d'oh!mestic

The first, free pattern to come out of Knitdown2010 is now ready for your consumption.

Click Blue Monday to download.

Go, go! Knit it up and send me a photo of your finished product.

Knitdown2010 continues apace.

So far I have made three gloves, a hat for a baby, a shawl blanket for another baby, an infinity scarf and the cuffs you see blocking on the beer.

I have not made a workable .pdf of any of my patterns.

Win some, lose some.

Confession:

After a day in the real world where I had to tell clients that the exciting new product had “just been in beta” and that the “beta” had been shut down for the moment, I came home and made the executive decision that I could not face fixing the crazy PDF problem. About all I could face were four episodes of 30 Rock, where I did nothing except gape at the television, punctuated with pointing at the screen and telling the Capt’n that my life! It’d be like that if I didn’t have you! except, you know, the part where I’m a zillion pounds heavier and not working in television.

I didn’t even knit. Since we’re in the safe space? I pulled out 30 rows on a glove.

I know. I know.

And I don’t even have the courtesy to illustrate this post with a photograph.

Such a slacker I’ve become.

Yeah, you think that the big announcement tomorrow will be the rumored iSlate.

Have I got a taste for you.

Just a taste of what's coming up in the knitdown

Just as soon as I can get myself together and shrink the original .PDF file from 16MB down to a reasonable 2MB, there will be the first official D’oh!Mestic.com Knitdown2010 project.

And you’re going to love it.

And that is all of my yarn, all 69(!) skeins of it. Saturday afternoon was spent listening to U2 and sifting through the downstairs basket, the upstairs basket and the Bag o’ Summer Tweed, and logging the whole mess on Ravelry.

Outside of the Bag o’ Summer Tweed and five skeins of bulky cotton, I found that most my stash is composed of paired skeins. I foresee a lot of socks and gloves in my future. Lots.

And hey, speaking of Ravelry and gloves, I’ve submitted my first pattern. It’s the Fisticuffs mitts two entries below, and I’m just waiting for the good women there to hook me up.

But that won’t be the last pattern. No sir. Check back here on Jan. 15 for the first pattern in Knitdown 2010. It’s going to be a doozy.

After much consideration, I have decided to knit down my stash this year. It’s not a decision born out of economic necessity or a champagne-soaked New Year’s Resolution. It’s a challenge. It’s a change. It’s … going to keep me the hell out of the yarn store.

I should explain.

My local yarn store is 95% amazing. It has a wide selection of fiber, a gorgeous color palate, a decent selection of books and it just began carrying the much-sought-after Malabrigo this past fall. My LYS is ten minutes away from my office, and for the past few years, I’ve made it a bolt-hole, a place where I could escape when work was getting a little to liberal with the morale crushing. My MO was to pop in, say hello to whichever lady was running the till and then spend forty minutes picking up and putting down skein after skein, until I had made a decision and it was time to go.

I liked to take my friends — knitters and non-knitters — to the LYS and present it to them like Ali Baba’s cave of wonders, stuffed to the rafters with bright jewels.

I really, really liked my yarn store. (Emphasis on the liked.)

It had its foibles, the LYS. There was the one yarn lady who had to pick on any flaw she found in a finished product of mine. I think her goal was to shake a little sense into me about careless mistakes, but she went about it with just a dash of condescension. “Well, if you can’t be bothered to properly weave in your ends, you really shouldn’t be bothered with even trying.” But hey, y’know, she was rarely there and she’d go out of her way to be polite if I turned up at the shop with my mother. I always put it down to her being peeved by my relative youth, and that she had written me off as a hipster knitter, someone who followed a trend blindly and wasn’t going to graduate from worsted-weight scarfs.

And then they hired the other one.

I don’t know who this woman is, or how long she’s really worked there. She cropped up on my radar towards the end of the summer. She didn’t just go out of her way to be picky with her clients, she went out of her way to be downright mean to them. It got so bad that every time I saw her, all I could think of was, “Oh, no. Not Belittling Belinda.”

I don’t know what her name actually is, but Belittling Belinda has stuck. Every visit to the LYS since August has featured her brand of sneering customer service, which features her saying things like, “There’s no such thing as a 7″ double pointed needle” or “I’ve never heard of that yarn, so I just assume you’re making it up” to women who just wanted a little guidance. To be helpful would be to go out of her way.

After my first encounter with Belittling Belinda, I always tried to shut her down with quick and dirty transactions: here’s my frequent shopper card, my debit card, my driver’s license (since she’d always card me, as if I were a knock-kneed seventeen-year-old McLovin’, trying to buy booze with a fake ID). I wouldn’t make chit-chat, the way I did with the other women behind the counter. I’d try to keep my face arranged in a neutral, but pleasant, expression. It wouldn’t deter her. She’d call my choice of color tacky, or make a snide remark about how the button I was buying being “a little too arty” for the likes of her.

I couldn’t avoid her. She was always there.

The last straw came on December 23. I needed one skein of yarn for a last-minute project. One skein of Mission Falls 1824 Merino, one of my favorite workhorses. I found it and queued up to pay. In front of me was a novice knitter looking for a little guidance, and unfortunately, she got stuck with Belinda.

I had enough time to study the woman ahead of me that I made up a little biography for her: she went to law school in the early eighties, had a daughter and a nasty divorce, decided in the early 1990s that she wanted to do something more with her life, and went back to school for a Ph.D. in linguistics or Latin American politics. Taught at UNM or CNM or St. John’s for a few years, until her daughter graduated from high school and went off to one of the minor Ivies, which is when she decided to learn how to knit — not just as a hobby, but as a philosophical and political statement and a chance to take part in a sisterhood of crafters dating back to the Middle Ages. Also, she had noticed one of the Flying Star Stitch and Bitches and thought it’d be a good way to get out of the house during the week. So she learned to knit. (Seriously, I could tell all of this from her wire-rimmed glasses, salt-and-pepper hair and the way she clutched at her project book.)

And she had come to the LYS to support local business, and because someone had said the ladies there were helpful and patient with novice knitters. So she had picked out her project — an ambitious sweater — and had gone to the yarn store for help. And instead, she got Belinda.

Belinda scanned the pattern and said, “You have got to be joking. This is the second thing you’re going to make? Yeah, you may as well give up and go home.” When the woman said she was determined to give it a try, Belinda sighed and started throwing out as much technical jargon as she could muster. “Well, you’re gonna need at least a 42-inch circ, and a set of DPNs, unless you decide you want to go the Magic Loop route, and of course you don’t even understand a word I’m saying, do you? Do you even know what kind of yarn you want to work with?”

The woman held up a skein of Cascade 220 wool in a nice shade of oatmeal. “No,” Belinda said, shaking her head. “No, that’s worsted and you want an aran yarn. And you don’t even know what that means, do you? No, because this is your first project and you thought you’d go into this headfirst without bothering to learn a darn thing.”

The woman said something in her defense like, “well, that’s why I’m here.” Belinda’s response. “Well, you’re wasting my time and yours.” She then shooed the woman to the side so as to ring me up. “Can you believe the nerve of some people?” she asked. But I was trying not to say a word. I was horrified at her treatment of this woman, and I was afraid if I opened my mouth, I wouldn’t be able to close it again until I was forcibly shown the door. I got out my cards and my identification and handed over my one skein of Mission Falls, a fine wool produced in Canada.

“Mission Falls?” she asked. “Do you know you’re just taking money out of the hands of hardworking American farmers by buying from them.”

That did it. My cool was completely gone. I put down my card and my cash, counted to ten in three languages, and then I loaded for bear. I let her know that it was not her job to be picking on my yarn purchases, that her opinion, when not solicited, should not come into play during the transaction. I let her know that in my case, I was happy to buy Mission Falls, because Mission Falls kicks all sort of ass, but that I was also sorry that I wasn’t buying Australian merino, since one of my friends just happened to run a merino farm in New South Wales. I also let her know that from a professional standpoint, I was not impressed with her level of service in a retail position and that if I hadn’t needed one more skein to finish one more Christmas present, I would be walking out of the store empty handed. I let her know that instead of having to show off her incredible wealth of knowledge, and wield it like a cudgel with the novice knitter, she should have said something along the lines of, “Oh, that looks like an ambitious project, however, we’re offering a sweater class in the new year, and it might be the best way to transition.” She could have been helpful, but instead she was cruel, and I was freaking tired of putting up with it.

She kind of stared at me open-mouthed, and I was glad that I had just enough cash to cover the purchase.

And that was it Internet. I was through. After I left, I made a fist-shaking, Scarlet O’Hara oath that, as God as my witness, I wasn’t going back in there again.

And I won’t. Not for a long time. I have a lot of yarn squirreled away, enough yarn to keep me busy for months. So begins Knitdown 2010.

Along about Wednesday it became obvious that the Quarterly Descent into Hell had commenced without my really noticing or getting ready ahead of time.

Intellectually, I am aware the QDiH is coming regardless of any preparations on my part. No matter where I am in the year, I am less than six weeks away from another QDiH. It always hangs over my head like a locomotive* released from high altitude and plummeting towards me. It’s always just a matter of time before before hits the ground at terminal velocity and squishes me like the sorry bag of endoskeletal protoplasm I am.

I knit to survive. Last time around, I started on a very intricate wrap. Previous quarters have seen socks, hats and a cardigan. Complicated scarves are especially good QDiH projects. I have dreams of someday working the Pi Shawl over the January QDiH (which lasts into May). But this time, I got hit unawares.

Stupid, rookie mistake.

When I climbed out from under the dropped box car of overtime and bitter tears on Wednesday, I knew I needed a project, and I needed one FAST! The first thing that came to hand was a ball of New Mexican-raised merino that I had purchased in Taos last year and then never used, and the first idea that popped into my head was a pair of nubby mitts, so that’s what I did. Forty stitches cast onto 3.5 mm needles, 50 rounds of mistake rib, thumb hole, another 15 rounds of mistake rib, cast off. Done.

I am really pleased with how they turned out. They were fast, they were simple, they fit in with my QDiH mental picture, which usually involves a lot of circa 1993 angst, loud music and heavy boots.

Fisticuffs

100 grams aran or worsted-weight wool (Cascade 220 would be great here)
3.5 mm double point needles

Cast on 40 stitches
Round 1: *K2, p2*
Round 2: K1, *p2, k2* to last stitch, K1

Work rounds one and two for 50 rounds, or until glove reaches desired length.

Round 51: Using waste yarn, knit 5 at beginning of next round. Slip these five stitches purl-wise back onto left hand needle. Knit over the top in pattern and complete round.

Work in mistake rib pattern for 15 rounds.

Bind off.

Thumb:
Carefully remove waste yarn and pick up live stitches onto needle — there should be nine total. Pick up and knit live stitches, as well as two stitches between top and bottom of the opening on each side. You should have a total of 13 stitches. Loosely bind off the stitches and weave in loose ends.

Repeat for the second glove.

Rock out.

*Interestingly enough, if my math is right (and I’d like to think that it is) it appears a locomotive’s terminal velocity would be approximately 195 miles an hour. Squish.

A craft hawk moved into the railyard and started feeding on the local pigeon population. Because I’m a major nerd still deeply entrenched in my Roman Phase, I had to take a picture of the bird guts for later consultation.

Signs point to maybe.

Little purple socks for sale on my etsy store

I, um, launched an Etsy store today. For all your baby sock needs. D’oh!Mestic, the store.

If you’re a reader of a particular brand of LadyBlog, you could not have missed the Julie & Julia craze surrounding the movie release this summer. First came the promo stills of Meryl dressed up like Julia, and then came the usual biographical nuggets about about Mrs. Child (she was in the OSS! She didn’t get married until she was 36! She cooked!) followed by fistfuls of links to more mainstream fare, like the New York Times talking about the food styling, or a profile on the upcoming 50th anniversary of the book.

You would probably notice how, inevitably, in the comments section of those particular brands of LadyBlog, there would be the chorus of, “that’s great but — or should I say ‘butter?’” followed by 83 women chiming in about how Julia Was Great for Feminism, But I Would So Get Fat if I Tried to Cook Like That (Butter, Don’t Do It), or alternately, She Was Revolutionary For Her Time, But Alice Waters Says I Should Eat Local, And Besides, Julia’s Recipes Are Kind of Fussy (Also, Did I Mention the Butter?).

To which I hold up tonight’s meal as proof that those women are doing themselves a great disservice by not cracking open the copy of MtAoFC that Amazon shipped them three weeks ago (when we were belly-deep in the J&J hype) and make cream of mushroom soup.

Before today, on the off-chance that my mind flittered to the notion of mushroom soup, it went straight to the red-and-white can of condensed white glop that was added to some casserole recipe before the potato chips, but after the green chile. It was a base, never to be eaten by itself.

But the Capt’n likes cream of mushroom soup, and there it was, the fourth recipe in the book, and it was rainy today and I have this new green Le Creuset pot just aching to be put to use and what the hell? Soup.

An hour later, we had soup. It was amazing. It tasted just like cream of mushroom soup, but in its platonic ideal. There was no need for it to be baked with tuna and potato chips with a crunchy noodle crust. This soup had no time for such plebeian froofery. This soup is like the self-assured geek: a loner who knows that lesser folk have to have the crunch and the tuna, but this soup, this geek can stand alone and be taken straight up and be praised for it.

(I could be reaching.)

It was good, fine soup. I was impressed.

And yes, it had butter in it. It also had heavy cream, chicken stock and some onion. It also had flavor. And that’s when I started feeling bad for the LadyBlog chorus. It’s a mixture of pity and frustration, more like. Pity, because by turning up their noses at a perceived passing trend (I mean, dear lord, the movie has made made $85 worldwide! That’s so … plebeian!) and saying redonkulous things like “butter gives me cellulite” these women are cutting themselves out of the opportunity to have the satisfaction of making (and eating) a simple, yet profoundly tasty dish. Frustrating, because butter doesn’t cause cellulite.

And, really, Julia Child was a freakin’ member of the OSS. She was a spy. Who doesn’t want to get down with some of her recipes?

And butter is good. There, I said it.

(But this soup is so much better.)