Said and Unsaid

I was thinking about dialogue on the Greyhound bus ride home the other day. I have borrowed many a good line from strangers on public transport—the gem of that trip was 'Have you been to the bathroom in Baltimore? I felt safer in prison'—and sometimes these lines are so good they sound like they HAVE to have been made up.

Here's an example. I wrote the following, and my editor asked me to change it because she couldn't imagine anyone actually speaking this way:

Every so often I get a craving for the kind I can’t find at night. You know the sort of man I mean: a vegetarian Buddhist in thrift-store corduroys, doesn’t drink, rarely pays a visit to the barber. Last time I found one I was coming home on the PATH train at half past six on a Sunday morning; he boarded with a friend, both with twelve-speed bicycles in tow. I knew I had to have him when I heard him say, “You know when you’re riding down a country road and come upon the skeleton of a barn? I love that.” He didn’t notice me then, but I made sure he left his pocket journal on the train...

Yes, I heard a guy say that, word for word. I loved how much that offhand remark told me about his personality, and the well cared for bicycle at his side reinforced my impression. I didn't go home with that boy, but Eve sure did.

What can really make good dialogue, though, is all the things that go unsaid. Here's another exchange I scribbled down on Monday afternoon:

HE: So...are you going to be around long enough for us to go out?
Something about being on a Greyhound bus gets me really horny. You'll do.

SHE: I don't think so. I'm too old for that shit.
I'll talk to you across the aisle, but there's no way in hell I'm going back behind the dumpster with you at the next pit stop.

HE: Yeah, I don't do the bus thing either.
[a moment later] But I can cook up seafood better than you can buy it at the harbor.
I'm gonna pretend like you didn't just shut me down. In fact, I'm gonna give you one more chance, because I haven't met a woman yet who could resist my crabcakes...

This reminds me of nights in the study room back in grad school, when Seanan would write two lines for every one line of dialogue he composed: one for what was coming out of the character's mouth, and the second for what he was actually saying. Dialogue—reading it, writing it, overhearing and 'appropriating' it—is one of the most delightful aspects of being a storyteller, and doing it well makes it just as satisfying for the reader.

The Wind in the Willows, part 2

Especially for you, Pare:

And a better view of the stairs:

Can't even see the house from the street, but I want to live here so bad.

Quick Dispatch

1. This place is AMAZING. The people are lovely, the place is lovely, and I'm getting a load of work done.

2. New rule re social networking: I'm only logging in to accept friend requests and follow people back. I can justify this because I don't want to lose track of new friends.

3. Silly Mealey. Nobody gives a crap if you check your email in the middle of the day.

4. Not that I'm checking my email in the middle of the day. Because I'm not.

5. I will admit to a nap though. And I wrote 400 words afterward, so even the nap was productive.

Going Dark

I'm leaving for Yaddo today, and I've promised myself there will be no blog-reading, tweeting, or facebooking while I'm there. Wild with anticipation, of course, but there's also a whiff of ‘trial by fire’ about the whole thing: either I have the most productive month of my life, or I go completely potty from internet withdrawal. (There is internet access, just not in the studios, and I know I won't be sneaking into the WiFi area during working hours for fear of being seen. Sometimes shame is a very good thing.)

(What I'm packing: a copy of Mary Modern for the Yaddo library, some Petty Magic ARCs, one of the Moleskine notebooks Elliot gave me for Christmas, lots of looseleaf paper and gel pens, and a bunch of great books for research and/or pleasure. There's also a book of Dürer etchings—I thought I might use them for inspiration, you know, just sit and ruminate on "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" until I start getting ideas. I'll let you know how that little experiment goes.)

If I can get some good photos (and permission, when needed) I’ll be sure to post them (after 4pm!), and in the meantime this thing is set to auto-blog: more photos from Eastern Europe, great books, and some random nerdy stuff.

Galley giveaway winners!

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest! I drew names over coffee on Friday morning, and the winners were @AngelaPardue, @angelynnodom, @eheinlen, @melistress, and @chickwithbooks. The galleys are going in the mail today.

(That's my WIP bucket bag from MadebyLoumms. Their bags are ADORABLE and very well made!)

Sundress!

(Thank you for all those enthusiastic comments about Petty Magic—I wish I could give every one of you a galley!)

On a sultry day in Brooklyn last summer, I envied every girl out and about in a pretty sundress. Feminine vanity aside, they were keeping a lot cooler than I was in jeans. I wanted sundresses, one for every day of the week.

The pattern is Heather Ross's Mendocino sundress, which she has generously posted on her website. I usually try to buy from a designer/shop offering free patterns, and I did pick up some awesome Mendocino fabric via Fabricworm, but I decided to use it for a different dress out of Cal Patch's Design-It-Yourself Clothes: Patternmaking Simplified. (More on that later.)

I know this is going to sound really nerdy, but I've been in love with this calico since I was a teenager. I'd bought a few yards of it at a mom-and-pop fabric shop back in high school for a dress I got quite a bit of wear out of but am much too embarrassed to show you, and every time I looked at that old dress in my scrap pile I wished I had more to sew something up using a proper pattern. I finally made it back to that shop before Christmas, and what do you know—they still had the fabric, and it was still four bucks a yard!

I remember Kelly saying (back in the day) that it was the sort of thing one's grandmother would wear—"in a good way." This fabric is very vintage-y (heck, it probably is vintage)—that's why I love it so much.

A few notes, if you want to make this dress:

—It was $6.47 at FedEx Office to get the pattern printed on a 24 x 44" sheet of paper. A little bit more than I thought it would be, but taping a lot of smaller pages together would have been rather tedious. (Apparently FedEx ate Kinko's. Whatever it's called nowadays, the email-to-print service is pretty nifty.)

—The schematic indicates that you should position the pockets 14 to 18" below the top of the dress; I decided on 18" because I'm tall, but when I finished sewing the seams and tried it on (insofar as it could be 'tried on' at that stage) my hands hardly reached the pockets. I decided they weren't worth adjusting, seeing as I probably wouldn't use the pockets anyway, so I just ripped the pocket seams and stitched up the sides. But if I make this dress again I'll go with a pocket placement of 14".

—You need elastic thread for the shirring. A nice lady at Jo-Ann pointed me to Dritz brand in the notions section (with all the other types of elastic), which is a lot less expensive per yard than the smaller spools you find on the rack with all the other types of sewing thread. (It's $1.59 for 30 yards of Dritz versus 11 yards of Gutermann. Or you could buy a ginormous spool of it here, but I can't imagine ever needing or using $40 worth of elastic thread unless you're also making jewelry.)

—Found some handy tips at Projects & Preoccupations. For one, the back hem needs to be taken up a bit more than the front because of the extra fabric at the bust—that probably wouldn't have occurred to me on my own! So I pinned up the hem and tried it on before sewing.

(Long-arming it. I wanted to get a detail of the shirring, but every close-up I took was basically 'and here are my boobs!')

This dress was quick to make, too—took less than a week. The pattern says you can sew the whole thing in an afternoon, and if I make another one I'm sure it'll go a lot faster.

I'm excited to be getting more proficient at sewing, but I have GOT to become tidier and more careful—I have a bad habit of dropping pins in the carpet. Yesterday I went for a run, and on my walk back to the car I felt something sharp in my sock. Yup. A pin. I'm lucky it didn't stab me in the foot. And last week I woke up and found safety pins under my pillow...at least they were closed!

(Thanks to my mother for the first photo.)

Process, part 2

(Process, part 1.)

Here's a page from one of my NUIG notebooks. People always seem surprised that I don't write in chronological order, but to me it makes sense (during the rough draft, once the thing has been loosely plotted) to write whichever scene I feel like writing, and stitch them together afterward.



(Click here for a better view.)

In this case, I'd only just started the draft in earnest (notice the date up top: 6 October 2004), but I was already working on the graveyard scene that begins on page 218. Some famous writer said that if you know how your novel is going to end before you've written it, then it isn't worth writing at all. Biggest load of baloney I ever heard.

Process

I was sorting through old journals recently, and found some very rough notes for Mary Modern taken before I even got to Galway.

(Better view here. Or just click on the photo.)

I thought it might be fun to put up a few pages to give you a glimpse of the story in its earliest stage of development. (I don't know about you, but I eat this stuff up.)

(Better view here.)

After all, you've got to start someplace...

The Art of Kissing

"Arrange it so that the girl is seated against the arm of the sofa."

Back in high school I came across The Art of Kissing, a reproduction of a booklet first published in 1936, and seeing as it's Valentine's Day I thought I'd dust it off and blog about it. As the following passage will show, it has very little to offer in the way of practical advice:

"For a kiss can never be absolutely defined. Because each kiss is different from the one before and the one after. Just as no two people are alike, so are no two kisses alike. For it is people who make kisses. Real, live people pulsating with life and love and extreme happiness."

Gotta love that florid old-school prose, especially when applied to the subject of "osculations"; we are also provided with a very illuminating definition of the word tumescence. Every time I rediscover this book I wonder about the author, 'Hugh Morris.' Debonair man-about-town, or middle-aged pervert hunched over a typewriter in a terrycloth bathrobe? (Two guesses and the first doesn't count.)

"Different Sizes of Mouths Require a Different Technique in Kissing."

Morris quotes liberally from the love poems of Catullus, Horace, and somebody named Sir John Suckling, but as you might expect from a pamphlet published in 1936, misogyny is the overarching theme: "It is, therefore, necessary that the man be taller than the woman" because a man "must always give the impression of being his woman's superior, both mentally and especially physically."

(Good God, am I glad I was born at the right end of the twentieth century!)

It gets worse—the author stops just short of condoning out-and-out rape. "If she flinches, don't worry. If she flinches and makes an outcry, don't worry. If she flinches, makes an outcry and tries to get up from the sofa, don't worry. Hold her, gently but firmly, and allay her fears with kind, reassuring words. Remember what Shakespeare said about 'a woman's no!'"

Oh, but he's just warming up: "However, if she flinches, makes an outcry, a loud, stentorian outcry, mind you, and starts to scratch your face, then start to worry or start to get yourself out of a bad situation. Such girls are not to be trifled with...or kissed. It is such as they, in most cases, who still believe the story of the stork which brings babies because of the consequences of a kiss."

What an absurd little man you were, Hugh Morris! No doubt you concocted all this dangerous nonsense simply because every woman you encountered was much too smart to be snogging the likes of you.

I sat down to make fun of this thing and look what came out. Sorry about that. I think I'll go eat some candy hearts now.

(Thanks to eliz.avery on Flickr for scanning all the delightful illustrations. Check out her photostream, there's plenty more where that came from.)

Funkahedron

Look, look—a stellated dodecahedron! I know, I'm a big nerd, but I think nerdiness is kind of a prerequisite here. It's got bells in it too. I hope my little nephew gets as big a kick out of it as I do.

(Pattern from Berroco, raveled here.)

Hat for a Wise Man

This is one of my favorite pictures of my grandfather—it conveys his personality so perfectly. He is playful and loving and unself-consciously wise; my favorite expressions of his are Don't take no wooden nickels! and What God's got in store for you ain't gonna pass you by.

I've made him two sweaters these last two Christmases, so this year I thought I'd make him a hat, since he doesn't seem to have a proper warm-and-wooly one. I've found a couple of simple hat patterns I can use for quickie gifts, but his hat has to be special.

(Kate is modeling—haven't gotten any shots of him wearing it yet.)

Pattern: a mash-up of the Norwegian Star Earflap Hat and Sally Pointer's Owls and Flowers chart (both Ravelry links); I changed the earflap shaping though, and added the chin-strap and buttons.
Yarn: Cascade 220 Heathers, one skein each of galaxy, turtle, and straw
Needles: #6s for the strap and #7s for the hat itself.
Gauge: 24 sts and 32 rows over 4” on #6s; 20 sts on #7s.
Raveled here.

Most ear-flap hats have long i-cord, chain-stitched, or twisted ties, but I couldn't really see him using the ties on a hat like that. I like it this way because the earflaps can be kept close to the ears using the strap, or held up by fastening the strap over the head, or the strap can just be fastened up on the button on the same side.

If I could knit it over again I'd probably use a finer yarn, cast on more stitches and knit three full repeats. As it is, I ought to have cast on a dozen or so extra stitches, because truth be told it's a little too snug.

(No, he is not having a convulsive fit.)

Grandpop to Grandmom: Turn off the damn light!
Kate: You two are cursing up a storm tonight.
Grandpop: That's married life for you. Now hand me that shoehorn.

Sinkhole Alley (First Month's Free!)

I haven't had all that much to say lately; most of my knitting projects are for Christmas and therefore top-secret, and I'm still stalled on my reading list thanks to an incredibly disturbing scene in Suite Française. (Yes, it is a book about war, but this scene horrified me for a different reason. I'll persevere, and tell you more about it once I've finished.)

My research reading is going swimmingly, however, and I thought you might enjoy this excerpt from Chapters of Dublin History:

Close by Old Church Street on the west were three streets worthy of some notice. The first was the Hangman's Lane, a name naturally not much relished by the inhabitants, and consequently corrupted into Hammond Lane, which it is still called.

In the same way Bumbailiff's Lane, off New Street, on the south side, became the meaningless Fumbally's Lane. There was another Hangman's Lane from Kimmage to Dolphin's Barn, where Tom Calvin, the hangman of '98, is said to have lived. It is now called the Dark Lane. Dublin also contained such names as Cutthroat Lane, Murdering Lane, Cutpurse Row (Corn Market), Hell, near Christ Church, flog Hill (St. Andrew Street), The Common Lane (Watery Lane, now Brookfield Avenue), Gallows Road, Gallows Hill, Gibbet Meadow, Dirty Lane (Bridgefoot Street and Temple Lane South), Dunghill Lane (Island Street) and Pinchgut Lane. Some 18th century street-names were even coarser; yet, they were the recognised official names, figuring in postal addresses, and found in maps and directories. The age of refinement was yet to come, and it has already reached its extreme point in renaming Dublin streets and lanes.

How'd you like to live on Dunghill Lane?? It was actually on the map--that's what really gets me!

Little Birds!

I feel a little guilty casting on a sweater for myself while Santa's workshop is open for business, but it is nice to work on something more ambitious in between cranking out the gifts. It's another pattern from Ysolda: Little Birds, from the inaugural issue of Twist Collective. I've been obsessed with this cardigan and itching to cast on for a whole year now. I bought the pattern without really considering if the cut of the cardigan would flatter me, however, and I think I'll find it more wearable as a pullover. I'm using Knit Picks Palette, which is a great value: soft, great colors, and only $1.99 or 2.19 a ball! A slightly different color scheme, too—green is more flattering than beige.

Raveled here.

Whenever I think about this sweater, I remember that song from Man of La Mancha:

Little bird, little bird
in the cinnamon tree
Little bird, little bird
do you sing for me?

...which is, of course, completely inappropriate. This sweater is sweet and innocent, and that song is just the opposite!

Make Do and Mend: Tarot Breakfast Tray

When I lived in Boerum Hill I had really cool roommates who were both crafty and thrifty—Rachel made a colorful quilt out of old t-shirts, and Rel found some great furniture and other random stuff on the street (curbside shopping, can't beat it for the price!) She came upon a lone tarot card (I think it was Death), and she cut a small rectangle in the center and used it as a switchplate cover. Rel also found an adorable (if rather banged-up) breakfast tray someone was tossing, but she ended up passing it along to me when she moved out. That was back in 2003, and the breakfast-tray-with-potential had been sitting in my basement waiting for its makeover ever since.

Before: cute but scratched and faded vinyl tray covering and white paint job that was probably never sealed—it was flaking and splintering.

The plan: pull off the vinyl, strip the paint (using an eco-friendly...eco-friendlier?...paint stripper), sand the bare wood, stain it, put on a new lining using the decoupage technique (with Mod Podge Hardcoat), and seal it all up.

After: TOTALLY AWESOME, no?

The eco-friendlier paint stripper worked pretty well, and I applied two coats of a dark stain. I knew the decoupage would be tricky, so I did the bottom of the tray first since most of the time it won't be visible. (Naturally, the reverse side turned out great, but there were a couple of tiny tears on the side everyone sees! Fortunately the pattern on the paper is busy enough that you'd never notice unless I pointed it out.)

I measured the paper, adding a fraction of an inch on all sides (to be removed with an exacto knife later), and applied the Mod Podge with a foam brush directly to the paper before positioning it on the wood. Then I smoothed out the air bubbles with an old credit card. Some decoupage tutorials suggest using wrapping paper, but I think that's a bad idea—I used relatively thick, high-quality paper, and still had a couple small problems with the paper tearing (too much glue and too much friction from the credit card). After the paper was in place, I waited for the glue to dry before trimming the edges. Repeated the process on the top surface, then painted on three thin coats of Mod Podge over the whole tray (over a period of a few days).

I panicked a little when the first topcoat went on though—an air bubble appeared out of nowhere, and it was impossible to smooth it out (as I'd been able to when I initially glued the paper on). I got frustrated—'why does every DIY project I attempt come out like CRAP?! ARGH!!!'—and then decided to watch Pride & Prejudice with my mom and try to forget about it. The topcoat had dried by the time I came up to bed, and lo and behold, the paper had tried perfectly flat and smooth! HOORAY!!!

To my dismay, the Mod Podge Hardcoat instructions say you've got to wait a whole month between the last coat and actually using the finished piece. It's perfectly dry now though, so I'm going ahead and taking pictures, and I'll eventually pick up a can of polyurethane. The Mod Podge people say you don't need an additional sealant, but I don't believe them.

Here's a close-up of the oh-so-appropriate new paper lining, purchased at a stationery shop in Florence in 2002 (and up to now, gathering dust in a roll under my bed). I'm such a sucker for pretty Italian papers.

This wasn't a cheap DIY project (the materials were about $25, and the paper couldn't have been more than a euro or two), but I can rationalize the expense somewhat because I'm planning to use the paint stripper (the priciest purchase) on another project. And it's quirky yet practical—just my style. Yay!

Love only what you do, and make.

When I applied to Yaddo a few months ago, I wasn't thinking too much about my chances. It was something proactive at a time when I needed to be thinking about the future, so I felt good just dropping the application in the mail. As the day of judgment approached, though, I half-convinced myself I couldn't get in, despite the warm encouragement of Jonathan Santlofer (former Yaddo board member, artist, author, and all-around awesome guy).

But I did get in! I got the letter on Friday. This is a tremendous honor and opportunity, and I intend to suck the marrow out of the whole experience. So many 20th-century American heavyweights have stayed at Yaddo—Truman Capote, Langston Hughes, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and on and on—it's very humbling, to think of them.

Of that list of luminaries, Sylvia Plath's is the name that resonates most with me, though I feel a little guilty admitting it. Not that she wasn't a brilliant poet, but her work is the stuff you live on when you're nineteen and hopelessly misunderstood (or such is your belief at the time). I picked up a copy of The Unabridged Journals when I was in college, and naturally I had to go back and read the entries she wrote at Yaddo in the fall of 1959. She sketches ornate old furniture and wall sconces, describing photographs and engravings in minute detail, and frequently doubts the quality and importance of her work:

I feel a helplessness when I think of my writing being nothing, coming to nothing: for I have no other job - - - not teaching, not publishing. And a guilt grows in me to have all my time my own. I want to store money like a squirrel stores nuts. Yet what would money do. We have elegant dinners here: sweetbreads, sausages, bacon and mushrooms; ham and mealy orange sweet potatoes; chicken and garden beans. I walked in the vegetable garden, beans hanging on the bushes, squash, yellow and orange, fattening in the dapple of leaves, corn, grapes purpling on the vine, parsley, rhubarb. And wondered where the solid, confident purposeful days of my youth vanished. How shall I come into the right, rich full-fruited world of middle-age. Unless I work. And get rid of the accusing, never-satisfied gods who surround me like a crown of thorns. Forget myself, myself. Become a vehicle of the world, a tongue, a voice. Abandon my ego.

Try a first-person story and forget John Updike and Nadine Gordimer. Forget the results, the markets. Love only what you do, and make. Learn German. Don't let indolence, the forerunner of death, take over. Enough has happened, enough people entered your life, to make stories, many stories, even a book. So let them onto the page and let them work out their destinies.

A 27-year-old acclaimed poet, bemoaning her wasted youth! (Also, of course, ridiculously ironic given the manner in which she died.) But I love what she's getting at in the second paragraph: it isn't about you, it's about the story. You have nothing to prove, and everything to tell.

Minnie & Mealey's Greek Adventure (part 1)

Traveling with my friend Aravinda (a.k.a. Min) is never, ever dull. We traveled around Greece for three weeks in September 2006, island-hopping on and off the tourist track. My journals from that trip are full of what Min and Leah call the 'liturgy'—a string of inside jokes and assorted nonsense, which we would sometimes recite out loud and add to each time. Here is but a brief sample:

HOT CHOCOLATE + COINTREAU = SEXUAL BLISS. [Written at charming cocktail bar on Lesbos.] This music is making me sterile. "Oedipa came to, to find herself getting laid." "She's sniffing his armpit. He's dry-humping her. That's real sexy." [I believe that refers to a pair of turtles we found tussling in a cemetery.]

A walk through olive groves outside Plomari on Lesbos:


Minnie Minster chillin' on the ramparts of an amazing medieval fortress, Mithymna, Lesbos:

We went to a hot spring near Mithymna as well, in a small building that reminded me of an igloo (hah!) You would hang out in the hot water for awhile (trying to avoid looking at everyone else's boobs—we were the only women there in one-piece bathing suits), then go straight outside and dive into the sea. So refreshing, I can't even tell you.

(Not the beach by the hot springs, but you get the gist.)

Pretty much the only places we visited on mainland Greece were Athens and Delphi. The Acropolis is as touristy as you'd expect, but I found it funny that once you're up there, you look down at the city and you realize just how hideous all the modern architecture is. The only good view is looking up at it. Delphi was almost as touristy, but the scenery was fantastic.

(Above: the Erechtheion on the Acropolis; below, Delphi.)


We visited six islands in all: Lesbos, Ithaki, Mykonos, Delos, Santorini, and Crete. We'd originally wanted to visit the Peloponnese, but realized we didn't have quite enough time, and Ithaki was plan B.

9:30PM—Friday, 22 September 2006

Ithaki is lovely. Min says it's her new favorite, but I can't decide which place I prefer. This afternoon we walked a couple kilometers past darling terraced houses and hills covered in olive trees to a small secluded harbor and pebbly beach. The water was clear and warm and I quickly waded in up to my neck. Then I noticed movement beneath the surface—a few (at least three) schools of fish swimming all around me! It kind of freaked me out at first—I had this hilariously stupid idea that these tiny black fish were carnivorous (TEE HEE!) Took loads of pictures in the dusk. I didn't want to leave...

Last night, when we got off the ferry at 12:30am—having failed to secure a room, but unconcerned, seeing as we're always approached by some legitimate domatia owner—I had quickly decided I liked the place. A clear sky full of stars, the air heavy with jasmine—there's definitely a timeless quality to this island I haven't noticed elsewhere. The dull chime of bells around goats' necks in the distance, the old man waving from his veranda on the hill above us, the dogs half-asleep in the road, the colorful rowboats bobbing in the eerily clear water—(I pictured whole rooms beneath the surface, furnished in algae and shaded in green and blue)—yes, timeless.

(Not bad for point-and-click, eh?)

Next time: Mykonos/Delos, Santorini, and Crete.

How's this for random nerdiness?

I found this fishbowl in my grandfather's crawlspace. I gave it a good cleaning and now it stores my oddballs. I'm so tickled with this, it's ridiculous.

Plum Truffle Redux

(Plum Truffle part 1, Plum Truffle part 2, Raveled here.)

Well, those dimples on the button band were really annoying me, though I can't even wear it for another two months. I really liked the idea of an invisible button band, but on this cardigan it's just not working out. So I pulled out four lovely buttons I got from Jo-Ann ages ago, picked up four more (luckily they're still in stock), and now this button band is 100% visible.

I had to reknit the buttonhole band because I'd originally knit it with dyelot #2, which would have been way too obvious to let show. Now the buttons are fastened on the 'wrong' side, but I certainly don't care enough to reknit both bands. Between the buttons and all the cabling, perhaps the effect is a bit busy—but still a big improvement, methinks!

1930s Tennis Blouse

(Tennis blouse, part 1.)

This one spent quite a few weeks in time-out before I finally dealt with all the little things that were annoying me about it. First, I have decided that I really do not like knitting with cotton. The fiber has no give, and my fingers actually started to feel a bit sore after awhile. Also, it may not have been such a good idea to stray so far from the original pattern. One word: STRIPES. Since I knit the front in pieces, they were a b***h to match up. Plus, the lace pattern slants to the right (oops), so it was tricky to seam so it laid evenly. I'm not pleased with my finishing on this one either, but it's time to call it a day. It's quite pretty...if you don't look too closely at it.

Pattern: 1930s Striped Sweater with Lace Panel, from Vintage Knitting
Yarn: Rowan 4-ply Cotton (discontinued) in aegean and fresh, 3 balls each
Needles: #2s for the ribbing and #3s for the body
Raveled here (with detailed pattern notes, not that I suggest you follow them!)

Kate took these pics today, a very gloomy Labor Day. No tennis racket to hand, but I found my grandparents' old croquet set in our garage. I think this qualifies as random nerdiness.

Poll Results

Eighteen readers! Oh, you dear sweet wonderful people! That's about three times the number I was expecting.

Random nerdiness wins. Who would have thought?