediting project that's sitting on my desk (on the history of porn. This should be amusing. Or maybe depressing. Or maybe a little of both. We'll see how the author approaches it.) And today is also for writing. All other activity will stop at two pm, cause it'll be writing time. Yes, I'm enjoying my summer break very much so far, thanks.

I'll leave you with this, a little tidbit from my darling brother. The two or three of you who've been reading this silly little blog since I started it know that my brother is a sergeant in the Marine Reserves, and that he was in Iraq last year. You also know that he came home safe and sound last summer. Well, I saw him on Wednesday and he told me a little something about his time in Iraq that amused me to no end. It also goes a long way toward showing how cool my brother is, and how he isn't even a little bit caught up in the macho Marine thing.

Okay, okay, enough buildup. Well, for most of their time in Iraq, his squad (He's a squad leader) would sing "War Pigs" by Sabbath to get themselves worked up before they went out on patrol. Makes sense, yes? Toward the end of their tour, they started singing along to something else instead. Singing and clapping. To what? To Journey. Yes, there was a squad of Marines--in fact one of the most respected squads in country from what I hear (conflicting, to oppose the war but to still be proud to hear from others that my brother is this incredible combat leader)--clapping and singing along to Journey. I asked him what song and he said, "Anything. Anything by Journey would work."

Isn't that sweet? I mean...weird, but sweet.

Stadium rock in the desert. With machine guns and grenade launchers, yes. But stadium rock, no less.