It's not over until the Cat Lady sings...

Foxy's silence is deafening.

and believe me, it's going to be a long time before that happens. The Rally for Women's Rights at the Rhode Island Statehouse, and all of the other simultaneous rallies in DC, throughout the US and around the world, showed that there's a vast movement rising and it's here for the foreseeable future.

How heartening it was to see so many Pussy Hats in evidence!

La lutte continue!

Hello, summer!

Apparently there are some people who vacation from knitting during the summer months. Mine not to reason why, but I do have it on good authority that during June-July-August there's a parallel downturn in sales at the few LYS that remain on this planet. Here it is, merry May, but yesterday the heat slammed in so it might as well be the dog days of summer. I'm still knitting and knitting and knitting large scale (my house has a/c), although I'm writing a piece for one of my employers on how you can make an afghan by knitting small blocks that ultimately are sewn together. That way, if you don't want to deal with dragging around a mess o' yarn in the summer heat, you can still knit and survive. Two of the afghan blocks are displayed in the photo far below--actually, the pink one is most visible. (The dusty blue one's on the needles, partly obscured by the chair arm.) It's a free pattern, designed by Irina Poludnenko for Lion Brand. I really like Irina's work, and recommend her website of patterns, Hats and Not Hats, to you. Her children's bonnets are completely adorable.

Portuguese knitting has been much on my mind, and somewhat in my hands. I taught myself how to by watching videos on Youtube, some of which are pretty amusing.

 

The advantages of Portuguese knitting are that the right hand's movements are minimal, and once you become adept you can probably knit pretty fast. Although you doubtless can't tell from the above-embedded video, in which the headless instructor is competing with ambient birdsong, the right hand simply stabilizes the needle. I hold my needle as if it were a violin bow; the left hand and left thumb do all the work. Tension on the yarn is maintained by the right hand and also either by looping the yarn around your neck (if you don't mind rope burn) or by using a little hooked gizmo (purchasable on Amazon.com) that pins onto your clothes, somewhere between navel and sternum, depending on how you want to hold your needles.

It takes some getting used to, but the alternative--not knitting--isn't an option.

Foxy enjoys knitting al fresco, too.

Little grey rabbit, loose ends

In my freelance life I've been given the enjoyable assignment of knitting up toys for a venerable yarn company. The latest completed project has been a shy little grey rabbit. She refused to smile for this photograph.

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Yesterday was the Ides of March, and as promised, a winner of the Knit Nordic pattern book giveaway was selected. That person is TracyK, and to her I say "congratulations, and please email me via the button on my blogger profile (the "About Me" section of the blog on the right side of the page) with your mailing address so I can send that to the publisher, who will then dispatch the book to you. If I don't hear from you by the 29th, the book will go to the contest runner-up." 

For those of you among the gentle knitters who like receiving free pattern books, a new giveaway will be posted shortly, so be on the lookout. Very few people tend to enter these giveaways, and you therefore have a much greater chance of being awarded a knitting book than you do of, say, winning Powerball.

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Thanks to the awesome designer Kristin Nicholas who mentioned it on her blog, my free pattern for the Earbud Sleeve went viral. That was quite pleasing to me, because I like it when I'm able to improve the lives of so many knitting friends. One of them, Margaret in Grafton, Massachusetts, sent this photo of her completed earbud sleeve, which turned out beautifully. 

I welcome photos of any others people care to send me, and I'll publish them to inspire future generations of knitters who wish to solve the problem of tangled earbuds.

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Purim and spring both arrive this week. At the moment there's very little snow left on the ground in southern Rhode Island, but it's bitterly cold and windy, so difficult to imagine there will be a warming trend. To offset this depressing thought, I baked a lot of Ultimate Hamentaschen today.

They're filled with a delectable mixture of oranges, pecans, dried figs, etc., and I highly recommend the recipe, from the venerable Joan Nathan, which was published in Tablet Magazine last week. Bon appetit!