Sock yarn, get your sock yarn here!

I thought I was going to really get into sock knitting. All my friends knit socks, and my grandmother would tell me stories about being in kindergarten in Germany and learning to knit socks as a 5-year-old. So, I bought some sock yarn. But I've just never gotten around to learning to knit socks. So, it's up for trade. Lindydiva from the Knitty board has first pick, but then the rest is available to others. I have two skeins of each.

Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting

That's the name of a new exhibit opening this week at the Museum of Art & Design here in NYC. The show runs from January 25th until June 17th, 2007. Field trip, anyone?

Here's just one of the items to be exhibited -- a tiny pair of gloves knitted out of silk, using wire in lieu of knitting needles. Impressive! (Though my hands are cramping, just looking at them.)

Good genes!

The past month and a half were big for birthdays in my family, so I drove down to Philadelphia several times to celebrate. It was a blast to spend so much time with my nieces and nephew, who are 10, 4 and almost 2. As you can see, they are quite adorable!

This is Emily, my goddaughter, who will be two in March...

...Thomas, who turned four in December and has a great sense of both humor and fashion...

... Sara, who was just 10 last week and who is flanked by my brother Stephen and sister-in-law Lanina (Sara is a knitter, so that's the knitting connection in today's post) ...

... and, finally, my mother, who is ultimately responsible for the gene-pool cuteness factor passed along to her children and grandchildren. Thanks, Mom!

Global Warming

Melissa, my fellow LIC knitter and the talented knitwear designer behind Neoknits, has had enough of unseasonably warm weather that makes it impossible for us to wear our handknitted garments. So, she's launched Knitters Against Global Warming, and is encouraging knitters worldwide to take action to help reverse the alarming climate changes we've all experienced recently.

Having just seen "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's film about global warming, I'm totally on board with this campaign. Join us, please!

And a belated thank you...

...to my good friend Deborah and her adorable daughter, Nina, for hosting me for Thanksgiving weekend. Deb is a new reader of this blog, and wanted to know why there were no photos posted from my Thanksgiving trip to Portland. Well...perhaps because I forgot to bring my camera with me and so didn't take any photos? Luckily, Deb sent me a shot from Thanksgiving dinner.

Nina's favorite activity during my visit was playing "tea party" -- never have I drunk so many imaginary cups of tea in so brief a time period. I'll give her another year or two and then get her started on knitting and purling!

Save the Children

I posted back in the Fall about the "Caps to the Capitol" drive that Save the Children was undertaking, to raise awareness of infant mortality rates in developing countries and to encourage knitters and crocheters to make hats for newborns. Here are the two hats I made:




I should have added something to provide perspective on size -- these are TINY. A colleague asked me if they were mug cozies. :-) The tan hat is crocheted from a superbulky wool, and the aqua hat is knit from DK weight cotton. I mailed them off to Save the Children on Wednesday, along with a note to President Bush asking him to provide funding for maternal and child health programs in developing countries. The hats themselves will be sent to Africa and India, I believe.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to meee.....

I'm a new year's eve baby, and this year decided to throw myself a party to celebrate the end of a fairly awful year and to ring in the new year with good friends and a hopeful attitude.

My dear, dear friend Dara came up from Philadelphia for the weekend to celebrate with me, and we had a great time. Saturday night was a wonderful meal at Tournesol in Long Island City, then watching the "Little Miss Sunshine" DVD -- we laughed ourselves silly! On Sunday, Dara took me to Communitea for a birthday breakfast, then we did a pre-party apartment cleaning and straightening up. At lunchtime, it was off to Central Park for a long walk, fueled by chocolate chip cookies from Dean & DeLuca. And on the way home, we stopped at Daffy's where I found a fun, slinky sequined dress for ...gasp!...$19.99!!!!

Here are Dara and I, in my kitchen, in all our party fabulousness:

Angela brought the birthday cake (yum!), along with her cousin Catherine, visiting from Nova Scotia.

And, of course, there were knitters! Jolie and Gwen, from the LICKnit group.

And Jill and Ruth, from the Tuesday night Stitch-n-Bitch at The Point in the West Village, along with Colette, Scrabble player extraordinaire and fellow LIC knitter.

It was a fun, fun evening, capped off at midnight with a spectacular view of the Central Park fireworks. (At that point, I was a trifle overserved and so did not take any photos of the fireworks, but take my word for it -- they were amazing!)

Happy new year!