Eleanor Roosevelt

Last night Steve and I watched a lenghty biography of Eleanor Roosevelt on PBS. All the amazing and fascinating facts about this awesome woman's life aside, I noticed that in image after image, she was knitting. In one segment, I think it was a sock. There were at least three pointy DPs visible.

When the vote was finally taken to accept the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, 1948, she is sitting in the US Delegate's seat, knitting.

Eleanor Roosevelt has long been a personal hero of mine, and of countless other women. Now I have one more reason to love her.

Knitting for Victory

Even if they win, they lose

A sewing store in NYC has started a fight with thousands of knitters they have never met over a few words we've been enjoying for years. Many of us are "mad as Hell, and we're not gonna take it any more." Read the story here.

What follows is the e-mail I sent to the offending company. I copied it to knitty.com, Vogue Knitting, Knit n Style, and TKGA -- whoever had an e-dress I could find.

Dear Sewing Store,

I was stunned and angry to learn of your claim to the use of the words "Stitch 'n Bitch" as used by informal knitting groups across the country (possibly all over the knitting world).

Your shop has nothing to do with knitting. It appears that you added knitting to your descriptions after the term became popular. You don't sell yarn and you don't have any knitting classes listed on your Website. None of your team members are knitters. Your motives are suspect and your actions reprehensible.

There are more of us than there are of you, and we spell it differently, and we don't use the word "cafe," either with or without the accented "é."

Have you any idea how much bad press you are getting from this dispute? Even if you win, you have lost.

Just after I hit "send," I scared myself, because I bravely and/or stupidly signed my real name. Ah, well.

The Incomparable EZ

Franklin Habit and Tricky Tricot have started a Knitters Almanac knit-along.

I probably will not knit all those things. But thank you, guys, for bringing me back to Elizabeth's delightful pages. Now I know that the person who perpetuated the falsehood about fisherman's pattterns as IDs for the dead was she. And the bit about the #8 needle -- ah, such wisdom.

Gone to the dogs

The holiday frenzy is over and the January frenzy has not yet begun, so I am knitting sweaters for Cody and Goldie , the welcoming committee at my favorite LYS. My Sister's Knits is a new shop owned and operated by Carol Oprondek. Her Golden Retrievers were adopted from a _rescue shelter. Goldie is especially devoted to her, never letting her out of her sight, probably because her previous owner of many years passed away. Cody is anybody's baby. A few weeks ago, Carol's friend Diane and I decided that dogs who live in a yarn store should have sweaters, and Carol was too busy to ever do that. You know the expression: the shoemaker's children go barefoot. So I undertook the task of designing for these children.

Cody has a 38-inch chest. That's pretty large for a Golden. After researching many many dog sweater patterns, most notably _Knitting for Dogs_ by Kristi Porter, I settled on adapting some patterns for these special pups.

For Goldie, I will use the machine and an original fairisle pattern I call "Herring Bones Hounds Tooth." The yarn is Jaggerspun Maine Line 2/8 wool in colors celadon and buttercream. I've worked out the math for 8 sts and 10 rows per inch and am planning to cast on today.

Cody's sweater has to be in a much larger scale, and more butch. I needed to get out of the studio yesterday and went to MSK to visit and knit, and cast on in the shop. His sweater will be mostly Cascade 220 in solid green and Quatro greens (4 plies of 4 different shades), with lemon yellow cables down each side. I'm using intarsia. Glutton for punishment, I guess. So far no disasters. I rigged a few yarn ball holders out of cottage cheese tubs and have managed to keep the tangling under control. I'll post a few photos as things progress. Now I'd better gert back to work.

Carol

Nothing here yet. Go back to youknitwhat.