- Summer’s punch list

Often, I think seriously about changing this blog’s tag line to this: “What goes into planting, fixing, and writing.” I rarely use my skills in handwork to do much else than repair or fix stuff up. This month, for example, I’m painting the mudroom, tinkering with the garage door, and changing the latch set on [...]

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- Only the rain has such small hands.

Althea Crome Merback knitted Coraline’s sweater. She knitted these gloves, too.

In this short video on her work, Merback calls herself, as far as she knows, the “only person in the world who knits conceptual sweaters and garments on such a small scale.”
Seeing these gloves for no hands reminds me of a conversation I had last [...]

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- Hail to the, er, crochet

I’ve been wanting to put a photo of President Obama on my blog. However, I do have some editorial policies (admittedly, my own) that I follow, and his photographic image doesn’t really fit. He’s not very Leaf: not a gardener, is he? I suppose I could say he’s kinda Word; I mean, he’s a great [...]

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- Good use of time?

Without the energy to start a new knitting or sewing project, much less decide on one, I experimented on knitting the same thing — a small leaf — in different materials: yarn, wire, plastic bag shreds, and dried grass.  The straight-up yarn leaf in marled red came out pretty nice, and it’s in the banner [...]

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- Not for the thrifty

After I went to the chiropractor’s, which is a new kind of errand for me, I headed over to the nearby Black Sheep Knitting Co.
Thirty minutes later, I walked out with a modest-sized bag and receipt for $190.36.  Their prices are no more or less than other good local yarn stores. (And yet they’re so [...]

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- Sew peace

You could buy this from soleilgirl’s Etsy shop:

Or make something like it. A little felt, a bit of thread, a steady hand to cut and sew.
Link via whipup.

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- Three new knitters

Yesterday, before a late afternoon dinner at my sister’s house, I taught my two nieces, Elena and Sara, and my oldest child, Eli, how to knit. (My two younger children, Lydia and Grace, are already in the club.)
The three of them picked it up quickly: naturals. It must be in their blood. Eli and [...]

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- Over the edge

I am not obsessed with knitting, as the character in this short video is.  (Keep track of her hair as you watch.)

I may be obsessed, however, with writing. Still, my work on any one thing is woefully slow compared to this lady’s progress on that scarf.  Oh, if only I were [...]

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- The knitting student

Today Grace, George, and I had an impromptu and inaugural meeting of Jane’s Knitting Club.  All are welcome.
Because the two of them are a mere 8 and 6 years old, a lot has to happen before knitting begins. Bickering. Bathroom trips. Yogurt. And the unknotting of yarn and the finding of needles.
I smoothed out some [...]

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- Needles and activism

The knitters at Stitch for Senate are making helmet liners for every member of the U.S. senate in order to engage “with public officials about the war in Iraq.”
This puts me in mind of Eyes Wide Open, an exhibit of boots and shoes, representing military men and women killed in the Iraq War, that we [...]

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