"I crush your precocious little head! Crush crush crush!"

Anybody else miss The Kids in the Hall?

Here's another view of the boxy fingerless mitts.

Boxy because I blocked them on a plastic kids cup saved from Houlihan's.

Playing along...89 things about me that you didn't know you wanted to know and may not really want to know anyway!
1. I am a feminist.
2. I once bought a stick-shift car and didn't know how to drive it home.
3. I bought it because it was $500.00 cheaper.
4. I stalled out in an intersection at 10 pm driving it home that night by myself.
5. I love stick shift.
6. So, I have a minivan now. I miss my Jetta.
7. My daughter's name was supposed to be Helena or Ingrid.
8. One of my pet peeves is that people think "Noel" is pronounced "Noelle." And that they misspell the Christmas "Noël."
9. I want to learn to weave.
10. When I was 6, I wanted to grow up to be a book writer and a teacher. (I already knew I'd have lots of time off during the summer to write.)
11. The strangest pronunciation of my name I ever got was "Le-aig-uh" from someone in Stoneham, Massachusetts. She also asked my friends and me if we liked to "Paaaahdy." Potty? What?!
12. I am a book snob.
13. I went to an Episcopalian Church and was an acolyte there for 6 years.
14. I am disenchanted with religion now.
15. I am thinking of visiting a Friends Meetinghouse though.
16. I went to the University of Delaware and majored in Communication and minored in English and German
17. I studied Mandarin, Latin, French.
18. Very afraid of public speaking but was required course for my major.
19. I don't really like chocolate.
20. I am giving up Diet Coke.
21. I will not shop at Wal-Mart.
22. I garden organically.
23. I am surprised that my kids will eat tomatoes.
24. I love rollercoasters.
25. I am impatient.
26. My favorite color was blue up to age 29. Now it varies.
27. My favorite food is Kal-Bi from Woo Lae Oak in NYC
28. My favorite movie is "Lady Jane" (where did I get the name Helena do you think?)
29. Noel was due on January 11, 2000.
30. I'd already picked out the name "Noel" way back in July 1999.
31. He came early on Christmas morning. "Noel" means "born on Christmas day."
32. How weird is that?
33. Becky was due on September 10, 2001.
34. She was 10 days late.
35. I thought I wanted 4 kids.
36. Sometimes just 2 kids drive me very crazy.
37. I want to grow up and live on Martha's Vineyard in the off season and have my own studio in which to weave and knit.
38. I never said shit, fuck, damn, hell, piss, asshole, bastard or bitch until I was 20 years old.
39. I say them now after the kids go to bed.
40. I still wince when I hear "G-d damn it!"
41. I feel like I should have been born in England or Massachusetts. Two hundred years ago.
42. I was a sprinter in high school track.
43. I want a "Darwin Loves You" bumper sticker for my car. That, or a Darwin fish.
44. I am very scared of sharks and alligators/crocodiles.
45. I wish I lived in NYC or Boston.
46. Or Martha's Vineyard or upstate New York.
47. I only wear one pair of shoes a season. I am a dork.
48. I don't like shoes I have to tie. That slows me down.
49. I like Martha Stewart
50. When I voted for Clinton, I was really voting for Hillary.
51. I am very interested in how the government works now. I never used to be.
53. I am not good with the telephone. But that doesn't mean I don't value your friendship.
54. I am a recluse and love to be alone.
55. But I get powerful lonely sometimes because I wasn't outgoing enough to make a lot of friends.
56. I love to read.
57. I love music.
58. I wish I'd kept up the piano lessons as a kid.
59. I wanted to learn to ride horses as a kid.
60. I am going to learn to ride horses someday.
61. I lived across from Longwood Gardens when I was a kid.
62. My childhood friend Becky and I used to build grass houses in their fields for our little toy mice. We would build frames out of twigs and then fill them in with cut grass.
63. Laura Ingalls Wilder was my hero.
64. I was devastated to read "Ghost in the Little House."
65. Rose Wilder Lane is one of my favorite writers.
66. I have 4 cats.
67. Four cats is too many.
68. I would like to have a little dog.
69. So I could knit for him/her. You think I'm kidding? (Okay, I am.)
70. I catch and release bugs. I don't think it's right to kill them.
71. Yet, I eat meat.
72. I am a hypocrite there.
73. I love Ayun Halliday's East Village Inky .
74. People think I look younger than I am.
75. I wish Becky liked to wear dresses. (But why?)
76. I hate to wear dresses and skirts. My father once said to me that I'd have to wear them when I grew up and went to work. Times they are a'changing.
77. Can you tell my dad and I are not very compatible?
78. We are more alike than we care to admit.
79. I am very opinionated but also non-confrontational. A weird mix I think.
80. I used to work as an assistant editor for the National Board of Medical Examiners (Step III, SPEX, Flex, Part III). Uh, it's been awhile. I could spell generic drug names in my sleep.
81. I once worked in one of those little Fotomat booths in the middle of a parking lot in Kennett Square, Pa.
82. I read James Michener's Chesapeake that summer while sitting in the booth.
83. I don't like coffee. (But I wish I did a whole lot.)
84. I once tried to get used to the taste by mixing it with cocoa and gradually reducing the cocoa. It didn't work.
85. Julian Sands gives me the creeps.
86. I still have a Kerry Edwards bumper sticker on my car and intend to keep it there.
87. My hair is stick straight and I perm it.
88. I hate hot fudge to be hot.
89. I'm thinking of growing my hair out straight.

Here's all my shetland fingering weight yarn stash. Mobilizing for a big fair isle mitten knitting frenzy.

I have a feeling I will be asking myself quite soon, "Just how many Fair Isle mittens* do I need?"

*or gloves or fingerless mittens. You know how it is.

Regia Mini Ringel Yarn in Greens and Blues

So, that's one. You know what comes next. Cross your toes for Sock No. Two.

I tried the afterthought heel on this sock. It was fun, but it is puckery/pointy at the ends where I kitchenered the stitches together (7 on 7).

This isn't normal is it?

UPDATE: What a great idea--Lucy Neatby's toe grafting technique. (Thanks, Mary!)

After knitting Widdicombe Faire, I decided I'd had enough Fair Isle knitting to last me awhile.

A long while.

But we're coming up on 2 years now of no FI FOs and I figured if George Bush can get elected again, I can try Fair Isle again.

Maybe my tension would improve. That's always been my problem. Puckery tight knitting.

So, I decided to follow the rules I gleaned off other knitting sites about which hand carries the background yarn and which the pattern yarn. (Left=pattern, Right=background. Be consistent!) The reason the pattern yarn is in the left is because these stitches seem to be made looser, and thus, pop more. The background stitches knitted with the right hand are tighter.

Now I know that part of my big problem was that I always always switched the yarn with the most stitches in a row to my left hand, because I prefer to knit Continentally. So, some pattern stitches were tight and some loose.

Here is my most recent attempt at FI:

Medallions in Aurora from Knitting Fair Isle Mittens & Gloves by Carol Rasmussen Noble
Yarn is Hebridean 2-ply in Red Deer, Poppy, Red Rattle and Machair. (In retrospect-- wouldn't have used the machair in middle of design.)

It seems like a good stiff blocking make the stitches even more even. I think I'm addicted! But gosh are there a ton of ends to weave in (33 total--I counted)

Here's what I've been working on:

A few rows of the mitten. Yarn is handspun from a batt I bought at Rhinebeck.

Almost a sock--technically I knitted most of this sock in October. Did the heel yesterday but can't work up enough gumption to kitchener the heel. (Yes, it's an afterthought heel. Got mildly worked up over that. How genius is that heel?)

Spun a skein with my spindle. It's a whopping 3 yards long.

"Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. " Pietro Aretino

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show." Andrew Wyeth

I am bitter!

I am pissed off!

But this can be good. It galvanizes me to get involved and do something. America was built on conflict and revolution and I'm ready to do my part. I appreciate what America can truly be now because of what it currently is not and because of what I remember it to have been.

Something to think on:

"Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible to restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; ... that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; ... that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy [sic], which at once destroys all religious liberty ... ; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities ... "
--Thomas Jefferson, "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia," 1779

Definition: [n] a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties

[n] a person who favors an economic theory of laissez-faire and self-regulating markets

[adj] tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition

[adj] showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; "a broad political stance"; "generous and broad sympathies"; "a liberal newspaper"; "tolerant of his opponent's opinions"

[adj] having political or social views favoring reform and progress

Not such a bad word now, is it?

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