Or, in the original Italian, "La seduzione ha un' anime soft."

It's been a long time--years--since I've done any stranded knitting, and since last fall the urge to try it again has been waxing and waning--but mostly the former.  Late last fall, I paid a visit to the

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Sure, I'm inspired by a particular yarn, by "stitchionaries," by just about anything, but really, it all comes down to the earrings.  Unlike some other knitters, I don't have a thing for shoes, nor socks (too many knitters

"Magari" is one of those words that you hear often when Italians converse, and it's one of those words which is hard to translate precisely into English.

No, I didn't knit this.  I purchased it at Barneys for way too much money--and then found an area next to one side seam where several stitches were unraveling.  (Rather than go to the trouble of trying to exchange it, I just fixed it).  I thi

Although I've been knitting furiously for the past week, little or none of it has been bloggable (bad news).  However, by next week, I should have 2 or 3 completed pattern submissions to send off to knitty in time for the deadline for their July issue (good news).  My limited experience with submissions for publication, whether print or online, has been that rejections are to be expected (bad news).  I've heard that knitty's editor, Amy Singer, at least lets you know quickly whether your pattern will be used (good news), and if NOT (bad news), then I will be posting those patterns here on my blog, instead (good news). I haven't given up on Chinese Lace, and the other day I was flipping through the yellowing pages of 1500 Patterns, a softcover "Knitting Encyclopedia" from Mon Tricot that I've had for about 20 years, when I found this.  Look familiar?  Aside from using k2togs instead of SSKs, it is a block of four pattern lines from Chinese Lace, and that lovely diagonal has me thinking I might resurrect this idea--or at least the mock wrap part of it, combined with C.L. sleeves.

in some ways.  For instance, when going on vacation, one must decide beforehand how to care for the blog, realizing that it must be fed regularly.  And since I don't have a laptop, and my compact digital camera is gone for repairs, that meant deciding ahead of time what to blog about, and emailing myself an image to insert, using the husband's ThinkPad.  Which means a certain loss of spontaneity...but I'll be home soon.  (How sick is that, longing to be home for easy blogging while sunning myself on South Beach?) Anyway.  I recently found this document between the pages of my beloved Treasury of Art Nouveau Design & Ornament.  It was created when I was in college--which, incidentally, was about when Eunny was born--yes, twenty-something years ago.  Kinda young for a person, kinda old for a throwaway piece of paper.  And I had to laugh, looking at it; it's sketches for the Boyfriend Hat and the Paisley Vest, two of my first original designs.  (Clearly I had no concerns at that time about too-long floats.)  The Paisley Vest was oversized, done in grey wool with cream paisleys in an allover pattern, and beloved among my post-college friends--so much so that I have no idea where it is now, it having embarked on a lending cycle from which it never returned.  I do remember that the V-neck pulled the paisley just below it out of shape, something which would be intolerable to me now. As for the Boyfriend Hat, picture a common stocking cap, and then lengthen it to about five feet--long enough to wrap around the neck--and then picture various colored stripes, each embellished with either a Fair Isle-style pattern, or a more personalized jacquard motif:  snowflakes (to commemorate our ski trips together); easter eggs (the first time I went home with him to meet the folks); tiger stripes (a nod to the alma mater); Plato's Retreat (no comment); waves (our trip to Cape Hatteras); and more that I can't, or won't, remember.  Unique?  Yes.  Hideous?  Perhaps.  I haven't seen it in many, many years, and although I remember it as being colorful and silly, not gag-inducing, we all know how memory can deceive us.  Finding these sketches did pique my curiosity:  just how bad was it?  So if you should spot it on a ski slope, or buried in your cousin's husband's closet, or bobbing down the aisle at the 7-11, please--let me know.   

It's one of those perfect winter days:  sweet sunshine and cobalt skies soon after a heavy snowfall, when the drifts are still clean and unmarked, and you can just tilt your chair back, turn your sunglassed face to the afternoon light, nurse your apres-ski draft, and watch the bunnies and the boarders to your heart's content.  Aaah... Oliver is a little young for the beer, but everything else--right up his alley! Inserting the zipper (by hand, not machine) turned out to be a breeze, but I do have a couple of questions regarding the fit:  I'm concerned that the neck opening will be a tad small, and the sleeves could probably have been roomier.  Unfortunately I have to send him off to his namesake in San Francisco before these questions can be answered, AND before I can get a photo of him with a warm body inside; he's too small for my peanut , and too big for the teddy bear.

A) Valentine's Day! B) A swimcap a la Esther Williams C) A strawberry D) Odessa?!  You poor thing, what did she do to you? E) All of the above Yes, but what is it, this delectable-slash-disturbing item?  Just a little Valentine's Day folly that I whipped up over the weekend, with both thanks (for a wonderful pattern) and apologies (for heinously hijacking said pattern) to Grumperina.  Thing is, I had these darling red rabillettes, and I was imagining a hat upon which they could swirl gracefully from brim to crown--and then I saw Odessa.  I have to admit that as I knitted, I was tempted to abandon the tacky aluminum hearts and work the hat as G. intended; it really is a lovely design, and the rabillettes tend to obscure rather than complement its graceful lines.  But, gosh darn it, those rabies tags sure are some silly fun!  Just ask the TS (teenaged stepdaughter), whose hat has inspired numerous comments, the best (so far) being "Does each of those come from some dead animal?"  (The answer, of course, is "No, just from my deranged ex-veterinarian stepmother.) Notes on Odessa:  I used Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (a slightly heavier yarn than the Rowan Cashsoft DK that the pattern calls for), decreased the number of pattern repeats from 11 to 9, and got a hat with an unstretched diameter of just under 16"; it's a little tight on me, but fits my nine-year-old perfectly.  As for the rabillettes, I spaced them more widely apart than the pattern calls for, and used a technique I believe I first saw in Lily Chin's Knit & Crochet With Beads; the holes in the tags are almost 3 mm. in diameter, so I didn't have to prestring--just used a crochet hook to pull a stitch through each tag as needed.