The Amazing Swollen Shawl Trick

I'd never wet blocked a shawl before this Drooping Elm Leaf top-down triangle. I've read over and over that water (as opposed to the steam I usually use) expands the size of yarn by a lot, but never really believed it till now. Holey Lace, Batman! Truly cool! I need to put this on a bed, not this table, to block, and just hope my kitties won't claw it up as it dries. Hey wait! I can close the door. Knitting makes you so much smarter! I started this shawl with a contrasting green yoke in a Japanese Feather stitch pattern but it was ugly and looked like floodwaters. So I ripped, mirror imaged the Drooping Elm Leaf stitch pattern (from Barbara Walker, who else) and I love it! It's 4 skeins of Malabrigo Acorn in Silky Merino on #9 needles. I'm doing the Japanese Feather with an altered (square) stitch count in cool seawater colors of the same yarn for a Pisces friend who lives on the coast of Maine. I miss buying yarn, and just saw some crispy lettuce-green lace weight I long for here, but I have all I need for my next 13 planned projects, so I don't know how I can justify buying more right now. I'm sure I'll find a way!

Wall of Junk

I found this lacquered red shelf at the Salvation Army recently. It's absolutely perfect for displaying some of the junk I collect: old playing cards, old photos, old button cards, old doggie pins and plaques, old perfume bottles, old etceteras of the narrow variety. Red really rejuvenates these old things, in the same way red lipstick rejuvenates us old dolls!

Pho MSG

Today my brother and I had lunch at that delightful Southside Vietnamese eatery, Pho Grand. The flavors there are such a perfect blend of salty sweet spice! They rebalance one's bloodstream. Afterwards we went to Jay International to pick up the essentials I can't live without, and which aren't available in the corner of the Metro East to which my husband so ruthlessly transplanted me 8 years ago: Portugese sardines, jerk sauce, cilantro chutney, bancha tea, shredded squid. (I passed on the Croation pork paté this trip, due to a suspicious bulge in one of the tins. It was difficult to make the management understand what the hell I was talking about, but eventually they got it — a botulism outbreak would not be good for public relations.) As we strolled the aisles in a world tour whirl, we came across these cubes, and the secret to Vietnamese cuisine was revealed. MSG! All four cubes shown here feature four ingredients: salt, sugar, MSG, and spice. MSG can't be pure evil if it makes things taste so darn good. Supplies loaded into the truck, we then went to Shaw's Garden to burn off our iced coffee buzzes in the rain. It was Henry Shaw's birthday! Happy Birthday, Henry. You are one of my favorite St. Louisans, ever. I renewed my membership despite the hideous "art" currently infesting the place, and for some reason the woman who took my credit card started talking about the St. Louis Knitting Guild. I held out my swollen knuckles as proof of my own knitter's status and she urged me to join. I guess I am a joiner, because By God, I think I shall. Maybe the Guild will give me some useful, charitable ideas about what to do with all the chunky yarn I bought back when I liked chunky yarn, last year. Now my favorite yarn is Kidsilk Haze. I bought that Victorian Lace Today book by Jane Sowerby, and want to make every lovely thing in it. I've just started on a half hexagon in Kidsilk Haze "Fern" in a fern stitch pattern. I can't believe I'm knitting with such skinny yarn. It's a joy, but I've been doing it (joyfully) too much, and my hands are starting to hurt again. I'm going to take some Aleve tommorrow if rest alone doesn't take the soreness away. I must be holding on tighter to the needles due to the skinny yarn, I never used to have hand pain, even after 12 hours of knitting....

Happy Weeds

My weeds are happy in this hot weather. These pictures don't quite capture the magic of this garden, because they don't show all the butterflies, dragonflies, bumblebees, frogs, gold finches, hummingbirds, box turtles, bats, and buggy miscellany living the good life there. Plus I am not a very good photographer, because I took these under the blazing noonday sun, instead of waiting for that special twilit hour which would show off all the saturated rainbow colors of the flowers. But happy, happy, anyhow! And the birthday girl at Saturday's barbeque bash loved her rainbow shawl! Noro Iro is as thick and scratchy as rug yarn, but the colors can't be beat. A perfect present for temperatures in the upper 90s!

Sparkles!

Just picked up this notepad holder at the local Goodwill. My grandma would have loved this. I think she had a cigarette case made out of some similar sparkly vinyl. Sparkles, in fact, informed her entire interior design sensibility, especially in the bathroom. Now I remember why this reminds me of her: this sparkle plenty laminate was the vanity countertop! Pink tiles, rose red towels, china poodles on the shelves opposite the toilet, and gilded everthing else. Liberace would have felt right at home in there. Oh, and a red velour toilet lid cover. And a vase full of plastic roses tucked amongst the poodles. She was the best grandmother ever, but her tastes were totally Vegas. Here's what she read: Photoplay (where I first learned that Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors were more than "just friends"), The Poodle Gazette, and The National Enquirer. She had a bunch of Reader's Digest condensed books, but those were just for show. Her hobbies were sewing, smoking, drinking Fresca out of a sparkly insulated cup, and Bingo. I miss her and my grandpa most in the summer, especially around the time first tomatoes appear. Like right now. The tomatoes sandwiches at their house were always better than anywhere else. The tomatoes were grown in their own back yard, and they would often ripen on the windowsill, soaking up flavorful Raleigh smoke. From sparkly notepad to long ago tomatoes — I buy junk for the nostalgic stream-of-consciouness it evokes, not because I actually want to do anything with it. Thrift shopping is therefore free of pressure compared to other forms of shopping. Yarn always needs to become something else, food has to be cooked, and clothes must not only fit, but look good. Hooray for junk!

Sluggard's Day Book

This book, published in 1965, is the sort of book that both inspires and makes me perspire with anxiety. I could be doing something every single day in my garden: weeding, dividing, mulching, feeding, watering, etc. Tasks a normal gardener is supposed to do. This book takes away the guesswork about what needs to be done when. July 17 = rethink begonia watering. Here's what I do to my garden: absolutely nothing. (Correction — I pulled some evil crabgrass out of the herbs five days ago.) Yet everyone who sees the garden is awestruck by its beauty. What's the secret? With the exception of herbs, sunflowers and zinnias, I only plant weeds. I even joined something called Wild Ones, an organization whose mission is "to promote biodiversity and environmentally sound practices using native species in developing plant communities," (yah!) though I am not a joiner, and haven't actually been to a meeting yet. But l passionately believe that Nature Knows Best, and all the bugs and birds happily munching away at my flowers would concur. So I'll pay dues to folks who think the same. Plus — I am so f@#$%^&ing lazy these days, deep in the bones, that there's no way I'm going to treat the garden like an outdoor house which needs tidying. I will probably burn it this fall, which will kill the invasives and boost the natives, but pyromania is fun, not work. I don't really like being lazy, even though I'm so darn good at it. I keep hoping some miracle will occur and I'll get my old pep back, but I'll probably have to take drastic action: listen to heavy metal, eat raw foods, exercise like mad. One of my best friends is my age, but despite her well-earned laugh lines, she looks like a teenager, thanks to yoga and diet. I don't like looking or feeling my age, but I'm much better at whining about it than actually changing any bad habits. Still, transformation is possible till you're dead ....

On Edge

In case none of you out there believes I really do have a hoard worthy of any fairy tale dragon, I'll be posting proof over the coming weeks as I organize the Junk Dungeon. This is going to be a slow process, because of course as I organize, I have to pause to admire! To say nothing of the time deducted by scanning and blogging. Plus, there's always the taxonomic issue: just what file should Jello Cookbooklets go into? This hurts my brain, so I end up making a file called "Jello Cookbooklets." Basically, I'll end up with as many files as I have items, so I don't know if what I'm actually doing qualifies as "organizing." "Getting up off the floor" is probably a more accurate term, especially since I can't be bothered to alphabetize. Today I bring you to the edge of my collection. Too bad I don't like to crochet as much as knit, because old crochet patterns seem to outweigh the knits by 100 to 1. Still, I did find some cool "Forget-Me-Not" knitted edging I mean to work into the next shawl I crank out. And why bother to learn how to crochet better or tat at all when made edgings are so cheaply to be had at any antique mall?

Dainty Trifles

I can't remember where I got this book, but I do remember that it was under $5. What a bargain! Dedicated by the author Addie E. Heron in 1894 to Mrs. Potter Palmer, its battle cry is: "There is no home so poor that some attempt at beautifying cannot be made." Here's a list of some of the beauties it teaches the homemaker how to craft: burnt match holders, pansy sachets, chamois tobacco pouches, Spanish foot-rests, glasseine toilet sets, water lily carafe mats, and ladies' dust caps. Did people ever really have time to make this intricate stuff? There are many more crochet than knitting patterns in here, and "doyley" instructions galore. Aren't these silk chatelaine bags gorgeous? The trick to reproducing this particular fancy work today would be in finding the closures. Hello, China? And as we see by the gentlemen's shaving paper case, owls were as popular a motif back when as they are now. What is shaving paper? Is that the stuff my husband sticks all over his face whenever he nicks himself with the razor?

Ash Can Gloves

I defied both medical advice and all odds to finish these gloves. They remind me of a burning ash can in a vacant lot, as for some reason all fingertip-less gloves do. They're basically a practice swatch, made out of two different colors of some leftover Noro Kochoran, that turned into something wearable, even adorable: not bad for no pattern and no previous glove knitting experience. Toot! Toot! (That was the sound of my own horn.) Of course, I couldn't have done it without the succinct mini-tutorial by Rachel, evil genius behind Dyeabolical Yarns. Thank you! Now I can have at the gorgeous handwear in Robin Melanson's Knitting New Gloves and Mittens with confidence — and an almost healed left forefinger!

Hostess with the Mostess

As the knitless hours slowly pass by while my inflamed finger tendons cool, my creative urges have lured me down to the sewing room. It's a bit dusty in here, so completely has yarn supplanted thread in my affections. But leafing through the huge stockpile of vintage patterns is putting the sun back in my heart. Look at this cool Hostess Outfit I unearthed! (Simplicity #9085, ca. 1970.) I'm having a girls only BBQ next Saturday night, and this will be the perfect look to complement the Mai Tais and Rumaki I plan to serve. Better get the old machine whirring!

Overuse Injury

See my left forefinger, the one with the splint? I killed it yesterday by knitting this much of these Sugar Stick Ribbing gloves by Magic Loop. When I curl the finger, my lips turn white and I feel light-headed. It f@#$%^&*ing hurts! My husband has diagnosed it as an overuse injury and prescribed R-I-C-E (Rest, Ice, Elevation, Compression). It started aching around 10 last night, but I ignored the twinges and kept knitting for another half hour. Then all of a sudden the finger simply wouldn't move any more. If this is arthritis instead of the digit equivalent of having done deep knee bends for nine hours, they can just shoot me now and put me out of my misery. Because I've found my drug of choice, and it would be rottenly Cruel of Life to rob me of my needles! I guess I'll have to learn to knit continental, or at least a lot more loosely, so I don't do so much pushing with the sinister side. Rats!

Red, White, and Blue Chihuahua

Today marks the anniversary of our Sacred Blue Chihuahua's entry into our lives. We'd heard her howling for two nights before she came over to bark at us for food last 4th of July. Since we understood her so well, she decided to stay, and has been eating gourmet fare ever since. We love her so much!!!! Just look at that darling face. To celebrate this special day, I made her some bunting with "Superhero" colored Alter Ego Yarn from Dyeabolical. Happy 4th! Happy Chihuahua!

Flower Beds

After admiring my flower beds this morning, I decided I need a new bedspread to bring the outdoors in. Unfortunately, the only fabrics that fit my design ideals were last being sold in a 1970 Sears catalog. I see spreads like this in thrift stores occasionally, but they always look too ratty and hopping with dust mites to actually buy.

Five Hundred Year Shawl

Instead of finishing the Morning Dew shawl, I started knitting another one, because I just couldn't stop thinking about the Malabrigo Silky Merino in Acorn I bought at Knitorious the same time I got the Noro Silver Thaw #9. Or fondling it. It's got such a cool texture. I was going to call the shawl "Wind In The Willows" after adding the dappled green yoke from last year's Christmas hat alpaca, but then the Japanese Feather stitch started reminding me of The Flood. Look at it roil and boil! So now it's the Five Hundred Year Shawl. I'll knit another in 15 years or so.