Happy Halloween

This time of year will always allow me to remember fond times in my childhood.

A Child's Time
As my breeding friends send me pictures of their adorable children wearing a lion costume, or dressed up like the little mermaid, I find myself enjoying a lovely reminiscence of my childhood at Halloween time. From the ages 5 to 10, I grew up in a small town about 20 miles West of Boston, called West Medway. It was as close to Mayberry that a New England town could come to. We had a drug store down the street with a real soda fountain, where the counter person actually made sodas. I was always a big fan of cherry Cokes. They also sold penny candy.

A little further down the road was the local barber and then slightly further, the town park. We played little league, fished, swam, did crafts, and caught bullfrogs at this lovely park. It was a pretty idyllic place.

Halloween was always fun, running from neighborhood to neighborhood, trying to fill up my trick or treat bag as quickly as possible. I am glad to have had such a carefree place in which to grow up.

Current Knitting
I finished another mitered square on Aunt Dorothy's Jacket.



This is coming along nicely. My only concerns right now are the amount of yarn I have, and if the fabric will be stiff enough for a nice jacket. It will certainly be warm and soft enough.

A Knitting Magazine Renaissance???
Folks are seemingly quite excited about the preview for the upcoming Interweave Knit magazine.

I'm not so sure. I love that Eunny's design got published. It looks spectacular, and the Shirley Paden design looks quite fine as well. It's also nice to not see more capelets and fur-ball ponchos.

I picked up an actual copy of the latest Vogue Knitting, and it's better than it has been in the recent past.



Mostly, it's better not because there are more great designs...in my opinion, this issue includes about the same number of good designs as the last couple of year's worth of magazines. It's better because like IK, they're not including as many dreadful designs.

This issue of Vogue has 36 pattern designs for US$5.99. Of the 36, I found six that I liked quite a bit, and only two dreadful designs. There is a Koigu design in this issue that has caught a lot of knitters attention, and I have to admit, I don't like it at all. I have always said that the Koigu ladies make incredible yarn, but aren't very good at putting it to good use. I personally think they should focus on their amazing talent of creating awesome yarns and let other folks design with it.

Here are the five garments I liked a lot:

1. Sandi Prosser's Mimosa Cashmere Pullover - Amazing textures and innovative design
2. Shirley Paden's Bell-Cuffed Cardigan - Not ususally my style, but even the ruffled collar looks great. All the components of the design work well together.
3. Sasha Kagan's Tapestry-like scarf - Perfectly Sasha, perfectly beautiful. I think I will actually try making this design.
4. Vladimir Teriokhin's Cabled Twin Set - He puts Lana Grossa's Cool Wool to good use in this interesting strap shoulder, cabled design with matching cardigan. Just lovely.
5. Brandon Mably's Lava Pullover - Brandon continues to come out with spectacular colorways with this stunning example of color design.
6. Mari Lynn Patrick's Short Sleeve Cardigan - Glad to see she can make nice designs as well. Mostly, I thought she used a beautiful yarn in a beautiful color and made a good sweater with it.

I'll let readers pick their own dreadful designs.

Readers' Comments/Questions
Cynthia writes, "Sick for a few days with the flu and missed the entire "queer" issue. Please post the name of the on-line community so I can be sure not to support them without knowing it."

I'd prefer not to name the group. The correspondence I had with the moderator was one of respectful disagreement, and her bigotry was one of ignorance, rather than purposeful hatred. If you ever happen upon this forum or others like it, you'll be able to figure it out yourself, I think.

On the same topic, AuntieAnn writes, "Joe, one more comment on the forum that wanted you to change your name -- I am curious whether they censored other names that might refer to sex or sexual orientation or preference in any way -- would they also censor 'StraightJoe', 'HeteroAnnie', or 'LikesBlondes'?"

I was told by the moderator that they had made someone else change their screen name because it included "wench." Although I found it kind of odd that the moderator's screen name ended with "-aholic" and that wasn't an issue too delicate for children under ten to deal with.