my breakfast table -- not visible to the left: Mr. Patinkin.

It’s a stunningly beautiful day here in New York City, brilliant sun and 63 degrees right now. I had breakfast at a restaurant in the neighborhood and sat next to Mandy Patinkin, who was being strenuously wooed by two guys who wanted him in their project. I tried not to listen, but we were sitting so close I couldn’t help it.

Tonight I’m going to a Ploughshares event at Joe’s Pub, where Nick Flynn (!) will read. Also Yusef Komunyakaa, whose poetry I love as long as he’s reading it out loud. Given my serious crush on Nick Flynn, you can imagine how exciting this evening will be. Otherwise, it’s a busy weekend, mainly because the coming weeks are insanely busy. For the next few weeks I have travel on the weekends, and lots of stuff going on during the week. So this weekend, I have to make a lot of hay.

I’ve decided it’s final acceptance time: Marnie’s Moby sweater is just lost in the mail. Period. This sweater has been a perilous process, but I’m undeterred! I need to order more yarn, and get going for the third time. And I also need to set aside the writing and pick up the knitting for baby goodies! I’ve also been assigned quilt-making duties by the mother-to-be, so that’ll be loads of fun, too. If only I had four hands and two minds (and extra time) I could do it all at once. Maybe in the next life.

Wherever you are, and whatever you have planned, I hope it’s a surprising and beautiful day. Happy Friday, y’all!

gray garter

I’d had a sneaking feeling that the sleeve for Marnie’s Moby sweater was going to be too tight around her bicep, but of course that didn’t stop me from plowing forward! It did, however, slow me down and make me less willing to work on it. Oh Denial, my Muse. So I bound off the underarm stitches, knit a few more rows, and then pulled it on yesterday. It’s tight, not so tight that it pulls the stitches, but it’s tight. And my Marnie has biceps. So I’m shipping the sleeve (and the sweater body, why not!) off to Marnie in Chicago, to try it on and see how it really works for her. If it’s not good, I can just get started on another sleeve immediately. This is going to be an heirloom, dammit!

I’d decided I needed to work with color, I needed that bright change of pace. So I looked at my brilliant yellow sweater, sitting at my elbow in the basket, luring me forward, and I just didn’t feel it. I’m in a grinding wearing time right now, and everything just feels so old. So *snap!* I realized what to do! START SOMETHING NEW! Even though it’s still and more gray, I decided to cast on my Color Affection Shawl (Veera Välimäki), since it’s stripes and short rows and purported to be lots of fun. Plus garter stitch, simple and soothing. And the yarn — The Plucky Knitter Primo Fingering — is lovely and smooth, and rich with color.

the makings of a shawl

The two lighter grays are really so close to each other; they’re the same value, but one’s a slightly bluer gray, and one’s a slightly yellower gray. But the difference is slight. I didn’t even think, really, I just cast on, making the charcoal the main color, which seemed obvious. And I got pretty far last night, nearly completing the first section, when I got a sinking feeling that I should’ve picked one of the lighter grays as the main color. Yep. Further reflection made that obvious. [I blame my jaw, which is still so bad, so much pain, I haven't chewed solid food for 3 full days now.]  So I ripped it all out last night and started over. The photo shows my reboot progress, using Elegant Elephant as the main color. It’s quite lovely, various shades of silvery gray. I can’t wait to get to the striped section.

Tonight I’m going to see An Iliad, with Denis O’Hare, at New York Theatre Workshop, “A sweeping account of humanity’s unshakeable attraction to violence, destruction, and chas. Has anything really changed since the Trojan War?”. With everything going on in the Middle East, we’d all have to say that nothing has changed. I love a good examination of epic concerns, so this should be great.

Happy Sunday, y’all, and happy knitting!

malabrigo makes such soft, soft fabric -- hard not to touch it all the time!

Yeah, that’s the ticket, don’t you think? I’m working on the collar before the sleeves, so that’ll be easy to get back into. The color will surely be dazzling in the grayscape! And any slight change in my tension will be less visible in the 1×1 ribbing.

I have another gray project waiting in the wings, the color affection shawl striped in three shades of gray, but I don’t think that would give me the jolt I need. I started feeling somehow unsophisticated, knitting in so much color all the time, and chose neutrals — Audrey, Moby, Color Affection — and while I do love them all, color is where it’s at, man. Paul Klee said, “That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one.” I’m no Klee, and I’m intimidated by color and don’t know how to select it or combine them, but I do get the happy hour bit, the joy in color.

Oh! Marnie’s second volume of her book series is at the printer now, but this truly lovely review of the first volume just came out; it’s an expansive and gorgeous understanding of what Marnie is doing in this book series, and as the mama, I cried when I read it. The reviewer really got it, and wrote so beautifully. The site, Make Space, features artists and their work, and the author of the review, Kelly Parsell, is a Chicago-based artist and writer. I love reading good writing about writing, and art, and when it’s about my daughter’s work, I’m over the moon. Please do read the review!

And just wait until you see the second volume — it’s even better than the first. There will ultimately be six volumes, and the story is epic and amazing and beautifully illustrated. If you want to subscribe to the series, so you automatically receive volumes 2-6, here’s the link. If you didn’t get volume 1, that link will take you to the listing. If you enjoy seeing and hearing about the process of creation, and of this project in particular, this’ll take you to the posts on her professional site about the In The Sound and Seas project.

In a continuation of appreciation of epics, this weekend I’m going to a performance of An Iliad with Denis O’Hare — I can’t wait for that. I prefer The Odyssey, but this should be interesting, especially in light of all the war in the world right now. Otherwise, I look forward to a weekend of writing and reading and knitting and good food….can it be any better than that?! And next Thursday I fly off to Austin to spend a few days, never enough, with my beautiful daughter Katie. That’s a lot of great stuff to look forward to. I hope you are in a similar boat of your own happy making — happy Friday, y’all!

And this sweater is taking me forever to finish — not just because I nearly finished the body and had to start over from the beginning. It’s just going so slowly. I pick it up in the evenings with joy to be making this beautiful thing for my beloved daughter, but not with the joy I get from color. What I’ve learned is that knitting with color is somehow more fun and engaging, and I do it more quickly. It’s been an interesting thing to figure out. I have the Plucky Knitter set of yarns for the Color Affection shawl (three shades of gray, one of which is charcoal) and I’d been so excited about it but some of that excitement is gone. Maybe it’ll be different since it’s stripes of light and dark gray. We’ll see, if I ever finish this sweater!

for Veera Välimäki's new shawl, Color Affection, these three skeins from The Plucky Knitter (top to bottom: elegant elephant, Sammy Samerson, and flannel).

Since I seamed the shoulders, I was able to try on the Moby sweater to see if it is a reasonable fit. Marnie and I are similarly shaped, though I’m taller than she is. The sweater blocked to the right measurements (though it won’t hug Marnie’s tiny waist, it will echo her shape) so I think it’ll work on her.

the fit is really nice

See how the center panel (the ‘flukes’) extends up into a point? The sweater is designed to be finished with a simple edging, which means that point remains, and kind of folds over when you wear it. I personally think that’s funky-looking, and was glad that Marnie wanted me to add a turtleneck which will disguise it. A cleverer-than-me knitter could do something with binding off those stitches a few rows down, to end up with more of a straight edge there, but I’m not that clever — and I didn’t need to anyway, since I’ll be making a turtleneck.

i hadn't pulled the back of the sweater down -- that back bulge isn't really there

I think this side(-ish) view shows the dimensionality of the cables on the front. There are 4 columns of single twisted stitches for a teeny cable effect, a couple of columns of a flat 4-stitch cable that’s just a kind of raised thickness, and then the really 3-D ropey cable on either side of the center fluke panel.

It’s been a lot of fun to knit, simple enough but requiring attention. I made an Excel spreadsheet that put together all the different charts so each row was then simple to follow and track. That helped a lot, and allowed me to watch many a movie while working on the sweater. One sleeve is approaching the underarm seam so I’ll be thrilled to finish that and block it and get it sewn in, and to start the second sleeve. The yarn is Valley Yarns Northfield, 70% merino, 20% alpaca, and 10% silk, so it produces a really nice drape. It’s probably not the best yarn in the world for showing off cables, but it’s lovely to wear. And I hope it wears well and doesn’t pill too badly.

It’s Thursday already, what a fast week this has been — a blur, really. And so funny, since I’ve been making a concerted effort to be mindful and aware. I’d thought that might lead to a slight slowing-down of time. I have been trying not to multitask, and it’s hard. I have become more aware of how often I do it, which is a start. It’s kind of like meditating: I become aware that I’m doing it and I bring my attention back to only one thing at a time…..and soon I become aware that I’m doing it again, so I bring my attention back. If I get nothing else from my 40-day project, I’ve already gotten a better degree of awareness of myself, which has been helpful. Not always pleasant, but always helpful.

So happy Thursday, y’all! I hope it’s a good one, and includes the chance to read for pleasure, get a bit of knitting done, and stop to notice now and then.

there will be 12 buttons -- this is just the first 5

I want to say what I think, but I don’t want to influence your opinion. I realize that seeing a few of them on an unfinished sweater lying flat on a table is a different thing than seeing them all on the sweater, on a real body, but I ….. well, what do you think. I am happy with Moving Mud, she was wonderful to deal with, so any concern I have isn’t about her and her business, it’s just about these particular buttons. What do you think?

Marnie’s sweater is coming right along:

the sweater body, blocked and dry. even though the waist draws in quite a bit, it's still not as tiny as marnie's waist. but it should look nice on her!

that rope cable will travel up the arm, all the way to the shoulder.

I’m very fuzzy-headed today and having a hard time getting my brain to work. I really need to get to work, and want to (I’m editing a great manuscript, such fun to read), but it’s like being encased in cotton today, everything’s kind of fuzzy and far from me, and I’m not feeling sharp at all. I hate days like that…..and hope yours is crisper and better!

Please, really do tell me your honest thoughts about those buttons. Perhaps my sure/unsure thing is about today’s fuzziness, but I don’t think so. I’ve had them for weeks now and still feel unsure. What do you think?

BLOG: For some weird reason, my blog has suddenly become a destination for people from all over the world, I have no idea what that’s about:

visitors in the last 24 hours

The searches that bring people to my blog are varied; ~50% are about knitting, and the rest are about such a mish-mash I wonder what the searchers think when they get to my blog and see that perhaps I used one word in their search somewhere in my whole site.  Anyway, it’s new, this global deal. I have a reliable cluster of visitors from the UK and from Paris, and then usually just a random one here and there. Late last week I had a flurry from Africa, which was particularly startling because I never have African visitors and I’ve wondered why.

KNITTING: I finally finished the body of Marnie’s sweater and have started a sleeve, which is going pretty quickly:

whee! starting sleeve #1

I think today I’m going to go ahead and soak and block the body of the sweater, so I can seam the shoulders and do the turtleneck. I worry about hitting a slump with the second sleeve, so I want to have something else to do, and I also want to see it so close to finished that it pulls me forward. It’s been such a mild winter I really hope she gets to wear it.

READING: If you’re the same kind of nerd as me, you might like the book I read yesterday (Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, by Mark Garvey). It’s a loving look at The Elements of Style, at E. B. White and Harold Ross and The New Yorker, and the world of people who are passionate about this little book including a host of famous writers who talk about their relationship with the little book. It’s a quick read (about as quick as The Elements of Style, for that matter), and you may — like me — read it with a silly grin on your face. Since I didn’t go online yesterday, I read that book, I read this week’s issue of The New York Review of Books, I pulled everything off my bookshelves and reorganized (and found of bunch of surprises, wowie), I cleaned the bathroom top to bottom, I did some shopping, and I spent a lot of time keeping my husband company. We watched Thirteen Days, that 2000 movie about the Cuban missile crisis — much more his kind of movie than mine, and I was only 3 when it happened. But when the spy planes flew low over the Cuban stockpiles, my heart raced and that surprised me.

HELP: A friend here in Manhattan is heading up a project called Legal Aid Society Trafficking Victims Legal Defense & Advocacy Project (she’s a lawyer for Legal Aid). Victims of sex trafficking are removed from their circumstances and hidden away in safety; she has organized a number of small knitting groups for them and is seeking donations of yarn and needles. Many of these women are from other countries, but some are US citizens. Their larger needs are more urgent, of course, but the knitting efforts are designed to help their spirits, and we know how well this works. The women have nothing and the woman at Legal Aid who is organizing this for them has no specific wish list. Just think about what any new knitter might need/want — yarn, needles/hooks, a nice project bag maybe, notions, anything at all. Others are organizing clothing and coat drives for the women, so we’re the lucky ones who get to give them this kind of joy. If you have any interest in helping, just let me know and I’ll give you the mailing address for the woman at Legal Aid. I posted a note in a couple of Ravelry forums and several knitters are sending boxes, but [unfortunately] there’s a steady stream of women so the need doesn’t stop.

Have a wonderful Sunday, whatever you’re up to! I’m looking forward to spending a few hours with a certain humpbacked wicked king.

Remember how I had to frog Marnie’s Moby sweater? I frogged it completely and just started over, and I’m finally back at the point I was in the first edition (I’ve decided to refer to them as editions, like books). So here I am:

Ambergris, by Ann Weaver (2nd edition)

I do note with satisfaction that the cable ropes are all done correctly in this edition; there was one error in the first version that would’ve bugged me forever, so you know, you take what comfort you can from a situation like this. I’ve already divided at the sleeves, so now I’m doing the front up to the neck, and then I’ll do the back. Then two sleeves, each with cable ropes up the center, assembly, and a turtleneck. I hope I can finish this while Marnie still has time to wear it this winter; since she lives in Chicago, the odds are pretty good.

Tonight I’m having a date with Will, which I’m really looking forward to. We’re going to a cool little independent bookstore on Prince St. (McNally Jackson) and then over to an Indian food restaurant he loves, for dosas. It’s been such a warm and dry winter, it doesn’t feel like January at all — but I’m not complaining, especially for this evening, as we tramp around that great little neighborhood. One truly wonderful thing about all three of my kids is that we share a love of words and books. It manifests itself differently in the three of them, but I do share something special with each one of them around books, and that makes me happier than you can imagine. I like to think it’s my gift to them.

* * *

Here’s the next writing prompt — a 600-word story (a narrative describing a shared experience) told from the “we” perspective. No first person pronouns allowed! My first thought was to put the couple in therapy and have them telling competing narratives about something, but I got this idea and ran with it instead. It’s a piece of fiction, again, but again it uses bits of real experience for texture. My husband and I did go to Luang Prabang, which means the details of place are true, but the rest is entirely made up:

We woke up very early that morning because we wanted to witness the monks’ morning alms ritual; since we were staying at a hotel on the other side of the Mekong River, we had to get up early enough to walk across that long scary bridge – remember, honey? – and it made us nervous because of the traffic, especially in the dark. We felt so exhausted when the alarm went off, but we both knew how much you wanted to see it so off we went.

Right – it really wasn’t the kind of thing you like to do sugar plum, you’d rather visit the markets and the food stalls, but you were such a good sport about it. We just had no idea how it was going to turn out, did we? We thought we’d go to the main street, kneel at the curb, and watch the Lao women putting little clumps of rice in each of the monks’ baskets, and then get some breakfast on the way back to our hotel – remember how much we loved the breakfast at that one place? But it didn’t turn out like that at all. And you’re usually such a quiet guy, avoiding trouble. Sure, you’ll speak up if you feel you’re getting ripped off, but you never get involved in violence. You just never do that.

So there we were, walking across that bridge, in the dark. Remember how there weren’t any lights of any kind? Not even headlights, since cars weren’t allowed on the bridge? And remember how tiny the walkway was for pedestrians, with broken boards and loose nails? And how quiet the morning was – we heard the river, the cyclists passing on the bridge, the early morning fishermen, and the birds? You were commenting on the birds just as we left the bridge and crossed onto the sidewalk. We had to stop because your long skirt got caught in the clasp of your sandal, and you were kneeling down to untangle it. We were both a little bit on edge – do you remember why, now? It’s hard to imagine why we felt so unsettled, in Luang Prabang. We’d had such a great time, and felt safer there than anywhere else we’d been in Southeast Asia. Maybe it was just the very early hour, combined with the darkness that we’re not used to, since we’re from Manhattan where it’s never dark. Maybe we were just kind of punchy from exhaustion.

Well sugar, you say “we” were punchy, but “we” weren’t really punchy – you were. Remember?

You’re right – you were singing and laughing and commenting on how beautiful the river was in the dark, and how many stars you saw. OK, “we” weren’t punchy, point taken. But we were both a little anxious in the utter darkness, that’s definitely true. And neither of us expected someone to grab you – you have to agree with that!

No, we certainly never expected something like that to happen, that’s true.  Did you see him coming?

No, remember how we were both bending over – you were squatting – trying to get your skirt free? The guy just came out of nowhere, it seemed, and leaned over you, saying something we couldn’t understand.

You did overreact just a little bit honey, you have to admit. If it hadn’t been so dark we might’ve noticed that he was wearing orange robes, and had shaved his head. You didn’t have to punch the poor guy, he was just offering to help us! Granted, it was dark and you were trying to protect me, but come on. You punched a monk.

Over the years, my subscribing habits have reflected ongoing passions. A few years ago, when I was a very-involved food blogger, I rabidly consumed other food blogs; now, if I don’t have much time, I just mark everything as read in the food blog folder and don’t bother. Now, if I don’t have much time, I limit my reading to the personal blogs, followed by the knitting blogs, followed by the reading blogs. Actually, it depends on my mood, the specific order, but I generally try to make time to at least scan through those categories.

Today I thought I’d share the reading sites with you, in case you find something of interest. In some cases the site offers criticism, in other cases it provides longform reading. At any rate, these are sites I really love for one reason or another, and share them gladly:

A.V. Club — this site is run by the people behind The Onion, but there’s nothing fake or jokey about it. I particularly love the tv and film criticism (here’s a post about the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad), which is always thoughtful, even if I don’t always [necessarily] agree.

Big Think — this site focuses on a range of topics including arts and culture, belief, ethics, history, identity, life and death, and a bunch of others. It’s not my favorite site in the list, but there are gems now and then, like this interview with Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist who talks about the mysteries of her own brain, and making it as a lady scientist (my words, not hers!).

Brain Pickings — I mentioned this site at the end of last year as my favorite (new to me) website. The posts are always interesting, and the blogger seems to have an endless supply of ideas and topics to explore. I’m very eager to read this post recommending 9 books on reading and writing. In addition to great information, I love the site design, which is fresh and clean.

Gangrey — the site’s subtitle is “prolonging the slow death of newspapers,” which makes me smile. Each post presents a newspaper article the blogger appreciates for one reason or another; s/he provides the link and a small bit of context, so it’s really a curated set of links but I often really enjoy the pieces and might not have found them, otherwise. For instance, this piece titled Salt is “a tale of Texas justice and mysterious salt poisoning.” Well, I want to read that one!

McNalley Jackson Bookmongers — this is a book shop’s tumblr, so the posts are very brief….often just a literary quote, or a link to a post from another site, but I enjoy it often enough to keep it in my list.

Melville House — the Moby Lives site, if you know it by that name. I can’t wait to check out the books on the Man Asia Prize shortlist. The site offers literary criticism, insider-publishing posts, interviews with authors, everything you might expect from a smart publisher.

Pageviews — the books blog on the NY Daily News website. The Daily News isn’t a hotbed of intellectual rigor, but this blog is consistently thoughtful and takes on interesting books and writers.

This Recording — very new to me, so I don’t know much about the site except that I tend to love it. You can just follow the posts on books if you like, but the posts on tv and film have been quite good, so I just follow the whole site.

The New York Review of Ideas – a digital magazine of NYU’s graduate ‘Journalism of Ideas’ class of 2011. Another new-to-me site, but I’ve enjoyed it so far.

To Be Shelved – with the subtitle “judging books by their covers since 2010″, this blog is written by a woman who really loves books, and who works in news design. I bookmarked this post she wrote last November about John Updike, and just haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

Longreads — along with Brain Pickings, my favorite site in this collection. With word counts greater than 1,500 words, these are the articles you want to read when you have a bit of time. It’s another curated collection of writing found around the web, and I count on this site to collect stuff I want to read. They never let me down.

Obit Magazine — bear with me on this one. It’s about death, yeah, so it’s really about life, of course. There are book reviews and a blog, and I consistently enjoy the pieces that grab my attention.

If I’m in a rush, I just focus my attention on Brain Pickings and Longreads and let the rest go, but they’re all worth a look!

***

Just a couple more things to share and then I’ve got to get busy; this Gandhi manuscript isn’t going to edit itself!

it snowed our last night in Atlantic City, making the sad, worn-out place seem even sadder and worner-outer.

the lobby of Caesar's -- a little something for everyone! Fake Roman ruins, a Chinese New Year tree of lanterns, and a giant snowflake hanging just off to the left. They're taking no chances.

for Veera Välimäki's new shawl, Color Affection, I just received these three skeins from The Plucky Knitter (MC Fingering -- top to bottom: elegant elephant, Sammy Samerson, and flannel). Too much knitting, too little time, man!

And on that note, I say ta-ta! (for now, of course)

1540 yards of fingering weight -- for the perfect sweater if only I could remember

I know it wasn’t a pattern I’d made before, and I think it was a cardigan. I think I actually wrote it down on a little notepad file but didn’t save it. Curses! Foiled again! Dadgummit! If you have a favorite cardigan knit with fingering, please let me know!

It’s c.o.l.d here this morning; it’s risen to 14 degrees and heading up to 29. Perhaps its because of my flu, but I just cannot get warm. I’m wearing a long-sleeved thin undershirt, a turtleneck, a cardigan, and a fleece jacket on top of it all, and I have a scarf around my neck and thick socks on my feet. I’m covered with a hand-knit blanket, and another blanket, and I’m still cold. I had a big bowl of very hot oatmeal and cups of steaming tea, and I’m still cold. I think the flu must be ramping up the chill.

On that shivery note, back under the covers for me. Don’t forget to suggest sweater patterns if you have a fave! Stay well y’all.

This weekend I did a lot of knitting, as I mentioned, and just shared the pictures with Marnie so I thought I’d put them here, too. This is the Ambergris sweater designed by Ann Weaver, which she [obviously] based on Moby Dick:

here's the front -- see how the design elements extend down into the ribbing?

close-up view of the flukes and ropes -- i really love both those elements

the side seam, a kind of whalebone inset

It’s great fun to knit, but it requires attention because there’s a lot going on at once — several charts, shaping, and the addition of a side chart in one small section (not shown here). I made a large Excel spreadsheet — oh how I love Excel spreadsheets — plotting out each row on the whole body. It makes it much simpler and so far I haven’t needed to frog anything….good, because the yarn is sticky and has long alpaca fibers here and there, which would make frogging a slow process. I’m really enjoying working on it, and love to imagine Marnie wearing it. The pleasures of knitting something special for someone you love, when they’ve had a part in the project so you know they’ll enjoy it.

*cough* *shiver* Back under the covers for me. Happy knitting, y’all.