stitch marker

free range

Saturday is World Wide Knit in Public Day and there are events everywhere. I went on AM Northwest yesterday talking about it and had a fun time making little jokes with the host. If you're inclined you can watch it here, but beware my arm is taking over America. I spent a good portion of the first few moments staring at my huge arm on the screen, which is facing you while you speak, wishing I'd worn longer sleeves. Ugh. He was quite a good interviewer, really listened to me and questioned me based on what I said. Not always the case.

Thanks, Dave!

how it feels today, warning: a mope

Edited to add: The more I think about this the more I realize what a wonderful life and friends I have, and how everyone is hit by hard times and I am such a jerk. I will do more for other people, okay? But I'll leave the post here....

I’ve always been totally honest here. So I’ll say something personal and self-centered, if you don’t mind. I mean really self-centered. Can I mope for a minute?

Writing a knitting book was my dream, and I did it, and I think the book is beautiful, a work of art. While spending two years doing sometimes-grueling work on it, I kept my eyes on the prize—that we would sell tens of thousands of books and people everywhere would be reading it and Meathead Hats would take over the world.

Well, it hasn’t sold like that. And I’m sad. That’s just about how I can describe it.

Some days I feel like I’m jumping up and down trying to do things that will promote Knitalong, to get it to that point where it’s left the ground and you really feel the plane tip back and take off. But it has not reached that and often I feel like it never will. It’s such a selfish thing to feel so sad about, but it’s honestly how I feel today.

I don’t care too much about knitting today. It’s not my friend.

really big soft box

It's been 2 years, nearly exactly, since the photo shoot for Knitalong. I was perusing the pictures, remembering what it was like. A very hard, chaotic time of our lives, punctuated by this thrilling and yet even more chaotic and exhausting process. Things have changed into another world, with those days barely recollectable. Some things were achingly beautiful. My dog was alive.  My baby was a little one-year-old hamburglar.*

I think it's fun to look at the photo process for projects that you can now see in the book. Michael agonizing over the Victorian Baby Bonnet. Standing on the furniture to shoot Pinwheel Blankets, or on a column in the park to photograph Entomology Mittens. My friend Eden finishing the Traveling Scarf while the Velo Cycling Sweater was being shot.

Up there you can see the corner of the Blessingway Blanket. My mom was modeling it (which didn't get into the book) and you can see the results of this exact shoot moment here on ravelry.

Today I was in an antique mall, thinking about doing it all again. Happily thinking. Yup.

* Thanks to Adrian for pointing out the resemblance.

class five rapids

This is where I sit when I'm writing my new book.

People who've been rafting, do you know that feeling, when you hit the rapids? For me it's a serene expectancy right before, a bit of strangely quiet water, and then I hit the whiteness and my stomach hits my feet and every other thought is blissfully obliterated. Sudden and dangerous, but deliciously good. A focus. (Mental note: I should raft more.)

So, I've suddenly hit the water with this new book. For more than a year I've known I would write this book, but in the past couple of weeks I've suddenly and dramatically started writing it.

Like Knitalong, it's more about people foremost, rather than a straight pattern book. Once again, it's going to involve stories and pictures from every kind of knitter I can get a hold of, all over the place.

I've alluded to the palette for the book. I'm a visual person, and I need to see the book as it develops, as I interview designers and broker patterns and collect stories and a hundred photos. The palette is softer and cooler than Knitalong's, for which my metaphor and mood were a busy farmer's market. This one is a 1960s swimming pool behind a summer house, a porch swing with roses growing up around it, a pile of crisp sheets, a dark green house with white trim, pot roast in the oven. There are crickets chirping while you read this book.

(Even now I'm thinking, Expand Larissa, expand beyond your own experience. I just spoke with a knitting author yesterday, ran into her here at the coffee shop, and her family is from Norway. What are the analogous memories from there, I wonder?)

My seat up  there is a serene place, but sitting there my mind races. I call people. I picture things. I write in my new notebook. I should go out and run more in the cold. Let go of thinking once in a while. Remember to meditate on cold water rushing, rushing, rushing through my head.

magic

I stand in gape-mouthed wonder at everything.

All this stuff - making things, capturing beauty, marking time (and being fearful of it too), birth, joy, hurting - is about wonder. Most especially my family, friends, and the things they make and give. I am agape at how it all moves and moves and moves, a river of livelihood. There are people all around me here in this toasty cafe, a blizzard outside, talking, reading, computing, laughing, wearing sweaters I'd like to reverse engineer, loudly drawing allongés. Sometimes it seems so impossible.

The Magic Yarn Ball is a project in Knitalong. This one, above, is one I made a long time ago for Kay. The yarn is white linen and the dpns, measuring tape, and baubles are all vintage/thrifted. These are the funnest thing ever to make - each one a magic sculpture using the materials we knitters love to touch, collect, use, in a wholly new and curious way. They feel good in the hands, fat and substantial, a knitter's softball.

You obviously don't need my directions to make a ball full of knitter presents. But I hope that if you don't have Knitalong, you will buy it and read it. For yourself, for friends, to give along with a Magic Yarn Ball on top. The book i's something I made from myself, with a huge force of generosity and good will - and yes, wonder. It's special to me, and I don't write about that very often here.

these are they

Colors are the place to start a big new 2-year project.

brown sepia, from dark to light
aqua
dark hunter/emerald green
hot coral rose
dusty pink
cream

p.s. 4th row there? That's my beautiful Mom.

jumbo tron

Photo by Jeanmarie Higgins.

It went great. Thank you so much for all your positive thoughts and notes. To answer the comment on the last post, I'd say my nervousness was a 7. It wasn't debilitating and didn't make it un-fun.

The people on the field were very friendly and very organized, down to the minute. I got to the field a bit early and Sebastian had a picture with the big moose (total love.) They had me go out there about 4 minutes before the game began. I  had to wave, run to the  middle of the  line between home base and the pitcher's mound (it's 90 feet between the two; no way I was going to pitch from there!) (My catcher was Jared Wells, by the way, a very lovely, very tall guy. Sebastian's head was at his knees, quite seriously.) I pitched immediately and they very quickly shepherded me away from the field for a picture with him, he signed my ball, and we were gone.

To upstairs where there were probably more than 20 tables of yarn, right across from the $7 french fries and $8 foam fingers. I hardly saw any of it, but signed a lot of books and met dozens of very wonderful people. I retained a few names, especially Michaela Murphy who was dearly nice. sherriknits wrote about the game and if you scroll down she has a picture of me pitchin'. My form looks surprisingly good for a former fat kid who got a 2 on the annual President's Fitness Test (hello, flexed arm hang?)

In the knitting, I'm up to 20 afghan squares. I love writing woot.

i think i'm ready

Photo by permanently scatterbrained.

That's Safeco Field, in Seattle. And right there in the center? That's where I'll be tomorrow night throwing out the first pitch. Hilarious. I can't say I ever thought this would be the result of writing a knitting book (or really would happen to me for any reason whatsoever in any reality.) But it's true!

So, before going to do this amazing task, I practiced (for 15 minutes today, and it turns out I'm a pretty good pitcher for a knitter.) And I studied. Those who have gone before me, the great first pitchers of all time.

Mariah Carey.

The Mayor of Cincinnati.

And a broad range of minor celebrities, sales VPs, and wish kids. I've watched a number of them.

I think I'm ready.

eden larissa rhubarb and a pink pink sweater

Photo by Sarah Gilbert.

Yes, you have seen this sweater before. But I love this photo and wanted to show you. At our farmers market there's a place called Cafe Velo that custom drips Stumptown single origin coffees in ceramic cones. I had ordered some sort of coffee that had "eden" in the name, but I was knitting the sweater for the daughter of my good friend Eden and so asked Sarah to photograph the cup and sweater together.

I haven't seen enough of either friend, Eden or Sarah. I'm sad about that, or, more wistful. There should be more friends together time. I miss people, I miss my dog, I miss my family from traveling, even for a single night.

But Berkeley was lots of fun! I had a wonderful interview with Mike from YKnit (you must click here because we are toooo cute,) and visited Mrs. Dalloway's Books where they were so kind to me. Aurora works there and is someone who knitted pieces for our book.

When I returned I found out my previous trip to Denver continues to pay off. Our book is on the Denver Post bestseller list this week! This is really amazing to me. I didn't imagine a knitting book could do that. I'm thrilled.

Have a cup of coffee with me?

ready to go

A late night photo of the ready-to-go dishcloths.

They'll be in the show starting this weekend, at the Long Beach Island Foundation. Here is how they look in a stack. They'll be shown in a stack, with a book that includes a photograph of every cloth, in the order I received them, with handwritten info about the person who made the cloth and where they're from. It's called archive. I think my sister will take photos for us all to see.

And I'm not ready to go, but need to be in the next hour or so. I leave for Denver very early in the morning and speak tomorrow night at Tattered Cover book store. I'm really looking forward to the flight and time in Denver, but I really dislike packing and getting to the "or-port."

Someone who may or may not be ready to go is Ellie. I've explained to Sebastian she needs to go somewhere and will not be able to come back. Sometimes she looks so great and jumps for tennis balls and runs for 20 or more minutes with me. Other times it looks like she can barely breathe. We think she rallies for fun stuff and food, but really she is in very poor shape. She's had all the treatment they will give her, and she's survived longer than expected on the last dose. But she breathes very fast and shallowly when resting, and she's acting dumber or more on instinct - barking a lot even when it's us coming in the door, stealing food from the garbage and people's hands. She has never been like this. We'll know more this weekend.

Sebastian says:

At thirteen o'clock we can go to the strawberry train and get some strawberries. And we can eat them on the way home. On the people coach of the strawberry train.

All aboard.