Hello ladies,

I just wanted to write a quick hello from the internet cafe outside the modern art museum in Paris! We’re having a fabulous time – just back from a restful weekend in the wine country near Bordeaux, where I have cousins, and we’ve checked into an adorable little hotel in le Marais, which might be my favorite Parisian neighborhood yet. Why? We walked by an Anny Blatt yarn store on the way over! We were too hungry to stop at the time, but after stuffing ourselves with falafel we’re quite revived and I’m planning a trip for tomorrow. La Droguerie calls, too, of course! And there’s even a cute bead store around the corner from our hotel. Mr. Garter wants you all to know how thrilled he is… Oh well, I’ll know how to amuse myself while he’s ogling Napoleon’s stuffed horse in the Musee de l’Armee tomorrow.

A bientot!

It’s official: I am unemployed. Yep, Friday was my last day of work. I have mixed feelings about this. I will deeply miss my wonderful mentor and the camaraderie of my fellow assistants at Penguin, and I will miss the satisfying and challenging process of making children’s books. Last week I was mopey and stressed, and Friday was the worst of all. But then my pal and coworker Sarah gave me this:

She knit me a penguin! This cheered me up and really moved me. Sarah and I picked up the sticks about the same time, and Sarah quickly became the most prolific hat-knitter I knew. All last winter she cranked out hats and scarves like she was clothing an army. But Sarah doesn’t like to knit from patterns, so it means even more to me that she followed the Knitty instructions for this adorable little fellow, and tackled such advanced techniques as short rows and complicated color changes. I really love him.

The above photo also provides a clue to the other major pick-me-up of the weekend: the first Spiders yarn-dying party at Marie’s house. It was epic, folks. I don’t even know how many people were there, but it was at least fifteen. We took turns soaking and dying our yarn, and although the party began at 1pm, it was 9:45 before my bout with the dye bottles wound up the show. Since it was already so late, I took my yarn home and steamed and rinsed it yesterday. Sitting overnight really helped it soak up the dye; the water ran clear immediately. Here it is in the rinse pot:

(Laudamus te, O Olympus E500!) And here it is today, almost dry:

I can’t wait to wind it up and see how it will look. The pumpkin spice, teal, and chartreuse dyes took beautifully. Although I really saturated the deep violet and denim segments, they came out a little paler than I would have expected. And the brown I used to transition the skein on the left from pumpkin into denim and teal seemed nearly black coming out of the bottle, but ended up as a color I’ll name “dusty mouse”. Next time I’ll know to be very liberal indeed with the blues and browns. But I’m delighted with the results, and I’m eager to experiment with dyes in the future. I’m especially interested in plant-based dyes.

And for the final garnish on my new life as a Lady of Leisure, I visited a new yarn store in my neighborhood – Knitty City! This cute place on West 79th just opened a couple of weeks ago, and I’d begun to hear rumors of its existence. Naturally, I had to investigate post haste. It’s simply laid out, well lighted, and inviting. They’re still bringing in stock, but they’re specializing in the new line of Lily Chin yarns (which I hope Knitter’s Review will take a look at soon), and they have a good quantity of staples like Aurora 8, Cascade 220, and Plymouth basics, as well as a strong selection of Bouton d’Or yarns I haven’t seen elsewhere, and attractively priced lines of Frog Tree alpaca and Classic Elite Bazik wool. In fact, prices across the board are very competitive for New York. And they have a tempting array of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn… yum. I snatched up some Bouton d’Or Aida in two lively turquoise hues. I’d never seen this yarn before, and I’m happy to report it’s delightful – two plies of different intense colors, very springy, and I-can’t-believe-it’s-100%-wool soft. I knit up a quick pair of Last-Minute Knitted Gifts wrist warmers for a friend’s birthday, and I went back for more of this yarn right away. Hooray for another LYS!

I believe my Jaywalkers may have gone last night where no Jaywalkers have gone before: to Carnegie Hall, for a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to benefit Doctors Without Borders. Our phenomenally talented friend Margo was assistant principal cellist, and she tore it up. The socks were deeply impressed. I’ve never heard the 9th performed live, and all I can say is it sure is worth it if you ever have the chance. (Actually, I could say a lot more, but this is a knitting blog and the socks didn’t do anything of note during the lovely bassoon countermelody at the beginning of the Ode to Joy that I loved so much.)

Sorry about the long silence here. I was in the techno-void of Parent Land for the holidays, and since we’ve been back we’ve been working on some improvements to the blog, but our tinkering seems to have unleashed a bug we haven’t figured out yet. I say “we” because Mr. Garter is my technical enabler in blog land, and he deserves public thanks for the support and encouragement he gives me. But this time even he is stumped. It’s something to do with the photos, and we may have uncovered a secret battle for supremacy between Flickr and Gallery. At any rate, it’s stymied my attempts to post in 2006. So I’m trying a photo-less post for now.

I know you’re all waiting for pictures of my father’s finished sweater, and I’ve got some great ones. I used the excellent Dadcam, an Olympus E300 digital SLR, for a dramatic photo shoot on top of Mt. Young. (The techno-void warps a little around my dad, allowing him to surface in the 21st century and utilize technology that isn’t operable by most parents.) Mr. Garter and I have almost decided that the new model, the E500, will be our combined wedding and Christmas present to each other, so it was fun to play with my dad’s camera, and I was impressed by its capabilities. So look for the image quality to improve around here once I figure out how to post pictures again!

In the meantime, here are some things I’m proud of having accomplished in 2005, and some goals for 2006.

Notches in the Knitterly Bedpost:

1. Lace. I took a big leap into the deep end last February when I decided to attempt the Baltic Sea Stole as a wedding day accessory. I worked through my initial horror of mohair and charts, stuck to my goal of one repetition per week, and even survived a couple of disasters with the cat and a week of lost work when I got overconfident and knit the wrong half of the chart. I ripped out more than a thousand stitches ten days before the wedding, but still finished in time, although Mia had to come to my rescue at the eleventh hour and weave in the ends while I was shaving my legs and putting on my makeup.

2. Design. I conceived and knit an original gansey for my father, with the help of my heroes Barbara Walker and Priscilla Gibson-Roberts. It included a lot of traveling stitches, faggoting, and detailed textural work.

3. Charts. I drew charts for said gansey that actually worked for knitting both flat and in the round. I also made a chart for a complicated mitten pattern (which I haven’t shown you yet).

4. Socks. I made my first pair of socks in June and July, and I was instantly hooked. I never thought I’d be a sock knitter (why bother? It’s really a lot of tiny stitches for something you’re going to put on your feet and wear through in a few months), but now I can’t stop making the things. I’m on my seventh pair, not counting baby booties. And they’ve taught me about short rows and Kitchener, which have become invaluable techniques for me.

And the goals? Frog and re-knit Charlotte. Finish my second lace shawl, Lotus Blossom. Try entrelac. Try fair isle. Do some charity knitting. Submit a design or two for publication. Blog more regularly, at least thrice weekly. The list goes on, and I’m glad. For me, knitting is still a vast country only partially mapped, and I couldn’t be more pleased to find my appetite for exploration undiminished after my first year. Onward.