Just an update

I haven't been in the mood to blog, or to write for that matter. If I was to write more, it'd be about knitting. Even with all the knitting books, magazines, and instructions that come out every month, I've discovered that there's a big glaring hole in what's out there; information for people who are beginners who want to graduate from knitting their first scarf (or dozen). The knitting pattern designers focus much on showing off their creativity and expertise, and many of their patterns are too complex for newbies, or at least appear to be so. Knitting instructions look like indecipherable algebraic formulas, and that in itself is enough to frighten off a good many math-phobic people. Add to that that the majority of patterns are written for specific yarn, which is likely too expensive for many people, difficult to find, or has gone off the market, and well. . .even if you're not a knitter and have read this far, you can see there's a problem.

As a longtime knitter, it's easy for me to make up my own patterns, alter existing ones, or ignore instructions and know what will happen if I do so. That kind of information would be useful for beginning knitters. Presenting this information in a lively, hands-on format is something I'd like to begin working on, and I'll probably post some of it here. This idea seems to scream out for another side-blog project, but those haven't worked out well for me. So, since "everything is interesting", you non-knitters who enjoy reading my posts may have to just ignore some upcoming knitting entries, just as the folks who don't care about perfume did the same for perfume entries. In the meantime, I hope to get back to writing entries that are interesting for everyone. Maybe when the summer is over (and I've finally stopped procrastinating about getting my resume done, sent out, gone to interviews, and (hopefully) found a job), I'll be back in the mood for writing up free-flowing entries. I should hope so. This has been great fun for a long time.

A global Christian organization has docked a large sailing vessel on the coast of Maine. I just tried to google them, but they seem to be elusive. I want to know more about who they are. They have tourists visiting the boat all day, and coming to listen to free music at night. Now, discovering that they're hard to find on the web makes me even more suspicious of this group who asks its members to give all their money to them, take a vow of poverty, yet has a sailing vessel worth millions sitting in Belfast harbor. The boat is called the Peacemaker. If you find out something about them, let me know!

Image Note: A Japanese knitting chart. Charted knitting is great, for it does transcend language barriers. I can understand what this chart is saying, but it is a language one has to learn. But no, it is not hard to learn. Try learning Japanese. Now, that's hard.

Addendum: There are a host of books about reading knitting instructions, but that's all they are. Some of them look like fun, like the "Secret Language of Knitters", though this book, as good as it might be, seems like the author is trying too hard to be funny in the way that Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is. I love McPhee's "At Knit's End: Meditations for Knitters Who Knit Too Much". It's endlessly amusing for someone who is an avid knitter, but unfortunately, McPhee has actually added to the lexicon of indecipherable knitting abbreviations with her pithy acronyms, such as SSS (Single Sock Syndrome). Ha! I just googled SSS and my own post about knitter's groupspeak came up on page one! Go here to read it. For you newbie knitters, I also found "KnitSpeak:An A-Z Guide to the Language of Knitting." Still, none of the books I've found have it all, and I as much I personally love owning lots of knitting books, but it seems like one shouldn't have to lug around an entire library of books in order to follow one simple knitting pattern. Wouldn't it be nice to have a good all-in-one book with basic knitting patterns and how to read them, execute the stitches, and understand just what the whole process is all about? Yes, what I'm describing is on the market, but they're not the most compelling books.

Okay. I really have to get to re-doing my resume. Unfortunately, I have developed a nasty headache since I started this "just an update" post. Can you believe I have a hangover form drinking one beer last night? Seems that it's so.

Knitting and crocheting cheerfulness

I've been having lots of fun knitting up the components of knitted and crocheted flower bouquets. Here's my first flower:

Okay, I did make another one before this, but it was very plain. Now, I think this one is quite plain, too, but I like it. I have an urge to make truly wacky and frivolous knit bouquets. Crocheting different spirals is a lot of fun!




Here's my first bouquet:













I've got a little stack of components for the next few bouquets. Here's one set, ready to be sewn up, that will have spirals that hang more, instead of just popping out in all directions:


I've been having a blast discovering the ways different stitches cause spiraling shapes, leaves that bend to the right or the left, and just generally enjoying being freed from stitchery that is meant to be "useful." This is pure fun (not that I don't enjoy knitting or crocheting everything else, for I do). I should have said this is pure play. There's no reason for me to be knitting these objects, but I love how small everything is, and how yesterday I knit about a dozen leaves, didn't like how they looked, ripped out all I'd done, and didn't feel like I'd wasted my afternoon. I learned quite a bit about forming leaf shapes. Sure, I could read some instructions, but I'd rather explore. I've always thought of knitting and crocheting as a two dimensional art form, mostly a vehicle for making sweaters, socks, and shawls, and I feel like a new world has opened up for me. I had explored this a bit two winters ago, when I went on a miniature bag making spree, but after a while, I got bored with the little bags. There's way more possibilities here. I'll post some more as they get sewn up. These aren't too thrilling, but I figured I should let my readers know what I've been doing with some of my previous blogging time!

And as far as the blog title goes, that's how I feel making these; that I'm creating cheerfulness. I'm using bright colors, which is unusual for this tweedy natural yarn loving woman. It's rather impossible to feel down when knitting with bright green, orange, and hot pink.

Daily scents and nonsense

It was a beautiful day. Simply perfect, unlike most of the days we've had this spring and what there's been of summer. The sky was a clear blue. The clouds were small and passed quickly. It wasn't too hot, nor was it too cool (as it could be here in Maine in August), and it was nice and dry. What more could one want? I sat outside and knit.

Dick received his new Mac, was sent the wrong one, had hours of frustration with Apple, which proved to have about the worst customer service I can possibly imagine. My brand loyalty has been waning over the last year or so, and this was the final nail in the coffin for me. I was nearly astonished about their complete lack of caring whether they did right by a customer that I called myself to see if things might go better. They did not. If I went into details right now, my blood pressure might go up, and you don't need the details. All I can say is that in the last six months or so I've been surprised at how poor the service has been with a number of large purchases, and this seems strange, especially given the condition of the economy. I want to tip my hat to Maidenform, once again, for their fine customer service. So, to hell with Apple. . .they could have ruined an otherwise perfect day, but it was much too nice a day to ruin. Dick's still getting a Mac (sometime or other). Me, I would not.

I got a Crazylibellule and the Poppies fragrance from the Les Garconnes line around the same time as Dick got the wrong computer. It's Pour Gabrielle, with notes of jasmine, peony, ozonic flower, cedar, incense, leather, vanilla and elemi. At first whiff, I was surprised at the complexity of this inexpensive (and terribly cute) stick of solid perfume, though my second take reaction to the scent was that it smelled like some bug dope I used as a kid. I applied a bit to my wrists and commenced knitting, ignoring the warning sign that it might give me a head ache. I hate the smell of bug spray. Sure enough, as I warmed up while knitting with wool in the sun (perfect day or no), the smell grew stronger. I could not pick out any notes. My brain had fixated on "bug dope" and I started to feel slightly nauseated. A thorough scrubbing did not get the smell out of my nostrils.

When this happens, the only remedy is applying a beloved scent, but today I did not do that. I wish I could recall exactly what I wound up doing, but I can't seem to. I tried, in vain, to find some Terre D'Hermes that smelled heavenly on a friend who came to visit this past weekend. I know I've tried the Hermes before, but that's yet another thing I can't remember (uh oh). Instead, I stumbled on something else I'd been meaning to try. Whatever it was, it had a strong peppery, bitter lime note and obliterated the memory of the Pour Gabrielle. But that started to bother me, too. I woke up with a headache and I really had no business fooling around with scents that weren't soothing. Anything lavender would have been fine, but no, I was set to discover something new today, and nothing was going to stop me. What I wound up doing was creating a fragrance stew. I covered the forgotten lime scent with some CB I Hate Perfume Fire From Heaven, and when it seemed that that was too weak, I followed that up with some Ginestet Le Boise. At this point, I think I was suffering from a bit of anosmia, for I really could not smell Le Boise, and it's a fairly strong fragrance, with named notes of cedar, sandalwood, spices, and vanilla (though I smell patchouli in there, but no one else has mentioned it). If I can't smell Le Boise, even if there are plenty of stronger fragrances out there, I should just quit and go back to my knitting. So, I did, and about a half an hour later I realized I smelled like a perfume shop. A good one, mind you, but still. . .good thing I didn't have to go to an office party.

It's almost eight hours since I went into this fragrance frenzy and I can still smell all of it on me, except (thankfully) the Pour Gabrielle. Poor Gabrielle, I wish I could have liked her.

Photo note: Knitting on the street in Georgetown, Wales. For more beautiful black and white photographs of the people in Wales, circa 1972, go here.

Random snapshots of New York City

One thing that's stuck with me since I was in the City (as I still call it) is a friend's comment that Zen is not popular with hipsters. I thought this was a rather amusing observation. The idea of a religion or philosophy being popular or hip is absurd to me, but I shouldn't be surprised in the least. Since I don't want to malign sheep, I'd rather not say "people are like sheep", but that's the expression. Sheep do a very good job of following one another around, and it's a rare sheep that does it's own thing. If they run to the right, they all run to the right. If it's time to sleep, they all sleep. If there's a coyote to the east, you can bet all your money that they're all looking east.

People aren't as good as sheep when it comes to sticking together in this way, but they do seem to want to be alike, even if their self-image is that of being different. The hipsters in New York do a pretty good job of being different in exactly the same way as every other hipster. I went to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, supposedly the hipster capitol of the world, and I didn't see much in the way of creativity, except when I visited CB I Hate Perfume. On the street, everyone looked pretty much the same. There was a lot more diversity on 28th Street and Park Avenue, which is thought of by most New Yorkers as just another street in a generally boring neighborhood.

Being hip has always been tyrannical. When I was young and living in New York, the unwritten dress codes for getting into clubs made me crazy. I've undoubtedly written about this before. I know I've written about my aversion to purple, the color of "kookiness", and finally made peace with it, for it's a great color that comes in a myriad of shades.

Quite frankly, whether you're hip or decidedly plain, the tyranny of "fitting in", wherever one lives, is just ridiculous. I've moaned about feeling like a nutcase wearing slightly fashionable clothes in a rural village. Not wearing a sweatshirt and jeans at the General Store is akin to wearing a sign that says "I'm an outsider." Wearing a lavender sweatshirt with lupine design on the front and a pair of light blue jeans in Williamsburg, Brooklyn produces the same result. Honestly, a person who dares wear such "unfashionable" clothing in that part of Brooklyn would practically be a pioneer or a daredevil.

Right before I left for New York there was a news report about a child who was taken away from her family by social services because she was obese. One person posited that this was classist, and that no one would take away an anorexic kid from an upper middle class family. I was thinking about this a lot while I was in the City, for I saw an awful lot of women whom I wanted to pull aside and whisper in their ears "maybe you'd like a little bite to eat?" When I asked people I was with who lived in the City if they noticed how many anorexic girls there were on the street they seemed shocked. Everyone in New York is gorgeous! Not so, not so at all. In the heat of summer, with less clothes on, there were an awful lot of legs that looked like they'd come straight out of a concentration camp. That kind of skinniness is a bit frightening to me. A leg should not be thinner than my forearm, even if my forearm is a bit thick.

I saw a girl wearing fur-lined knee-high boots on a subway platform. It was so hot and humid on that platform I was sweating profusely. She looked perfectly calm. Later, when I mentioned it to a friend, it occurred to me that she was a heroin addict. Really, that stuff keeps one cool as a cucumber. And skinny.

Getting back to 28th and Park Avenue, we stayed at a "boutique hotel." It cost about the same as a hotel in anycity, USA, because it was in a "boring neighborhood." Yes, the shops closed at 9:00pm, which is nearly shocking in the city that never sleeps, but the hotel cafe stayed open late and it was charming. The rooms were tiny, but the bathrooms were simply luxurious and as clean as any I've ever seen. The cafe had Victorian velvet sofas where one could lounge and watch the stream of people go by. I sat for a while and knit and thought I was in heaven. I had forgotten how much I like to people watch.

One thing that's truly lovely about NYC is that on almost every corner is a neighborhood deli that sells cheap bouquets of high quality flowers. The variety is tremendous. One can get orchids for four bucks. I know it seems absurd for me to be raving about this when I live in the country and grow my own flowers, but my flowers only bloom for a short amount of time, and if I want a bouquets in my house all year long I'd be spending a fortune. Not only that, one can get asparagus for one dollar a pound.

Don't get me started. Tourists think eating in New York is expensive, but they don't know what the real deal is. It may be an expensive place to live, but to eat, no. There are countless ethnic restaurants that serve up food that makes cooking at home seem like a bad deal.

I know this post is all over the map, but I've been trying to write something for days. I'd intended on writing a somewhat in-depth entry about thinking for oneself, but then memories of my recent trip intervened. I'd trashed blog entry after blog entry all week, so I made a deal with myself that I'd post whatever the hell I wrote tonight. So, here it is, folks, a piece of poorly constructed writing that lead to nowhere. Take from it what you will. Next time I'll do better (I hope).

Photo note: The corner of Bedford Avenue and ? in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Look! There's a Subway! Is that hip? No. It's the bicycle racks that are. Not that I have anything against bicycle racks, mind you.

Models Wear Creations

Woman Wearing His Clothes

Woman Wearing His Clothes

Model Wears Clothes

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