Real, Actual Knitting

Knitted goods continue to be popular at the Farmer's market (with only 3 weeks to go for me, since I'll be away for part of September). I need to finish another freakin' pirate hat (half done) and make a baby version, replace the football buttons on the brown sweater with girly blue ones, and finish this hat set before France and Brent of New Jersey swing back for it on Saturday. The hat is a variation of my standard pattern, using 72 stitches on 4 size 5 needles and an 18-stitch repeat of the feather & fan stitch. The baby mittens feature a small hole on one side so baby can suck her thumb without disrobing. But I also promised them booties or socks, so I need to find a quick, simple pattern that adapts to about 4.5 stitches per inch for about a 6 - 9 months size. If you've got anything like that in your collection, e-mail me. Otherwise, I feel a trip to Ravelry.com coming on.

Oh, and look what else I have going on! That's Glimmer from America's Angora and a truly luscious silk whose ballband is stuffed inside the ball right now, to be crafted this weekend into Eloping. I'm counting on the bride being too busy just now to see what I'm up to here!


Not much else to report. As far as I know, the invisible steer is still at large. Rick reports that the weather is wretchedly hot in Florida and he's drinking a gallon of Gatorade a day to try to stay hydrated. The project is not going as well as hoped, but he is bound and determined to be on that plane Friday evening and headed towards home!


Meanwhile, I'm 3/4 of the way through Escape by Carolyn Jessup. (I'm supposed to be reading 3 other books at present to prep for Lay Academy in two weeks - my excuse is that I have Escape on CD, so it's car time rather than reading time.) It's fascinating from a wide perspective, but I'm especially struck by how similar some of the theories and vocabulary related to the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints cult are to the Greater Grace World Outreach cult. The control of communication from the outside world; holding out the husband as the "godhead" or "covering" of the wife, or the guy who God has placed in spiritual authority over her; the need for adherents to the faith to believe rather than think; the disapproval of higher education other than the teachings of the church; and the way the whole group of believers could be instructed to believe that a certain style of dress or form of communication or line of thought was not only contrary to the philosophy of the group, but actually evil. Eerily familiar.