Quick update!

They are now for sale on Ravelry and/or Etsy. 5 bucks apiece or as a duo for $9. Saving is good.

Fairy Leaf Scarf, which is a lot prettier than the picture shows. Trust me on this.



Titania's Waltz, which is easy, and looks so complicated, and yes, the first row is on the wrong side and the even rows are the right side. If it drives you batty, change the numbering, but make sure that you knit that garter ridge on the wrong side. Oh, you know what I mean. You need that little garter row to make the pattern. Verstanden?



Or email me and I'll invoice you the amount and then send you the pattern(s), although that's very cumbersome, if you know what I mean. Bye, I'm hungry and my brain is flying off somewhere.

Henya - They're really not that hard. Once your brain understands the pattern, you can just go and knit. Yeah, you do have to look at the chart occasionally, but not so it will drive you nuts.
I'm glad you like the yarn. Go knit lace with it!

Bishop Stone - It's actually very pale blue cashmere from JoJoLand. I used a little more than 200 yards of it.

The Yarnarian Ponders Imponderables.

So here are my questions: I have 2 light switches in a part of my kitchen, one on top of the other. Why do I always flip the wrong switch?

Why does the Hubbo do the dishes, but not wipe down the stove top?

Why does the Hubbo not clean the sink after doing the dishes?

Why do I put a bowl down on top of the counter instead of putting it away?

Why do I not put away that large box of yarn to be dyed? Why is it sitting in the living room? Is it living?

Why are there no pics in this post? Ha! That one is easy to answer: because I have nothing new to show you.

Here's itsJUSTme-wendy's post:

why do kids ask the same questions day after day?
Why do you have to tell kids the same thing over and over?
Why does the sun shine all day until I have to walk to school to pick up the kids, then it downpours!

The Yarnarian Has Pictures.

So, I'm happily working on my lace scarf and lace shawl, plus other projects. These 2 are irresistible to knit, and I keep going on them. Do you ever have a few projects that call you nonstop? That's what these 2 are doing to me. Here's a pic of the scarf, that may turn into a shawl when finished and blocked. I cannot tell which it's going to be, and when you look at the pics, you'll understand what I mean. The color is violet. My camera thinks it blue. So the more violet one is the correct color, more or less, maybe. arrgh.





And here's a good pic of my new shawl. I'm knitting this in my newest yarn, Judith, 80/10/10 merino/cashmere/silk. Not superwash, but who washes lace shawls in the machine anyhow? I think I said that in a previous post. Good grief, the woman is repeating herself. Size 6 needles.



Purchase: Look what I had made for me as a custom wallet:



Here's the inside of it, the color is a bit off because I really blew it up so you could see.



I have one of these in wristlet form, and it holds everything. You would be amazed at what you can stuff into it. Wristlets, however, are bad on my wrists, so I asked Julia to make a long strap that I could wear diagonally. To tell the truth, I just asked for a long strap, and she came up with the diagonal idea.

I bought it on Etsy from Julia Martinez. She has lots of fabrics available, and she's wonderful to work with.

And that's it. Today is as usual laundry day. Every day is laundry day, but today I'm determined to actually finish a load.

Henya - Wait for lace when the kids are a bit older, then you can drape yourself in gorgeous lacy stuff.

Bishop Stone - My advice? Just work slowly at your lace, and count often. Also, try to learn your pattern: look at the graph and then at your knitting, and see what kind of pattern there is, where you yo or decrease. It helps a lot.

PS, the wool is to dye for. I couldn't help it. Had to say it. hee hee hee.

The Yarnarian asks you to look at a blog.

Please, click on this. It's so important. Whatever would we do without Alison Hyde? She is such an amazing person. To me she embodies all that's good in the universe. And she does it with grace and modesty, and she really is a role model. And a fabulous knitter and designer, too.

Gotta run. More pics eventually, maybe Sunday. Wait until you see the scarves/shawls I'm knitting, and the yarn too. Whoo hoo. Off to visit the Mommie!

Debra - I have never met her either, but she is just wonderful.

Scrabblequeen - We'll start the AH fan club!

The Yarnarian Thinks About Moving.

Linda just mentioned on her blog about leaving her lifetime home in Orange County and moving to Taos. What an adventure! Starting over in a completely new place, one that you love! But also about leaving her home where she has been forever. What a push/pull that must seem. To leave where you grew up and lived your entire life to a brand new location, even one that you love, must be wrenching/exciting.

It's a life lesson. Leaving what is familiar for what is unknown. (Yes, she does know Taos, but living and traveling there are 2 different things.) Isn't this a life story? Look at our relatives who left their homes in wherever and came to this country. Look at the Africans who came here involuntarily. Look at the Native Americans who were displaced from their homes. It makes me wonder what "home" actually means. Is it a physical location, a feeling, a spot in your heart, a bolt hole?

I had the fortune of growing up and going to school in an industrial city where everyone was from somewhere else. Parents who spoke English as a first language were exotic, although we regarded those who had southern accents as foreign also. We were multicultural when multicultural meant exactly that. We learned respect for each other. I can remember classroom discussions in elementary school that were about how we all celebrated the holidays. OK, we Jewish kids were ignored, and there were a good number of us in our classes, but that was a different time, and that's a topic for another post.

Anyhow, we learned about Christmas in Germany, Albania, Portugal, the South (!), Hungary, Ireland, Scotland, etc etc. Not one kid I knew had an "American" last name, except for the 2 southerners. Kids brought in cookies for the holidays, and they were all different.

To get back to my original post, Every one of those parents pulled up roots and came to Connecticut. I heard about the glories of Vienna from my father and his family, and also about what the Anschluss meant. I didn't have to watch movies about the Nazis; I lived those stories. My mom came here in the late '20s. She left Europe for entirely different reasons. My grandmother was widowed while pregnant with her last child, left her kids with relatives, and came here to make a new life for herself and her children. These were big moves.

And here is my friend, Linda, who is moving out of her comfort zone for someplace new, where she probably has no friends or support system except for her husband. That's a big move too. But think of what her rewards will be. She'll have the adventure of a lifetime here, her mind will expand and her delight for life will be enhanced. I'm envious! I'd love to move somewhere, where I don't know, but somewhere, even for only a couple of months. Just to learn new ways of looking at life, see different buildings, taste different foods. What an adventure!

I suppose that anytime you "move" into a different phase of your life, you are heading into the unknown. So many people are fearful of it. They want their lives to proceed as they have always done. They are terrified to go into a big city, to travel where English is not spoken, even to try different ethnic foods. But moving gives the gray matter a challenge, teaches you so much that a book or TV program cannot.

Retirement is like that also; you move out of the routine of work for pay, and into something brand new. Scary. But look at it this way: you now have the opportunity of a lifetime to do what you want to do, to take classes, to take up a hobby, to travel, to be free of responsibility at least until old age sneaks in. And even then, to age and grab life by its horns and go with the flow, that is living. I know, illness, death, will hurt beyond measure, but even then, there are opportunities to move and grow.

OK, now that I've put you to sleep, here are some pretty yarns to wake you up:

Morning Glory and Ice Green:




Peach Tart and Aruba:




Go off and move somewhere today. Try something new; be brave.

Andrea - Yes but you were adventuresome; you tried it out. I know people who will not go into New York City and they live in a town that's 27 miles west of the city and you can commute in and be there in 45 minutes. Talk about provincial. It's not that they don't like the city; it's that they automatically reject it because it isn't what they are used to. They pride themselves on never having been in the city. arrgh.

Henya - If you can do that, you can do almost anything.

Linda - Your blog post really moved me.

itsJUSTme-wendy - Give me flats any time.

The Yarnarian is Heathered.

I have a new shipment of Bambi yarn (70/20/10 merino/bamboo/nylon) and this batch seems to have come with little bits of bamboo fiber hanging out on the surface. I don't know why, I suppose I could have sent it back, but I like the heathery-ness of it. So it stays. I certainly couldn't see it in its undyed stage. Off white is off white, but dyed up, there it is. And I like it. Bamboo doesn't take acid dye. I'm certainly not going to play with fiber reactive dyes just to get it to take color. The fun of the yarn is that it is not totally solid within each color, and this batch is more of that undyed effect.

Here are pics of some very damp yarn. Nope, you can't have it yet; bamboo takes forever to dry, and it's been cool and damp here, so maybe by tonight it will have dried. Maybe. You can however email if you want me to put aside.

fritzL234 AT yahoo DOT com.

Oh, you know the routine. If you really want one, jump on it; we have yarn sharks here, evil laugh, and they are very quick. And they know who they are. And they are a lot of fun, and make me giggle.

Damsel and Allianora:




Gossamer and Sunlight (Sunlight is Alexa and NOT heathered; she sneaked in here)




Tender, Squawk, and Lake:





If you look closely at the darker ones, you'll see those fluffy little bamboo fibers.

Tikkun Olam: Huh? Hebrew for "repairing the world". I don't like the word "charity"; it implies noblesse oblige, which while certainly useful, seems very snobbish to me. I would much rather do something to repair the world than to give charity. It's all semantics. but from now on, it will be Tikkun Olam

So these last couple of months I've been doing a bit of knitting for the folks at the Pine Ridge Reservation, the poorest spot in our very wealthy country. A couple of months ago, I worked on knit squares for the kids in South Africa, and will go back to it again (and yes, they did arrive safely). I just thought that I'd like to help out people in our country this time. So, I'm knitting 6" squares on the diagonal, and amassing them, and will mail out to Pam, a lovely lady who assembles them and then sends on to the Reservation. You can check her out on Ravelry in the Afghan Squares for Pine Ridge Reservation forum. Pam is looking for 6 and 12 inch squares, knitted or crocheted, as warm as you can make them. This is THE perfect travel knitting. You can do it on auto-pilot, it uses up all your knitting worsted leftovers, someone gets a warm blanket, and you do your part to repair the world. What could be better?



Alianora, Gossamer and Tender are spoken for.

KV - I concede! You have THE CITY; we have Newark and Trenton.

Caryn - I have webs growing between my toes. The grass is beautifully green, however.

Quick post!

I was checking my hits on sitemeter, and I saw that someone from Storr, CT took a brief look at ye olde blog. Hey, I went to UConn, Class of 1965. Oh, stop laughing you silly little kids!

That's it, back to work.