Last month, the Men's Fall Knitting Retreat was held at Dumas Bay and altough I've been meaning to post about it, I haven't had the inclination to write it up. You'll see why if you continue on. As always, it was great to see the guys who attend these events! I really enjoy their company and wish I lived closer to many of them. On top of that, I love the little city of the Pacific Northwest that is Seattle and could easily live there. Unfortunately, the trip was slightly overshadowed by the plague I suffered from while I was there!

To the lady on my flight to Seattle in 26B, I hope you're still sick and I hate you for coughing on me for 3 hours.

I left the retreat on Sunday having missed all of my classes and having visited with the guys for barely a day and a half. I was hopeful for the remainder of my trip. WonderMike couldn't have been a better host, he looked after me and gifted me the most amazing yarn from Hazel Knits. The camera is not playing nicely with the computer at the moment but click the link, she's amazingly talented. I'm thinking a Stephen West design should do the yarn justice. I also received tons of swag and even won the coolest pattern markers and project bag from Slipped Stitch Studios. Visit them on Etsy and spend money there!

Monday was spent in bed ordering room service.

9AM May I have a pot of tea? ... Yes

12PM May I have tomato soup and a pot of tea? ... Yes

2PM May I have chocolate lava cake and a pot of tea? ... Yes

5PM May I have tortilla soup and a pot of tea? ... Yes

6:30PM May I have creme bruilee? ... Yes and a pot of tea.

If nothing else I'm consistent.


Tuesday, having ingested a bottle of Dayquil, I set off for Bainbridge Island and Churchmouse Yarns & Tea. I loved the shop. I purchased some lovely Rowan Kid Silk Haze for a scarf from Churchmouse's private designs.

The following day, I was actually feeling well and spent a lazy and lovely afternoon at the Public Market and the Seattle Art Museum. They have a varied and beautiful collection of work and this really cool tour that can be accessed with your phone where you can listen to the curator's take on an individual piece. It was like being there with a very knowledgable friend. I especially liked the knit/crochet exhibit! It was really unique and filled with different yarns and stitch patterns! Phone photos don't do it justice and I stupidly left the camera at the hotel. All the more reason to visit SAM again!

Upon my return, I was feeling a little sorry for myself and the fact that I barely spent any money in Seattle, I was encouraged to treat myself to a few "welcome home gifts".


I opted against photographing the new china, flatware and glassware that will adorn my Thanksgiving table but I was concerned for Blogger's bandwidth capacity. ;-)

Sorry I missed ya'll at Rhinebeck. It wasn't in the cards this year!

Never forget...

simplicity and joy, my mantra for life. It's true but occasionally I fool myself into thinking that technology and its advancements make life simple. I can pay my bills online in 40 seconds which used to take an entire evening. I can look up a recipe while standing in the supermarket when I've forgotten the list at home. And I can buy a book at a traffic light from my car or my living room armchair in my boxers!

Life is simple, right? Wrong! So wrong! Dead Wrong! Wrong, Wrong, WRONG! Life's just faster and blurred by the speed at which these choices come at us. Unfortunately, life's not always simple. The simplicity and ultimately the joy, takes a little work and perspective.

I give you exhibits A, B & C:

Have you purchased a light bulb recently? It's complicated. CFL energy efficient, incandescent, halogen, fluorescent, LED, compact, flood, spot, type, wattage, and on.

Or have you purchased a toothbrush recently? I've said this before, the beauty of the toothbrush was its simplicity. "Stick with bristles." Not anymore ... sonic, vibrating, round head, long head, short head, soft bristles, hard bristles, bristles that change colors when it's time to buy a new toothbrush, and on.

Yesterday, I went shopping for milk. So simple I could have sent Laura Ingalls to buy it. Have you really looked down the milk aisle recently or do you just grab your go-to milk or milk by-product without paying any attention? Whole, 2%, 1%, skim, Soy, homogenized, grass fed, goat, organic, fat-free lactose-free, kefir, and on.

All I wanted was buttermilk. That's what the recipe called for so I mindlessly went out for buttermilk ... simple. I didn't know whether it should be organic, skim, fat-free or whole. I didn't even know buttermilk came in a fat-free version. Isn't that the whole point of buttermilk, it's loaded with fat, calories and TASTE which is why it's used in recipes?!

Chad was there, he helped. Hip, about my age, great silver hair and rocking a really tight t-shirt. I liked him immediately and drawn to his "milk does a body good" vibe! He was against the whole buttermilk idea from the start but when I told him it was for a recipe, for chocolate cake using all organic ingredients, he acquiesced. I lied, there's nothing organic in the recipe but I knew he wasn't going to let it go. He was sexy but I had a cake to make! This cake to be exact! Thank you Jocelyn!

In the end, I bought Organic, Cultured, Low-Fat Buttermilk because they didn't have grass-fed buttermilk which I was told was my preference. Thank you Chad. I didn't have the heart to tell him I'm lactose intolerant and usually drink Soy or Lactaid. Regardless, he was very helpful, knew a lot about milk and did I mention how to wear a t-shirt.

So ... as the simple things get complicated, I suggest surrounding yourself by the truly simple things in life.

I give you exhibits A, B & C:


my chocolate cake, best with vanilla ice cream



blocked and finished, the dandy neckerchief


from my stash, my favorite color

and on, and on, and on.

Admiration, anywhere you can get it...

When blocking lace, remember, pins hurt. Refrain from putting pressure on them when in contact with the skin.

It's nearly impossible to make a knitted object symmetrical when you're pulling it in different directions.

Pay no attention to the YouTube videos, those bitches lie.

When you roll the FO in a towel to get the excess water out, be reminded that if you used worsted weight wool, there's gonna be TONS OF WATER ALL OVER THE COUNTER and eventually the floor! The wool is very absorbent in a way the towel can never be!

Use excess water dripping from counter to floor for impromptu floor washing!

Admire floor while contemplating poorly blocked lace.

Goo Gunge

First, I've been away for six weeks. My lovely "Sneak Peak" and "Call me Nancy Drew" posts came to you via Palm Springs. It was hot (surface of the sun hot), over 100 degrees every day and on some days upwards of 116F. The heat is inescapable. You can't get away from it and to prove it I got my first, very first, dare I say it ... age spot. [insert scary, horror film instrumental here] This is significant as I'm obsessed with the youthful appearance of my hands. Maybe it's because my Mom's hands look 100 years old or maybe it's because, I don't know ... my Mom's hands look 100 YEARS OLD!

And when the sun does finally go down, the bats come out. Tons of bats, maybe millions. Okay, maybe not millions but I've got a dramatic flare going here, don't forget the age spot! I did not enjoy the trip except to say, I'm finally home.

Anyway, it was planned that I'd be gone for maybe two weeks. I didn't plan to be away for six weeks and the garbage is Exhibit A. The trash fermented and although I never studied maggots in depth, I think I can safely say I've seen 'em up close! No person on the planet has ever closed a trash can quicker than I did Monday, August 16th, 11:45PM EST when I stood in my garage with a refrigerator full of expired food and nowhere to put it! I wasn't opening that can again. Hell, I would have hermetically sealed it but I didn't know how. In a pinch, I used the neighbor's trash cans! Thank you neighbor!

It gets worse. Last Spring, I ran over the trash can with the car. It popped back into shape but the bottom cracked. It worked fine but this crack allowed for a gelatinous, liquid, goo gunge to leak from the bottom when I tried to drag it out of the garage. Some advice...

1...do not drag a cracked trash bin across the garage floor. You will only spread the goo gunge.

2...when the ginormous roach cracks itself out of the goo's chewy center and slowly walks out of the surrounding puddle of goo, don’t scream like a 6 year old as it may attract the neighbors and then they too will know you’ve been garbage remiss.

3...after you kill said roach in psychopathic, screaming rage using only a box that your lace blocking wires came in (like how I got knitting content in there), contemplate having to persuade the trash collector to take the leaking pail without opening it.

4...consider taping it closed and putting a note on it that says "Trash, please take can."

5...be aware, #4 does not work.

6...consider pinning a $20 bill to the pail only if you want to lose $20 bucks and still own the goo pail.

7...ignoring the pail and putting it back in the garage does not make it go away.

8...admit defeat, go to Lowe's two days later and buy 55 gallons trash liners and bleach.

9...be hopeful that 55 gallon liners are big enough to hold a maggot filled trash bin.

10...squeal with delight when you discover that gelatinous goo gunge leaking pail fits in 55 gallon trash liners.

11...wrap trash bin with 6 liners while sweating to death the entire time from heat and anxiety.

12...when you accidentally find the carcass of the dead roach try not to repeat the "screaming like a 6 year old" performance from when you first met.

13...wash the garage floor with bleach and zeal.

14...wait 6 hours and carry the trash bin wrapped in 55 gallon liners to the illegal dumping site under the cover of night and chuck that whole heaping mess in.

15...run quickly before you're apprehended.

16...strip naked in the foyer of your home and bath for 30 minutes.

17...write blog post while the horror is still fresh.

That's all. Okay, the desert sunset's cool!


P.S. Blocking sucks but that's for tomorrow! [and that's more knitting content]. Yes!

Wunsapana Farm

When I was about 9 (no clicking away, it's not that long a story!), my family packed up the Cadillac Seville and headed from Brooklyn to the Catskill Game Farm ("Catskill Game Farm was a zoo in Catskill, New York, U.S.A.. It closed permanently on Columbus Day 2006 after 73 years of operation" - Wikipedia quote.

Looking back, my Mom and Dad always found a way to get us out of the city for the Summer. In fact, some of my earliest memories were those going to a "bungalow colony" resort in the Catskills for school break. We'd rent a tiny, little house (my parents actually slept on a trundle bed in the kitchen in one of them) and we stayed the entire Summer until it was time to head back to school. I remember thinking that kids in my class only got to go to Paris for a week but I went to "the country" for the whole Summer. I think Mom had visions of us running under fire hydrants with the hooligans and decided getting us out of Dodge was the best way to keep us out of trouble.

That year at the Game Farm, my Dad got me a map of the fairgrounds. It was colorful, had drawings of all the exhibits and I plotted our course through the grounds with absolute precision. My sister and I went into the petting zoo and a llama decided she needed a snack and proceeded to eat my amazing map. I didn't know what to do, I was frozen with fear. This huge animal was getting her daily dose of fiber and I couldn't do a thing about it. With panic seared into my memory, I never liked farm/zoo animals again. The circus, fey. I never played with ants in the dirt, fish at the lake and even a trip to the park where I might encounter a squirrel was a flat-out "no thank you". Even today, a gecko on my lanai gives me a start and those pesky frogs at my front door turn my stomach.

In college, I tried to overcome my animal phobia and for a very short time while in college, I worked on a diary farm in upstate NY. A friend's family owned the farm and they happily let me slop cow shit and try not to get run over in the evening stampede back to the barn. I don't understand why they got to ride on horses and all I got was a big stick and instructions to yell loudly. Oh yeah, I didn't like horses. The whole experiment failed. It was hot, there were flies everywhere and cows are just about as dumb as an animal can get.

Fast forward... as my love of fiber grew and knitting became a regular part of my life, I thought my love for the animals that bore their coats for those lovely skeins would grow as well. Not so much but the idea of rural farm life totally romanced me. Granted, it usually included a hunky farm boy-friend who did all the dirty stuff but I was romanced all the same.

The other day, I visited WillyG's blog and saw a photo of him laying in the grass with llamas. First thought was ... tics, bugs, crap, trampling, spitting...ick...ick...ick. Then I linked to the farm's website where the photo was taken. Take a look at it. The enchanting, Wunsapana Farm conjures up images of an idyllic life in "the country". Scroll down the homepage and take a look at their home, read what they have to say about their farm and you too will be under its spell.

Well, I'm not liquidating the 401K to buy a farm but the idea of embracing these splendid creatures before I actually "buy the farm" warms my soul. I hope it does the same for you.

Call me Nancy Drew....

but I think there may have been a bird fight on my patio today. If you see a featherless, stunned bird flying around, let me know. I have something of his. I think the pieces of nest and the apparent "poop of fear" (that's a technical term or a song title) close the case. It takes a keen eye but I'm thinking a career in crime investigation may be in my future.

On the knitting front...

K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2, K2, P2,

...in grey.

Call it that keen eye, but I think we can forgo the photo tonight, yes?

Secret Projects & Harry Potter!

My secret project is coming along nicely. Here's a sneak peek! There's one more pattern repeat left and then it's blocking time. I bought all the requisite blocking items: wires (rigid and flexible) and blocking pins. I've watched the YouTube videos, read the blogs and memorized the instructions that came with the wires. I'm sure to screw it up. ;-)

This pattern is called a neckerchief and in my opinion it's too long and not wide enough. In order for it to fold around the neck with the point in the front and have the edges come back around to the front (so it'll stay on the neck), it needs to be wider. Additional repeats are not the answer, it's already too long. One knitter did this...

* YO, k2tog, YO, k1, YO, ssk * all the way across the scarf’s RS before the 4 rows of garter stitch edging.

What do you think? If you have a better idea to increase the width, let me know. This seems plausible but I'm open to suggestions.

On the non-knitting front, last week I decided to finally read all the Harry Potter books before the November premiere of the first of the final films. I am loving them! I already finished the first 3 books and today I picked up Goblet of Fire. It's 750 pages and it hurts to hold it in my hands but I'm enjoying myself.

The fact that Daniel Radcliffe is finally over 21 and getting kinda sexy has nothing to do with the appeal of the books or I could just be embracing my dirty old man years! It's been known to happen. ;-)

Fiber Artist ... I don't think so.

Last weekend was spectacularly lazy. The kind of weekend you need more often than you take. The Golden Girls marathon was on, knitting was in arm's reach and the fridge was full of food. In between knitting, eating and Betty White, I surfed the net in search of new knitting blogs; they're always so positive and filled with yarny goodness!

For the record, I'm a knitter and it's a hobby. I love to knit. I feel creative when I knit and I cherish every finished object. I am not a designer nor an artist but apparently any knitter who can master garter stitch seems to think they're a "fiber artist". There are so many new knitters out there blogging about their experiences. I'm glad they want to share their progress with the world but it's plain obnoxious to refer to yourself as a fiber artist when you don't yet know how to purl. Maybe I'm channeling a less tolerant blogger tonight but it's really starting to get on my nerves. One blogger went so far as to call herself a "fibre artist". She's not British, she's from the deep South of the U.S. It's self-important and utter nonsense.

I know we're all supposed to get along. Knitters unite! Knit in public! Show your support for the craft! Strive for the most you can be but newsflash, it's a hobby and it's called knitting which makes us knitters. It may take up all of your free time. You may feel passionately about it but sorry, you're still a knitter. If you're making a living at being a knitter, stick a feather in it and call it macaroni, you get a free pass but if you've only knit wrist bands and a hat and still don't know why your stockinette scarf curls, you're not a fiber artist. If you spin and crochet as well as knit and use the term as an "umbrella", it's marginal but acceptable.

When did being a knitter become declasse anyway? It's an amazing pastime and has gotten me through some tough times. It just about saved me in Los Angeles and although I don't knit nearly as much, I bask in every finished project with pride. What do these bloggers say to people at social events when they're asked what they do in their spare time? And we wonder why Ravelers complain about the isolation of our craft, oops, hobby.

So if you're 'fiber artisting' today, get off your horse and come knit with the rest of us!

Finally Unpacked....

I finally unpacked (put the suitcase away and everything) from my trip and I'm still basking in the glory of friendship, knitting and an amazing city! Once again, I attended the Men's Spring Knitting Retreat in Easton, NY and enjoyed myself immensely. It's a bucolic setting (that's for you Joe, if you're listening) and gathering with like-minded men renewed my knitting spirit!

I loved the drive down from Boston in my deluxe SUV, thank you Charlynne for taking a shine to me at the check-in desk and upgrading me famously. The MA Pike is a lovely drive and in a few hours, I was in Easton. I love that you can make this retreat anything you want. This year, I didn't formally sign up for any classes but I enjoyed loitering in their vicinty. I had to see what all the hype was about steeking, lace blocking and two fisted knitting (that one wasn't what I expected). For someone who didn't want to take a lot of classes, I sure learned a lot!

As always, the best part of these retreats is the time spent with the guys. Chris was a great roommate and Michael, always the best company. Troy, my 'stylish' caffeine buddy and Matthew, an unexpected bond. Bob/John, the party was a blast and of course, Joe and Ted, thanks for making it all happen!

On my way back to Boston I got lost and if you follow me on Twitter, you know I ended up in Vermont. But who could complain when covered bridges like this appear out of nowhere.

In Boston, I had the esteemed pleasure of meeting my fav, Rav pal Mel. We met for lunch and she is a funny, smart, engaging and as lovely a woman as I could have ever imagined! A two-hour lunch proved the highlight of the entire trip. We must spend more time together!

While I was at the retreat, I knit my first moebius scarf of Cat Boordhi fame and I love its infinite design. In Blue Sky Suri Merino it made the perfect gift for Mel. She was kind enough to photograph it and I hope she'll think of me when she wears it this Winter.

I ate my way through the North End, it reminded me of growing up in Brooklyn. Pasta, pizza, bread, pastries, cookies -- can you say carb coma? I don't have to say it, I was in one -- heaven! I loved this building and its patina was incredible in the sun!

Thanks again Mel! Every direction was a postcard!

Boston Commons was so lovely, I read Pride & Prejudice under a tree for almost 2 hours. I know, I'm a girl. Tell your jokes. I don't care. ;-)

And, this is my idea of a bookstore. How I do miss city life sometimes!

Thanks for the memories guys and girl. J.