Knit Like a Man

Fiesta.

June 17th, 2006

Here we are in the final hours of my birthday week. Some people are big on partying over their birthdays. I don’t find my birthday depressing, exactly, but I do tend to be more circumspect. When I sensed that Asif was up to something for my big day, my first and only command was “No people!” I like a Holiday Inn-style birthday: one where the best surprise is no surprise. It was also a pig of a week at work and I didn’t want to carry that dark grey cloud around with me everywhere.

This meant that I didn’t go to Stephanie’s birthday bash at Lettuce Knit, as it was on my only ‘home by myself’ night this week…I see it was a blast though (beer, cake, spontaneous yarn sale), and I’m glad a good time was had by all. I also missed out on Drunken Knitting night this month–jeez, I haven’t gotten to any of them since the Olympics–as a friend of ours was in town from Vancouver. So I kind of had Drunken Non-Knitting Night instead.

Back to the birthday: Asif took me out for a lovely dinner at a restaurant where a co-worker of mine held a showing of his paintings a few weeks back. We then came back to my place and he brought over his gifts to me: a Nintendo DS mini and the new Super Mario Bros…two DVDs (Chicago, and The Color Purple which I’ve never seen)…and three skeins of Alchemy’s Silken Straw!

This is one of those yarns that is so beautiful, I’m afraid to make anything with it. Has anyone made anything out of this yarn other than swatches? I’m wide open to suggestions. Asif’s birthday is at the end of July–I have just enough time to use the chartreuse and aubergine to make him a slipstitch scarf…but maybe someone has a better idea?

I finished the Cool Linen facecloth this week–and will give it its first scary encounter with my morning face tomorrow. I’ll be interested to see how it compares to the hemp facecloth that I use now. It certainly feels softer, and it looks terrific. I have three more balls of the stuff, and could happily go on a facecloth-knitting binge if it works out. It might even be a good alternative to Euroflax  for the linen hand towels in MDK.

And I dug into Mama-E’s Peaches & Creme care package at last this week, and have started one of the garter stitch baby bibs from MDK. I picked the colorway that I was least interested in on the ball–Fiesta Ombre–and it turns out that it’s gorgeous when you’re knitting it up, particularly in garter stitch. I also love how soft this yarn is, and how easy it is to work with. I can see I’m going to have to call Elmore-Pisgah and order a few one-pound cones sometime very soon.

The final bit of news is that my blog has been accepted into the 9rules Network. 9rules aims to bring the best of the internet (specifically weblogs) under one umbrella so that members can share information and expertise and enjoy the benefits of being promoted under one unified brand. It costs nothing, it pays nothing, and it doesn’t affect my content in any way, but I think it will bring the blog to more readers and more of my readers to other 9rules blogs, and I think that’s cool.

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