But I am calling all Portland/Vancouver/etc. metro area knit bloggers! Several of us are starting a Yahoo Group called PDX Knit Bloggers. Come on over and join up! We’re hoping to organize a little get together — or maybe several. It will be fun!

News:

The new knitty.com is up. As always, the patterns are lovely. As always, there are several I want to start right now. But I’m restraining myself. So far. Check out Chapeau Marnier by local Portland designer Marnie MacLean.

Woodland Woolworks has lace-weight on sale through Friday, 06/15. C’mon… you know you wanted to start some lace! You know you did. Also, all of their stash-room closeouts are an extra 10% off through 08/15. I may have to make a little trip over the mountain and look in person! But, if you are not within striking distance, I can tell you from experience that the folks there are wonderful and their customer service is superb!

Finally, I leave you with the following little thingy. Similar thingys have been floating around the interwebs for years, but this one tickled my fancy.

You know you are living in 2007 when…

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven’t played Solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 4.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 50) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12 You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t a #9 on this list.

And now you’re laughing at yourself! 😆 Go knit something!

First of all, thank you all for your commiseration with me over my extreme dorkiness. 😳 I may eventually live it down. Or not.

I can’t believe how many people raised their hand when Stephanie asked how many people blogged! I had no idea there were so many of us! It would be cool to do a little Portland Portland/tri-county/Vancouver/larger-metro-area/whatever Knitting Bloggers thingy. I’m touching bases with a few other bloggers whose emails and/or blog addresses I have to see if there’s any interest in getting something going.
[ed. 06/11/07 12:01 PM – to be inclusive of a larger territory than only Portland proper. When I say Portland, it’s my shorthand for all this stuff around here within striking distance. I certainly don’t want anyone to feel excluded!]

Did any of you knit in public on Saturday? I did. It was at my normal haunt — Tangle — but it was in public, even though it’s a yarn shop. And a couple of non-knitters did come in. I think.

On Sunday I had lunch with my muggle friend M. She said, did you know today is National Knitting Day, or something like that? I gave her lots of credit for trying, because she was obviously paying attention! And told her that the day before had been Worldwide Knit In Public Day, and I did knit in public, which I do all the time anyway.

On the more changes in PI subject, gentle reader, I’m pleased to announce the return of spell check on comments. Oh frabjous day! I think that’s the last thing lost during the WP 2.0 upgrade that had not been replaced or rewired or recoded or updated. Whew. It’s a really cool spell checker, too. Better than the old one. I think you’ll like it.

Yes, that’s a blatant hint that you should try it out! 😆

Here are the little blue baby socks. The knitting was finished at the Harlot’s book signing, and I did the bind-off when I got home. I think they came out really cute. I’m so pleased that I had some Cascade Fixation in a color that worked so well with the little sweater. I also have some Fixation in a lime green, but I think it may be too green. There really are two socks in this picture.

The Particulars:

• Yarn: Cascade Fixation — 98.3% cotton / 1.7% elastic, 100g / 50 yds per ball — in an unknown colorway (might be 2706) — a tiny amount left over from a different project.
• Needles: Knit Picks Classics, US#2 (3mm).
• Pattern: my own standard toe-up sock pattern, just knit really, really small. Magic cast-on. Flap-and-gusset heel. Tubular bind-off.

Next up: finishing the Spanish Lavender Basket Wave socks, another stab at Clapotis #2, Sockapalooza socks – hopefully the yarn will arrive!

This is the lecturn that Powell’s Books provides for guest speakers. Cool, isn’t it? I love the book stack and the faux shelf of books at the top. Just below the faux book shelf is a place where books (I guess most frequently written by the guest speaker) can be displayed during an event. Like Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off, for example.

This lectern is large enough to almost entirely hide Stephanie, except for her head from the chin up.

I’ve missed The Yarn Harlot the last couple of times she traveled to Stumptown. I almost missed her this time.

I looked online to see if there was a bus or something that runs from where I work to Powell’s, because I knew that finding a place to park would be nearly impossible. Portland has this wonderful invention called fareless square. You can ride any of the mass-transit options for free, as long as you stay within this area. I work at one end. Powell’s is at the other. Free ride — how often does that happen? And, it turns out that the Portland Streetcar, which stops only a block from work, would drop me off and pick me up right next to Powell’s. How perfect is that?

Then the only issue was to get out of work early enough that I could ride the incredibly slow charming streetcar and still get to Powell’s in time to get a seat. I did kinda have a clue what was going to happen. 😆

When I arrived at 5:30, there were already a goodly number of knitters in attendance, but I managed to get a great seat.

Powell’s main store is so large (an entire block), and so maze-like that the different areas of the store are painted different colors so it’s easier to find your way around. I’m sure that it’s much simpler for employees, when asked for directions, to answer go through the Blue Room, then down the stairs and through the Gold Room. Stephanie would be speaking in the (I am not making this up) Pearl Room.

But now perhaps they will rename the Pearl Room the Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Room.

As I arrived, the intrepid Powell’s employees were cramming as many folding chairs as they could into the open area in front of and to either side of the lectern. Apparently they partially learned their lesson after last year, when they booked her into the tiny Powell’s Home & Garden store and did not even provide a microphone.

By 7:15, Powell’s looked like this. Powell’s tried to limit the audience to a number reasonable for the area provide, and closed the door when the limit was reached. I’m not sure of the truth to the rumors that a few knitters simply bypassed the closed door by taking the elevator. Would knitters do that? 😆 At any rate, by the time Stephanie arrived, it was standing room only, and the aisles were crammed.

I saw so many people! Nurse Knitter was there, T, Lori – she had her socks with her and they look great. I sat right behind Monica, who has cards for her blog! And I saw several people who I met at the Magical Moebius Festival and I love you all and I know I’m forgetting bunches of people and I’m sorry. I’m a dork. Next time I will take better notes. But I kept trying to finish the little baby socks, which were barely past the toe increases when I left work.

Everyone was knitting. I tell you, you’ve never seen so many knitters in one place. And we all had a bunch of fun showing each other what we were knitting. And I, being a dork, just had a lot of fun listening to the snippets of conversation around me:

It was the perfect gray cashmere, so I had to buy it.

This is the third sock I’ve started.

(said very earnestly) Sometimes, when you frog something out, you just need to let the yarn rest a little while and then it almost seems like it’s brand new when you start to knit with it again. It’s almost as good as actually buying new yarn. But not quite.

Stephanie was funny and witty and earnest. I loved her talk about knitting and knitters and the amazing things we can do when we put our minds to it. She started by describing what a worrier she was. Having grown up with a command-performance worrier in the form of my Mama, I laughed and laughed because the description rang so true. Stephanie worried about all of the sheep in the world suddenly losing all of their fleece. She asked us to picture the battles between crocheters and knitters over the last of the yarn. Crochet, you know, is so much faster!

Most of the time, Stephanie had us all in stitches (pun intended). The part about she and Joe attending a swanky cocktail party, and what it meant to admit she was a knitting author, was particularly funny. And there were boos (aimed towards the banks involved) when she mentioned Blue Moon’s problems with their bank over their sock club orders. And the issues another woman had when trying to get a business loan to open an online yarn store. There were cheers when she talked of the amazement from another fund raiser at the speed (72 hours) with which knitters could double the amount donated via Tricoteuses Sans Frontières (Knitters Without Borders). At this writing, an amazing $320,093 has been donated.

There was time for a couple of questions afterwards. Someone asked about the traveling sock taken hostage at BEA by Ann and Kay. Stephanie was pleased to announce that her no negotiation policy had payed after all, and the sock was on its way home.

Then it was time to get in the long, long, long line. And my true dorkiness began to shine.

As I prepared to gather my stuff together, a very nice woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was the magic cast-on lady. I admitted that I was. She said some very kind words about the cast-on and how pleased she was to meet me. And I thanked her and asked her name (which I think was Terry? And if it wasn’t or if I’ve spelled it wrong, please let me know right away so I can fix it, because I’m such a dork with names). I picked my stuff up to get it out of the way of all of the knitters who were stumbling over my purse (I’ve driven cars that were smaller) and my other junk. And the lovely lady came back with Melody (who gave me her card, sparing me from totally humiliating myself by forgetting her name, too).

It turns out that they had come all the way from Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, to see the Harlot. So we had Idaho in common, I being born and raised in Idaho Falls and not only knowing where Coeur d’ Alene is but how to pronounce it. Melody owns Harmony Yarn Studio, which looks like such a cool little store. I will definitely visit if I’m ever in the area.

This is so big, for me to meet you, Melody said, can we please take my picture with you? And that rendered me totally speechless and feeling all weirdly cool and embarrassed at the same time, and of course I was happy to oblige. They were both so sweet and kind and fun to meet.

And the picture… it was pretty hot in the Pearl room, and it was pretty humid. Yeah… The incredible expandomatic hair was at it again. When I gasped ohmygod, my hair!, Melody kindly replied, don’t worry. We’ll explain about the hair.

Now… I’ve been trying to explain about my hair for years and years. 🙄 I wish her luck with that. Melody, if you are reading this, maybe you can send me the explanation so I can use it in the future? I’m serious.

And then I went to stand in line. And then I remembered that I had neither taken a picture of the Harmony Yarn ladies or written down the first ones name. And now, of course, it was way too late to do that. And I banged my head against the nearest bookshelf a few times in lieu of kicking my own rear end, because I’m a dork. Harmony Yarn ladies, you were wonderful and I am not usually quite so spacey.

The line went on and on and on and moved very, very slowly. So slowly that I actually finished the baby socks while I stood in line. Babies have such tiny feet, as we’ve already established.

I knit for about 4 hours straight, while waiting for Stephanie, while she spoke, while waiting in line. It was a bit too much for my hands. By the time I got to the head of the line, my hands were hurting and clumsy and my brain was beginning to shut off even more than it already had, if that were possible. Low blood sugar? Yeah… that’s my story for what happened next, and I’m sticking to it.

Stephanie was just as warm up close, in person, as I knew she would be. I said, nice to meet you, and passed over my book calmly, and then gushed can my socks meet your sock? Stephanie giggled and said of course they could, because her tours were really about socks meeting and not about books at all. After some fumbling, I managed to partially untangle the two pairs of socks in my little knitting bag, so Stephanie is holding both the Spanish Lavender Basket Wave socks and the little baby socks, along with her traveling sock.

Book signed and picture taken, Stephanie looked closer at the Basket Wave socks and stroked the yarn a little.

That’s the Rockin’ Sock Club yarn for April — Silkie Socks That Rock in Walking on the Wild Tide. I’m not knitting the club pattern, but I’m pleased with the results. I said.

Or that’s what I meant to say.

Instead I suffered from total brain freeze and said, that’s the… that’s the… that’s the…

Yeah, Stephanie nodded. It’s the Silkie stuff. It looks nicer knitted up than in the skein.

Thank you, I croaked, and began gathering up my stuff because I knew that she was tired and there was still a line of knitters behind me and I couldn’t talk and I needed to disappear quickly into a hole in the ground because I couldn’t make my mouth work along with my brain.

I was carrying my purse (small cars, etc.), my knitting bag containing yarn and various tools, the two pairs of socks on two circs each – now outside the bag, my sweater, Stephanie’s book. My hands were very clumsy, and I kept dropping things. I picked up the bag and dropped the book. I picked up the book and dropped a pair of socks. I picked up the socks and dropped the other socks. I picked up the socks and dropped the bag, and the socks, and my sweater. ohmygod I wanted to just die.

Take your time, Stephanie said. Do you need help?

No, no, no. I’m so sorry. I managed to get out. Then I finally captured all of my errant objects and made my escape.

Ugh. How embarrassing was that? Gentle reader, isn’t that the most extreme case of dorkiness you’ve ever heard of?

I know. It’s the universe’ way of keeping me humble.

P.S. In case anyone wondered, I’m watching the Portland Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade right now. It’s raining. Tradition is preserved.

OK… there’s not much progress on the baby socks. I will admit it. But I have a couple of good excuses.

First, though, before anything else: don’t forget that tomorrow is World Wide Knit In Public Day. Go somewhere and flash your sticks. Let’s amaze the world with our sheer numbers. 😯

Baby socks… have you ever noticed how tiny a baby’s foot is? Really tiny. And socks to fit on such a tiny little foot need to be equally tiny or they will fall off. And then the tiny little foot would get cold. And this would not be good.

I knit all the way up the foot and then realized that what I had was really more along the lines of something a 6-year-old child would wear. Since I would like this baby to be able to have the use of these socks some time before starting school, I ripped them out and started over. The good news is that they are even tinier than before, and so will take even less time than before. If I actually knit on them.

Life intervenes.

Yesterday I was minding my own business, finishing up some work and thinking that maybe I could get out relatively early and go home to do some serious baby-sock knitting, when my cell phone rang.

I’d forgotten to put it on vibrate instead of ring like all get-out. Click on the little player thingy below to hear my cell phone ring and understand why there were giggles from the cubes around me.
[audio:http://www.persistentillusion.com/blogblog/wp-content/uploads/jumpin_judy.mp3]

The phone call was from my friend L, who jumped right in to the conversation without even saying hello.

L: Where are you?

Me (frantically trying to remember if I was supposed to meet her someplace and totally flaked out, and coming up blank, decided to fish blatantly for a clue): I’m at work. Where are you?

L: I’m at work, too. But we should both be somewhere else having dinner, don’t you think?

Me (breathing hopefully inaudible sigh of relief): How about Thai?

L: How about 6:30?

Me: I’ll see you there!

That L is one of my bestest friends (yes, I can still use that word and mean it!), is shown by the fact that I will actually knit pink things for her.

I first met L back when I was in the process of disentanglement from the sperm doner. I met L on AOL. That sounds weird to say, now, but this was way back in the early days of the internet. It was not long after PC Mag published a big issue devoted to why you should be online, and having an email address was still fairly new and a cool thing (now I have dozens, I think), and spam was almost non-existent (almost).

I really, really wanted to meet some new people. It’s funny about what happens to your friends when you divorce. Those who were my friends before I got married are still my friends. Those friends that we made as a couple for the most part simply faded away.

So, anyway, I posted on a people search type board that I was looking to meet people to do fun things with — no romance, no sex, no strings. Just a cup of coffee or a movie or a stroll in the park. Did I mention no sex? Just friends. Period. And L emailed me and said she’d like to do coffee or some such because she wanted to make some new friends, too. And we hit it off and a firm friendship was formed.

Nobody else answered. I think it was the no sex thing. Even back then, the internet was a rather sleazy place in some parts. I wouldn’t go in chat rooms because they were all M-20-looking-4-u and such. Ick.

Now, of course, there’s the wonderful online blogosphere community, and I’ve met wonderful people – both online and in real life – and had lots of fun. But this was the early days, way before blogs were invented.

So L answered my ad and I made a new friend, and we’ve been friends ever since. Last night we met for Thai and talked about our kids and her husband and my work and her work and the state of the union and why it seems impossible to have a life any more. And we got to talking about old times and people that we’ve known and funny things that have happened. And the restaurant closed so we moved outside and talked some more, and laughed until we cried and had a grand time.

So it was too late to knit when I got home, but I’m not feeling at all guilty about those socks. Nosiree.

I haven’t finished the baby socks yet. Life keeps getting in the way of my knitting. grrrrrrr I’m almost to the heels, though. And they’re so tiny, that it won’t take any time to get those heels turned.

Speaking of heels, Kristina asks:

I am a toe upper, too! I would love to know how you did the Beautiful Plum Cable heel. It turned out absolutely fabulous!

Thanks! As I mentioned when I finished the plum Beehive Cabled Socks, it wasn’t a heel I had much experience with, being a mostly toe-up sock knitter, but I was really pleased with my unvention of it by knitting a top-down heel backwards. It’s similar to some of the toe-up heel flaps that have been featured in knitty.com patterns lately, but mine is a little different.

The heel turn uses increases to fill the gaps left by the short rows, so there are no wraps and yet no holes. You can find the heel construction in my free patterns Tangled Up In Blue socks and Snake River Socks. Both of these patterns use a k2-sl2 pattern on the heel flap, but you can knit the flap in any stitch pattern. The plum socks have a standard k1-sl1 heel stitch on the flap. The latter have a garter-stitch border on the heel flap, so the melding of the heel flap to the gussets is very slightly different. But check those two patterns out, and you’ll know all my secrets.

The reason that I was so pleased to unvent this method is because I hate doing short rows with wraps because my wraps always looked wonky. And, yes, I’ve tried all of the wrap methods. They all looked wonky. So having a way to do a standard heel flap that actually looks exactly like a standard heel flap but without a wrap in sight was, to me, very cool.

At Cat Bordhi’s Magical Moebius Festival this spring, Cat taught me how to do wraps the correct way. So I do know how to do them now and they don’t look wonky at all. And Cat is such a wonderful person! She refrained from adding you idiot — you can invent bizzaro ways to cast on and yet you can’t managed to do a short-row wrap without it looking wonky? She simply showed me how and smiled knowingly and kindly. And the little lightbulb went on over my head 💡 and now I get it. But I’d still rather not, you know. Do short rows with wraps, that is. I’m glad I get it finally.

And it just goes to show you that you can knit for a long, long time and there are still new things to learn.

Evidence of surprise knitting, that is.

A colleague is having a baby in July. Last week it occurred to me that July is in the none-to-distant future, and I’d better get a-knittin’.

This is the Babies And Bears sweater from Cottage Creations, knit in Cascade Sierra in colors 47 (turquoise blue) and 48 (lime green). (Such nice Persistent Illusion colors, eh?)

This sweater was a really fun knit. I love knitting baby things, anyway — they are so little and cute! And I so rarely have a reason to, except for charity knitting. “E” is for excuse also. The Babies And Bears sweater is knit in two sections from the ends of the arms in to the center. The two sections are Kitchenered together up the back while the rest of the stitches remain live. Then the hood is knit starting from the still-live neck stitches and Kitchenered at the top. The trim is added last from the still-live stitches around the edge, and then you bind off at the very end. I hate picking up stitches, and with all of the stitches remaining live until the end, this construction kept the picking up to a very minimum. It was fun, fun, fun!

Maybe, just maybe, there are a pair of little socks in some leftover-and-stashed Cascade fixation in a bright turquoise (ball band long ago lost).

Sorry about the craptastic chair shot. I had to take pics indoors rather than out in the yard because it’s raining.

It’s raining because this is Portland and it’s Rose Festival time.

Similar to the teaser faux-spring in February, we usually have a teaser faux-summer in May featuring a week or so of lovely warm days and clear crisp nights. It lulls even the long-time residents into putting away their winter coats and heaters and digging around in the basement (for those that have them) or garage (for those that don’t) to find the fan that was stashed away last autumn. Then Rose Festival comes and the rains return. It’s not as cold as it is earlier in the year, but it’s not all that warm, either. The jackets and sweaters come back out. The fan goes back to the basement / garage.

The weather sucks until after the 4th of July. Then we have a couple of truly hot, hot weeks. Everyone runs out and buys air conditioners like crazy because, you know, it’s apparently impossible to live through a couple of hot days. And the power demands spikes up while everyone attempts to keep cool. For a couple of weeks. Then the weather moderates and we have lovely 85-degree days all the way into October, with just a spot of rain occasionally to wash everything down. September is Portland’s way of rewarding us for living here through the long, dark winter.

I did turn my furnace off for the season. But I haven’t dragged out the fans yet. And I don’t possess air conditioning (and not likely to get it). So my summer preparation is fairly minimalistic.

PI updates continue, now and again. You might notice a little share this link at the bottom of each post. Clicking on it brings up a little tabbed window — one tab has a list of social bookmarking sites and the other lets you forward a link in email.

Toys. 😀

Thanks to everyone for your well-wishes after my little prat fall last week. I am well on my way towards being as good as new — or at least as goos as I ever am. 😈 . All of you who related your own harrowing tales — Ack! Please be careful, gentle readers!

And greetings to fans of Defect Defect arriving here because they played at a placed called The Knitting Factory… I love my kid, but this might not be the site you were looking for. Google carefully. 😆

P.S — yes, the sweater is for a boy. If the baby were a girl, I think hot pink trim would have been just too cute, don’t you?