Ivy... art for your coats

We have a bit of a problem with stuff moving in and out of our house--there's no entryway or coat closet, so stuff gathers by the door, and our dining room is become a mudroom--there's no way around it... We have to find someplace to put things when we come in the door--backpacks from school, shoes, coats or swimming gear depending on the season, mail, etc. I'm constantly searching for elegant solutions, which is why I was excited to find Ivy today... Maybe I can somehow work this in as a birthday gift for myself...

Link [via Design Sponge]

Beware...

0628071930.jpg
Originally uploaded by plainsight

"Beware of animals or wildlife from surrounding woods." Animals OR wildlife? What other sort of wild life could they be referring to? (James thought maybe mosquitos... I was thinking teenagers). This sign is posted at a local swimming pool in Silver Spring, MD

Oh, and visit Comfort Kitchen for a post about a great publication I've just stumbled on about local food in your area.

Amy Teevee

Amy on Teevee
Originally uploaded by such sweet hands

My Knitty Gritty episode aired again today, (when my nephew-18 mos-saw it, he called me "Amy Teevee" for weeks instead of Aunt Amy), and I got some e-mail asking about my shrug. It's a pattern I created for a class at Stitch DC, it's worked in Classic Elite Bamboo--I haven't listed the pattern for sale yet on lulu, (if you need it now, e-mail me) but you can get it if you have the Crochet Pattern A Day Calendar--it's the January 1 pattern.

Phi's Fabrics

Phi's Fabrics
Originally uploaded by plainsight

Yesterday, my mom, her good friend Pam, and I went exploring in Langley Park--the shopping district just behind my house. Langley Park is a busy commercial district that serves a fusion of Hispanic, Indian, African, Vietnamese and other Asian cultures.

There are restaurants, including my favorite, Woodlands, which has a great south-Indian vegetarian buffet lunch, and the best pizza place in the area, Pizza Castle, which also serves grape leaf rolls and quesadillas (talk about fusion cuisine!), there's a popular hispanic bakery, a plethora of discount import stores, and lots, and lots of fabric stores--African fabric stores, Indian fabric stores--with sari materials, and yards and yards of glitz and glitter. But most of these small boutiques don't carry a lot in the way of notions.

Enter Phi's. Just up the road from the busiest part of Langley Park is a small building that houses--behind barred windows--a Tatoo Parlor and on the upper two floors, Phi's Fabrics.

When you walk up the stairs to Phi's you walk past cutouts of ball-gowns collaged onto the wall. The first level is stuffed with bolts of fabric, and with no projects in mind, I didn't linger there. Once on the second level, I was hooked. I couldn't stay too long--because without strong air conditioning, the room was a bit stifling for my shopping companions, but I could have browsed for a long time looking at trim and ribbon and buttons, and hooks and notions, and frog closures, and a covered button machine, and much, much more. Phi says she's been in the spot for 17 years. I got the feeling that this is the place real sewers come for their supplies. In one small room, it has a better selection than our area's famous G-Street Fabrics for some kinds of notions, and it's just down the street from my house!

Technorati Tags:
pattern, sewing, fashion, buttons, vintage, fabric, langley park

Mom's Always Right.

WATERMELON EATER
Originally uploaded by foreversouls

When I was a kid, my mom always said, "A colorful plate makes for a healthy meal." Of course she's right about that, and yesterday, she was right about one more thing. I'd always thought of watermelon as a fun snack, but it turns out, it's a superfood--full of lycopene, vitamin C, and other great nutrients all with only 46 calories per cup!

Oh, in other food news, the July+Aug issue of VegNews just came out, and with it, my article about "Benevolent Businesses," green companies with great perks for employees.

Also, many of you are aware of the kurfluffle that erupted after a nutritionist and former vegan slammed veganism in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times siting both faulty science and shady legal ideas. Well, the Public Editor--an ombudsman between the Times and its readers--has responded to the piece saying the Times was irresponsible--and that even though the article was opinion, they should not have allowed it to be printed without rebuff, knowing full well that the evidence sited was not up to snuff. (Thanks Hilary--for pointing this out!)

[x-posted at comfortkitchen]

Technorati Tags:
watermelon, superfood, vegan, vegetarian, vitamins, momNew York Times, Veg News

Sock Hunting

Sock Hunting
Originally uploaded by plainsight

My cat Honey likes to pretend to hunt. Sometimes she carries around the kids mittens, sometimes foam letters from the bathtub. (Maybe she wants to communicate, but no discernible text was ever produced). Last night, she brought me hand knits for the first time. "Aha!" I thought, she is trying to tell me something. I'm still not sure what. However, it is interesting to note that this particular sock was made in a class I took with Cat Bordhi. Coincidence? You decide.

Technorati Tags:
knitting, socks, cat, cat bordhi

Quickie Knit Charting

I was surfing the net yesterday trying to find a quick way to mock up a lace chart for a swatch and found Knitting Chart Maker.
"This wasn't here before," I thought--I've searched pretty regularly for knitting chart makers and I knew I hadn't seen this one... It turns out, Jaquie--the knitting Java programmer who launched it, just put it out there on June 10th, as she says "It is free to use how ever you want - my gift to knitters everywhere :-)" Yeah Jaquie! (click on the picture to see the full-size chart on flickr)

The applet has some pretty cool features for a web-based program including Undo (which she calls Tink, clever gal), select, cut, and paste, so you don't have to create every stitch of every chart.

Jaquie hopes to add charts for color knitting soon--wouldn't that be fun! Maybe if we send her enough feedback, she'll also add crochet symbols!

Creating my simple chart was easy--all the symbols I needed were there. A couple of great features--the chart keeps track of your stitch count, so you can now if you've added too many yarn overs or decreases, also you can set the size of grid that you want before or during the chart creation process. The whole thing is intuitive and easy to use. When you click over to the program, scroll down to read the how-to section and a comprehensive (huge!) feature list.

What's missing so far?

There's a "special" * symbol you can use, but no way to define it in the chart key. I'd like a text box so you can describe the special symbol in words

Also, there's no way to export the resulting chart--right now Jaquie advises you take a screen shot of the chart and save it. This is easy on the Mac--Apple includes a program called Grab with the OS that lets you take a "picture" of the whole screen, a specific window, or even a selection. (And as Jaquie says in her comment, below, PCs actually have a "Prnt Scrn" button on the keyboard that copies your whole screen into the computer's clipboard. But built-in exporting and printing would be nice.

Jaquie--thanks so much for this gift to the knitting world--it's much appreciated!

TECHNICAL UPDATE: AmyP says when she tried to run the program in Firefox (on a mac) it didn't work. I had the same experience, and figured at first that the program was not compatible with Firefox. But I came back and tried it again later, and it worked fine. So there is a bug there, but it seems you can work around it.

Technorati Tags:
knitting, pattern, swatch, lace, math, chart maker, chart

Product Review: Addi Lace Needles

One of the goodies I picked up at TNNA in Columbus is a set of Addi lace needles. I had been pulling my mohair hair out trying to work a simple lace pattern with both denise and knitpicks needles--the denise--even 'tho they are super-pointy, didn't have the right shape, and the knitpicks were both too slippery for my novice lace skills, and they kept loosening on me--and I didn't want to worry about dropping stitches. I remembered I had these, thanks to Cat Bordhi who always has exceptional treats for those taking her classes.

As soon as I switched needles, things got much easier. Unlike the Addi's nickel-plated needles, these have a gold-tone finishe which is a little "stickier" but not in a bad way, it's perfect for me. Also, the tip is fluted in a subtle way--you can't see it by looking, but I can feel it, and that seems to be a big help in scooping up tiny stitches and working complicated decreases.

The needles are available in 2.5 mm - 4.00 mm sizes in 24, 32 and 47" lengths, so everyone from 2 circ, magic loop, to mobius folks should be happy. Actually--if I had one wish for the size range--it would be that they produce a set with short tips so it's easier to knit smaller circumferences in the round with 1 needle.

World Wide Knit in Public Day

This morning, Selma dug her knitting out of the closet, packed her camera in her bag, and we all headed to the co-op to gather picnic supplies. There, we met Hilary and bought humus, tabouli, chips and other goodies.

Glen Echo park was an amusement park in its hay-day. You could get there by trolly from DC. Much of the art-deco architecture has been preserved and the place has turned into an artists colony/children's theater. When we arrived, the carousel hadn't opened yet, but we found out there would be a puppet show, so we bought tickets and went to meet the knitters.



Selma hadn't worked on her scarf/doll pillow/whatever she wants it to be today in a while, so we reminded her how to knit and two seconds later, off she went!



The puppet show was a great break from the heat--it was a Trial of Goldilocks--was she really responsible for the damage at the Three Bears House?

By the time we got out, there was a line at the carousel, but a few minutes later, that had subsided. We thought it would be fun for someone to actually knit on the carousel, and Selma nominated herself for that job. (I was surprised she was so into this whole thing because, this morning, when I told her about World Wide Knit in Public day, she said, incredulously, "Uh, mom, I don't think that's a very important holiday, 'cause, you know, I've never heard of it."

Here she is warming up:



Here's the real deal:



Here's Jay enjoying his first-ever carousel ride:



On his wrist is my old watch, which he's taken possession of, and calls his "few minutes," i.e. "When are we going to the park, mama," mother looks at watch and says, "in a few minutes."

In case you weren't convinced that Selma was really knitting on the carousel. Here's a video, courtesy of my cell phone:



That's it! We're home now, but we left plenty of knitters and crocheters looking like they were planning to hang for a while. I'm going to go up and try and figure out what to do with the mess of veggies I received this week in our new CSA box my friend Kim signed me up for.

Technorati Tags:
knitting, wwkip, world wide knit in public day, glen echo park, dream, facebook

Stockinette Dreams

I had a knitting dream last night. Do you ever get those? When I'm learning a language intensely, or I'm in a play, and I dream about it, I'm always quite pleased because it means I'm seriously obsessed enough to get the job done. My brother has programming dreams. He dreams answers to his math and computer programming problems. It's brilliant. My friend Hilary (who I haven't convinced to start blogging yet, but she has fallen for my suggestion to sign up for the time suck that is Facebook), says I knit in my head all the time (like to work out the construction of a thing before I actually start on it). But I don't usually do it in my sleep.

I should have been dreaming how to work out intentionally dropped stitches from the top down, but I wasn't. I was dreaming that I was in a college knitting program (if only), and my teacher, a guy, was coming around to inspect our work. When I pulled my shawl out of the bag, of course I had no recollection of starting it or what we should be doing. The teacher grabbed my work, and complimented me on some aspect of it, then said--"I'm surprised you're not farther along by now." Doh.

The shawl itself was stockinette, it increased in the center à la Seraphim but with seed stitch running along side the center increases and purl bump rows on the right side every so often. I had started it using some orange tape-style yarn on an obviously too big needle. I had just decided to rip out and start over when I woke up. So I have no idea what the interesting lace part of the shawl would have been. Yet perhaps I do, because there's an edging in a Harmony book that I was particularly attracted to last night, right before I went to bed.

Don't forget that today is World Wide Knit in Public Day. The kids and I are going to Glen Echo park to meet up with whoever shows. I hear there's a carousel there, so we're excited.

Technorati Tags:
knitting, wwkip, world wide knit in public day, glen echo park, dream, facebook

Is someone at the FTC a Princeton grad?

(Consider this my foodie Friday contribution). When I heard that Whole Foods was trying to buy smaller natural food chain Wild Oats, I was a little disappointed. When we lived in Princeton, NJ a couple of years ago, there was a small, local Wild Oats in walking distance from campus. But while I was there, a huge, new shiny Whole Foods opened a couple of miles away. They didn't compete much because Wild Oats catered to the walking/biking crowd around campus, and Whole Foods, the suburbanites with cars (I was both). I didn't want them to close Wild Oats but I thought, worst case scenario, if they close Wild Oats, it means the local Co-op, also walking distance from campus, will do even better. But some of the folks I know who are still in Princeton were quite upset about the prospect.

Now, the Federal Trade Commission is challenging the merger citing, believe it or not, Anti-trust concerns. In a world where Safeway and even Wal-Mart are selling their own brands of organic food, a merger of this scale is in no way an anti-trust violation. An opinion piece by Daniel Gross in Slate explains the issue in great detail. Gross Begins:

The U.S. attorney scandal has raised fears that the Bush administration is misusing the levers of government to punish political opponents. Now I think I've uncovered another sinister example of the administration using government lawyers to stick it to liberals. And this time, Bush is aiming for the belly!

Gross goes on to illustrate how the FTC allows huge mergers like that of AT&T and Cingular to occur, but somehow doesn't want to encourage growth in a more progressive industry.

Technorati Tags:
organic, whole foods, anti-trust, ftc, slate

Eye Candy you can Eat!

Knit Night Cupcakes
Originally uploaded by teenytinyturkey

I'm in heaven. Two of my favorite things combined. Knitting, and vegan cupcakes. Somebody pinch me! Thanks to Natalie for the tip/link...

Technorati Tags:
knitting, vegan, baking, chocolate, cupcakes, marzipan

Crochet Me -- The book!

So, one of the most exciting things about being at TNNA this weekend (more pictures below including teaching Amy Singer to crochet, a sit-in on the show floor, and on...) was seeing the preview for Kim Werker's new Crochet Me book--due out in October. Hard to wait. It is so beautiful, and she did such an awesome job writing the profiles and essays. In case you just CAN'T wait, you can have a preview, including a printable pattern by YOURS TRULY, just by visiting the book's preview page. It's an awesome little flash widget that lets you page through the preview and even print out my pattern and profile. Wheeee!

OK, here are my fuzzy cameraphone shots from TNNA. (What in the world is TNNA? Clara has a good recap.) Enjoy! (Click over to flickr to see my descriptions of what's happening in the pics)

Technorati Tags:
crochet, crochet me, kim werker, interweave