Thanksgiving, part I

I'm sorry, but isn't this the cutest baby ever? I mean, really? In that tiny plaid shirt?



Yes, that's my nephew Alex and his mommy, my sister-in-law Kari. They and my brother Dan decided at the last minute to come down for Thanksgiving. It was so great to see them, and to cuddle the baby, who is soon not even going to be a baby any more. He's 15 months old. Walking about and learning to complain when he doesn't get what he wants and so on.

For good measure, another picture of Alex, this time with my cousin Meegan.

Who can resist the cuteness? Those little fingers and toes?

Saw lots of other people at Thanksgiving too. But I don't have many pictures. There was a fair amount of horsing around:

That's cousin Austin and his wife Jen. Goofballs.

And of course, much food-related action. There's my dad.

I wish I had pictures of everybody to post. It was a typical thanksgiving. Lots of eating, vegetarian and non-vegetarian options galore. And of course, there was lots of knitting. I pretty much finished the scarf, finally, and then fringed it at our next location, Kirkwood camp in the Poconos where we hung out with Bill's kids.

I decided after Bill took this picture to braid the fringes. Get it? A cable braid in the pattern, with braided fringe at the ends. It looks much better now. I could tell that the Malabrigio Merino I used would in the fringe quickly turn to balls of fuzz. But it really is lovely, soft, warm, cozy stuff. Perfect for a scarf. When Libby at Water Street Yarns sold me the yarn, she told me it wanted to be a scarf, and she was right.

another post coming soon

I know its been a while since I've posted. I have things to write about and somewhere out there in the universe (in Bill's camera, in my stepson's camera) there are lovely photos of the thanksgiving holiday, during which time I spent hours knitting with my beloved family (to see what they look like see photos on my husband's site), a scarf was finished, the hurricane sweater was hurried along, and (most exciting of all) my stepdaughter was induced to buy more yarn so she could knit hats, and she learned to knit ribs, and also learned to knit on a 16" circular needle. Woo hoo! So I do hope to post pictures soon.

Knitting Evangelism

Almost on a daily basis, I encounter somebody who is curious about my knitting. Like today, I'm sitting in a Doctor's waiting room with my friend, explaining to her how cables work. After a while the girl sitting next to us tells me my scarf is pretty and asks if knitting is hard. I say not really, but that initially it feels clumsy--it takes getting over a hump to get comfortable with the motions. I always think of it as learning to trust your yarn and needles. She asks where she can learn how to knit. I stop myself from offering to teach her (while I'm usually happy to teach random strangers, they usually don't know how exactly to respond to a street knit-evangelist like myself, so I try to restrain myself in public places). Rather than go out to the car and grab some spare yarn and needles, I tell her that several local stores like Rosie's have good teachers. But I also tell her that old ladies who are looking for some youthful companionship are wonderful teachers for beginners, and I urge her to look for one. I hope she does.

Rabbitch had this great post a few days ago about how her brother asked her for yarn and needles. After all these years of watching her knit, he has decided to try it out for himself. And in addition, Rabbitch reports that her daughter wants a spinning wheel and her husband wants a drop spindle. I have so much respect for the way she has brought her family over to the dark side! (In our family, Mom and I have only managed to bring over my brother's wife Kari--who needs to start a knitting blog!--) Rabbitch states that she is pretty much finished corrupting her family and threatens to come after our families next. I'd like to see her try! She'd have a tough time with my husband.

Do any of you ladies out there have a husband who is frustrated with your knitting? Mine teases me so frequently and rolls his eyes so often that I have to wonder whether knitting is good for our marriage. (Did anybody out there read that Psychology Today article about how the amount of eye-rolling people do about their spouses is a very reliable indicator about whether they will stay together in the long-term? Eye-rolling=divorce.) In our house, the occasional knitted gift item does not produce enough goodwill to compensate for the incredible lack of attention I pay to my husband because of all the time I spend knitting (at home, on the couch, out at the coffee shop, with my friends, more time with my friends, over at Interim House, etc...)

What's more, every time I suggest that he would have more fun while I am knitting if he were knitting too he doesn't respond very well. He calls me a knitting evangelist in the same tone he uses to say "you're always trying to get me to do yoga," (horror or horrors!), God forbid I should try to get him to do anything so distasteful. I am a horrible, manipulative, scheming, yoga- and knitting-pushing wife.

I have given up trying to get Bill to do yoga with me. Likewise, I am no longer hoping that Bill will ever take up knitting. I can't take having my hopes crushed yet again.

However, perhaps I could get him to try crochet.

Big life change

I usually restrict myself to knitting content on this blog. I think I do this because its "safe," (though sometimes knitting can be dangerous, indeed, witness how at my current ministry setting, a state psychiatric hospital, none of the patients are allowed to knit because the staff is frightened that people might stab themselves with the knitting needles--can you imagine? I've tried to explain that the very soothing nature of knitting would prevent such incidents, but they cannot be convinced, just as TSA authorities were for months following 9/11) meaning that I don't share much of my actual life. Which means that most of the time this blog is pretty boring. And I'm okay with that. I mostly blog to keep some kind of record of my knitting for posterity. Here's hoping Blogger's server doesn't go down in a firey blast.

But today I am announcing a big life change: I have a new job. I will no longer be a chaplain at the beforementioned psyche facility (and if I think about leaving too much I will start crying, so lets move on), and I will be moving on to a full-time chaplaincy position with VistaCare hospice. More hours, lots more salary, benefits, paid vacation...its a real job. I am looking forward to the change. Mostly what I want to know though is, will I have enough time to knit with this new job?

Thanks from Interim House

I was at Interim House again today. Its this local Drug and Alcohol rehab where I've been hanging out on Fridays and knitting with the residents and some of the staff. I brought some yarn that had been bought with money from a friend of my mother's. Mom, which friend was it? The ladies at Interim house would like her address so they can write her a thank you note.

Then I arrived and Kathy told me they had received a package from a lady in Wisconsin. How amazing is that? Somebody in Wisconsin actually took the time to bundle up needles and yarn and send it all the way to Philadelphia. It was so much appreciated. Nearly all the balls were immediately appropriated and new scarves and other items were cast on. It was awesome. And this lady from Wisconsin--I don't even know who she is! If you are the nice lady drop me a line and let me know. You're the best. The needles were especially appreciated--several sets went out immediately to new residents.

I've been sitting next to one of the ladies for the past three weeks. The first time we talked it was because Kathy asked me to help her. She had only just begun knitting and she was not enjoying it much. She was finding it difficult and stressful. It didn't help that she was using some old white acrylic yarn on rough wooden needles. She had the classic beginners problem of adding stitches (mostly at the beginning of the row). I tried to help her out--explaining that it wasn't necessary to pull the stitches so very tight, and that it is important to tug your work at the end of every row and admire it, pulling the yarn down and towards the back so that she wouldn't accidentally yarn over or make that first loose stitch look like two. And even though she was complaining about her knitting the whole time, she got better, and she started making progress.

The next week she had finished that scarf, and was showing remarkable improvement on her second white scarf. By the end of the knitting time she had gotten her first ball of pink, green and purple fun fur, and she had cast on for a wild pink scarf. When I arrived today, she was nearly finished with it, and we bound it off near the end of the group. And it was gorgeous, beautiful! I wish I were allowed to take pictures. It was evident that at some point during the week, something had clicked and she really understood how knitting worked. This scarf was even and beautiful. And she was so proud of it, she kept saying, "nobody is going to believe I made this." I don't think she quite believed she had made something so wild. She said several times that she is really a plain kind of person.

It was funny, at the same time as she was loving her scarf, wearing it and stroking it and feeling proud of herself, she didn't want to appear too proud or excited. At one point I asked her whether she wanted to learn to cast on her next project (another fun fur scarf) and she said, "Naw, cause I'm not going to keep knitting once I get out of here." One of the other residents said "Hey, that's the kind of thing we say amongst ourselves but we not in front of the teachers!" (those of us from the outside who join their group on Fridays are collectively called "the teachers") I said in response that the thing about knitting is that its always a choice. But then we'll see how she feels about it after four more months in the program.

I wish you all could be there with us. The room is packed with women knitting and crocheting. There aren't enough seats--some of us sit on the floor. Some sit in the kitchen. The group was quieter than usual today, and somebody said they liked the energy in the room today. Another one (one of us outside "teachers") said, "it feels like a real knitting group today." Another one of the ladies, a bit annoyed, said "it is a real knitting group." And she was right. I really enjoy my time at Interim House, its two hours which has some of the best knitting energy I encounter all week.

Wednesday--my favorite day to watch TV

Because of my secret favorite TV show. I'll admit it here: I LOVE "America's Next Top Model." This season isn't quite as good as last season, which had this beautiful, tall, blonde, hippie blind girl--but its still enthralling. This is something I don't understand about myself. Why do I love it so much? I look forward to each new episode. Other people make sure they are home to watch "ER," or they TiVo "The West Wing." I make a special effort to be home Wednesdays for the stick-skinny, back-stabbing, whiny self-absorbed wanna-be models.

I end up watching the show by myself (because my husband cannot stand it), and I knit blissfully through each episode.

Something about the wild clothes and makeup I love. Maybe its my alter-ego coming out--you know, most of the time I go around in black, boring clothes, clomping around it my vegan Doc Martens. The most exciting things I wear are these pretty blazers my parents gave me last Christmas, and my handknit socks. Some part of me is a secret top model, longing to fuss with hairspray and makeup, don midriff- and cleavage-baring tops and tight jeans, and teeter around in very unsensible shoes. But so long as I am a minister-type this secret top model part of myself will go un-fulfilled.

I guess I'm all right with that.

Maybe another entry on the "You Knit What" blog

I don't know. Perhaps I'll let YOU decide. I've been working on this sweater for a "Hurricane Sweater" knit-a-long. This whole group of ladies who live nearby and knit at my favorite coffee shop InFusion are all knitting versions of this sweater. The pattern is for the sweater on the cover of the Fall issue of Vogue Knitting (I posted a picture of it here).

Of course, none of us are using the expensive yarn suggested for the pattern and none of us are doing the twisted stitches (the pattern calls for knitting alternate stitches with two colors of yarn, and twisting them together on the right side.) I was the only member of the KAL who was fully committed to the twisted stitch pattern. I was going to do it. I even started the sweater and followed the pattern completely, using the alternate yarns I chose, but found that the twisted stitches hardly showed and the pattern looked like a big ol' bullseye. And who wants a bullseye radiating from the center of one's back? Not me, not in a society that still allows just about anybody to own a gun.

So I'm knitting this circular sweater using pretty rusty-brown and mustard yellow cotton yarns, alternating the colors pretty randomly, using more brown than yellow because I have more brown than yellow. And I think its going to look pretty dramatic, but I'm not sure. It might be another awful knit item. Hmmmm...

In this picture it looks a little bit like a big knot in the wooden coffee table. So to give you a different perspective, I took a picture of the sweater in a more foresty kind of setting,


My dining room rug. Eh. I think the circle part is going to get real drapey once the sleeves are on and its worn but I don't know. Maybe it'll be real nifty and original looking. Or maybe it won't.

I keep remembering Claudia's hilarious list of top-ten-tips which states very clearly that "If you even half-suspect for one moment that the thing you’ve just made is hinky, it IS hinky." Is this sweater hinky? Is the fact that I am wondering whether its hinky enough to confirm that it really is hinky? Oh dear. Claudia says that I must then rip it out. But I can't bear to. Perhaps this is why I continue to knit questionable items, instead of the drop-dead gorgeous things Claudia makes.

I am bored with this sweater--the only reason why I keep working on it is because of the KAL. Must. Push. On. I bought a new needle--an Inox 40 in. circular (sz. 8)--to replace the icky plastic needle I was using in the hopes that the needle would inspire me to keep knitting.

The project I yearn to be working on instead is the cabled scarf I am making out of some Malabrigo merino wool I bought at Water Street Yarns in Waterville ME this summer. If you havn't tried this yarn yet you really should. It is perfectly delicious. Sooo soft, so delightful. I probably wouldn't have bought either of these colors on their own, but the lovely Libby who owns Water Street Yarns handed me them both, saying, "these need to be a scarf." And my heart melted, and I longed to adopt them.

I tried to take some pictures but they all came out unfocused. Here is the best:

2x2 ribs down each side, a cherry-colored cable down the center. Oh, and its my first cable ever! People have been telling me for a long time that cables are easy. I never believed them. But its the truth! Cables aren't hard! Now I just have to figure out how to read a chart...but I believe I can do it. I am feeling empowered. When it comes to cables, anyway. Perhaps I should have skipped the Vogue hurricane sweater and done one of the cabled sweaters in the same issue instead?

Big News

So the big news in the Norton family is that my amazing nephew Alex


(who was practicing his walking skills by pushing this car all over the living room, like some crazy driver, running it into walls and chairs and tables) took his first steps unassisted by human hands or plastic cars or coffee tables. He happened to take these first steps when his physical therapist and occupational therapist happened to be there (such a show-off!), so they and everybody else were very, very pleased.

The cherry on top for me is that he took the steps while he was wearing the romper I knit for him. Yay! I wish I had a picture! (hint-hint-to dear Dan and Kari)

In other news, THANK YOU SO MUCH to everybody who said they would send yarn to Interim House. Thank you Thank you Thank you!

Interim House Part III

Okay: Any knitting supplies can be sent to

Kathy Duffy, Social Worker
Interim House Inc.
333 W. Upsal St.
Philadelphia PA 19119

For more information about Interim House, read here.