Gosh, its been so long!

This post covers several events. I've been away and unable to blog, so here is some catchup posting.

First of all, I went on a pilgrimage retreat with about 25 twenty-somethings from my denomination, which was held at a camp in the Adirondacks,Camp Fowler. I taught about half the participants to knit throughout the week. It was great to see that the craft is still appreciated by the younger generation. If you want to see my pictures from the retreat, go here, to my flickr site. However, I wanted to post this one picture,


if you promise to pay no attention to that girl behind the communion table. She's trying hard to get your attention with her knitting, so you'll have to resist. I took this picture at the last night's worship service, when the group decided to decorate the communion table with their knitting WIPs. The scripture was that one from the psalms, "see, I knit you together in your mother's womb..." and the service was beautiful.

Also, I need to document that the previous week I went to Philadelphia and spent the afternoon with Interim House. I delivered the yarn I collected from my new congregation up here in Schenectady. Here is a picture of me with Kathy, the social worker who runs the amazing and innovative knitting program at IH.


You can't really tell from the picture, but the way-back of our Ford Explorer was nearly full of the yarn donations. And here is a picture of Kathy with the knitter who only needs her first name to be introduced, Zelphia!

It was Zelphia's birthday, and I was so happy to be there for her birthday party! I wish I could post pictures of the participants in the IH knitting program, and pictures of their knitting, it was really a sight to see all their beautiful creations. Alas, I am not allowed to post their pictures. You should still go look at the Interim House blog, to see the pictures of the knitting the ladies produce, even if you can't see pictures of the ladies themselves.

Also when we were in Philly we saw many of our friends, and here are a few pictures.

Oh, and finally, because I haven't posted pictures of my nephew in a while, here is one from this weekend, when my folks visited and the family just hung out for the holidays. Here is Alex with my brother Dan:

Knitting into the abyss

A nice girl I met at a party sent me this link, which I thought I would share with you knitters. Its a very real public service announcement about the danger of knitting near cliffs. *Thank you, Heather,* for passing on this information vital to the health of our knitting nation.

Click to see it here on U-Tube.

In other news, I've finished my toe up socks and will post a picture as soon as I can get my camera to work.

Who is this man?

The backstory: The current minister for youth and families at our church is moving to Queens NY, because he's got a call to serve a church there as senior pastor. Naturally, the question arises, what is he going to do with his motorcycle?

Because he certainly can't take it with him to Queens?

Sell it to Bill at a very reasonable price!

Bill's been complaining for a while that our current bike, a Honda Helix scooter which is just super in my opinion, is wussy. He's happy with this upgrade. Its a Honda Shadow. If you want to know more about it, you'll have to ask him. We rode it this past weekend out to see our friend who lives in the countryside, and the bike did great. Though Bill plans to put a windshield on it, in order to make it more comfortable (less windy) to ride.

Now the question is, shall I at long last get my motorcycle license, so I can ride the Helix while Bill rides the Shadow, and we can go on road trips?

**ps. yes, those are the same plastic goggles you wore in woodshop in 7th grade. Only a temporary solution for last week's roadtrip, the glasses were obtained at a Dollar General in Fonda NY in order to keep the bugs out of Bill's eyes.

Really, I do still knit

I got word from my friend Karen that she received the package I sent her, so at long last I can post pictures of this sweatercoat! I knit it for Karen's little girl, Hazel.

Close-up of the back and all those seed stitches.


Pattern: "Smock Coat" from Debbie Bliss' Simply Baby. The pattern was pretty simple. The only adjustment I made was that Ms. Bliss called for ribbon to be sewed on to be tied in the back, and I substituted a knitted belt. I tried every which way of sewing on several different kinds of ribbon, and they all looked sloppy, so finally I just knitted little strips of seed stitch to use instead.

By the end of this project, I was entirely comfortable with the continental method of holding the yarn in my left hand and "picking" both knit and purl stitches. This made for a faster knit than if I'd thrown the yarn with my right hand.

Yarn: Rowan Cashsoft DK, a pretty reasonable (and much cheaper) substitute for Ms. Bliss' Cashmerino. Its lovely, merino with a hefty amount of microfibre and a bit of cashmere. It is machine-washable (supposedly) though I didn't attempt that. It blocked out nicely for me, though.

Needles: Addi Turbo circulars, sizes 3 and 4.

If you check back to this page and scroll down a bit, you can see that Hazel has grown since the last time I posted her picture.

Karen emailed me some pictures of Hazel wearing the sweater and here they are:


Oh, what a face, you have to love it.

I will love Hazel forever for wearing the sweater, even if just for the pictures. I hope she gets a few months out of it before she grows too big to wear it!