Not without a Trader Joe's Guy!

I've been incredibly productive over the past week. I have had loads of long term projects on my mental to-do list for months and I finally got around to a few of them. The first of these was sewing up a new messenger bag.


Almost two years ago I took a sewing class with Melissa and neighbor Pete at Valley Fabrics (which is sadly closing it's doors at the end of June). The project was a simple messenger bag. I made a lovely orange, green and teal bag that I gave to my sister that Christmas. Immediately after the class I bought this heavy cotton fabric at Ikea intending to make another bag for me. The fabric sat and sat until I finally pulled it out of the depths of the closet a couple of weeks ago and cut out all of the bag pieces. Last Monday night I needed to hem some curtains (also bought at Ikea many months ago - another long delayed project...) and, since I had the machine out, sewed up the bag.


The bag is super simple, but I am not much of a sewer. I wont invite anyone to look closely at the seams on this, but I think it came out quite well. The fabric is nice and heavy and holds the shape of the bag quite well. And it's reversible!


Tina took these photos today in Trader Joe's in Hadley. One of the clerks saw what we were doing and ran over saying, 'Wait, you can't take pictures without a Trader Joe's Guy!'

If you look close at these photos, you can see Traci behind me looking at soup (with the checkered bag) and if you look in the lower right of the photo with the Trade Joe's Guy you can see Audrey in the bottom rack of the cart. Not sure what's she's doing there. Probably being bored waiting for the best part of Trader Joe's - when they give you a balloon (in your favorite color) at the check out counter.

Euphoria and Walden, a bandit and a monster

I've found an even better spot for photographing knitting than the porch at my office. I needed to take pictures of some stuff and I needed breakfast and coffee. So Traci and I headed out to Bread Euphoria on the Northampton/Williamsburg line, home of (in my opinion) the best pastries in Western Mass. Their morning buns are sheer perfection. And they are expanding and will soon have a cafe with lots of seating and parking. They're even moving the driveway (Those of you who have experienced pulling out onto Rt 9 on that blind corner know what a good thing that is) and paving it.


We found a little table outside and each took a turn modeling my new Springtime Bandit shawl.

This was totally selfish knitting. After finishing the lace shawl for my soon-to-be-sister-in-law (15 days!) I needed to make something for me. I had this yarn - Cormo, Silk and Alpaca - bought out of the seconds bin at the Foxfire Fiber booth at the NH Sheep & Wool Festival last year. I love this yarn. It feels like your favorite old sweatshirt. I did one extra repeat of the main body pattern of the shawl because my gauge was a bit smaller than called for. It's the perfect size and so comfy I want to wear it all the time.

Also photographed during breakfast was my new Walden Beret. This is the second one of these I've made and it is my own design. This is done in sock yarn dyed in peacock colors by Melissa (it is basically the same as Valley Yarn's Franklin).

The first Walden Beret has left me in hopes of bigger and better things. I'll keep you posted... It was done in sparkly sock yarn dyed especially for me by Gail the Kangaroo Dyer. Gail calls this yarn Twinkletoes because it has thin strands of stirling silver spun into it. I love the earthy tones of this yarn - they were the inspiration for this beret's name.


Speaking of Gail... guess who has a new book coming out soon? Here is a mock up of it on display at BookExpo last weekend.


Finally, here is little Maddox hiding among my flowerpots.


I saw this yarn on close-out at Webs and said, 'That's perfect monster yarn.' And it is.

He still needs proper teeth (that's just a bit of paper in the photos), but I didn't have a chance to go to the fabric store this week.

Dear Nick Hornby, I love you.

Juliet, Naked: a novel by Nick Hornby

It's been a long time since I read a really good book. I read lots of books and many of them are good. But only a few are really good. This one made me wish my flight was longer, wish I'd taken a shuttle instead of renting a car and had me looking forward to dining out alone.

It's about a couple in their late thirties ending a long term relationship. It's about the internet enabling a youthful obsession with a rock star to last many years longer than it should. It's about the life of a washed up rock star. It's about getting to know someone over email. It's about wanting kids and not wanting kids and having too many kids. It's about music and how it can affect life. It's about life in a small town. It's about the stupid mistakes we all make. Nothing earth shattering here. But it's all in how it's written. Hornby makes it all so real and familiar - sometimes painfully familiar, but somehow laughable at the same time. My only complaint is that it was too short. I could have gone on reading this book all summer.

There was a moment when two of the main characters were ending their relationship and one was moving out where Annie offers to lend Duncan money and he says "I never thought you'd be so... tough." I think I may have snorted out loud (Much to the annoyance of the guy sitting next to me on the plane. But whatever - he did not respect the invisible line created by the armrest and his elbow was in my space the whole flight.), because I heard in my head an ex calling me a cold hearted bitch when I told him he could keep our DVD player. And now I can see that it's funny. The book is full of those moments we've all had. And because they're not actually our moments, we can laugh at them and somehow that makes our own memories more like clever, witty, novel moments.

What happens when Times Square is closed to automobile traffic:

Lounging.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this

What? You didn't serve Dharma food at your Lost Season Finale Watching Get-together?

In which I keep a promise that I'd forgotten I made to somone who didn't know about the promise to begin with.

A few years ago I was at Rhinebeck with Kristen and one of the vendors had a display of Russian Wedding Shawls. They were gorgeous, weightless, cloud-like things made from very fine yarns knit into intricate lace designs. Both of us were in awe, but determined that we would someday attempt to make one.

On the drive home Kristen and I discussed who in our lives we would make one of these shawls for, should they ever decide to get married. The few names that made it onto those lists were women important to each of us. Making the shawls would be a labor of love with wishes and hopes and care knitted into each stitch.


Last June, my brother and his long-term girlfriend Julie got engaged. When I mentioned it in drop-in at Webs that Thursday night, Kristen reminded me of that conversation we had on the way home from Rhinebeck and that Julie was one of the names on my list.

So I spent some time researching the traditional shawls and finally came across a more modern pattern inspired by the traditional shawls from the Shetland Islands. It is the Forest Path Stole out of The Best of Interweave Knits. It combines lace with another challenge - entrelac. I decided that, while the entrelac would make it more complicated, it would also make it easier to work on in short bursts of time. Throughout the main body of the shawl I would only be working on 20ish stitches at a time as I worked each diamond.

I then decided that a cobweb weight shawl might not be practical for someone who lives way up in the mountains of Colorado, as my brother and Julie do. So I looked for slightly warmer yarns. After much squishing and stroking of yarns and discussing the various merits of each with the drop-in ladies, the winner was a baby alpaca and silk blend that I'd found tucked away on a bottom shelf of Webs. Absolutely scrumptious stuff that I hadn't known existed before that - Buckingham from Bristol Yarn Gallery.

Over the past year, I worked on this shawl on airplanes, in coffee shops, in bars, in cars, in movie theaters, while teaching classes, in rooms full of friends and curled up on the sofa with two cats, during snowstorms, watching British costume dramas. Friends and coworkers kept track of the progress and encouraged me every step of the way. So the love of my whole tribe is knitted into it too. Last week, as I was working on the borders (in a bar) a fellow Drinking Liberal asked what I was making. I explained and he said 'Wow, you must love your brother very much!' I replied, 'Well yes I do, but this is for my new sister.'

On Friday, I drove down to Connecticut where Julie was visiting her parents for the weekend. I gave her the shawl and neither of us could keep back the tears. We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and walking on the beach by the Long Island Sound. I don't know how my little brother managed to convince such a lovely, warm, intelligent girl to marry him, but I'm glad he did.

Many thanks to my coworker Tara who, once again, agreed to be my model. Thanks also to my employer for housing our office in a building with a lovely porch that makes a spectacular backdrop for knitting photoshoots. I regret that I didn't think to get a photo of Julie with the shawl, but I plan to get some next month at the wedding.

Note: Because I feel I must, I will point out the glaring mistake I made. If you look at the photos of the back of the shawl, you can see where I flip-floped two of the diamonds. The lily-of-the valley looking one and the one that looks a bit like heads of wheat. And I know you will all say that no one will notice but me. But I also know that some of you (I'm not naming any names, but you know who you are...) enjoy the fact that I am not a perfect knitter, so I point it out for your benefit and mirth. Don't say I never did anything for you.

I don't know how you did it Mom.

An old friend of mine bought a house recently and I teased her about being 'such a grown-up'. We discussed how, at 37, we still feel like kids and are waiting for the day to come when we actually feel like adults. We talked about what our parent's lives were like at our age. I mentioned how odd it is to have very distinct memories of mine when they were 37. I said, 'I actually knew my mother when she was our age. And not just like I knew her because she was my mother, but I was old enough to know her as a real person. It's a very strange feeling.' My friend agreed and said, 'Hell, I knew your mother when she was our age!"

When my mother was my age, she'd been a teacher (in three different states), she and my father owned their second home and she'd given birth to 3 kids (the second one one came three months early and from what I remember and the stories I've been told about that scary time, it's amazing they decided to have a third). She had her hands full at 37 with my 5th grade pig-tailed self, my wild 6 year old brother and Lindsey, the loud, stubborn toddler. I can't imagine. She must have been exhausted all the time. But she was always there whenever we needed her. She still is.

I love this photo of my mother as a child. She clearly has on a new outfit and is about to leave for an event. Posing in the backyard of my grandparent's house. I've looked at this photo a zillion times, but only just now, as I was uploading it, did I notice the shadow of the person taking the photo. I think my grandfather was the photographer in the family, but the shadow looks more like my grandmother. I hope it was. It makes it all the more perfect for Mother's Day.