NaNoSweaMo

So, November has been deemed many many things in the bloggy world this year. Most of these things are absolutely ridiculous for me to even contemplate. For example:

1. Write a novel in the month of November--ummm. I have never even thought about wanting to write a novel and the idea of trying to write one in one month makes me want to jump off a cliff. (Not that it isn't an admirable goal for more writer-ly types.)

2. Post to your blog every day in the month of November---ummmm. Clearly that is not happening. November has been what could most loosely be called a "harrowing" month. October wasn't much better. That would be why there was a two month lag in posts.

I was beginning to feel a little left out until I discovered NaNoSweaMo or "National November is Sweater Month". Maybe. Or knit a sweater in the month of November month? Or something else. I just know that it is NaNoSweaMo because I like saying it 10 times each day. When I discovered it I thought, Hey! I AM already knitting a sweater and I could just finish it by the end of November! It was good incentive.

This is Julia, she is not NaNoSweaMo-ing but I wanted to show you her lovely socks she just made. They are the socks that Tipped Her Over The Edge from being interested in knitting to obsessed. Tee-hee. Now I have a New York knitting friend. Maybe she will be ready for NaJaSweaMo. Lovely socks, no?


OK. Back to my original point. The next thing that happened in November was that I discovered that suddenly everyone I know is procreating. This made me think, HEY! BABY sweaters are sweaters too and they are a lot faster. I can be a multiple NaNoSweaMo-er! (Not that I'm being competitive, I just like acheivement). So last weekend I cranked out this, aka NaNoSweaMo #1


Then I got obsessed (how unlike me). I thought, if I can crank out a sweater while roaming around town with my family maybe I could knit Yet Another Baby Sweater before the end of the month. Well, it turns out that for sweaters to get knit, you have to knit them instead of doing things like working. This is all I could accomplish:


It is a NNSwM or half of a NaNoSweaMo.

But, I can hear you asking, what of the original sweater? The one you were already knitting and trying to finish? The one that is questionably a NaNoSweaMo since you started it in August? Ahh, that sweater was finished Wednesday. Behold the buttons:


This sweater is, despite it's Not Entirely Knit In November status, a NaNaNoNoSweaSweaMoMo. I get double points because it is so amazing. I can't believe I made it. I want to wear it every day for the rest of my life. See? Isn't it ravishingly beautiful?


The first day I wore it (ummm I've been wearing it since Wednesday so it is actually possible that I might wear it every day for the rest of my life) I got 7 compliments on it. 3 of those people didn't know I made it and asked where I got it. They were stunned and shocked to learn I had made it. "What!?" they said, "How can you MAKE something like that?"



Happy NaNoSweaMo! (I wonder what obsession December will take on?)

i heart arlo

So last Saturday my grown-ups, husband, and I went to see Arlo Guthrie. He plays a concert at Carnegie Hall every Thanksgiving-ish and we like to go. I think Arlo is very funny and I enjoy when he tells seemingly pointless stories that end in hilarity. This concert was with the UK orchestra (who he just released an album with). Apparently he has scored many of his songs for an orchestra and wanted to play them for us. At the beginning of the concert he told us some of his songs didn't go so well with an orchestra, like "I wanna pickle." Lots of people laughed. James and I didn't because I think we aren't old enough to know about this particular song. The mystery is revealed (thanks in joint part to my mom and You Tube)



I agree. Not so much an orchestra song. But funny.

I also happen to think that Arlo Guthrie has gotten funnier as an age-ed hippie than he was as a youngster. See.....



practice makes perfect....

sweater on the loose

So, I have many talents. But really one of my strongest one is losing things. I loose keys, staplers, pens, wallets, metrocards, clothes, hats, gloves, and on and on. Really, if you would like something lost you should hand it to me and I will lose it within 15 seconds.

Lately I have been knitting a beautiful baby sweater. It has been very satisfying. I cast on after we ate on Thanksgiving and by this evening I had the back, both arms, and part of the front knit. I was in the middle of explaining how satisfying this was when I went in my bag to find these peices to show-and-tell. Or to brag. Who knows.

But in my bag was only the sweater back, the sleeve I had just finished, and the front that I was knitting. Since I am talented in this area and thus have a lot of experience with What To Do When You Suspect Something Has Been Lost I began carefully and calmly taking everything out of my bag. "It has to be here," I insisted. It wasn't.

So I put everything back into my bag and tried once more. I carefully took everything out one by one checking it closely for signs of a missing sleeve. No sleeve. "Oh well, it must be at home. I probably threw it out of my bag when I was looking for my hat earlier." (Is it becoming clearer why I am so good at losing things?)

Once we got home, no sleeve. So I called everywhere I sat knitting today (1 restaurant, 1 bar) and asked if perhaps I had left it there. Now, usually when you call about a missing object it is easy to describe what you are missing in a generaly fashion, a coat, a headband, a sweater, a wallet. (Again, I know this through much personal experience) But a sleeve to a baby sweater is not so easy. First of all it isn't a sleeve yet, it actually looks more like a washcloth. But it isn't square so a really funny kind of washcloth. "Umm, this might sound strange but I think I left and oddly shaped piece of knitted fabric there earlier today?" "What?" "An oddly shaped piece of knitted orange fabric. It looks like a washcloth but not sqare." "Ummm, is it like a piece of clothing or art?" (Can you tell that I was in Chelsea by all the art galleries?)

Everyone I talked to was very kind, searched the restaurant or bar and got back on the phone, "well, I don't really see anything and I think if we had what you are talking about we would know it. So sorry, we really hope you find it!" (This is the best customer service I've had all day)

So. No knitted sleeve = I have to knit yet another sleeve. Luckily this clearly does not take all that much time. Here is what I am down to in terms of the sweater:


What do you think the other sleeve is out doing? If you happen to see it cavorting around town will you let it know I miss it? That I would really like it to come back now?

I think the fact that I am only mildly irritated by the whole escapade speaks to how totally accustomed I am to losing really important and devastating things. How does one divest themself of a talent?

blast from the past

youtube is so wonderful. I had completely forgotten about this until today. The theme song is so jaunty.

fall warmth

The weather seems to have officially turned towards the fall-ish side of things (now that I say that it will of course get really hot tommorrow). I really love fall. The weather is delicious, you start all kinds of new things (like school), and you get to wear things made out of wool. I've clearly been thinking about warmth lately in my knitting.

Julia gave me a gift certificate to Purl (the most dangerous yarn shop ever) for my birthday. They had a wall of cashmere. I couldn't resist. Luckily the price of one hank of cashmere was less than the gift certificate! Unfortunately one hank of cashmere doesn't go very far.


Ta-da! A cowl is the perfect solution. You get the coziness of a cashmere turtleneck with any shirt you wear! There is a camisole that goes with it that I may or may not knit with the rest of the cashmere.


Next is my thermal sweater which may be my most exciting big project ever. It is knit on very small needles so it will be more like the weight of a store bought sweater and will be wearable in fall and spring.



It is also grape juice colored and I own nothing else that color. Unfortunately small needles = lots of knitting, so who knows if I will actually be able to wear it this fall OR spring.

It is feeling so cozy out that I have even embarked upon a little christmas knitting. Imagine my surprise last night when I began a secret little project to discover that it was also a therma-ish stitch, almost identical to my sweater? Alas, no pictures of it until Christmas time. These are also for christmas but I won't say for who (though I'm fairly confident the person in question does not read the blog)


They are fabulous. And lacey. And cozy even though there is no wool whatsoever in them. It is the softest cotton in the whole world. Surprising, because the yarn didn't feel as yummy as I was knitting it as it did once it was knit.

All of these cozy prospects are distracting me from the more difficult aspects of my fall; getting two cavities filled, training 12 four year olds how to be in the classroom (and reminding the 7 five year olds), and working 10-12 hours a day but still not getting everything done.

Happy Fall!

a trio of productivity

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with the start of school. 10 to 12 hour days don't leave a lot of time for anything else. Except, apparantly, knitting. Unlike blogging, cleaning, sleeping, and playing with a parrot knitting is happily portable and is thus happening a lot more often than any of the other above tasks.



Gloves, done! They are lovely and eagerly anticipating a downturn in the temperature.

Who knew that pink-ish goes with orange-ish......



Half of a pair of socks........


And a cashmere cowl............


which was going to be a cashmere hat until I wore the skein around my neck for 8 hours and decided it needed to be a knit object to hang around my neck.

Still to come, the beginning of a thermal sweater...

a lovely day....

Where has this month gone? I can't believe it has been 20 days since I have blogged. Whew, teaching is exhausting. We made up for our sheer exhaustion by having a marvelously lovely fall day on Saturday.

We started by heading off to the Museum of Natural History to see the Mythic Creatures exhibit. Incredible, did you know that people believed in cyclops because they found elephant relative bones and rearranged them the wrong way? It is incredible how you can make elephant bones look like a scary huge human-ish thing. It also explained myths about mermaids (manatees), unicorns (narwhals), dragons (dinosaurs), sasquatch (enormous extinct gorillas), sea serpents (schools of dolphins jumping above water), among other things.

While we were waiting for our admission time we strolled through the dinosaur rooms. Dinosaurs were big and scary.


I'm very glad that I will never meet them.


I also had a sad ephiphany that the reason I think Gris-Gris is very dinosaur like is probably because Stephen Spielberg made his Jurassic Park dinosaurs very bird like. Movies do scary things to my understanding of reality.

Apparantly even Jurassic turtles were scary.


Who knew they could swim in the air?

Next we went for a safari through the wilds of central park. We ate freeze dried ice cream. yum.


It never fails to amaze me how you can be in the middle of Manhattan and then make it just disappear. Every time I'm in the middle of the park I begin to think about what a great place it would be to camp. Then I remember about the big city. And the homeless people who live in the park (who I'm sure are perfectly lovely people, their current circumstances just give them a more "basic needs" approach to life than I have, and I would rather not be stuck in the dark woods with them. In a tent.)

We emerged from the wilderness at the Hans Christian Anderson pond. This place always makes me think of Stuart Little because this is where he took his epic ride on a boat. It makes me very excited to see people sailing boats here because I like to imagine a little mouse on them.


Apparantly childhood fiction also does strange things to my understanding of reality.

Then we visited Alice nearby and her retinue of crazy people. I like the mouse in a teapot. Twinkle Twinkle little bat......



After a lovely knitting ride on a subway we walked home. We happened upon the farmer's market down the street from our apartment and the lovely rainbow of heirloom tomatoes.


I'm obsessed with tasting every different kind. Did you know that tomatoes could taste like strawberries or pineapple? Incredible.