New York Minknit

Far in the distance–if you squint hard enough–is the Statue of Liberty, and the cuff of the second loud monkey sock. I admit it–I like hideous sock yarn. I think a little vulgarity in life is fun, plus I can’t resist brightly colored skeins’ siren call: “I am so ugly and bright…please buy me!” Anyway, the yarn is for socks–where else are you gonna get crazy with knitting? (Wait, don’t answer that.) 

We went to Governor’s Island (you can take a ferry over for free–it’s just a ten-minute ride or so, though the boat only comes once an hour), and rode bikes around. (That’s me above!) I have extremely poor locomotion skills–basically, I can only go forward, so Governor’s Island is nice because there are no cars to clog up the roads.

I think the funniest exchange was in the gift store, which is run by the Park Service. I was looking for a hat or visor, because I forgot to bring one (or sunglasses) and the sun was rather bright. I asked the park ranger who was working as a salesgirl if they had any non-Civil War hats (the island used to be a Civil War fort, I think). She went, “Yes, we do. That one.” Me: “Um, that’s a pirate hat.” Her: “Actually, that’s a Revolutionary War hat.” Oookay. Even though they were only $6, I could not deal with riding around in a hot, wool felt Civil War/Revolutionary War hat with no brim. I would look crazy and still be hot!

I’ve taken up sock knitting again, and moving my socks out of hibernation. The squares and the sweater are just too difficult to knit on the subway. I’m trying something new with these Loud Monkey socks–I’m knitting them on 9″ circulars (Hiya Hiya brand). It’s definitely a different feel than DPNs. I think I prefer DPNs, but there is something incredibly quick about knitting on these needles. Also, the pattern (Cookie A.’s Monkeys, which is the most knit sock pattern ever) is really fast and easy to memorize. Now I must abandon you, my readers, to read the second half of LOTR: The Two Towers. 

Since I’ve been knitting my log cabin blanket, I’ve become re-interested in quilts in general (a common side effect of log cabin knitting, I think). I went through a brief obsession with quilts as a kid (probably because of a book I read–I think it might have been a picture book, but I can’t remember the title), but nothing ever really happened with my obsession, besides a quilted pillowcase. But I recently discovered the website for the International Quilt Study Center, (it happened to win a prize in that freelance project I was editing a couple of weeks ago) and the interface is really terrific. The image above is from some of the examples that come up for “log cabin.” You can spend quite some time playing with its explorer feature. I also found a really cool knitted log cabin quilt on Ravelry (registration required), by a user named Bubbie Ann (she has a Flickr photo of it here, as well).

Some random thoughts: I happened to catch Steel Magnolias on television the other day, and I realized why so many commenters pointed out that Julia Roberts’s character had died of diabetes, not cancer, when I brought it up. The whole movie was about diabetes! As a closet Brothers and Sisters fan, I was amused to see that Sally Field’s movie husband was Tom Skerritt, who is also her television husband. Also, as commenter Michelle mentioned yesterday, there is a Sex and the City episode set on Staten Island, where Carrie misses the boat to go back to Manhattan, but as Adam pointed out, the ferry runs (for free) all night, so it wasn’t a super realistic episode, except that she would have had to wait an hour for the next one, I guess.

I like taking photos of flowers, though the photos are not as beautiful as in real life. This is the border of a lawn in my parents’ neighborhood in San Francisco–there’s some freesia on the bottom, and poppies, tulips, and ranunculus (ii?). 

I’m still knitting squares. I’m really loving garter stitch these days. Simple and easy and SQUISHY. 

(This picture is from this site.)

Over the weekend, we walked by the Strand’s outdoor book stalls and Adam bought me The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, not believing I would really read it. Well, I read the whole thing, and now I need books 2 and 3. I have to say I wasn’t particularly addicted, because at least book 1 was a little, um, [cowering from LOTR-fan hate] boring. I like King Arthur-y stuff, but the Fellowship of the Ring story, in my opinion, was lacking in psychological motivations for any of the characters. I mentioned this to Adam, and he was all, “IS DESTROYING THE RING TO SAVE THE ENTIRE WORLD NOT ENOUGH MOTIVATION?!” I’m like, well, okay, but so? I mean cute little Frodo (I am refusing to imagine him as Elijah Wood, rather picturing him kind of like an Ewok) is going through all this stuff, but why? I think this book is in dire need of some of my favorite plot elements: 1.) family revelations; 2.) psychological motivation (preferably with a shocking secret); 3.) romance.

1.) Family revelations are when people turn out to have long lost relatives who have been key characters. The ultimate family revelation movies are Jean de Florette and its sequel, Manon de la Source. Also, I must begrudgingly point to, of course, “Luke, I am your father,” in Star Wars. But you know, Oliver Twist, Portrait of a Lady, hell, the BIBLE, are filled with family revelations. Somehow I doubt Gandalf is going to be related to Frodo.

2.) Well, the new Star Trek movie I recently saw tried to give some origin/backstory to Spock, and I feel it was sufficient. Batman, etc. But Frodo has a cute happy life in the Shire–there is no real reason why he has been chosen to carry The Ring. (Except that he is so cute and happy that he can’t be destroyed by it, I guess.)

3.) Duh. From the relentless publicity of the LOTR movies, I am guessing that Aragon and Arwen are in love, but I think this book could benefit from more female characters in general. I mean, these faerie folk things normally throw a sop to lady readers with a major heroine (Jane, in The Dark is Rising; Princess Eilonwy, in The Black Cauldron; Hermione, in Harry Potter), and I think this book could really use a  major lady character.

Okay. I am going to try to get book 2 and will report on that when I am done, though I assume most of my readers are already familiar with LOTR, and not in need of my commentary.

Here I am, wearing my shawl and eating a hot dog, during a cool evening last week. (This is on a pseudo-boat, the Frying Pan.)

We took an impromptu trip on the Staten Island Ferry on Friday night. Opportunity to knit, of course! (P.S. I happened to work on a freelance project last week about movies that were filmed in lower Manhattan, and two movies that feature the area prominently were Working Girl, obviously,* and less obviously, Green Card. Apparently all of Green Card takes place in Foley Square, which is down near the Courthouse. Who knew?)

*If you’ve seen Working Girl, then you remember that Melanie Griffith’s character lives on Staten Island and takes the ferry to work. I don’t remember the movie super clearly, but I remember rooting for Sigourney Weaver, just like I rooted for Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. I’m not sure what my fondness for the boss character says about me, though I think in both of those cases Sigourney and Meryl are better actors than Melanie and Anne Hathaway.)

Photos by Adam.

Yesterday, when I came home, I said to Adam, “Do you smell kind of a poop smell?” And he said, “Yeah, it smells kind of like an animal.” I groaned and wondered  where  the strange smell was coming from. Adam investigated and then he sat down and said, “I have discovered the source…YOUR KNITTING.” It’s true–I washed all of my mittens and stuff (with an odorless wash) to put away for the summer and they were emanating a sheep-y woolen smell. It was like the spirit of the sheep had come alive. We’re wool and we smell!! Thankfully, the sheep smell goes away once the stuff is dry.

On Saturday night, Adam and I tried to go a bunch of restaurants, all of which had an hour and more waits (sometimes, I’m like people! We’re in a recession!), and at some point, we were waiting for a table at Pastis.

I like Pastis a lot–it’s a fake Parisian brasserie and I think it’s considered very “New York” by non-New Yorkers, and thus, was overrun with tourists and Fleet Week sailors, hence the long wait–though I think it’s pretty much past its prime for New York foodies (It opened in 1999, so jaded New Yorkers are over it, of course.) I have a fondness for “fake” New York restaurants; I had drinks last week at The Rusty Knot, and I told Adam he would have either loved or hated it–it must have cost the owners a fortune to re-create what is essentially a 1970s Midwestern dive bar (complete with Christmas lights and tiki furniture), but instead of being populated by Midwestern hipsters, it was all first-year Wall Street men and their girlfriends, in chambray button-downs and linen sheaths. There’s an element of New York that is a simulacrum of its cinematic self, and I have a fondness for these places that try to give us a cinematic backdrop to live our lives, even if they’re more sets than reality. 

Anyway, while I was waiting, I was knitting on my afghan square, and at some point, I was like, “Do you think me knitting is going to hurt our chances of getting a table?” Adam looked at me, wearing Crocs and a jacket from Forever 21, knitting, surrounded by soft shiny silk mini-dresses and linen blazers, and he was like, “Um, yes.” 

(We ended eating at a diner with no wait.)

Pattern: Silk kerchief, by Kate Osborn, of Zeitgeist Yarns

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden sock, 1 ball 269 (from the now-defunct Point) and 1 ball 245 (from Knit Therapy, in Park Slope, Brooklyn). (These are the colors that Kate used in her original version. I’m a follower, what can I say. Also worth noting that the ball from The Point’s original price was a good $3 more expensive that the one from Knit Therapy–though I bought it at 30% off.)

Needles: Um, I forgot–either a size 4 or a size 5 Addi Turbo lace.

Project started/finished: I started this in California, in the beginning of April and finished on May 23, so about two months.

Modifications: Since I used the same colors as Kate, I can’t really say I made any significant modifications. I used a bigger needle to make it a little bigger, and I used up both skeins to make it a bigger size. This is really a beautiful project and super easy to make–perfect for hospital waiting rooms and the subway. If I didn’t already have a huge stash of other yarn, I would buy a whole bunch more of Noro sock and make more. (Or a sweater with a similar garter stripe pattern.) Even Adam said that it was one of the cooler knit projects I had made.

Photo shoot notes: These are taken at the Bronx Zoo. This August, I will have lived in New York (on and off) for thirteen years, and somehow I had never been to the zoo. Anyway, it was nice, though it was a bit more like a giant park than a zoo–I only ended up seeing one tiger and some penguins. (Also, I didn’t miraculously start doing sit-ups, Adam just reminded me to suck in my belly when he was taking the photos!)

Recently I was at a party, and I was making fun of someone I had just met (I know, I’m so polite) because he had never heard of Hot and Crusty (it’s a chain of bakeries on the Upper East Side here), and I was like, “Are you not a New Yorker?” He didn’t seem particularly offended, and he said, “Well, I’ve lived here two years, and I guess they say ten years makes you a New Yorker, right?” I stopped, and I was kind of surprised to hear that. When I’m not in New York and people ask me where I’m from, I still generally say California, but when this guy said this, I realized that I’ve lived here almost thirteen years, which is 42% of my life–and 100% of my adult life. I like to joke about being old, but sometimes I come across a milestone, and I think wow, maybe I AM old. I went drinking at 1020, a college dive bar (that we used to actually drink at during college) with a friend for her birthday, and I was like, seriously? We used to drink here ten years ago? How can that be? But it did feel like a long time ago (even though they were still playing The Cure, just like when I was in college). I guess this time of year–graduation, prom, the start of summer–always makes me nostalgic, even for things that I don’t have particularly John Hughes-esque memories of. It’s like the movies implanted fake memories onto my own real life. (Though I do remember drinking at 1020 the night before my college graduation–a mix of champagne at parties and white russians at the bar–so I guess this week was weirdly reminiscent of my own actual past.)

Happy Memorial Day and cheers to the start of summer.

As I mentioned a while ago, I participated in a “Creativity Study” at NYU’s business school. I went to Purl, the yarn store, and picked out a bunch of Cascade 220 (they were pre-wound into little skeins) and then I was given a week to knit any kind of scarf I wanted (they provided size 8 straight needles) for a three-year old girl. Since I only had a week, and I also ended up going to Milwaukee at the end of that week, mine was pretty short:

Basically, you tied it around your neck like a weird cuff. The graduate student who helped administer the study was very nice, plus all participants received a $20 gift certificate to Purl at the end of the study. (This was during the period I was doing odd things like working as an extra on Law and Order, a state that I am returning to next week, after I finish this freelance project.) I actually did find the experience very freeing because I knew that the project was (a) not for me and (b) not made with yarn paid for by me (yet in colors chosen by me). When I make something for myself, I’m kind of a perfectionist about things turning out well. I doubt I would have ever knit something like this for myself and it made me realize I should try designing stuff for myself more, instead of just following patterns.

At the end of the study, the participants filled out a questionnaire about our feelings about creativity and making the scarf, and the graduate student administering the study explained that they were trying to judge whether consumers were more or less creative when presented with more or fewer choices of yarn colors. (Some participants had a choice of six colors to choose from and some had twelve, or something like that.) I asked how the scarves were going to be judged and she said by the professor in charge of the study; Joelle Hoverson, the owner of Purl; and….Brooklyn Tweed!!! The graduate student was all, “This guy named Jared Flood? He has a blog called Brooklyn Tweed?” And then I was like, oh no! But I never found out what happened with the study, so I hope my scarf did okay–go little scarf, go!

We were told not to look at knitting books and magazines, and I came up with a slipped stitch for the ends of the scarf, and an intarsia cable for the middle. Anyway, I thought I would blog it before I forget.

I know some people knit stuff and then never wear their finished objects, but I actually do wear most of mine a lot. I thought I would include a shot of something I made  in action, so you can see how I actually wear stuff, not just when they’re styled for the blog, which tends to focus on the knitting, rather than how it looks in real life. This is the Burgundy Bat Shawl from last year. I mainly kept it at the office as an in-between layer for the mysterious heat/air-conditioning battles, but now that I’m freelance, I’m trying to incorporate it more into my daily wardrobe. 

This was the weekend of street fairs–the official sign of the start of New York’s summer season. On Saturday, we walked up from 53rd to 82nd St., with a street fair along the way. Today, on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, it was the exact same street fair, including the same ShamWow guy. One year, I bought this really cool chopping gadget–you put all your vegetables into a bowl, you spun the handle, and voila, all your vegetables were chopped! I haven’t seen that item at a street fair for a while though. Yesterday and today I only saw the usual meat-on-a-stick and strange undergarments.

I also knit through an afternoon showing of Star Trek, which I enjoyed, even though I had never seen a single episode of any of the television shows or movies (a fact that horrifies Adam). I totally didn’t recognize Winona Ryder as Spock’s mom:

This scene, by the way, is not in the movie–but I think Spock’s mom is clutching something knit, with many many bobbles on it. I will say that there was a scene where Spock (the old Spock, not the younger Spock) had this awesome jacket that had a really neat hood that snapped around his neck and face that I wanted to copy. Anyway, knit long and prosper.