New York Minknit

I have totally discovered a new blog post theme for every post. HAHAH.

After spending all morning trying to figure out my various health insurance options (OMG America, just put everyone on national health care already), I decided to cross the next item off on my to-do list: being a television extra.

I’ve been thinking up things I want to do with my new unemployed/freelance time, including working on lots of my own projects, and doing weird fun things, one of which involved being an extra. I figured I had a leg up on everyone in New York because I have zero thespian aspirations* and can entertain myself during the long hours by knitting. (Figuring that being an extra is like dating–as long as you don’t want it, people want you. Also accomplished today: Watching He’s Just Not That Into You. Yep. I saw it. Shut up, I like Jennifer Aniston.)  So I went to sign up for this and dude, it was totally like jury duty. A wide swath of New York’s most intense.

I was right–I was the only person without acting dreams. Everyone had brought their head shots and they were all VERY CONCERNED about getting their best head shots uploaded. I think I even overheard one person say, “But what about my stage name?” In my head, I was like “My stage name is Fabulosa,” but I refrained from saying this out loud. Then, I probably enraged all of my fellow “background actors” because while they were all being hustled out, the casting dude asked me to stay behind because he thought he might have a part for me. (I like to think this is because I was the most stylishly dressed–and in my own opinion, least crazy–applicant.)

So yes, if you are reading this on Wednesday, I will not be at my computer because I will be playing a blur (a wealthy art-appreciating blur!) on a very popular television show! (Hint: Police procedural.) Or, uh, knitting on a chair somewhere, waiting to play a blur. You might even see my sleeve on tv!

* Of course, when I heard I got the “part,” I was totally excited, and imagining how they might upgrade me to a regular character, and how soon, even my friend Sarah would stalk me in Starbucks. Like everyone in America, I am revealed to be a fame whore when given even an inch.

The rest of the day I was all cheerful–with this kind of luck, I should start buying lottery tickets and persuing my other schemes ASAP! Wait until the world hears about my awesome history book idea!** I walked by the fashion tents at Bryant Park–it’s Fashion Week here in New York–and everyone was standing on the steps, craning their necks to see which models/fashion editors/celebs would come out of the Town Cars. I was so heartened. This is New York, where everyone comes to have their ridiculous dreams squashed! Yay!

** I mean, history, the most exciting field ever, right?!

Knitting in the car on the way to Montauk.

Last night I tried to install a bunch of different new themes for this blog and I was getting super-frustrated. But then I remembered how all knitting books always have a paragraph that says something like, “You’re smart! You can knit socks!” or whatever, and I was like, “YES I CAN!” (<–I am sure President Obama will not mind me stealing his motto to use for  learning how to use CoreFTP.)

I mean, if I can knit a pair of socks, you would think I would be able to learn enough coding to modify my own blog, right? Well, I was doing okay, and even changing colors in templates and such, but then I realized that my new chosen theme was not accepting my Flickr WordPress widget to create thumbnails  and I had a little bit of a mind meltdown. So I went to bed. But I did have to give myself a pep talk. I realized that reading knitting directions are a kind of separate language, and I can read music and speak four human languages (badly, but enough to be able to buy food and find the bathroom, and that’s all that matters), so I should be able to understand PHP. And many many years ago, I did take deductive geometry, though there was a minute when I was scanning the “if…then” code that I was like, “Why can’t computer programmers use regular English!?!?!” But then I realized it would be like if knitters wrote out all of their instructions (“knit by creating loop and pulling through, repeat, purl by creating loop in front, repeat” instead of “*k1, p1* repeat until end of the row”), that it would take too long. Cascading style sheets, I will conquer you.

Also, I spent all morning trying to read legislation to figure out how to get the new COBRA subsidy. Dear President Obama, please create a legislation FAQ for dummies on your homepage. Thanks.

Pattern: My own top-down helmet, following instructions in Barbara Walker’s Knitting From the Top. A similar free pattern for heavier (worsted-weight) yarn is here (or in Stitch and Bitch).

Yarn: One ball of Rowan Felted Tweed in camel, bought on sale when The Yarn Connection closed. I think it was about $5, after discount.

Needles: Size 5 DPNs, and one bamboo Clover 16″ circular in size 5.

Project started/ended: February 5 to February 12, so about a week.

Notes: This is pretty easy to make. I’m not giving a formal pattern because the average person should be able to figure it out, but here’s the basic recipe:

Cast on about seven stitches, increase (k1fb) in seven “slices” using DPNs (increase a round, knit a round plain, repeat for a while). Measure gauge. Calculate how many stitches you would need to fit around your head, by multiplying gauge by the circumference of your head. Keep knitting. Slip stitches onto 16″ circulars when wide enough. When you have knit for a while, slip stitches off onto a spare piece of yarn (something non-sticky, like cotton yarn) and try on. Stop knitting about an inch and a half before you want the hat to end. Knit in seed stitch (k1, p1) for about an 1″ to 1.5″ (knitter’s choice). Stop knitting.

Try on again by sliding stitches onto a spare piece of yarn. Using scraps of string, mark (tie string between stitches, but not around the needle) where you want your ear flaps to go. Put stitches back on needle. Bind off in pattern (k1, p1) in the bigger sections between the markers (aka the front brim and the back brim). When you get to the ear flap markers, slide those stitches onto a spare piece of yarn. Continue binding off, slide next ear flap stitches onto a piece of string. Put one set of ear flap stitches back onto the needles. Knit a flap. (Seed stitch one row, and then decrease at the sides–k2tog at beginning and end of the row. Repeat until flap is longer than ear. Decrease rapidly by k2tog two or three times, then k a couple of stitches, then k2 two or three times, repeat until you have two or three stitches. Bind off. You may want to throw in a couple of rows of plain seed stitch between the decrease rows to give a slower taper to the triangle.) Repeat for other flap.

Knit two lengths of i-cord. Weave in ends on hat. Sew i-cord to each point of each flap. Wash and block. WAA-LAA!*

* I used to work at a magazine whose readers would post recipes in their online forums, and they would always end their recipes with the phrase “waa-laa,” and I could never figure out whether they were joking or didn’t know how to spell “voilà.” But I kind of loved it and think it’s much more dramatic than just “voilà.”

Note: If you’re interested in the cowl I am wearing, it’s my Ithacowl, which is my own free pattern. You can download it from Ravelry or here.

Photo shoot notes: Adam took me to Montauk for Valentine’s Day, which is on the tip of Long Island, and also where they filmed parts of Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind**, a movie that inspired many people (including me) to go visit in the winter. It was beautiful, and in the back of these pictures, you can see the famous Montauk lighthouse.

On the way back, we stopped by a grocery store where I saw this funny bag of fruits (above). I would say that those banana chips don’t look a day over seventeen, wouldn’t you?

** An astoundingly beautiful movie despite the fact it stars Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey, two of my least favorite actors ever.

I went to Sunnyvale, CA, over the Christmas holiday for a work lunch and I, of course, had to sneak in a yarn store visit. This is Purlesence, which was a little hard to find because it was in this strip mall, which is not very Bay Area and I was lost in a sea of strip mallness. (The Bay Area does have strip malls, but they are not, I think, native to our land.) Anyway, the people in the store were nice and helpful, and it seriously was like the land of holy grail sock yarns. I always read on the internet about Socks That Rock and Dream in Color, etc., but they’re not commonly available here in New York. This store had every cult-y sock yarn you can imagine:

This is their rack of Lorna’s Laces and Colinette, and in the back you can see their Dream in Color. The stock is quite amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I didn’t buy any of it, because I was too overwhelmed with choices. (I did buy one skein of Rowan Cocoon, which I will show knitted up shortly.) They also have a big space in the middle for people to sit, knit, and chat.  It’s not the most stylish of stores (I still love Purl, here in New York, and Loop, in Philadelphia, best, for their color and style), but it had a really deep inventory of hard-to-find yarn. Definitely worth visiting. (For those of you who are car-challenged, like me, you can walk to it from the CalTrain stop.)

Purlesence

Website: purlescenceyarns.com
Address: 586 South Murphy Ave
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Phone: (408) 735-YARN (9276)

Adam suggested I do an inspiration day every week, and I groaned. I was like, noooo. It’s hard to find good images of stuff that hasn’t been blogged everywhere else, and I can’t just link to The Satorialist in every post, you know? Anyway, here’s an image from Chanel’s Pre-Fall 2009 collection this year. Yes, she looks like a deranged clown, but the design on the sweater is great–I think it would be a cute motif on a hat, or yes, dare I say it, a dog sweater. And I don’t even own a dog. Or maybe a felted handbag.

Oh, and sad news for those of you who don’t follow the media death march as I do–Craft magazine is going online only.

I’m supposed to be writing a book review, but I’m procrastinating a bit…by blogging! And knitting, of course. I didn’t finish this hat in time for my grandmother’s b-day, though I did give her the never-worn  Ella shawl instead, which she seemed to like a lot. I’m going to give this to her once I’m done, which should be soon. This ear flap is a little funky, but I’m hoping it will right itself out with blocking.  I still have another ear flap and i-cord to knit. It’s actually pretty cute on the head–perhaps I’ll have a modeled shot later this week.

Okay, back to work.

My sister recently made a joke about the recession leading to a zombie apocalypse, which I figured was just some college kid joke, but then I was reading this Ravelry thread (“Will Your Stash Outlast the Recession?“) and I noticed that other people seem to associate the recession with a zombie apocalypse. I’m not sure what zombies have to do with what New York Magazine is calling The Greatest Depression, but there you go. Anyway, whether the zombies do or do not arrive, I am stashing up while we are still zombie-free, in order to have yarn to last me through the recession.

Aren’t these colors beautiful? I picked them out at Purl, three skeins of Canopy from The Fibre Company, but they were a gift from Adam. I recently discovered Zeitgeist Yarns, the beautiful blog of Kate Gagnon, one of the women behind Kelbourne Woolens, which distributes yarn for The Fibre Company. I want to make all of her patterns, and I grabbed a skein of white Noro on sale at the Point, (also a gift from Adam, who was combining birthday shopping with pity buying for me, I think) for her striped silk kerchief pattern.

I have a bit more stash too, which I will unveil as time goes by. Don’t try to come take it! 🙂

New York Magazine has an interesting article this week about the state of retail in the city, and how everyone is cutting back. They came to a lot of the same conclusions I did about yarn stores last week–lower profit margins and higher volume is the new formula for profit (ie sales), better customer service, and even after all that, inevitable closings of favorite stores. (I am kind of lured by the idea of going to Italy though, where a small town will be having a non-stop film festival with Mondo Kim’s videos. How Cinema Paradiso is that?) Yarn is even more of a luxury item than many of these other goods, but it is, relatively speaking, inexpensive, so people might hold on and keep buying yarn even as the economy keeps sliding. I’m not sure what will happen, especially on the wholesale side–will entire yarn lines disappear? If you have noticed any closings or changes at your LYS, leave me a comment, I would love to hear what’s happening in your part of the country.

I don’t really have anything to add to the many Updike obits that have been printed in the past few weeks (I already shared my one interaction with Updike in this post), though my parents, knowing of my long-time Updike fandom, did mention it to me this weekend, when they were visiting. My father, several years ago, when I was complaining about how I missed seeing Updike, was like, “Oh, don’t worry, he’ll be back in New York–those kinds of readings happen all the time.” As a matter of fact, I did get to see him speak (as mentioned in that post), but I’m glad I went, because now he’s gone. (What I said to Updike: “I have always loved your work.” What he said to me: “Have you?” That was it. I was rather embarrassed and took my autographed book and hustled off.)

Moral of the story: If you can afford something, go see it now, because you never know when it will disappear.

Oh! I do remember, in high school, for a class in American literature, we had to write a paper on an American novelist of our choice, and I wrote mine on Updike (of course), and when my teacher handed back our essays, he said, “I have never liked Updike, but your paper made a compelling case for him.” (Or something like that, excuse the horn tooting, but it probably was a good essay, because I do/did really love Updike.) And then my friend, (who had written hers on Zelda Fitzgerald, as befits a young feminist), snickered and was like, “Bleh, Updike,” and my teacher was like, “Yes, I know! Who likes Updike?”

Oh, and I remember a high school friend once saying that he never knew any women who liked Updike, but I always have–somehow, I always associate reading Updike with sad summer days, and the language has stayed with me all these years. I have two favorite Updike lines–one is not in this giant Updike compendium I have here, but the other is: “So I am taken by surprise at a turning when at the meaningful hour of ten you come with a kiss of toothpaste to me moist and girlish and quick; an unexpected gift is not worth giving.”

No knitting content today. Maybe tomorrow!

I totally meant to blog this story a while ago, but forgot all about it. Kathy Kiely, a political reporter for USA Today, followed the Obama campaign last year, and knit a scarf during all of the campaign stops. She also kept a little photo journal of the traveling scarf and wrote a nice article about it a couple of weeks ago.

Link: “Knitting Together Stories and Scarves on the Campaign Trail.”

I’m trying to knit a quick hat for my grandmother (if you’re reading this and know my grandmother, shhh, it’s a surprise), and looking at it today, with the ball of yarn stuffed into it, I realized that it looked awfully like a knitted breast. Ha! Well, I am hoping it’s going to turn into an actual hat soon.

P.S. If you’re curious about what Brooklyn Tweed looks like, The New York Observer did a nice little article about him, the state of knitting in New York, and Ravelry, in  this week’s issue.