Knit and Plenty

The All-Fiber Diet

I am going to Florida in less than ten days and I'd be really excited about it if I could bear the thought of wearing a bathing suit. In January, I did the no-carb thing for three weeks and didn't lose a pound.  Now, I am thinking about trying an all fiber diet. Just wool - and maybe a little alpaca snack -- because it's so fun to say. I know that knitting has been a great way for me to curb after dinner eating while watching TV. I wonder if I could extend that to bringing my sticks with me to restaurants to avoid the pre-meal bread basket or to pull out at the end of the meal to keep me from sharing someone else's dessert?? There are many great  knitting recipes for food items to be found online, so maybe I'll just knit up a few burgers and pies.  Maybe I'll just take a needle and  some yarn and use it to stitch my piehole shut! Actually, these photos have made me incredibly hungry. I think I'll go get a Mallomar and study it to see how I might develop a pattern. Wait, I already have a pattern when it comes to Mallomars. I think I'm in big trouble.

The Real Cheney Cover-up

What's all the noise about Cheney and this hunting incident? For a long time, many people have said that he was "an accident, or a heart attack, waiting to happen."  We just got the situation a little wrong. 
But here's the thing:  In May 2003, Lynn Cheney delivered a speech on their family history, in which she recalled: "And as for my knitting, well, there's a history.  When Dick and I were in college, I decided to knit him a sweater for Christmas.  Now I'm not sure exactly what happened, but the sweater turned out to be very, very large, so large, in fact, that Dick's mother, who was a frugal sort, unraveled it and used the yarn to make sweaters for two adults and a child."
So, the real question is: was Lynn nice enough to knit Dick a gun cozy?? Because if that's the case, we would be talking about a real cover-up, now, wouldn't we?? And clearly, they both have gauge issues.

Got yarn?

It's the "Storm of the Century" and we've got about 2 feet of snow, and my mother just called from Florida with her age-old, weather-crisis question, "Do you have milk?" I don't even drink milk - but obviously it's very important to have in case of an emergency. Stew Leonards (the milk store) is always teeming with storm-shoppers anxiously hoarding dairy products. I'm betting that if there is ever a cataclysmic event, scientist will discover that milk is the only antidote. For us knitters, who needs milk as long as we have plenty of yarn?! For without it, IT truly would be the end of the world.

Stop the commercialism of GHD

I've never understood the whole Groundhog thing. What is it? If he sees his shadow, we'll have six more weeks of winter; if he doesn't see his shadow, it will be six more weeks until Spring? I don't get it. And how does anyone know what the hell he sees anyway? Obviously, this is just another one of those huge, commercialized events designed to get us to buy lots of groundhog greeting cards, decorate our lawns with groundhog statues, send the kids out to burrow in the lawn for prizes, and dress up in our groundhog hats!! There's still time for you to knit up one yourself before heading out tonight to your local GroundHog Ball.  Pattern: Groundhog Hat. All I know is that it won't be warm around here until mid-April, so I'll have lots of opportunities to wear mine. And perhaps one day we'll return to the true spiritual, less material meaning of Punxsatawney Phil, "If you want to see your shadow, you have to come out of the ground and stand in the sun."

Words to Knit By

Have you ever decided to turn a UFO into a WIP, began to tink by realized it needed a total frogging only to find out that the KAL is MIA and the LYS is out of DPNs? Striving for an  FO, you take a skein of worsted and swatch a gauge while your BP is on the INC. You obviously got out of the WS of the bed.
Such is the language of knitting.
UFO - Unfinished object
WIP: Work in progress
KAL: Knit a Long (a group of knitters sharing info)
LYS: Local yarn store or my kid's college tuiton

Tink: Rip out one stitch at a time , for knit backwards
FROG: Remove rows of stitches, as in Rip it, Rip it.
DPNs - Double pointed needles
FO: Finished Project, also known as "NEXT!"
Swatch: The sample of knitting made by doing a gauge.
Gauge: That thing we say we vow to do, next time.
My two favorite knitting ephemisms: Knitting with One Needle (bad thinking) and "One skein short of a sweater". We could make up some new ones, like "That's so acrylic." Any thoughts?

A Botanical Basket Brimming with Bounty

Yes, I love to knit. Yes, I love the process of creating and watching a project bloom into its own. Yes, I love it when a project is done and I definately love seeing what others have created and sharing my work with them. But I honestly never realized, or thought about the fact that I just love yarn. I love going into a  yarn store and seeing all the fibers and colors.  It's like going to the Botanical Gardens. This is a good thing to keep in mind next time I am in a shop: that when you go to the Botanical Gardens, you don't get to pick all the flowers and bring them home. You can just look and appreciate. O.K. - I never just "look" - but this love of yarn explains why sometimes I just buy one $32.00 skein, even though I know it won't be enough to make anything. Perhaps you have already realized this about yourself but  now can clearly see that I am not only a knitter - I am a YARN COLLECTOR.  It explains why I have it on display everywhere. Jennifer has a giant glass brandy snifter filled with balls of yarn. Regina has this beautiful piece of furniture that was once an old dry goods storage chest, filled with her incredible collection. I have a large felted flower basket (Vogue Knitting, Winter 2005) that displays some of mine.  Now I can refer to all those plastic storage bins downstairs, brimming with my yarn treasures as The Archives. I'd love to hear how you choose to display your collection.