the Village Knittiot

This morning in my inbox was an e-mail from Amy Krause Rosenthal. She wrote the book Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life which some of you may remember me writing some awfully nice things about earlier this summer. It is also the inspiration for the “Encyclopedic 100 Things About Me” (B is forthcoming — who knew it would be such a troublesome letter?). In the middle of her book at a couple of points she does some really neat interactive things that tie into her website. One of them was to ask readers to submit their own “Purple Flower Moments.” If you don’t know what that is, you’ll have to read the book, or at least pick it up in the bookstore and flip to “P” and read it. Her offer was a pie to the 100th person to do so, and in good form, she followed through on it. I wasn’t the 100th person, but she so liked what I wrote that she sent me an email, which basically said, she doesn’t usually respond to the Purple Flower Moments, but that she had to tell me how much she enjoyed reading what I wrote. I am pleased beyond words. When a “real” writer likes your stuff enough to take the time to e-mail you and say so, it sort of puts a little spring in your step. Especially since I was so critical of what I wrote after I submitted it. They actually post the submissions on her website, and mine was on the front page for a few days and everytime I looked at it, I just saw only what was wrong. I think I am going to take a vacation from criticism for a little while in honor of praise.

Wonderful knitterly moments are happening these days as well. Mi madre was visiting over the long fourth of July weekend (don’t worry, I will spare you the blurry photos of us knitting in our matching pajamas — yes, we have matching pajamas, don’t ask) and the only somewhat decent local yarn shop was having an insane sale where I got 30% off enough purple Rowan cotton glace to make a sweater. The picture makes it look like stockinette stitch, but it is really moss stitch — almost as boring, but it is nice to have some mindless knitting to breakup the lace merino shawl I am still working on. This is my first project using cotton and even though some people have tried to scare me about knitting with cotton, it has actually been wonderful.

Really though, isn’t this my second sweater this year in about the same shade of purple? Perhaps it is time to branch out…

I also got my very first pair of Addi Turbos and my hands are so happy I feel as if I have a new lease on knitting. It will be a long time before I buy anything else. Brand loyalty? Only when they deserve it.

Finally, I feel I must insert a brief apology to mi profesora de espanol. I posted my (very valid) irritation with her in the previous entry without at least giving a nod to her intelligence, passion and kindness. If I had been in her position, I probably would have resorted to arbitrary acts of unassigned homework inspection too in an attempt to get the ninos perezosos to do something. She turned out to be such a fantastic teacher that I wish she was teaching my next section — which starts at the end of August, but has a less crazy schedule.

Anyway, more later. It’s nice to be back…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 at 5:53 am and is filed under this Knittiot Life, this Writing Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.