New York Minknit

I’ve been dragging my sock around town, annoying everyone, but putting in a row here and a row there.

Here it is visiting the parachute jump at Coney Island. (My knitting has now visited two of the remaining remnants of the 1964 World’s Fair, the other being the awesome Panorama.) By the way, as an occasional reader of weird pop culture history books and through my years of research for work, I’ve discovered that almost everything was invented or debuted at a World’s Fair, including Belgian waffles, air conditioning, various electrical gadgets, and ice cream cones. Whenever someone wonders when the first “______” came about, if you answer “The World’s Fair!” you would, I think, be right at least 75% of the time.

I also made it pose next to many different types of magnolias, tulips, and cherry blossoms  at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, (and one patch of neighborhood jonquils). It’s like the gnome! It’s everywhere!

This is a small little yarn store in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Midwood, which is a short drive away from Coney Island. Adam and our former co-worker, Seltzerboy (pictured) wanted to eat pizza at Di Fara. (If you click through on the links, you can read about how the two of them are fanatical about Di Fara. I was the victim of much eye-rolling when I suggested that Di Fara should institute a line, instead of the free-for-all pizza ordering system they they currently have.) It’s just a neighborhood yarn store, with Red Heart and Patons, and similar brands, rather than the more high-end yarn stores in Manhattan or other parts of Brooklyn. It is, however, devoted entirely to yarn, unlike a lot of similar neighborhood stores, which tend to be a catch-all of fabric, yarn, Bedazzlers, and other craft supplies. I am guessing that they developed this inventory–of more inexpensive, and often acrylic, yarn–by observing customer demand, though I wonder if it would benefit (or hurt) the store to carry more boutique lines of yarn as well. Their inventory is so similar to that of Michael’s or Jo-Ann’s that it lacks any stock that might give it an advantage over those big-box craft stores. It may be, however, what the neighborhood wants, and a store carrying Koigu or Malabrigo might be seen as too expensive or too snobby by its customers. I don’t know; that’s just my guess.

Stitch N Stitch

1320 Coney Island Ave.

Phone: (718)-692-0100

This was on the same block, and I think it might be owned by the same people who owned Roxy Yarns, but I couldn’t find Roxy Yarns. Perhaps both stores are moving? I liked the name: “You’re SEW materialistic!”

Sometimes, I hate learning new things. I like doing things the way I always have, and assume, grouchily, that no new way can be better. I am, however, determined to try all of the different ways of how to knit a sock, and this pattern (Swirl Socks by Sulafaye), required learning how to knit toe-up. After some frustration trying to learn Judy’s magic cast-on, I went with the crochet cast-on, and I was amazed! It was so easy!

Combined with thicker needles (size 2) and sport-weight yarn, these socks have been flying along. I’ve become a total toe-up convert. That first progress shot (above) was after just five days of knitting. Probably, if I thought knitting taught life lessons, I would now say something about the importance of learning new things without fear.

I went on a business trip to Cincinnati this week, which entailed lots of airport waiting, and thus, lots of knitting. Something about getting to stay in a hotel suite still feels glamorous to me. Traveling for work–even if just to Ohio–seems so sophisticated! And a hotel suite without all the household chores of home meant more knitting time.

By the time I came back to New York, all the bulb flowers had blossomed. I had enough yarn to make these socks even taller and into knee-highs, but I had been knitting just this sock all week, and I got bored. Sometimes, when I read difficult [read: not particularly plot-driven] and long books, I get physically annoyed with the book. I remember reading Gravity’s Rainbow one summer and hitting the book against our dining room table. My dad looked up, and I was like, “This damn book won’t end!” It was slow-going in the beginning, and I seem to recall that the book was actually fairly interesting in the middle, but by the end, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was like, “End, you stupid book, end.” I got that way with this sock, and just bound off mid-calf, with yarn left (I had pre-divided the yarn into two balls), because I couldn’t deal with knitting more of it. That’s the beauty of socks, though–you can just stop when you’ve had enough.

I had never seen this kind of flower (above) before. They looked like they were cut out of crepe paper, but they were real. The rectangular ends of the petals were what made them seem fake–most flower ends are tapered, but these look like they were snipped off neatly. If you know what kind of flowers these are, leave a comment.

Off I go to cast on for the second sock.

Adam has become obsessed with Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. So obsessed in fact, that he was champing at the bit for volumes 2 and 3, which no Barnes and Noble had in stock. We had to go to Forbidden Planet to find them, and inside, we saw this Dalek [which due to Adam’s other nerd hobbies–like watching Dr. Who–I recognized]. I was like “Nerd hobbies collide! Traveling sock must pose with the Dalek!”

I was actually rather sympathetic to Adam’s plight because I had been searching every Barnes and Noble and yarn store in the city for this issue of Piecework, which features an article about how to make these Finnish mittens. Somehow, every other knitter in New York had snatched them up, and I was forced to order it off the internet, but I did get a copy.

I read some article once and the now-forgotten person being profiled said to their intern, “This is New York. You can find anything.” I have held this quote firmly to my bosom, but I have news for whoever said this. There are things you cannot find here.

Traveling socks…in the snow.

I may have acquired Piecework, but I often see beautiful knitting projects on the internet, and they are–unless one is willing to pay ridiculous shipping fees–impossible to get. (Though I sometimes think most of the fun of shopping for hard to find items is the search, no? The end product isn’t even that important.) Here for you to lust after, Things I Cannot Find in New York:

1.) Germany: Sport & Strumpfwolle Color-Ringel, color 15742. I saw Elemmaciltur‘s socks and I have been lusting ever since, though my babelfish-translated email to the company garnered me a depressing response: shipping to the U.S. is incredibly expensive.

2.) Japan: Ooh! Exciting news! I just realized one of my long-time favorite Flickr projects, this Japanese shawl, is actually a pattern I have! It’s a variation of a tablecloth in Marianne Kinzel’s First Book of Modern Lace Knitting–Yarn Harlot made it into a shawl here.

But Japan continues to lure me with cute things. Look at this beautiful baby sweater! So refined, yet cute!

3.) France: I actually tracked down (and bought) this pattern via ebay, but the yarn has been discontinued, and the occasional lots that pop up on ebay.fr cost way to much to ship here, especially for a novelty acrylic yarn.

4.) U.S.: Even things in my own country continue to elude me. Like Jess Hutchison’s booklet of Unusual Toys for You to Knit and Enjoy [the ethics of copying her out-of-print booklet has been hotly debated on Ravelry–a topic, interestingly, that is discussed almost point for point in today’s The Ethicist] and Hello Yarn’s fiddlehead mitten kit (good news on that front though–Hello Yarn is going to release just the pattern soon).

I once had an argument with a friend (this was probably in 2001) about whether the term “emo” was a well-known term. I said that if *I* knew what emo is–and I am someone who owns 5 CDs and no iPod–then it was a well-known term. We then proceeded to poll random strangers at the now-defunct Tower Records about their knowledge of “emo,” and shockingly, only one person knew what it was, and claimed it “was an obscure term.”

On a related note, I was reading Vanity Fair (the mag, not the novel) today, and in their letters section, one of their readers wrote, “Can you explain ’emo’ and ‘frenemie’?” Apparently, emo is continuing to confuse people across the land.

Anyway. If you take emo to mean “emotional” or “overly emotional” rather than relating to a specific era of music, the sock went to see various emo acts this week. On Tuesday, it went to see Morrissey at Hammerstein Ballroom.

I have two friends who love Morrissey with a deep and intense passion, so when I heard Adam was going to see the Moz, I invited myself along, to experience the madness firsthand.

The sock also went to see Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci, the former famous for being featured in Godfather III (amazing what you can learn from the program notes!) and the latter for being in a Seinfeld episode. Both are also very emotional. Pagliacci is about clowns, and on the subway home, I sat next to someone reading a flyer for the New York Clown Theater Festival AND who had small stuffed clowns hanging from his backpack. I was overcome with a desire to whisper, “Laugh, clown, laugh” when he got off, but I restrained myself.

Adam and I were discussing what constitutes a hobby, with Adam arguing that reading was not a hobby. His argument boiled down to two points: If the activity in question is a commonly listed question on an online dating profile (favorite book / favorite movie / favorite tv show)* and if it doesn’t require gear, it’s not a hobby. Though I agree that tv watching, is not, in general, a hobby, I was like, c’mon, reading! It’s a hobby!

*I think his theory was that if it was common enough to be a category in an online dating profile, then it meant it was practiced by most people, and thus, not a hobby.

Anyway. Gear. Gear is the favorite element of a hobby for many people, I think, and I finally bought some exciting gear for my hobby, knitting. Yup, I now own a swift and a ball winder! The purchase was somewhat expensive, but look what it makes:

Yarn cakes!

And I was so excited by my yarn cake that I started knitting these socks right away:

I am calling them the Queens Center Mall socks, because they seem kind of like the thing an eleven-year old outer borough* girl would buy after reading The Official Preppy Handbook, but getting it wrong, by buying the socks in a poly-blend at the Queens Center Mall. They’re pink and green, total ’80s prep colors, but also strangely garish, and kind of tacky. I totally love them. As you can see by my coat, which I had customized with the addition of pink ribbon (by my Queens dry cleaner), I think I just might be this girl. 

*If you’re not from New York, the “outer boroughs” are Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, with the main borough being Manhattan. I think New York dominates the media enough that the rest of the country gets that each outer borough has its own sterotype. Queens, home of the Mets, Archie Bunker, The Nanny, The King of Queens, and George Constanza’s parents. I can’t think of any literature set in Queens. Apparently, we are an illiterate borough of tv-watching yahoos.

The traveling shawl has got to be the most uninteresting thing to photograph:

Stay tuned for a new traveling project!

I am lacking in knitting blogging material, and thus I turn to my favorite filler: The Traveling Project!

(Top left and bottom right) Adam and I were invited to a preview night at a new bowling alley/bar in Williamsburg, The Gutter (well, I think really Adam was, but I tagged along) and the shawl came along too.

(The photo in the lower left is Williamsburg at night.) Adam takes beautiful photos all the time, even when I am being annoying, and being like “Why so many photos!?” Then I steal them for my blog. Mwhahaha.

(Top right) We also went to IFC to see Helvetica, the documentary. This is me knitting in line. The shawl is too heavy to knit while standing up, but it’s the traveling project for now.

Michele from Knitsane tagged me with a meme, but I’m still thinking it over. In the meantime, you get this photo–I think it’s one of the better ones from this traveling project gimmick. 

The AMNH is kinda racist* but still cool. I love the dinos, the gems, the whale room, and the old-school vitrines.

* See this photo of a vitrine in the Hall of Asian Peoples! Someone was telling me about this book, Give Me My Father’s Body, about the fight of an Inuit Eskimo to get his father’s body back from the museum, where it was on display.

If you want to knit a dinosaur, here and here are some dino pattern links.

Here are six skeins of Rowan Scottish Tweed Aran that I bought at Purl (they were 40% off, and I had a gift certificate from Adam, so it ended up only costing me $24) to make this:

It’s Kate Gilbert’s Equestrian Blazer in the Winter 2006 Interweave.

It calls for a 6 needle, but I seem to have a really loose gauge, so even when I knit on a 0 needle, I think my swatch might still be too big!

Also. It has gotten really hot here (Memorial Day! The start of summer!) so I’m feeling a little less enthusiastic about knitting with wool.

But meanwhile, here’s what the traveling sock has been up to:

Riding the Cyclone, visiting police precincts, drinking and hanging out.

Many people, including me, have been defeated by Robert A. Caro’s massive biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker. I own the book, and got as far as Chapter 5 in a week, and I’ve been stuck there since November 2006. Anyway, I went to see two of the Robert Moses exhibits currently in New York today, and I’m sure it would have been even better if I had read the book first, but I didn’t.

(Adam, who takes all the beautiful photos on this site, was being driven crazy by his side job of being the official photographer for New York Minknit and so he gave me his old camera. Fortunately for you, the readers, this means that I can now post photos of traveling sock when it is not near Adam. Unfortunately for you, this means the photo quality is going way down, since I do not currently have the photo skillz of Adam. So, I apologize for the quality of these photos, since I am still learning how to use the camera.)

Here is the second Ugly/Spring sock in front of a proposed Mid-Manhattan Expressway that Moses was trying to get built from 1946-1971. At one point, it was suggested that the Expressway run through the tenth floor of the Empire State Building. Craziness!

This was the Robert Moses exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, which was pretty good. I had no idea that Robert Moses built Tavern on the Green and the Central Park Zoo. (One plaque said that before Moses built the Central Park Zoo, the old zoo had these deranged animals that were prone to attacking visitors. Moses also wanted to build an “oldsters’ home” in the Ramble, in Central Park. Perhaps I should really finish that Caro book.) Also: free before noon! And lots of intense Robert Moses quotes:

Then I went with my friend to see the Panorama that Moses commissioned for the 1964 World’s Fair.

But first. The Unisphere.

The Panorama is awesome. Since it’s a permanent exhibit at the Queens Museum of Art, you can go at any time. Until next week, the Queens Museum of Art is also showing a related Robert Moses exhibit. We ran out of time to check that out, but it looks great too.

The sock hovers over the Manhattan part of the Panorama, a mini-replica of the entire city of New York, including all five boroughs and all of the bridges.

Since Adam normally takes the photos, he’s used to my weird photo schemes for showing off the knitting. But today, I had to try and distract my friend–“Look! It’s Staten Island!”–while I was taking photos. But I finally had to admit that I was, yes, taking photos of a sock.

This post is more about the New York part and less about the Minknit part of the blog, but more real knitting content to come soon.