Monday, September 29, 2008

of course.


















The BRILLIANT graphic is not a pac man or a fortune cookie under duress; nor is it a baby carriage or a caution against jumping face first into a hammock. In fact, it is a highly creative representation of a corner.

In India, especially in the north, many people enjoy chewing betel nut, often in a preparation called paan. Betel nut is a mild stimulant and pretty tasty, I have to say, despite the fact that it temporarily dyes the mouth a lurid red color. It's also possibly mildly carcinogenic, but so is breathing in India, and at least the betel nut is all-natural and locally produced. Anyway, the procedure for chewing betel (or paan) is to stick it between the cheek and the gum. As your mouth fills with bright red saliva, you as a chewer of betel are faced with a question which, since I am actually going to type it without clever little "*" edits, may inadvertantly bring a certain subset of googlers to this post. That question? Spit or swallow. And in India, if you choose to spit, it's either particularly satisfying or particularly polite - I never made it a priority to learn which - to spit in a corner if at all possible. Which is why, despite the sign, it looks like there's been a bloody murder in every corner of the New Delhi Railway station.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Ecce Alpaca (or, if you prefer, yarn porn)

Increasing levels of appreciation for my new alpaca sweater prompted this happy purchase:















Blue Sky Baby Alpaca is my favorite yarn, period.















Being a relatively unprolific knitter has its advantages - I can more or less justify buying obscenely expensive yarn because I go through it so slowly (witness the aforementioned 3-year-old green alpaca sweater).
















It's brilliantly soft and smells like baby alpaca - musty and living, though without all the actual barnyard animal funkiness. Blue Sky baby alpacas must maintain excellent personal hygiene.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

The love between a boy and his turtle...

...surprisingly best expressed in the lyrics of The Cure classic "Why Can't I Be You."

you're so gorgeous i'll do anything!
i'll kiss you from your feet
to where your head begins!






















you're so perfect!
you're so right as rain!
you make me make me make me
make me hungry again.






















everything you do is irresistible
everything you do is simply kissable
why can't i be you?

i'll run around in circles
'til i run out of breath
i'll eat you all up
or i'll just hug you to death






















you're so wonderful!
too good to be true!
you make me
make me hungry for you






















everything you do is simply delicate
everything you do is quite angelicate
why can't i be you?
why can't i be you?

you turn my head when you turn around
you turn the whole world upside down
i'm smitten i'm bitten i'm hooked i'm cooked
i'm stuck like glue!






















you make me
make me hungry for you

everything you do is simply dreamy
everything you do is quite delicious
why can't i be you?
why can't i be you?
why can't i be you?

you're simply elegant!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Sweater Rescue

Approximately three years after I started knitting it, I have a new fall sweater:






















Prior to its release last week the sweater had been living under our bed, wrapped in plastic, all knit except for the top part of one sleeve. I started this project back when I still thought it was a good idea to design my own sweaters using the free demo of Knitware. Somewhere in there I sort of lost faith in my design vision (fitted stockinette raglan with picot edging = boring) and then there were many friends' babies and the wedding shawls and the alpaca was forgotten.

















Because 100% alpaca ain't cheap, I had originally gone digging under the bed with the intention of cannibalizing it to make Camden (sans sleeves), but then I thought it was an awful lot of knitting to just rip out, and so I decided to finish the sleeve, sew it up, and see what I thought. And I think it's pretty nice. Nice enough to keep after all that freaking seaming, anyway.

















Stats:
yarn: Misti Alpaca Worsted, color 7300
needle: # 5
pattern: made using Knitware
yardage: exactly enough:






















In other words, after knitting the remaining portion of the sleeve and seaming, I had this much left:

















Rock star finish.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Hint: this does not mean "do not force-feed pacman"

I've got Delhi on my mind, what with the recent bombings. Scrolling through photos of the last trip, I came upon this one, taken at the New Delhi railway station.


















Based on the BRILLIANT accompanying graphic, any idea what this sign is forbidding? I would be willing to bet a large amount of money - five dollars - that no one will figure it out, but amuse me with your guesses and I'll give you the answer in a few days.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

For a change, a post that does not warrant the "gender" subject tag

For now, let's just have a posting about innocuous, pretty baby knits, shall we? I've finally put the finishing touches on the Koko Kimono from Minnies for Cousin Liz's little girl. The pattern was a snooze to knit in mostly a good way and I am mostly pleased with the results, though it is true that I am much more fond of knitting with variegated yarn than I am of the resulting rainbow knits. It looks a bit more pastel in the photo than it does in real life.

















Not much for a baby girl not to like.


















Immediately after this picture was taken I was reprimanded by a park employee for having draped the sweater on a bush. Because what would happen if everyone decided that they could go draping their baby knits all over the shrubbery of New York City parks whenever they felt like it? Defoliation! Deforestation! Global Warming! Apocalypse!

In other news, I am rather proud of this photo:


















It's the lily pond in the Conservatory Garden, and I love it even though Claude Monet more or less ruined water lilies for all eternity.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Actual spit-flying-from-mouth Ranting

Knitcrit can only say...ummm...you have got to be fu*king kidding me. KIDDING me. Fu*king KIDDING me. I am currently watching Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention.

So far she's said that McCain ROCKS because he's a WAR HERO. And as a MOTHER of a soldier, she totally wants McCain to be president because he's a PROVEN LEADER. etc.

And now she's going on and ON about being a MOM and from a SMALL TOWN. She's JUST LIKE YOU. She's an OUTSIDER.

And we're so inspired by her being a woman and all. Women can TOTALLY do anything! Because look at what a great mom Sarah is!

Or in the slightly more eloquent/less pissed words of Slate:

The Sarah Palin candidacy could have been a moment for women to celebrate, in glass-ceiling terms if not policy advances. But it never should have stood for the notion that the only way a woman is going to make it to the White House is if she's the best mom in America first.


http://www.slate.com/id/2199131/pagenum/2/