Knit Sisters

I’m glad to learn from your comments that some of you found The E. Bales “Seven Pillows of Strength” a valuable source of wisdom and—naturellement!—self-help.

As Oscar Wilde once said, “You have to give advice. Heaven knows you can’t use it yourself.”

In fact, just today I was headed down the path to what I like to call a “Seven Pillows of Strength” day, but was derailed from my planned exercise routine by a mid-afternoon flute of champagne (or two…or four…) with Kerry and Sean. While we were working at the yarn shop. Normally, we don’t drink and try to sell yarn because disastrous gauge and yarn substitution errors can easily occur after hittin’ the sauce, but today was special.

Our apologies to our late afternoon customers. We may not have shown the same incisive, razor-sharp knitting acumen that you’ve come to expect from us.

Here’s why we were swilling champagne at 3 p.m.: Sean bought the store! Yes, he is now the proud (and sometimes worried sick) owner of Harvard Square’s very own yarn shop. Hop on over to his blog and give him some love, support, and congratulations, will you? This is big bananas.

Let’s take a moment to honor the fact that Sean has achieved one of his dreams, shall we? Days like this don’t come along very often, and when they do, you really have to pause and feel the joy.

Champagne can facilitate that.

I also started knitting again and I even have a F.O. to display, although after Sarah’s revelation of her splendid Handsome Triangle shawl, I feel my offering is a tad underwhelming:

There is something so mid-80s, so Reagan-Years, so Flock-of-Seagulls, so (Lord help us) Bryan-Adams about these socks that it almost brings a tear of nostalgia to your eye. Key word being “almost.”

The traditional eye-of-newt heel shot.

The specs go something like this:
Pattern: Flame Wave Socks (aka Material Girl Socks) from Favorite Socks: 25 Timeless Designs from Interweave. A wonderful book, although the way I made these socks, they were anything but timeless. But why pick nits? I modified the pattern slightly by using the eye-of-newt heel and a different toe.

Yarn: Cascade Fixation in Pink. 2 balls. Leftovers: two marble-sized balls. Certainly not enough to choke a horse.

Needles: 2 each of US Size 5 and US Size 4 twenty-four inch Addi Turbo circular needles. Or, as Alex once quite earnestly called them, “the Speedy-Dos.”

When I laughed uproariously at his error, he pointed out to me that “Speedy-Dos” was not, after all, a priori a more silly name than “Addi Turbos,” and I’m afraid I was forced to concede the point.

I told Sean I would finish these babies today, and by God, I did! Consider them a tribute to your business ownership, Sean.

On another note, I’ve been meaning to mention a couple of things that have made me very happy anew that we have this blog and that I now know so many delightful people in the knitting blogosphere, people I would never have met otherwise.

The first wonderful occurrence was that Hanna wandered into Woolcott a while back and, after reading her comments and corresponding with her for several months, I finally got to meet her in person. She was just as beautiful, thoughtful, smart, and wise in person as she is on the internets.

I also recommend that you have a look at her new hat pattern on MagKnits. Not only is it an extremely pleasing hat, but one of the photos also features a very fine-looking dog.

Secondly, I’d like to thank Laura for putting me onto The Decemberists, specifically their Crane Wife. It was her enthusiasm for the band that piqued my interest and I’d like to give credit where credit is due.

Not only is the music great, but it earned me some desperately-needed hipness points with Alex, who had previously been thoroughly convinced that I knew nothing of any music recorded after 1990 (yes, ladies and gents, the year he turned nine and I turned, um, twenty-two) and that the popular music of the 1980s, with its grave aesthetic shortcomings and retrospectively comical use of synthesizers, could fairly be thought of as “The Music of My Life.”

This unfortunate impression was only reinforced when he discovered me in a shameful, nostalgic reverie over a-ha’s iconic video of Take On Me. I’m sorry to report that he laughed at me, trampling mercilessly upon the vestiges of my youth, ripping the gauzy veil of nostalgia from my eyes, and forcing me to the painful conclusion that the 80s were crap.

Young people can be so cruel.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 9:28 pm and is filed under Sock it to me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.