Mossy Cottage Knits

The Pen is Mightier Than, Well, The Pen

Recently another blogger, frustrated with the lack of comments on her blog, entertained herself by writing her own comments, using various dialects and personas. In an interesting twist, some of the personalities weren't particularly complimentary about her blog! This reminded me of something similar my mother did many years ago:

At the time of this story, we lived in Singapore (Really. And this was country No. 5. Maybe 6?). My mother was asked to write a book review of "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull" for our small American community newspaper. Being an unsentimental sort, my mother L-O-A-T-H-E-D the book but, for sociopolitical reasons, couldn't be as starkly honest in her review as she would have liked. She noticed, though, that previous book reviews had not had bylines, so she solved her problem thusly: She duly wrote and submitted a smarmily positive review, followed immediately by a long scathing letter to the editor saying how moronic the book was and what an idiot the reviewer was to think that the book had any redeeming value whatsoever. The review was printed one month, sans name. The letter was printed the next onth, avec name. Problem solved. A brilliant but conniving woman, my mother.

Knitting Knews
Take a little journey with me. One day, say, about six months ago, you learn that some dear friends are expecting. About one month ago, you decide to knit said dear friends a sweater for their snookum-wookums. You go to an LYS and find the perfect pattern: simple, tailored, sweet. You go to another LYS and find the perfect yarn: machine-washable and dryable, the right weight, a beautiful cobalt blue. You spend the next month slaving over the sweater, with considerable furrowing of brows and sticking out of tongue. You finish the sweater, back, front, two sleeves. You seam the sweater, again with great furrowing blahblahblah. You go back to LYS #2 and pick out six of the most precious cobalt blue heart-shaped buttons. You attach the buttons. You give a huge, satisfied sigh of relief that the project is over. You lift the sweater up to admire your handiwork. And notice a huge frickin', frackin' mistake!!!! Yes, dear friends, I left an entire pattern repeat out of the left front shoulder, making it a good 3/4-inch shorter than the right front shoulder.

The first sound you hear is me thumping my head against the coffee table. The silence you then hear is me holding my breath until I turn blue. The muffled sound you hear next is me stuffing the sweater in the "Sweater? What sweater? I don't see no steenkin' sweater!" pile.

And the next muffled sound you hear is me taking it out again because you know and I know I'm going to fix it.

Anyway, here is a picture of the &*$#@! sweater, post-seaming but pre-button:

Dyeing Dyegest -- The First Dyed Skein!

A picture of a 1/2-ounce skein of Henry's Attic in two cups of the alder dyebath:

A finished, rinsed and dried skein of alder yarn.

The color of the alder yarn is very much like the color of honey, as this picture shows.

Lastly, a swatch knit using the alder yarn. The color of this photo is pretty accurate.

On Wednesday, bracken-dyed yarn!

Posted by Ryan at June 23, 2003 09:52 AM