Two steps forward. One step back.

It’s always like this at this time of year.  Sunny and warm one day, dreary and cold the next.  It’s always like this.  Yet, somehow I am always surprised.  I always feel cheated by fickle spring.  It’s such a short season here in Maine.  Wedged between mud season and blackfly season, this brief, ephemeral moment that we’ve been waiting for all these months takes two steps forward, and one step back on its way to becoming real summer.  And today is one of the dreary days.  So I am extra glad to have my new muffatees to help me remember the promise of better things to come.

What’s a muffatee, you ask?  Well, a muffatee is like a fingerless glove, but it has no thumb gusset.  Just knit a simple rectangle that is big enough to go around our hand and as long as you want it to come up your arm.    Yup.  it’s that simple.  You don’t really need a pattern.

You can use any yarn you like in any color that inspires you.  I started out with this beautiful skein from Lorna’s Laces. (We don’t have it in yet, but will be ordering it soon.  It’s lovely stuff!)

The colors are so evocative of spring and I so needed a little more spring in my day.  I cast on 30 stitches and knit is Fisherman rib until they were about the right length.  Then I stitched them up the wrist, leaving a hole for your thumb, and stitched the last inch or so above the thumb opening.  Done.  well, almost.  They really needed some embellishment.  What do you think?

The flowers are six stitch I-cord, knit about six inches long then scrunched by drawing the tail through the middle of the tube and pulling it tight, stitched on to the backs at the wrist.

Then I added a little smocking on the inside wrist to give them a little shape and a kind of English country garden feel.

And I’m in love with them.  Pretty, like spring.  Warm and colorful for the dreary days.

Practical and whimsical at the same time.  They make me want to sigh a lot.  They maybe even make me look forward to the “One step back,” days that would give me a reason to wear them.  Okay, maybe not quite that far.  But they do make me smile.

I might have to make some more.  And you could, too.  Send me pictures of the muffatees you come up with.  I could use some more inspiration.

Hey, Girl…

You know we have a great time making our Stitch and Spin reminder memes.  There are very few places where part of ones job is to cruise the internet looking for handsome men, then fantasizing about what they might say to us about our yarn habits.  But here, it’s a twice a week event.  Several of us ponder, make selections, dream and finally select a beautiful guy and compose a sweet annotation.  And we put them up on Facebook just for you all.  We have a great time doing it, and most of our friends really enjoy them.

And then I got a funny kind of eye opener.  It seems so intuitive and universal a thing to do.  Everyone has dreams and fantasies, right?  And externalizing them in visual form is fun and whimsical and maybe just a bit silly.  Posting them on our Facebook page acknowledges the nature of an interior life and brings it into a sharable community experience.  Right?  Right?

I could go on a political rant about the over exposure of women’s bodies in the retail marketing industry and how there is no concomitant use of men’s bodies.  Or maybe a liberal feminist lecture on turn about being fair play.  But neither of these explains why we do it.  We do it because it’s fun.  Somehow we thought the impulse was self explanatory, until we tried to explain it to a couple of the men in the store.  They just didn’t seem to understand.  Why would we want to take a picture of a handsome man and put words in his mouth…and such ridiculous words?

We had our Cascade yarn rep in this week.  He’s a great guy.  He’s fun and smart and handsome in a tall, slender athletic way, and very knowledgable about yarn.  He’s actually “Hey, Girl…” material himself.  And he knits.  He works with yarnies all the time and seems to have a great handle on how we think and feel.  We started talking about our Facebook page and our thriving yarnie community, and how we do a great job of getting people to turn out for our community events.  Then we got to our “Hey, Girl…” memes…and he didn’t get it.  And we had a hard time explaining it him.  We showed him some of our favorite “Hey, Girl…” shots and talked about fun and fantasy and our passion for both yarn and whimsy.  He shook his head for a while, but finally kind of got the joke.  Then, we showed him our final example…

You know his response?  ”Oh, yeah I kinda get it, but…who’s the guy?”  Really?  Maybe it’s just a woman thing.  Or maybe it’s just a yarnie thing.  Or maybe it’s just us few here at OTR.  But seriously…don’t you all recognize this guy?

Summer yarns and letting go

It’s really hard for me to imagine that a whole season has sped by since I was here with you last.  I have had my head in a million other places, learning a million other things.  When I hibernate for the winter, it seems I really do it up, dreaming away in my cave, mulling plans for the active time to come.  Now the active time has come and, like a bunch of dropped stitches, there are strands of things left undone which have to be picked up and put in their proper places.  Yesterday, I saw robins in my yard, and this week the summer yarns have started to arrive.  These are the signs of a season changing once again.

As with any season change, it is also a time to assess our direction and see if the old plans are still the right ones.  It’s time to take a look around and see what’s actually here, not what I dreamed would be here when I awoke from the winter.  And you know what I see?  Yarn!  Glorious yarn!  Such wonderful summer yarns that I am having all I can do to stick with my design plans and not go haring off into a serious case of startitis.

Um…actually…I have a confession to make.  I have not been able to resist the startitis temptation.  I have a darling skirt back from the test knitter, and a lovely shawl out to the test knitter, and two more concepts with swatches in various states that need to be written up into followable patterns.  But they are old news.  All I want to do is cavort with the Berroco Lago and Universal Bamboo Pop.  I have visions of beach wear and flirty summer laces.  To heck with heavy sweaters; give me mesh tunics that can be thrown over a short skirt and cami for a night of dancing.  My crochet hook is smoking, my knitting needles are steaming, and I’m getting into the summer groove with two different versions of a sleeveless summer duster type vest thingy that can be worn over a bathing suit or can elevate a pair of capris and a tank top to an ensemble.  One will be crochet in Bamboo Pop, one will be knit in Lago.

And I can’t wait to show you the finished products.  The Game of Thrones folks have it backwards…the truth is, winter is over.  Summer is coming!

In like a beastly lion…

Happy first Monday of March!  Last week was pretty crazy here at Over the Rainbow, luckily it was the good kind of crazy.  Over the last week, I kept hearing people discuss March and how it’s “in like a lion and out like a lamb.”  I’ve truly never heard that saying before, weird eh?  It’s been pointed out to me that I must have spent a fair portion of my life living under a rock (I do enjoy soil) and this is another one of those times when it seems true. (I also thought the ol’ gift horse saying was more along the lines of… “Don’t kick a gift horse in the teeth.”  I do think that perhaps my version sends a stronger message.) Since it’s a glorious new month, we changed our window display and Mim used her wonderful creativity to transform Buddy the Dog into a lion.  So, if you’re strolling by the shop and don’t understand why our stuffed pooch has a mane and has a mini lamb (who looks much more like a a fat four-legged spider than a lamb) next to him  don’t beat yourself up too much.  I didn’t make the connection, but I dooooo adore Buddy and his new mane.

Last week was also the one year anniversary of Mim and Kristin, the evil geniuses who keep us minions in line, first mucking it up and beginning the work to open the shop.  They are quite a marvelous team, with personality traits that complement each other so well.  I was a lucky lassie and got to spend a week with them in California at the end of January for a yarn conference.  We had a grand time and while I was there, I made sure to capture some truly flattering photos of them for future photo-chopping projects.  I really cherish all of the apps that allow me to make silly photo compilations.  Where would I be in the blogosphere if I couldn’t tease my coworkers with blackmail style photos chopped into ridiculousness?  So, here was the anniversary celebration cake from Corwinnifer and I.  Such fun times with good sports….  Corwin has Celiac Disease and couldn’t partake in the deliciousness, but we made sure to inform him of the goodness that he was missing out on because we’re nice.

And finalllly,  I got around to giving the acrylic wonder shorts some loving attention.  I’ve been considering turning them into a skirt instead… a mini skirt with ruffles, lots of brilliant ruffles.  However, I officially decided they that are destined to be shorts with ruffles.  I just need to figure out how to knit a form fitting between-the-legs-pant-seat so that they can actually be considered shorts… it’s obvious that I got a little too excited about the short bit. On a side note, it’s very difficult to think of a word to describe the crotch without it sounding like crotch and having a weird connotation.  Mim suggested “inseam junction”  and Jen and I concocted “between-the-legs-pant-seat.”  We meant crotch. Some good old short row shaping might have made them a tad more wearable.  Stay tuned for the epic final reveal with the real life derby girl, Ice Cream Truck Full of Angry Bees.

Have a lovely week!

Allison

It was love at first sight.

Last night, I was gifted a skein of heaven.  It was truly the most amazing yarn gift that I’ve ever received and it was indeed love at first sight.  This was the sort of gift that the giver thinks is no big deal, but the recipient (lucky meeee!) feels like they’re going to burst with joy upon receiving. My dear fiber friend, Hannah, spun and dyed the most wondrous hank of neon stripy Wensleydale wool and I’m fortunate enough to be wearing it on my head today, despite the fact that I’m having a rare but super excellent hair day and it’s definitely on the toasty side in the shop!  My yarn shop cronies (or should I say Corwinnifer?  Yes, I should say Corwinnifer. ) can attest that I’m constantly on the lookout for the perfect neon yarn.  Not tacky neon, classy neon… I promise it exists.  And tahhhh-dah, Hannah made it happen.  I really should have taken a picture of the yarn before I dove into it but I was obviously too excited to have such a profound idea at the time.  She even included this darling yarn label…

With the company of some awesome roller derby pals and the better half of Corwinnifer, I finished the hat in one go!  There’s nothing finer than the feeling of stiff achy joints in your fingers to tell that you’ve been knitting too furiously.  For a lass with chronic cast-on-itis like myself, this yarn required that I interrupt all other projects, so the acrylic pom-pom nightmare booty shorts will have to wait until the weekend (I swear that they at least partially exist).

Do you enjoy the creepiness of the above photo?  Sadly, I’m a scatterbrained gal with a gift for bustin’ up electronics who recently smashed her iphone screen and can’t take nice forward facing photos anymore; hence the creepy stare to make sure the camera was actually pointed at my hat.  This hat makes me so happy that it cancels out my bad luck.  Have a wonderful Thursday, it’s such a lovely day here in rockin’ Rockland.

xoxo,

Allison