Festivus - A Wrap for the Rest of Us!

There's a party goin' on right here
A celebration to last throughout the years
So bring your good times, and your laughter too
We gonna celebrate your party with you

Come on now

Celebration
Let's all celebrate and have a good time
Celebration
We gonna celebrate and have a good time

- Kool & the Gang

According to Wikipedia, "Festivus is an annual holiday created by writer Dan O'Keefe and introduced into popular culture by his son Daniel, a scriptwriter for the TV show Seinfeld.

The holiday includes novel practices such as the "Airing of Grievances", in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. Also, after the Festivus meal, the "Feats of Strength" are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned. These conventions originated with the TV episode."

But I knew that.

What I didn't know, was that it is celebrated as an actual holiday and pre-dates the Seinfeld show that brought it to the public's attention.

Turns out the show's writer - Daniel O'Keefe - has published a book The Real Festivus, which provides a first-person account of an early version of the Festivus holiday as celebrated by the O'Keefe family, and how O'Keefe amended or replaced details of his father's invention to create the Seinfeld episode.

And that's not all.

There is another book called Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us, that chronicles the spread of Festivus in the real world. It even has a website, people!

Little did I realize the depth and serious nature of this nomenclature, when I chose it for my latest pattern.

Silly me...

FESTIVUS WRAP $4

SIZE:
24 inches wide by 72 inches long


MATERIALS:
6 balls (816 yds.) Noro Silk Garden Lite
or other DK weight yarn
Color: 2048
Size 7 (US) needles

GAUGE:
Approx. 4 stitches = 1 inch (blocked)

SUITABLE FOR THE BEGINNING LACE KNITTER
CHARTED AND WRITTEN DIRECTIONS

I used a yarnover/SSK pattern with a zigzag built in. Kept the pattern simple, so it doesn’t overwhelm the color change. Yet it has strong enough lines that the yarn doesn’t obscure the pattern.

I made mine in the Silk Garden Lite, but you could easily substitute regular Silk Garden or Kureyon, swap the needle up a couple sizes and decrease the number of repeats.

OR...

You could use one of Noro's sock yarns instead, use a smaller needle, and make it a scarf!

So many ways to celebrate...

Festivus - for the rest of us!

Catchy...

No(ro) Time Like the Present

"We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's."
-Henry Ward Beecher

Isn't that a fascinating quote to ponder today? I'm not quite sure I ever thought of it that way.

Of course, it is all too true.

DH is out of town this week, down in Huntsville AL at a training session for his job. So I stayed up too late knitting last night.

But look at how much I accomplished!

Just last week, it looked like this:

Just goes to show, you never really know what your children are going to grow up to become!

The pattern just wasn't making the best use of the spectacular color runs of the Silk Garden Lite. But I wanted to keep this project on the simple side.


An easily memorized 6 stitch, 14 row mosaic pattern does the trick. You get the complex look of Fair Isle with half - one third - nowhere NEAR the effort! Clever yarn!

She doesn't have a name yet - any suggestions?

Note added later: Too late! I christened her "Byzantine" for the colorful mosaics found in Byzantine churches.

Meanwhile, Festivus is ready for her bath and a little stretch to knock out the kinks. Look for her tomorrow.


Not every ball of Noro is so flamboyant. This understated little fellow is waiting on additional yarn. As you can see in this pic, the dreaded Noro knot rendered the pattern indistinguishable at the top.

His time will come soon enough.

Last night, as I knit, I watched the late movie on AMC: The Game, with Michael Douglas. Michael Douglas plays Nicholas Van Horton, a very successful and lonely business tycoon, whose brother gives him a very unusual birthday present.

I won't go too deeply into the plot (would take forever - very convoluted) but the upshot is that Nick learns how to live in the present, because everything spirals so far out of control that he has no choice, but to react.

And, in the end, that IS the gift. The complete unsettling of his routine breaks the bonds that hem him in and sets him free to experience life more adventurously, more fully...

More presently.

Sometimes I think I am somehow deficient or less than an adult, because I live so fully in the present. My work demands it. Thinking about next month, or next year, while you are knitting a complex pattern is asking for it.

"It" being dropped stitches, unintentional "K2tog"s, wonky patterns, one-offs, and frog ponds.

Sometimes I think I should worry more about the future.

• Will my eyes hold up?
• Will my patterns keep selling?
• Will I run out of things to say?
• How will I cope if Scott dies first?
• If I do?
• What does tomorrow hold, that I should be preparing for today?

I used to worry about those things all the time. Now I just shove them back into the closet and slam the door behind them. I can't answer them, so why waste my enjoyment of life on them?

I am never happier than when fully present in the moment, whether I am knitting, playing with Conner, spending time with my husband, or listening to God.

John Lennon had it exactly right when he wrote, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."

Sometimes, we need those plans to go awry.

Sometimes, we need to let go of our perceived realities.

Sometimes, we need to let the yarn, the beloved, the truth, or the moment tell us where to go and what the pattern looks like.

I do not design. I let the design flow through me.

I do not drive. I let the road take me where it will.

Trying to wrest the wheel into my hands would surely lead to disaster.

Might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.

Crush

"I've got a crush on you, sweetie pie.
All the day and night-time, give me sigh...
I never had the least notion that
I could fall with so much emotion..

Could you coo, could you care?
For a cunning cottage
That we could share?
The world will pardon my mush...
Cause I have got a crush, my baby, on you!"

- Frank Sinatra

I'm getting that old, familiar feeling...

The one where it's hard to breathe...

I want to giggle every time I look at him it...

Which I do all the time...

As if I think he it will have changed somehow in the interim...

You know, gotten even more gorgeous than the last time you gazed adoringly at his its handsome face...


This is Yuzen by Noro, color number 5. Such a prosaic name for the object of my affection...

So, what should I call it?

It's this gorgeous hunky tweedy thing.

It's got enough heft to be manly, but it isn't afraid to show its softer side.

And I finally found the perfect stitch for it.

Cause even the most gorgeous man yarn has to get out of bed eventually and put on some clothes pattern.

If I turn my flash off you can really see the depth of the crosshatch pattern.


More of this current obsession is to be delivered in a matter of hours - Squee!

No name yet - I suppose calling it "Hunk" wouldn't be the bestselling idea...

But it would be accurate.

In the meantime I will just have to amuse myself with this fun and easy slip stitch pattern for Silk Garden Lite - color 2014.



And gaze lovingly at what the US mail dropped on my doorstep this morning:

Two gorgeous skeins of Blue Moon LSS (luscious single silk) in Valkyrie, for a future project of the same name.

Maybe you better make that a cottage for three...four...maybe more...

Keep it simple

"Simplicity is nature's first step, and the last of art."
-Philip James Bailey

Think of it as a very LARGE swatch...

I used a yarnover/SSK pattern with a zigzag built in.


Wanted to keep the pattern simple so it doesn't overwhelm the color change.

Wanted it to have strong enough lines that the yarn didn't obscure the pattern.

We'll see how it looks once it is off the blocking board...

Mendhi comes out next week, and Rose the week after.

Busy,busy, busy...

!!STASH SALE TOMORROW!!