But Good.

“Like shit, but good” is the punch line to a hilarious story my grandfather used to tell. Some people are scarily good at remembering funny stories, and Paul Crosby was one of those people…had a card file in his head full of lines he’d haul out at the most inappropriate times. I’m pretty sure the story involved hunting a moose, but somehow the hunter ended up with a skunk. Certainly, with the metaphorically twisted "like shit, but good" punch line, it had to be a story straight out of the heart of Québec. Funnily enough, though, almost no one in my family remembers which story of his ends that way. We don’t really have to…all one of us has to do is say “Like shit, but good,” and the rest of us all smirk and nod, or if it’s muttered in public when it ought not to be, some of us spew beverages. We know exactly what we all mean, but none of us can explain it.

Writing a first post after a year and a half without blogging, especially for readers who haven’t been following me on Facebook, feels a lot like inviting you all back into a room where people are still laughing, but the joke's long gone. I run a serious risk of either overwhelming you with ninety-three jokes because I can’t remember which one goes with the punch line, or alienating you because hey, it was funny a year ago, and now I can’t explain it.

This is Lysander. He’s new on the scene, so he can’t explain it, either. Also, he’s eaten an entire bowful of nip, so you really don’t have to remember the joke. You’re hilarious just standing there.



So, where was I all this time? What the hell was my problem, anyway, ditching the old blog, starting fresh, and then not posting after such a rollicking, promising, oh-look-she’s-perilously-close-to-turning-her-life-inside-out-AGAIN start? Was I still writing? Still knitting and spinning? Did my history of diving first and asking questions later (which I fondly, and often blindly, refer to as “intuition”) come back to bite me in the ass? Did I know that Vogue Knitting’s Made In Canada readers are really tired of checking my blog link, only to find that damned sheep with the stuff on his face from a year and a half ago? Did I shave my head and take a vow of silence? Did I run that second marathon? What happened to the cute cartoonist? Was I stuck in customs prison for smuggling really tiny Gotlands over the Canadian border in my purse? Did I leave Montréal’s slanted three-flight staircase of chiropractic delight and my beloved running and knitting community behind to come home to New Hampshire? Did I wander into the family garden intending to harvest the last of the ugly tomatoes and accidentally eat the datura? Did Tig ever learn to tell a story from start to finish? Did I successfully hide a live sheep or five behind the manure pile in my dad’s garden? Also, what happened to the hot cartoonist?

A “like shit, but good” conundrum if ever there was one.

Tell you what: I’ll start with the most karmically intense, life-changing event that’s ever been granted to me, and we’ll go from there.

Three years ago, my best friend and first love, my childhood sweetheart, the only person who read as much as I did way back then, who would walk anywhere with me, would willingly read anything I wrote, and who made me laugh until my stomach hurt, responded to a hello with “I’ve been waiting thirty years for this moment.” Not a moment has passed since then that I don’t know, fully, that I am loved about as much as a person can possibly be loved, no matter where I’ve been, what my life has been like, what joys I’ve passed up in favour of turning myself into someone more acceptable, what wrong turns I’ve taken in the name of smoothing things over, what scars I’ve acquired along the way.

And last April, Justin Kane married me.



That’s what happened to the cartoonist.

Living in my hometown again after twenty-five years defies description. My parents are all here, right down the street, instead of six lonely hours and a nervous border crossing away. My inlaws are not just my parents but my friends: they make me think, and they make me laugh. My daughter goes to a school where there are still teachers I know, with the children of classmates of mine, and instead of being threatened with “special school,” she’s handling her learning struggles with real help on a daily basis, side by side with the rest of the kids. (Middle school is one big struggle, anyway, no matter what your learning profile.) Her English sounds French, so no, stories haven’t gotten easier to tell, but once in a while, this kid delivers a punch line that slays us all.

My husband and my kid. Walking punch lines, both of them.



There are so many stories down every single street in this town. A run anywhere here opens up the floodgate to memories, events pushed under by the matted riverweeds of early adulthood. Strangely, I recognize almost everyone’s face, though their names elude me unless I sit poring through yearbooks to search them out later, and even then, I don’t always remember. Sometimes I just think I know people, which makes me oddly brave. I’ll talk to anyone here. Still, I wander around a good part of the time feeling like I get the punch line, but dude, the story, she could be anything. And every few weeks, I run into an old friend. Town fairs are good for that. Voting, too. And school concerts. I have hugged and been hugged in public places more in the past year and a half that I’ve lived here than I have in the ten years previous. (Yes, by people I actually know.) And I’ve made new friends.

This one’s named Clover. I fed her by hand through much of last summer. Yes, she’s a porcupine. Don’t hold it against her. In fact, don’t hold anything against her. (Dude. Quills. Enough said.) She will, however, hold your hand with her paw while she eats, if you’re quiet and calm.



I have not run a second marathon, but I have run one of the toughest, most rewarding half-marathons I’ve ever run in my life, with more new friends: The Great Bay Half Marathon in Newmarket, NH. Hills. Nothing but hills. I loved it.

Best race I’ve ever run.



I have learned to fish. Obsessively. And I was the only member of the family to catch a striper this year, though it was too small to keep.

Damned fish keep swimming around the canoe. They’re taunting me.



I have also learned to garden. Obsessively, and on a grand scale. We grew a ton of vegetables this year, plus sunflowers that threatened to take over the universe, in a former hayfield behind my dad’s house. The infamous family garden where I have threatened to hide sheep.

The master gardener tells me there’s still time.



I have rediscovered the forests, oceanside cliffs, and mountains of my childhood, and climbed a few that were too big back then for me to scale. And now that I have my Three-Day Backpack Of Pocket-Rich Doom, I will carry forty pounds on my back practically anywhere.

I have officially become a peak-bagger.



I am writing, working from home on a variety of projects, with varying degrees of productivity.

Shackleton, our one-eyed smooshy-faced survivor cat, likes to help me.


Lysander is somewhat less helpful.



I’ve always been the person in the house who fixes things, and now that I live with someone who does the same, it’s tool heaven. I have demolished a porch front with a pulaski and rebuilt it. (A pulaski is a huge chisel-axe-like thing that is pretty much made for smashing stuff. Also, I just like to say “pulaski.”) I’ve stained more bookshelves than I’ve ever had before and we still don’t have enough for all the books we have together. I’ve patched my mechanic’s driveway when our truck’s gas tank bled out all over it (we ran over a deer, which tore a hole in the gas tank).

Doug, my mechanic, is out of photo range, asking my husband what planet I’m from. Loooong story, Doug. Note that the tool I am using here is called a "tampah." Not just a city in Florider, it turns out.



I have learned to whisper to cows. At the UNH Organic Dairy Research Barn, I have been, up until a couple of months ago when a few health issues derailed me, volunteering once a week, taking on any job my friend Emily Pavlidis, farmer extraordinaire and master cow whisperer, will give me. One of those jobs was to watch for hooves while she raced back from lunch…I got to assist in bringing a calf into the world. That was pretty wonderful, though it was a bull, which meant we couldn’t keep him at the farm. (Jersey bulls are mean, mean, mean, and with students around, not a very good idea, safety-wise.)

This little girl is named Blue. She's a kisser. If you thought my sheepy hair was bad, calf-kissed hair enters a whole new olfactory realm of Bad Hair Day.



I have been blessed with the opportunity to spend the last year and a half of my stepfather’s life close enough to him to really be there for him, and for that alone, I couldn’t be more grateful. Jim Kennedy was my second daddy, and my mother’s heart. Before I came home, I realized that if I could not have a relationship with someone who was truly my best friend, as my mother did, I didn’t want a relationship. Jim was a big factor in making sure that I not only knew what it looked like to have a loving marriage, but that I was able to come home to live it for myself. He spent the last year of his life in the hospital waiting for a heart, but the docs couldn’t find one big enough.

There isn’t a heart big enough for a man like Jim Kennedy. I miss him more than I can express.


I’ve come back home to return to far more than my family, my love, my town. I’ve come back to return to myself. It’s not a straightforward journey, that. Sometimes it’s incredibly tough. There are days where I run headlong into my old failures, opportunities lost, dreams ignored in favour of doing what I thought I was supposed to do. Days when I feel like I’m late to the gig, I’ve missed my entry, and the punch line isn’t all that funny anyway. Days where “like shit” stands all on its own and demands to be the life of the party.

Then I remember where I live now. No stilettos or flatiron in sight. I'll take this over nightclubbing any day of the week.



Most importantly, for me, there isn’t a day that can possibly stay “like shit” for long, when it starts and ends with this man.

But good, indeed.

You'd Tell Me, Wouldn't You?

Do I have stuff on my face?



This past May, I turned 44. I decided that, after years of not really celebrating the day at all, it's about time I did, and then I somehow managed to come down with the worst flu I've had in a long time, beginning right on the day of my birthday and lasting for a week. Still, I made up for it beforehand, spending three weekends in a row with probably the only person in the world who would reliably and honestly answer the question, "Do I have stuff on my face?" In fact, one of those weekends was spent shoveling truckloads of horse manure into our garden (we know how to live it up, eh?) so it's entirely possible that I did have stuff on my face. My aim with the shovel is terrible.

As I mentioned in my last post, I finally got to go to a sheep and wool festival, for the first time in several years. I went in my home state of New Hampshire, and, as many locals who suffered through the Great Mother's Day Washout a few years ago will attest, the day began in an auspicious and typically NH Sheep and Wool fashion:



But Tigidou and I, we have our Canadian Tire gumboots, and we are not to be deterred when there are lambies, kettle korn, and one of the best speakers of goat I have ever heard, at the end of that long drive, no, ma'am. We have ways of getting through such trials. First, there was the road coffee:



Then, there was the interpretive dance to Hell's Bells.

No, I'm not kidding.



It was quite something to behold. I'd show it to you, but I was driving and therefore unavailable to video the deeply expressive level to which one can take AC/DC. But Tig wanted you all to see just how impressed I was with her performance.

And then there was the U.S. customs officer who, when I said I was going to a sheep and wool festival, looked me straight in the eye and said, "You have sheeps up there in Canada?" I replied, "Yes, ma'am, Canada does, indeed, have sheep." She looked at me. I looked at her. Crickets. It finally dawned on me what she was asking. "No, I personally do not have any sheep, ma'am. My balcony is very small." "What will I find if I look in the back of your car?" "Um, probably not sheep."

(I am not known for my ability to finesse the customs experience.)

She got out of the booth and started bouncing the winter tires I had stored in the back of the car on the ground, trying to see if I was hiding anything in them. She swore a blue streak when she realised I had also bought winter wheels, which were ensconced in the tires. Massively heavy, those things...she gave up after two tires. I cannot express to you how tempting it was to baaaaaa each time she bounced a tire, but I resisted the urge. It nearly killed me. Later, at a Vermont rest stop, the kind attendant got to hear my "sheeps" story, and suggested that next time I tell her that I keep them in my purse. "They're very tiny sheep..."

We finally arrived at the fairgrounds, quite a bit later than we had intended, and after a bit of anxious and slightly road-fried cellphone discussion ("Just come in the Green Gate where the vendors are. Mel says you can park there." "I only see a sign for a Blue Gate." "You have to go a bit further, and turn right, and go around, and find..." "What right? I just see a sign for a Blue Gate. There is no Green Gate." "Oh, dear. Nevermind. Come in the Blue Gate. Just park and get out of the car and come In. The Blue. Gate. Please."), we landed ourselves safely in the arms of one very relieved festival-goer, accompanied by one of my very favourite knitterly people, swankily dressed in his self-created example of Icelandic gorgeousness:



Dr. Mel led us pretty much straight to the lambies, but not until I consumed my twice-a-year-like-shit-but-good-hotdog, as I was heavily encouraged to do something about my plummeting blood sugar. ("I'm fine! I don't need anything but coffee!" "Hey, look, a hotdog stand...you just stand right here and don't move, okay?")

Is that not a gorgeous sweater Mel is wearing? I love the addition of the nontraditional hit of blue. Beautiful. (No, I am not trying to change the subject. I ate the hotdog. All's well that ends well.)

Mel and Justin had already had time to circle the festival and stock up on coffee and doughnuts before I got there, so Mel and I went back around to find people I could leap on and hug and be deeply grateful to finally see after all these years, and Justin took Tigidou to a bead-felting workshop, which he ended up co-leading. By the time we caught up to them, the learning process was in full swing.

A really stellar teacher sits back a bit at first and withholds judgment, waiting to see what the kid thinks will work. It's always entertaining to watch that happen with my particular kid:



Yeah, okay, sooo...that probably works at the start, Tig, but maybe you might want to try this other process that we talked about a fair bit already...



Or, you know, you could always get the rabid herd of dinosaurs right over there behind you to help out. That'd be good. I hope you've had your shots.



Dinosaurs. Rabid ones. Right behind you.



Aha, got your attention, didn't I... Just kidding about the dinosaurs, Tig. But you might want to watch out for the wolverines...



Here, sweetiepie, have a grape leaf. I picked it just for you. No, honey, there are no wolverines behind you. Yet.



The learning process is a beautiful thing to behold.

We all thought that Tig's final creation was supposed to be a necklace, but she had other ideas. Unfortunately, she couldn't quite put them into practice without yanking out large hanks of hair:



So Justin offered to help out. He's still not sure what the heck she was trying to do with that thing, but made a few rather innovative guesses involving protection against marauding flocks of angry bats:



Dr. Mel, as he is wont to do, quietly observed the struggle, all the while assessing his next move:



The expert little-girl hair arranger stepped in. In two seconds flat, Mel did some kind of little ponytail flippy thingie we still can't replicate:



Right, yes, of course. What the hell did you do? Mel's not talking. Magic.



We then proceeded to fawn all over the critters, who were equally interested in us. This alpaca stomped right up to me to check me out:



I call her Janice. (No, not after Rabbitch, although the thought did occur to me to name one after her and just see how long it took to get back to her that I did. Nope, I'm talking about the lead guitar player of the Electric Mayhem on the Muppet Show. This paca looks just like her when she's doing her headbanging thing.)

And then there was the little brown and black lambie with the stuff on his face. You can see here how grateful he was that I told him about it. Either that, or my fingers look pretty much like the end of a bottle. Nom, nom, nom:



I did manage to find my one little treat for myself, the promised one-skein-only purchase. It had to be stunning, it had to speak to me, and I was pretty sure it had to come from Judy Jacobs at Ball and Skein.



Glissade, 100 grams of silk and merino beauteousness. It was only when I got closer that I realised that the colourway is named after our mutual friend Manise, who was supposed to name it and dragged her heels for so long coming up with a name that Judy just decided to call it Manise. There may be a Lee Ann in the works from Judy's dyepot, eventually. I have no idea what it will be, but I'm voting for variations on a theme of clear red. (Judy can do whatever she wants. I'm just thrilled I might go into her booth someday and see my name on a skein of yarn, because then I can turn to my beloved and say, "See? What did I tell you? This yarn has my name written ALL OVER IT!"

(Just as an aside, here's what you do when you forget to buy a ballwinder AGAIN and you're pretty sure that bringing a swift into the language specialist's office would mark you as a total weirdo. Who needs a swift when you've got knees?)



(Yeah, okay, so maybe I didn't avoid the weirdo label after all. We can't all be models of sanity.)

Anyway, after a fantastic day at NH Sheep and Wool, seeing lots of people I love, fondling fibre and snuggling various farm animals, and watching my little family have an equally wonderful time, the only thing stuck on my face was a huge, albeit tired, grin.

Also, a little bit of kettle korn, no doubt. That stuff is addictive.

I have lots of news to share in the next few weeks, but until then, as a small person I know likes to say around here, keep it up, sheepie butt!

You Say Goodbye, and I Say Hello.

Not too very long ago, I realised that in order to pay for a move, a divorce, and a very big life change that I will go into a little bit more when the time is right, I would have to have what you might call a Holy Crap, I Owe What?!? Sale. (Okay, maybe you'd call it a Stash Sale, but it was a little bit more dire than that, and I swear a lot.) It turns out that changing your life in very positive ways can have a very negative effect on your bank account. I cast my eye about, wondering what I could sell (don't worry, the kid and the cat are still here).

Soooo...I decided that I had to sell my beloved Martin OM42 acoustic guitar. (It just sold today, to a really nice guy in Ontario who will play it well and often. I'm trying not to be brokenhearted about it.) I also looked into the stash situation (I know!), which was...I admit it...a Definitive Situation. And then I wondered how in hell I was going to sell all that yarn and spinning wool, given that I don't sleep much already, I'm not exactly adept at figuring out stuff like eBay and (clearly) blogging about it, and I hate saying goodbye.

Enter one of the most wonderful women you could ever hope to call friend, Norma of Now Norma Knits. Not only did Norma take on about three quarters of my existing stash (I kept a bit of it), but she labeled all of my photos, posted everything on eBay, handled the bidding, the questions from bidders, and the resulting shipping, blogged multiple times about it, and managed to raise ALL of the money I needed to pay off the big move. With Norma at the helm, the fiber arts community came through for me in a way I could never have anticipated, given that I've been gone from the blogging scene for years now. I still don't know how to thank her, except for to pay it forward whenever I can. Her response? "Seeing you smile at a sheep and wool festival is all the payback I need."

Well, Norma, honey, you're about to get your payback. (Bet you never thought you'd be happy to hear that phrase, eh, sweetie?) Norma has sustained a running-related injury that might just sideline her for the NH Sheep and Wool Festival, but that won't stop me. That's what a willing partner-in-wool with a camera is for, and Norma lives not too far from me, so I will be finding her some kind of little treat at the festival, to be delivered by hand, with a big ol' smile and an enormous hug.

Yes, you read that right: I am actually going to attend a sheep and wool festival for the first time in I don't know how many years, and no one's life is going to be ruined in the process. (But, you know, I'm not bitter.) I'm very excited to get the chance to see so many people that have been blog readers and friends over the years, and whose own blog posts I've been gradually returning to as of late.

In the meanwhile, someone's been busy thinking of me and my somewhat traumatic just-close-your-eyes-and-get-rid-of-it experience. And that someone (whose name is Rachel, but they didn't tell me which Rachel, though I suspect it's you, sweetpea) overheard me drooling over some gorgeous BFL/silk blend fiber in Shamrock from the Cupcake Fiber Company. (I know. Mixed metaphor. But you'll drool loudly too when you get a look at this stuff.)

A box arrived at Justin's house, and he brought it with him when we took Tigidou down to Rhode Island to splash about in the waves. (Well, I splashed about in the waves while Justin and Tig looked at me like I'd completely lost my everloving mind. April ocean swims are not for the faint of heart, dude.)

So, when I arrived in Rhode Island after a four-hour border wait and a really long drive, he told me to "go and take a look at that box over there on the couch, would you," refused to tell me exactly how he was involved with this venture, and wouldn't name the giver of the gift. ("I am not at liberty to say" appears to be a phrase I will hear often, followed by wicked good surprises. I'm okay with that.)



Well, hellooooo, gorgeousness. If you ever, ever, ever get a chance to have some of this stuff, jump at it. The softness is not to be believed, and honey, don't just leave it in the cute cupcake box, tempting though it may be, because it really is cute. Pull out a batt and snuggle it. Put your face right in it (still smells a bit sheepy, and it's wonderful). Stuff it in your shirt and marvel at how it not only does not itch, but might want to live there for, say, the next several hours. (Okay, that might just be me that does that.) Revel in it, because this stuff is totally revel-worthy. I can't wait to spin it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Rachel who is not to be identified by Justin because he promised, and the Cupcake Fiber Company, for sending me a wonderful little note with the fiber and for making such gorgeous fluff.



And while I'm linking to beautiful people and things they create, I'd like to thank Ms. Uli Ross for making the only thing that I've ever found to prevent me from losing my housekeys. She does chainmaille jewelry (gorgeous stuff) and keychains, and her Celtic Star keychain is my saving grace. I can lose keys in the space of less than a minute, especially if I put them where they are supposed to go, in my purse, also known as the Endless Pit of Receipts and Other Doomed Items (Oh, Hey, Wow, My Glasses!).

But with this keychain, because it's so damned fun to play with, tactile people like me get to know what it's like in the hand, and then it will NEVER get lost in that purse. I just stick my hand into that sea of receipts and (oh, hey, wow, my glasses!) feel around in there, et voilà, keychain, ergo, keys! It's awesome.



The bracelet is also one of her creations: little beads on loops, placed one by one. Beautiful, and really fun to wear...makes a great fidgeting foil if you're trying not to look bored in public. Here it is again, in the wild.(Okay, actually, it is stuck in border traffic, but it's reeeally pretty in the sun that will go down and I will STILL not be across yet...)



This community rocks, and I feel priveleged to be a part of it. The next post will be full of cute sheepy butt pictures, and I'm hoping to do a little show-and-tell of my first fleece-to-knit experience as well. Justin's been practising with a Forrester spindle I let him borrow, so if you see a very earnest-looking man trying to spin and walk at the same time, followed by a kid who keeps asking for food that sticks to things and a woman who is not much taller than the kid and can't be easily spotted anyway because she keeps getting sucked into the wheel booths, that'll be us. Please do say hello, and tell Justin he's doing great. He is, and would do better if he actually let go of the spindle, but...we all gots to start somewhere, no?

Indeed, we do.

Welcome to Knot Good! Try the lamb.

It's been a long time, not blogging, and I've got the first-post jitters. It's always difficult to know how to start a brand new blog's first post, especially since I'm coming off a couple of years of silence, and some of you may know me from my previous blog, Fuzzy Logic. You may be wondering if I'm going to do the same thing you liked in the other blog. Meanwhile, I'm still futzing about in the window's reflection, wondering if I should have worn the other shoes, and we're both anxious to see what the first wardrobe malfunction will be. I'm hoping this blog won't just be Fuzzy Logic with crazier hair.



(As a side note, Ted Myatt, of Knitterguy fame, designed and knit the stole I'm wearing here, just for me, to boost me up when I was going through rough times. It's a marvel of Shetland gorgeousness, he's the most talented lace knitter I know, and I'm so lucky to be able to wear his work.)

So, who knows if you'll want to stick around the same way you did with the old blog, but I hope you'll enjoy what I plan to do here. To welcome us both—me as your host and you as my readers (all three of you!)—here's a little preview of what to expect from Knot Good.

First and foremost, Fuzzy Logic is dead. It is not resting, nor is it stunned. It is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker...you know the drill. Fuzzy Logic is an Ex-Blog. You can't visit it. You can't even nail it to the perch. Trust me, it's better that way.

I know, it's sad. But I still have photos of the heinous things I made for my daughter, at her request, when she was young. I still have a tendency to spin in public and freak people out. I still swear. (I know, I know. Motherhood is not the grand profanity eraser it's cracked up to be.) And I still have an enormous scar running down the side of my head from the Great Head-Opening Experiment. The rest, well...

I've had to move on. You'll note that my last name has changed. That's my maiden name, and it's the name I'll keep. In the interest of not dredging up the past or harming anyone, especially those I love, I would prefer not to answer questions about anything personal from the Fuzzy Logic era, unless you want to know basic fibre-related (or close) details, such as the gauge the surgeon got when he stapled my head back together. (5 staples to the inch. Worsted-weight stapling. Standard stuff.)

If you're coming here for the first time and you have absolutely no freaking clue what I'm going on about, I sympathise. I sometimes have the same problem.

Let me introduce myself: I'm Lee Ann Dalton, and I'm a knitter, a spinner, a poet, a writer, an editor, a Vogue Knitting columnist, a mother, a partner, and a diehard supporter of the serial comma. (Also, I don't sleep much.) The only thing you've missed was the surprise craniotomy. Trust me, it's a good thing for you to have missed. It was a little rough on the hairdo, I'm still slightly klutzy and have to write everything down, and I'm a tiny bit misshapen, skull-wise, if you look very, very close. Other than that, I'm okay. The aneurysm is gone. You can see the clamp using an airport scanner, but I have yet to be accused of being a brain terrorist. (There's still time.)

Part of my moving on has also involved becoming an athlete. (Holy hell, did I really just say that? Yes, I guess I did...). You'll hear a fair bit about fibre arts here, but you'll also be witness to my ever-developing adventure as a runner. When I was a kid, I was the very last person to cross any finish line and the very first person to huck up a lung in the process. As an adult, I struggled to include some kind of exercise in my life, and wasn't so successful at sticking to it. But after the surgery and a few other awful life-moments, I started running.

It was a slow process, becoming a runner. I went from stress-reduction flailing around the block at midnight, hoping that no one would see me cry or, worse, jiggle, to running a full marathon in the fall of 2010. 4:59. My surgeon could hardly believe I even bothered to run the full block, but there you go. I'm wicked stubborn, and anything I can do to get the neurons to keep speaking to each other helps a lot. It nearly killed me to finish the marathon, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.



In fact, this summer, I will do it again. In July, heaven help me and the creek don't rise, I will run the Mad Marathon. I'm not a fast runner, but by god, I can go long. Mind you, with all the life-changing I'm doing this year, I'm giving myself the "out" of transferring to the half-marathon. A half requires far less of the mental game of "Noooooo, I am not going to sit on this curb and cry..." and I may need that option. Big changes ahead.

Some of you may remember Twinkletoes. She's moved on, too, namewise, and prefers to be called variations on a theme of Tigidou, which means a-okay in Quebecois. She is big enough to wear my clothes. My red jeans have been missing for weeks. But the knitting for the Tigger? Not so much of that. Everything still itches, so we're sticking to polar fleece and fake fur for now. I'm still hopeful that we'll turn her on to knitting, though, and then she can pick any yarny variation on a theme of Pretty Pony Puke she wants.

I still knit, and I've even washed, combed, spun, and knit up a hogget CVM fleece into various little items. There will be more of that featured on this blog, for certain, because it's a very rewarding experience to go from shit-laden fleece to a delicate little lace bookmark. And someday, I'll learn to shear so that I can go from shearing to sweater. I'll keep you posted on the progress with various sharp instruments. I don't have such a good reputation with them, as they have tended to land me in the emergency room, but I'm working on that.



Another feature I am extremely happy to have here is the occasional cartoon. Some of the little sheepies you will see scattered around the blog are drawn by none other than Tigidou. (You'll know them by the little T next to each one. She wants to help me with the design. We're a family-run operation around here. I just have to cover her eyes and ears when I swear. All her unused knitwear is really good for that.)

The full cartoons, and a few other little sheepie tidbits besides, are drawn by the very talented and ridiculously funny Justin Kane. He picked up a pencil one day recently and, much to his surprise, drew my blog banner. (He was aware that he was drawing, thankfully. He just had no idea he'd also be roped into being my permanent illustrator with that one little cartoon.) I'll be featuring a Kane cartoon on the blog on a regular basis. Side benefit: he doesn't understand why anyone wouldn't wear wool. SCORE! I'll be stash-spinning and knitting for him for a long, long time. Especially since he knows the importance of posing to show the decreases. Take a bow, Jus...



I will be periodically singing the praises of artisans whose products and creations I love and use (Yes, really. No one's giving me anything to advertise, and if I talk about it, it's because I bought it and I love it. I like supporting small farms, independent artisans, and other creative types who are trying to make a living via their craft). I'll also do the occasional fibre arts book review, with my usual smartass approach. And I'll be announcing fibre events that may not get much publicity (and didn't make the deadline for the column I write).

Finally, I plan to test-drive various ways to create new knitters. I've got two unwitting victims highly enthusiastic total beginners: one who has tried before and just couldn't get it, and one who mentioned one day that he might like to learn to knit. (He'll either live to regret it or discover that it prevents him from falling asleep in places he ought not to, which is really handy. Either way, the freezer is going to end up full of wool. I just know it.)

This is going to be fun. I'm happy to still be kicking around, and it's good to see you again. So, why "Knot Good?" I'm glad you asked.



Honey, life is too short to come unstrung thanks to a crappy knot. And when it comes to being "good," I am, clearly,...

Knot. (Rimshot.) Welcome aboard. We'll be here all week. Don't forget your waitress.