November 10, 2003
Get Out Your Sewing Machines!
I’m always delighted when a Dear Reader sends me a Kooky Kraft, as Melinda did a couple of weeks ago. Now, lest you think this is just another piece of humorous fluff, I assure you it is an intellectual and educational quadruple-threat. It delves into the issues of sewing arts (how to make underpants out of handkerchiefs); physiology (why Japanese women can wear handkerchief-underpants and we apparently immensely huge and beefy American women can’t); the constructs of the English language (why the word “panties” is plural and “nose” isn’t); and philosophy (the question one must ask oneself: “Am I a better person for knowing how to make underpants out of handkerchiefs, especially ones that I can’t even wear?”). So, welcome to the world of higher education!
Knitting Knews
What does it say about how much I knit this weekend that the minute I lay down in bed both forearms went numb? That can’t be good. Yes, I knit uh-lot. Fortunately, however, I get to blame K and the Dr. Muto video game, of which much was played this weekend (and in which we have evolved from an ordinary butt-stomping gorilla to a mechanoid gorilla that has exhaust fumes leaking from his various joints and, one would presume, super-butt-stomping abilities). K plays the game, furiously flinging herself left or right or forwards or backwards thinking it will make her missiles go respectively more to the left, more to the right, faster or slower (it doesn't). I, on the other hand, knit and say helpful things like “You missed an isotope!” or “You missed a vial of life!” or “Maybe if you aimed a little more that way…” or “Look out for the shark (or steel piranha or giant death-dealing octopus or circular-saw-wielding bulldog or acidic green goo)!” Yes, I am the cyber-equivalent of a backseat driver. At any rate, while K careened wildly about in her chair, I started the second baby sock; started The World’s Largest Sweater; and cast on for the second reincarnation of the Acoma Socks.
In other Knitting Knews, a co-worker who is selling her house and wants to divest herself of her excess worldly belongings handed me a large bag crammed full of unwanted acrylic yarn. I have no objections to acrylic, per se. In fact, the yarn I’m using for The World’s Largest Sweater is somewhat woolish, somewhat acrylic-ish. However, this stuff was frightful. Blogger Robbyn calls some similar yarn “stranded corncob,” the perfect description. Long story short, I, in turn, gave the yarn to a wonderful elderly Belgian neighbor of K’s who is always looking for free yarn of any kind for her charity knitting projects (and blanches and twitters and fusses and has the vapors whenever I tell her what I paid for the yarn from my most recent project). But, before I handed the yarn over, I rescued all of this from the bag:
Of course, what am I going to do with three 29” inch, size 7 metal cable needles. Uh, anyone want one?
Dye Garden Dyegest
Here, another photo of one of the other summer denizens of The Mysterious K’s yard, an astoundingly pink dahlia, “Fire Magic.” If you say to yourself, “Surely it can’t be that pink” and adjust your monitor to make it a more “reasonable” color, you will be doing this dahlia a disservice. Truly, it is a bright, vibrant, glowing fuschia, and a very profuse flowerer. Many of these dahlias found their way into my dyepot, although you can be sure K gave me the hairy eyeball every time I approached the shrub with my clippers...
