Needle Roll

This is the gift for Annmarie that I alluded to recently, but had somehow managed to not photograph before giving it to her. I ordered the fabric from Hancock's of Paducah and used the pattern from the first Stitch n' Bitch book. It's a pretty simple set of instructions, but the one difficult part is cutting the fabric squarely. Luckily, it doesn't matter a whole lot with this project, and it can be easily fudged and not noticed. After all, how can you take your eyes away from those adorable birds to check the straightness of the edges? I am actually a little jealous, as this is way cuter than the fabric I used for my own needle roll a few years ago.

Thanks Annmarie for taking photos!

Endpaper Mitts Preview

This is a preview because that is my practice mitt - it's essentially my gauge swatch and also fair isle practice. The only fair isle I've ever done is my Fairly Easy Fair Isle from Stitch n' Bitch. It was pre-blog, but if you're on Ravelry you can see it here. There wasn't a lot of fair isle on it, and it didn't come out especially well. It was my first time, and I think the fact that it was bulky yarn was also a factor.

But the mitt looked pretty great, didn't it? I was starting to feel pretty comfortable with the colorwork and it looked nice and crisp and clear. But it was too small, and the cast-on edge was definitely too tight. Per the instructions, I cast on with a size 0 needle and used that for the ribbing before switching to a size 2. This pattern gives you a choice of 3 different sizes, but just uses gauge to vary the size of the mitt. I needed to move up to a size 3 needle, but I didn't have a circular in that size, so I used DPNs instead.


Not a great idea, apparently. Look at how muddled the pattern looks. If I look at it closely, it's obvious that the stitches aren't uniform at all and they look like they are all being pulled in different directions. Which makes sense, as knitting with these stupid things is one big miserable tug of war. Plus I can't hold my hands the regular way because the porcupine-like mess of needles dictates where I can put my hands. And I had to keep ripping back because I was watching a movie and not paying attention to what I was doing.

So today, I sucked it up and bought myself a set of Addi Turbos in size 3. I can't believe I've spent the better part of two days on this project and haven't actually started it for real yet. Good thing I don't have a job - this could have taken weeks!

Ten Cents a Dance : A Review

1941 Chicago is the backdrop for this fantastic teen novel. Ruby Jacinski works her fingers to the bone stuffing hogs feet into jars in a factory until she meets Paulie, who tells her about an opportunity as a taxi dancer. Trading in her brine-soaked rags for glamorous gowns, she’s soon out all night dancing with men for money. Her mother would not approve, so Ruby says she’s working as a telephone operator at night, and in the afternoons claims to be going to the movies with a friend when in fact she’s spending the time with Paulie in the back seat of his lime green convertible. She knows her double life can’t go on forever, but she loves finally having good food on the table and coal to heat their apartment, not to mention the nice clothes and nights out at after-hours jazz clubs.

I’d never heard of taxi dancing before, nor had I ever read a book with this setting. That alone was enough to make it compelling, but Ruby was such an understandable and likeable character that I felt very invested in her story. I wanted the best for her, but worried about her decisions. She grew a lot during the course of the novel and I was really happy about how things went for her, or rather, how she made things go for herself. She was an independent young woman who didn’t depend on others to take care of her, and who learned from her mistakes and made the best of what she had.

The icing on the cake was the awesome use of period slang which I enjoyed throughout the book. Christine Fletcher did a thorough job of bringing this time period to life and making it real to the modern day reader. Definitely pick up a copy of this book if you haven't read it yet.

More cardigan

I planned to show you pictures of the knitting needle case I sewed for my friend Annmarie's birthday but it appears that I did not, in fact, take pictures of it before giving* it to her. I can't even ask her to take pictures for me as she is busy working on the crew of the Komen Breast Cancer 3-day this weekend (to which you should totally donate, by the way.) That project will have to wait for another day. But trust me, it's cute!

Instead I will show you my sleeve.


Isn't it sleevy? You might even call it sleevelicious.

It is basically a gray stockinette tube with a wee bit of seed stitch on the end. I'm sure it is hard to contain your excitement right now, especially since it's mid-July and the thought of a long-sleeved wool garment is probably extremely appealing. But I'm kind of excited, because at this rate I may actually have a new cardigan by the time it is seasonally appropriate to wear one. Which should not be until November, given how late our summer started, right?

(*That's right, I didn't "gift" it to her, I gave it to her. Just sayin'.)

(Also, I just looked at the word "gave" for so long it started looking wrong, and I had to look it up to make sure it was a word. Wtf?)

What Happened to Anna K. : a review

If you know me well, you know that there is a special place in my heart for Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina. An unhappily married woman, Anna, leaves her husband for another man with whom she has had a child. Her husband refuses to divorce her and her new relationship isn't going as she had hoped. A pariah trapped by her poor life choices, she ultimately throws herself in front of a train. It is huge sweeping novel filled with themes of romance, family, guilt and the restrictions of 19th century Russian society.

Irina Reyn reworks Anna Karenina and delivers it as a fresh yet familiar story, set within a community of immigrant Russian Jews in New York City. The themes are the same, and even some the imagery - instead of trains in the Russian countryside Reyn has given us the New York subway as a motif appearing throughout the book. Rather than the stiff society of 19th century Russia, the modern Bukharan Jewish community provides parallel context, very fitting with its strict rules regarding chastity and tradition. Even the names of the characters are the same, but don't let it fool you - you need not have read Tolstoy's novel to enjoy this book (though I do recommend it!)

What Happened to Anna K. is a wonderful in its own right, the characters complex and the writing a true pleasure to read. Irina Reyn is unmistakably talented - hopefully this, her first novel, won't be her last.

Cardigan check-in

My Lucy in the Sky cardigan has grown quite a bit since I last shared it with you, so it's high time for an update.

First a close-up, because it's just so satisfying.


It was difficult to get a good shot of the whole thing as it is so wide, but this was the best I could do.


It is a little boring to knit and also involves a lot of counting so in a way it's good movie-watching knitting, but not movies that you need to pay attention to. I've found that it's ideal for re-watching episodes of the Simpsons I've seen many times before.

Also, is it dorky to admit that I love the criss-crossing diamond pattern just because it somehow looks so neat and orderly? I guess you can take the girl out of the library, but you can't take the librarian out of the girl. Or something like that.

Riddley Walker : a review

You may remember Russell Hoban from such classics as Bread and Jam for Francis and Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, but Riddley Walker reads more like Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic fiction, and picked up a copy of this book for free at one of my favorite places, the Traveler Restaurant & Books.

Riddley's society exists far after our own was destroyed by nuclear war, and his people make their living scavenging for iron from ancient machinery. They have no knowledge of life outside of England (or "Inland" as they call it) and learn about "times back way back" through traveling puppet shows. During the course of the story, Riddley discovers that some of his countrymen are trying to recreate the technology that ultimately destroyed civilization.

Their tenuous grasp on history is one of the things I found especially interesting about the story. There is a lot of misinterpretation, and of course it made me wonder how wrong we could be about ancient civilizations that we have studied. Parts of the novel imply that Riddley and his peers are lacking intelligence, and are perhaps inherently unable to grasp the foundations of our science, but that may just be my poor interpretation and not Hoban's intention.

What is remarkable about this novel is that it is written in an odd pidgin dialect, phonetic and distinctly British. The book begins with this sentence: "On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen."

As you can imagine, it is not the easiest book to read though it is only 220 pages long. It does get easier once you are used to the style but it is still not a good choice to read late at night in bed after a large glass of port, if you know what I mean. Nevertheless, it's a great - if bleak - novel, one that I'm sure will stay with me for a long time.