Some things are lovely:

And some things are charming:

And some things are downright quizzical

Until you figure out how to look at them

and how they need changing.

I felted the first knitting machine created swatch, and I fell in love with it.  It makes me think of this chunk of Patrick Kavanagh poetry:

O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.

(from Canal Bank Walk )

Which leads me right into “O commemorate me where there is water,/Canal water preferably, so stilly/ Greeny at the heart of summer.  Brother/ Commemorate me thus beautifully . . .” because I was trained up right.  And that will lead me into thinking of the bench with which they did commemorate old Paddy K, because sometimes folks really do get the fine things they deserve.  And that will lead me into thinking on James Still and his cabin . . . But I digress.

I went into a charming little kitchen shop in Middleburg with my charming Mom and my charming Sister-in-law, and I walked out with one charming knitting bag.  I might go so far as to call it cute-schmoot if I hadn’t just had Paddy Kavanagh rolling around in my brain.  I mean, sometimes all the book learning shames the goofiness right out of me.  For a second or two, at least.

Jayme and Jill helped me do some math on Wednesday, so I was able to knit a brim onto that quizzical object.  I had hemmed and hawed about how best to do the increases, but they came up with the right way pretty quickly.  It has some serious shrinking to do, oh yes it does.  I hope the felt ends up relatively stiff.  If not, I can wire the brim.

The knitting machine has been giving me some serious guff.  Post swatching, I set it up to start on a huge piece of knitting that I plan to stitch up into a bag to felt for el presidente.  But the machine got hella bratty when I had about 12 inches of mottled green knitting hanging from it.  The last three rows I knitted made me think a lot about how nice it would feel to hit my new knitting machine many many times with a maul, or maybe an adze, or just a nice heavy sledgehammer.  So I decided to pull that first chunk off and set it aside, and maybe do the body of the bag in two sections rather than one.  I’m sure some kind person out there in cyberspace can tell me why the contraption turned contrary.  If not, there is a kind person who will lend me a chainsaw and maybe some white fuel and a lighter.

Now, well, is the quazi-religious portion of the blogging.  In case you didn’t know, Sunday was fry-day (Fries will not sustain a tyrant!).  I’ll blame Mr. Mike for the institution of Fry-day.  I don’t know whether he actually started it, but it’s been going on for way longer than a decade, and over a decade ago, most of us were still basically kids and thus unlikely to follow through with such a cracked plan.  Mr. Mike seemed to institutionalize Fry-Day, turning it into, well, an  institution for nutbags.  He encouraged us all to take part in his insanity.  He encouraged us to cut potatoes and boil oil in the hot August sun as if we were on KP duty when we were actually on vacation.  Fry-day is almost never held on a Friday.  Its celebration is sacred.  It is a moveable feast in the truest sense of the word.  To celebrate Fry-day, well, you fry lots of stuff.  But to match the spirit of the holiday, the frying has to be truly inconvenient and preferably way over the top.  Making french fries in your fry-daddy?  Not Fry-day.  Frying a whole boar in Antarctica with only q-tips and Cheetos for fuel?  You have learned well, Grasshopper.  Here is your sacred skimmer.

In the early years, we just made french fries while we were camping.  You have no idea what a pain it was.  Then we got better camp stoves and made fries and onion rings and doughnuts and chicken nuggets.  You have no idea what a horrendous pain that was.  But every time we celebrated Fry-day, we were ended up making friends with other folks camping nearby, so we kept at it.  Yesterday, since Dobbs was in town from California, we fried chicken nuggets, and risotto-mozzarella balls, and fries, and sweet potato fries, and pierogies, and then we got serious.  We tempura-ed shrimp and string beans and onions and sweet potatoes.  And then we lost touch with all our mamas’ rules and fried twinkies and snickers and almond joys and cheesecake.   You have no idea what a pain it was.  My house smells like a Chinese restaurant even though we made no Chinese food.  But I managed to keep anyone from frying a) themselves or any parts there-of; b) any of the kids or pets; c) any of inedible possessions; and d) ice-cubes or any of the other things that make grease fires so attainable.

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