Knot Knecessarily Known Knitting

One of my aerospace friends has a farm. His wife is a nurse practitioner in north Georgia near the Georgia-Tennessee-North Carolina line. They have a lovely home up there and many acres of land. The Nurse is also a spinner and crafter, and owns goats. Many, many goats of different colors, sizes, and ages. On a visit and rafting trip up there in the summer of 2008, they gave me some shed goat hair. It is pretty neat to have fiber from a live animal you've actually met. I'm still working my way through the white fiber, and may or may not be able to spin it. I have used a little of it to very good effect as clouds on some Dungeons and Dragons miniatures. It has a lot of dirt and field bits in it and some of it is matted to the point of being felted. I need to find a really super scour. I was able to work more readily with the fiber from a goat named Cleopatra. She's a very pretty goat and her fiber is mostly brown, although she has black guard hairs. In this case, ...

During the Christmas holiday, the Cuddly Hubby and I went to visit my family in Pennsylvania. We drove up the weekend before Christmas, which was just after the big snowstorm. On the drive north I was wondering if this was such a swell idea -- why hadn't I promised to come visit during a warm weather holiday? But it all worked out very well. Big credit to the state of Virginia, as those folks really know how to clear snow off I-95. And thanks to Audible for the members' free 3.5 hour recording of Tim Curry reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol . Between the clear expressway and the good listening, we made our best time ever from Georgia to Virginia. For Christmas my mother took me on a surprise trip out to The Mannings . This was a totally awesome Christmas present! My sister and grandmother came along as well, so we got to spend nice time together. The Mannings is a shop out in East Berlin, Pennsylvania that offers classes and materials for knitting, spinning, and we...

I just came back from the Deluxe Panda Nightcrawler program at ZooAtlanta. Nightcrawlers is one of the oldest after-hours education programs in the country. On this program we got to learn about pandas, make enrichment for the pandas, and then have a behind the scenes encounter with the pandas. Cameras aren't allowed behind the scenes at the zoo, so I don't have any pictures of myself or anyone else in the party feeding biscuits to Lun Lun. I also don't have pictures of all the cool panda gear various participants were wearing. Most of the twelve of us were local, but Lola came all the way from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and another family flew in from Fort Worth, Texas. All of us are afflicted with Obsessive Panda Disorder, but none of us seemed to be in any hurry to be cured. But, I am very fortunate the bag of straw and scent that I assembled and painted was given to Lun Lun and Xi Lan. I scented the straw with banana flavor. The photograph is Lun Lun invest...

I've also added "And So It Goes . . ." from local knitter, teacher, and designer Laura. On Ravelry she's Angelfire212 and has designed Skolnick. Skolnick is a pair of fingerless gloves with a guitar design on the palm. There is a beautiful cable pattern on the back. Laura had me test knit these for her last year. The process was fun, and funny. She gave me all the directions and a chart and I was ready to start. Then I realized I wasn't sure what the chart meant. And I couldn't figure it out. Finally, I asked. Laura had given me everything except the chart key. You can bet that complicated cable and the duplicate stitch made a whole lot more sense with the chart explained. This is why you need someone to check your work -- because the gremlins get in it at night and do odd things. Laura has nicely placed the increases for the thumb opening so that the thumb gusset grows out the the side of the cable. This was a fun project. And it doesn't take...

The Cuddly Hubby left the 2 November 2009 Newsweek out for me to read. He kindly turns down the corners of articles I might find interesting. Obviously, it has been a busy time recently, since we're ten weeks behind. In this particular issue, Cuddly Hubby has marked a column by George F. Will entitled, "Magnificence Democratized." It requires a response. The article is about Antony Gormley's Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square. If you listen to Brenda Dayne's Cast On podcast, you'll recall how excited and thrilled Brenda was to get to be one of the plinthers. For 100 days, 24 hours a day, each hour a different person got to be up on the plinth. Over the course of the summer, 2400 ordinary people each got one hour of fame. Participants were free to do whatever they wanted. Some made political statements. Some performed. Some did ordinary things. And some knit. Mr. Will derides this democratization of achievement. Clearly, he is bothered --...

Just wanted ya'all to notice that I added Jenna's blog "Yarn Stylist" to my list at right. This is the famous Jenna the Yarn Pimp. She hasn't written all that many posts, but I have hope that she'll get back to it because Jenna is hilarious. And smart. And crafty -- both definitions. And because we really need a post about the great green dress monster.

We have been "enjoying" uncommonly cold weather here in the ATL. Nearly every day this new year has been clear and beautiful and COLD. It is uncommon for us to have days that aren't above freezing, much less several in a row. And the meteorologists have mentioned the four-letter "s" word for Thursday. At least this should cut into the bug population for next summer. 11 December 2009 -- Mei Lan looking fabulous even while napping. One of the upsides to this weather, besides the opportunity to wear your warmest knitted clothes with pride, is that this is panda weather! I haven't been to San Diego Zoo, but I've been to Memphis and National Zoo and talked to people who have been to San Diego. From what I can tell, the best panda viewing in the United States is right here in Grant Park. Visitors can get closer to the pandas than in Washington or San Diego and there are more pandas here than in Memphis. (After visiting Memphis, I am pretty sure their ...