As promised, a shot of my haul from yesterday’s cruise. Fall ’05 Vogue Knitting: check. Coupon for 10% off at The Point next month: check. Cascade 220 in a beautiful heathered red, Gedifra Stripes in citrus, Manetto Hill Fiero in blues and greens, and a shameless little tease of ArtYarns supermerino in a colorway I think is #137: check. (The ArtYarns thing is killing me – I’m in love with the color, which is shades of pinky browns, but this is definitely not enough yarn to make anything. Obviously I’m just going to have to buy more, but where to find it? Let the odyssey begin…)

Observe also the old-fashioned zinnias I picked out at the farmers’ market yesterday. They were a little token of affection for my husband, who completed his triathlon in a personal record time of 2 hours and 21 minutes. Way to go, honey! Anyway, I’ve always vaguely liked zinnias, but the big showy modern varietals aren’t something I can imagine growing myself. These adorable little zinnia buttons, however, have completely charmed me. I’m making room in my fantasy garden for a lovely big bed of them next to my fantasy house.

I also promised a picture that would show the colors of the sock.

In Firefox, these are skewing to red and yellow more than is accurate. Imagine the greens as grass shading to deep turquoise, with more rich blues shading to darkest navy. The purples are deeper, too. (My camera doesn’t handle greens and blues as well as I could wish.) In IE, it’s all going to show up really dark. Whatever. It’s a beautiful sock, and you’ll just have to take my word for it.

It was a red letter day for knitters throughout the five boroughs: the day of The Point’s knitting cruise in celebration of the third anniversary of knitty.com, and of The Point’s own magical goodness. The day didn’t start out too well for me. You know those mornings when you wake up vaguely aware that the cat has been making some pretty enthusiastic scuffling noises in the other room, but you’re still too deep in your state of lassitude to climb out of bed to see what he’s doing, so you just sort of hope he’s playing with his toy mouse before you roll over and go back to sleep? Yeah…

This picture really doesn’t capture even one tenth of the destruction that met my eyes when I finally did stumble out of bed. It seems that ultimately I have the spirit of a craftswoman and not that of a journalist. The first frenzied thought through my brain was “Repair! Repair!” and not “Document!” So I crawled around under the furniture rewinding my ball and picking cat hair out of the malabrigo and swearing before I realized I ought to take a picture. Actually, I may have the spirit of a vigilante – my very first thought was to find the son-of-a-mangey-monkey who dun this and give him an earful. And since I didn’t exactly have to send out a dragnet to round up suspects, that’s exactly what I did. (How did I come to leave my Clapotis lying about in such slatternly fashion that the ball of working yarn was available for this rumpus? Well, I left it on top of the laundry hamper where the cat never goes…and the darling hubby, being so darling and all, was trying not to wake me up when he left for his triathlon at 5 a.m. and may possibly have pulled his shorts out from under it a little indiscriminately, and since the darling hadn’t turned the light on he didn’t see that he’d released my precious ball of yarn down into Cat Territory…) Anyway, everyone is forgiven. We have nursery rhymes hundreds of years old that tell us what happens when you mix cats and yarn. This cautionary information is of such importance that generations of future knitters have learned it before they’re old enough to talk. Although my pet theory is that Mingus was reading over my shoulder the other day when I wrote to Lee Ann that he was good about leaving yarn alone, and he thought his bad-azz reputation might be slipping…

The omens didn’t get any better when I went to the flea market (Sundays the farmers bring their fresh produce, so I scored some tasty fruits and vegetables for the week) and the woman who sells the #5 green aluminum knitting needles wasn’t there. Her booth was just empty…I can only hope she was just on vacation and she’ll reappear next week!

But despite the signs, the cruise itself was delightful. I’m not sure how many people were there – seventy-five perhaps? It was a big bunch of happy floating knitters, and the breeze was cool enough on the river that we actually needed the knitwear we wanted to show off. I wore Lara, and she received many compliments. Goddess Amy of knitty.com fame took a picture of her and everything! And I worked on my mother’s feather-and-fan sock, which is nearly ready for a heel flap. You’ll have to visit other New York bloggers for good cruise pictures, as my little PowerShot S110 is proving itself to be sadly outdated, particularly in conditions with backlight. But here’s proof that the sock saw the statue of Liberty:

And no, the sock isn’t black. It’s Mountain Colors Bearfoot in colorway “meadow”, which is a rich mix of greens, blues and purples that my mom picked out herself. I’ll try to get a picture of it tomorrow when the light is good, since I also need to photograph my fab gift bag haul. Here are some happy Spiders (even poor Lisa, who was kind of seasick, is feeling better here as we pull back up to the pier) anticipating the gift bags:

A big thank-you to Amy, Helane, John, Sandy, and the rest of the teams at The Point and knitty.com for this terrific afternoon!

Behold the finished Feather-and-Fan socks, cavorting in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. The socks really wanted their picture taken with their favorite Calder stabile, but there were a ton of tourists seated all around it and the looks they were giving me were funny enough from across the pool. So the socks got to leer at this lovely and forbearing Nude instead. Then they demanded their own picture.

Because these little puppies are Art all by themselves. They’d like to thank Lorna for the excellent Shepherd Sock in “Sand Ridge”, and the clever knitter who first realized that the Old Shale pattern would make a sweet pair of socks. I didn’t actually follow the famous Socks, Socks, Socks pattern because I don’t have the book. I pretty much just looked at other bloggers’ photos of them and winged it. I may have even invented my own sort of heel flap. I think I shall call it the Twisted Mistake Reverse-Stranded Slip Stitch Heel. I’m owning the errors, by gum. Anyhow, I’m pleased as punch with these little beauties. Good thing, too, because I’m making a pair for my mother with some tasty Mountain Colors she picked out next.

In addition to a finished pair of socks, I have a small knitting eureka moment to show for this week: entrelac. Turns out it’s much easier, and much more fun, than I could have guessed. How do I know this? It’s all thanks to my pal John. John is my dealer at the LYS. He’s also the generous kind of fellow who will encourage you to plonk yourself down at his spinning wheel or pick up his latest WPO and try a few rows to get a feel for the latest crack he’s pushing. I get to take credit for introducing John to the joys of Malabrigo, but he’s the one who let me knit up a little of his haul on Thursday night so I could get a taste of the entrelac blanket he’s making. It’s not as complicated as it looks, and it’s a totally good time, especially when you’re using soooooooft Malabrigo that looks like leopard print. Huzzah for entrelac! There may even be some in my own knitting future. But not until after Christmas. Must. Not. Start. Any. More. Projects.

Brunswick, Maine is one of my favorite places on this green earth. We were just there for the wedding of two college friends, so unfortunately it was a short trip, especially considering the sixteen hours we spent in the car. But Maine is decidedly worth the trek, and we happily larked over our old stomping grounds and relished the greenery, the smell of the salt sea, and the more temperate weather. No visit is complete until we’ve had our toes in the sand of Popham Beach, above. And I was scarcely less eager to stop at Halcyon Yarn in Bath, conveniently on the way to Popham and to the resort where our friends had their reception. Halcyon is not only one of the great Local Yarn Stores in New England; it is also the first place I ever bought yarn (six skeins of Lamb’s Pride to make scarves for my grandparents!). Had I been thinking clearly, I would have taken some pictures of the hallowed space. But who can think clearly around so much yarn? Anyway, I lost all capability of rational behavior when I saw this:

Serious knittin’ booty, my friends. This is the elusive and currently unobtainable Malabrigo worsted weight merino. I’ve heard this stuff praised to the skies all over the internet, and I can gleefully report that none of the ovations have been unmerited. If you’d given me a skein in a blind grope test, I would have sworn it was alpaca, or possibly even a generous cashmere blend. It’s that soft. And the color? Brilliant geranium, just the remedy for another dreary winter in New York. The charming kettle-dyed (I love that phrase: kettle-dyed) variegations are just quirky enough to remind me that this yarn was made by real humans, which makes me all the fonder of it. I’ve been meditating on a second Clapotis in a winter weight and fiber, and now I know it’s meant to be. Much to Adam’s amusement, I kept a skein of my precious Malabrigo in my lap to fondle as we drove. It’s as good as a favorite stuffed animal, I tell you.

This wouldn’t have been a proper outing without a parting shot (no pun intended) from the sock. Although I mostly worked on fixing one of my most boneheaded knitting moments yet (with the sleeves of the bolero – would you believe I ripped out the wrong one, and so had to reknit them both?), the sock was not neglected. Unfortunately it didn’t get to cavort on the beach; it would have felt very much at home in that grey-blue-sand landscape. Here it’s posing with a recent addition to my college town: the Udder Place drive-through coffee shop. My “Ole Tangle Eye”, a mocha made with Mexican chocolate, was mighty delicious. I’ll finish this account of the trip without dwelling on the rather horrid drive home: I fully intend to wipe my memory of those mind- and bottom-numbing hours in traffic. At least I had my Malabrigo to comfort me.