Sox on the beach...

I'm beginning to understand why so many knitters focus exclusively on socks.  They offer a lot in one little package. The patterns are three-dimensional and require no sewing, the work is easily portable, and within small parameters there are interesting technical challenges. If you knit socks with variegated, self-striping, or self-fair-isling yarn, it's thrilling to watch the colors unfurl.  If you knit socks that are cabled, argyled, or lacy, your socks will be lovely beyond description.  Hand-knit woolen socks feel better on your feet than any machine-made sock you can buy (except maybe for cashmere).

Socks may always be fun to knit, but in the summer they're really pleasant because, unlike the back of a sweater or an afghan, they don't cover your lap with a lot of thick material.  And you can easily knit en route to any destination--assuming, of course, you're a passenger.

Our destination, the Charlestown, Rhode Island beach--a.k.a. "Blue Shutters"--was beautiful today. It was our first trip of the season to the ocean.

We were surprised to see a new sign with a list of no-nos, including "rough and injurious activities," "nude sunbathing," "alcoholic beverages" and "glass containers." I infer that tobacco, drugs, loud radios, sandcastle smashing, and working with sharp pointed sticks are all ok.

(Fortunately, I saw only one person wielding sharp pointed sticks, and I wasn't about to report her to the authorities.)

Tempi

Summer time, and the livin' is busy. Rather than fraught, however, filled with an abundance of absorbing tasks.

Last week was my annual sojourn at Amherst Early Music, the baroque workshops held at Connecticut College. Herewith two photos--the lovely Willard Martin single manual harpsichord I played for rehearsals of a Boismortier sonata for continuo, viola da gamba, flute and bassoon...

and the Baroque Academy production of Scenes from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and Les Arts Florissants, music by Charpentier and Lully.

My knitting output, naturally, slowed that week. It has been further impeded by the accelerating pace of the garden:

But I must confess, though I've got many UFOs, inspired by the splendid examples of the Langworthy Library Knitting Association members, I'm rather fixated on socks at the moment and am planning a post entirely about socks in the very near future.

A summer resolution has been to override nascent guilt engendered by UFOs. Life is too short, my friends. We must let ourselves simply be.

Kramer and I look forward to ever more submissions to the Poetry of Knitting Contest, which closes on August 31st. Here he is thinking a green thought in a green shade.

The Poetry of Knitting, a CONTEST for my readers

In the roundabout world of the blogosphere, surprising and serendipitous connections often occur.  So it was today when I did a Google search using the terms "owl knitting pattern."(Why I was searching for an owl knitting pattern must for now remain a mystery.) The search ultimately led to a quasi-scholarly Japanese site, The ABCs of Knitting, that is both a fascinating window onto how knit happens in Japan, as well as a mightily entertaining source of fractured English. As seems to be my constant fate, I engaged in an idyllic drainage of my limited time on this planet while perusing its many sections. One factoid I gleaned from my reading, for example, is that there is a "Japanese dedicated knitters craze in Knitted Wedding Dress" [sic], a phenomenon there illustrated by Japanese magazine covers of western-featured fair-haired women in knitted wedding finery. (Given my interest in hand-knitted wedding dresses, well documented in the pages of this blog, you can imagine how enraptured I was.)

Even more impressive was a section on this site dedicated to haikus about knitting. While the translations aren't in accord with haiku metrics, the transliterations are. Topics range from lyrical evocations of the natural world--
The full wool skeins in the shops tell the autumn has come

***
Autumn winds always drift me into yarn shops

to the psychologically weird:

Didn't you praise the botchy scarf knitted by the young girl?
How can you give the cold to my paramount sweater?

***
(Secretly, I turned over your new hand-knitted scarf.
Did you know how happy I was when I found a brand-label on it?)


Of course all  knitters are aware of the poetry of knitting--the rhythm, the coloration, the textures, the intricacy or simplicity, the repetition, the introduction at the beginning of every project undertaken, the closure when the last row is bound off. Therefore I decided, in the spirit of knitting's inherent poeticism, to sponsor a contest to find the poem that best captures the essence of knitting. AND, there will be prizes!

The Poetry of Knitting Contest:

Entry Rules and Requirements:

1. Entrants may submit up to three original poems about knitting before the contest deadline of August 31, 2010. Poems must be submitted by email to the email address under my photo on the View My Complete Profile section of this blog, Knitting New England (www.knittingnewengland.blogspot.com). Please paste the poems onto the email; those sent by email attachment will not be opened.

2. Poems must be in English, or if written in another language, an English translation must be provided.

3. Poems may be of any length, in any style or form--haiku, epic, sonnet, triolet, sestina, free verse, blank verse, ottava rima, whatever.

4. First, second, and third prizes will be awarded.

• First prize: My personal copy of Sweaters from New England Sheep Farms by Candace Eisner Strick (Down East Books, 1999).
• Second Prize: My personal copy of Woolly Thoughts: How to Unlock Your Creative Genius by Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer (Souvenir Press, 1994)
• Third Prize: My personal copy of Spam-ku: Tranquil Reflections on Luncheon Loaf, by John Nagamichi Cho (Harper Perennial, 1998).

And best of all, the prize poems will all be published on this blog during the fall of 2010!

So, gentle readers, what are you waiting for?  Get inspired and get writing!

I think that I shall never see

A sweater knitted just for me.

For tho' I knit much every day

I give my knitted stuff away. 

--Anonymous.

We're having a heat wave...

The temperature's rising, it isn't surprising...

(This thermometer takes its reading from a shaded place!)

Heat Wave by Ella Fitzgerald

Play song from iLike.com The Irving Berlin Songbook - 1986 - 2:25                                                 So of course I'm knitting the second of a pair of woolen socks.  The yarn is Fannie's Fingering Weight from Connecticut Yarn and Wool. The economy of project size and knitting movement render this doable even when it's 100 degrees F.  But this is New England, gentle readers, not the southwestern United States! Does anyone still disbelieve climate change? Apparently Kramer does.  Notice, please, his baleful expression. He's whining for me to let him out.  Perhaps he thinks his white coat will deflect the rays.

Happy Fourth of July!

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai...

Today I found myself wandering around a big-box fabric store on Route 2, a.k.a the Strip Mall and Shopping Center Capital of Rhode Island. My ostensible reason for heading out this way was to compare prices of various lighting fixtures, appliances, countertop materials, medicine chests, etc. at Lowe's and Home Depot.  (We are rehabbing a rental apartment we own.) However, I also had to buy some buttons for a baby sweater I recently knitted for a little girl who's going to enter this world next month. (Isn't it amazing how much we can know in advance? That's why I did the sweater in pink-lavender heathered Shetland wool.)

After finding some acceptable buttons, I wondered, does this fabric store have a yarn department? The answer was yes, if you define yarn as acrylic (mostly) and sold in supersize skeins (one pound seemed to be the measurement du jour).

It was, truly, like the McDonald's of yarn.  Do you want fries with that?

Yarn migration

A very kind friend who lives in Millis, Massachusetts and doesn't knit, happened upon a thirteen-gallon plastic bag filled with yarn at a yard sale.  The price was fifty cents, but he paid a dollar.  Then he drove down to Rhode Island and gave it to me.

As you can see, the colors are lovely.  As you perhaps cannot tell, it's rug yarn.  The processing is fairly minimal, and the dyes appear to be from natural vegetable substances.  The texture is rough.

If you can use some of it, please let me know and it's yours.  First come, first served.

And oh yes, it's bloody hot out, and the raspberries are in.  Summer has definitely arrived.