Friends with iPhones

Buffy, I wish I could be there to see you at your Kaffe Fassett Romeo & Juliet Coat World Premiere Wednesday night. All eyes will be on you, and lots of phone cameras, too.


If 20 pictures of Natalie Portman exiting the subway in New York City can be posted as a group on the net (with the most amazing white scarf that Ravelers are trying to reengineer), then we deserve to have even more pictures of you and your coat at the opera.

Handy technique that you used for your band: It's easy to forget that it is the working needle that determines the stitch size. I have used that technique with my interchangeable circulars when I could only find one of a pair of tips. I would just use a tip one size smaller on the other, nonworking end.

Being a mathematician, you have no doubt heard of the "double occurrence" phenomenon. You would think that the New Jersey woman who won the million dollar lottery in the 1980s would not win again, but she did, the very next week or two. The double occurrence happens with greater frequency that you would think. I thought of that yesterday when my old dalmatain dog again chewed a Long Leaf Coat color key card within an hour of it's completion.

So I've put the newest cards into a plastic sleeve. With a nod to Conan O'Brien,  the event will not occur thrice.

Opera night "Coming Out" for Romeo & Juliet!

Hi LuLu,
The next deadline is fast approaching: ONLY FOUR DAYS till my opera night at "The Barber of Seville," and the long red coat's FORMAL DEBUT! The weather forecast calls for a low of 34F (+1C), so I'll be able to make it to the door of the opera house without fainting.

The sleeves are completed and blocked (just need to be sewn in).

The hem is turned and slip-stitched in place.

As called for in the pattern , I've picked up stitches all around the opening using all three of my #9 (US) circular needles: up the front edge, around the neck, and back down the other side. I haven't counted the stitches...maybe 200?

Of course, I also need a #9 to knit the stitches OFF, so at the beginning of each row, I slip the last set of stitches onto a #8, freeing up a #9 to knit the row. Three rows of stockinette, then two consecutive knitted rows (to make a ridge for a hem), then 8 rows more of SS and bind off.

Woohoo -- nearly done! Buffy

New color key for Kaffe's LLC

Buffy, here's the new key for Kaffe's Long Leaf Coat.

Always keep more than one work-in-progress going. When I misread the sock pattern that I started last night and realized I had to take out a few rows, it was easy for me to jump right back to Kaffe's LLC, make a new key, and start the next row. When you are presented with a lemon, switch WIPs!

Bad dog!

Buffy, the dog ate my homework. The 34 colors (but for big "E" and little "e") were keyed onto two index cards. My old dalmatian Halliburton must have thought that the bits of yarn would be tasty. Here's what's left.

I'll make new keys in the morning when the light is good and the colors are easily distinguished from one another. Most yarns are in the keyed slots of my yarn box, and all are in their own well-marked ziplock bags in an aluminum sorting file, so it will be quickly done.

Tonight I'll just begin a new sock project. Sounds like fun!

Kaffe's Long Leaf Coat Mashup

Buffy, a little of this and a little of that makes for a most colorful coat. The other Long Leaf Coats on Ravelry have been inspirational, and each is unique. Some have subtle color changes; others are the opposite. Just like the color changes in nature's trees, some color changes can be jarring, some restful. Most take your breath away.

I like to think of my Long Leaf Coat as a mashup of colors. There are 34 unique yarns in the pattern, and I've added several more. The yarns are used in combinations of two at a time, and sometimes I have combined three colors and textures of yarn together to make this coat uniquely mine.

I've noticed that some knitters have not liked some of the color changes that have occurred in their coats. One bought new yarns and began again. One is thinking of frogging to start over.

I like what's happening with my Long Leaf Coat. Every time I think that a new color combination next to the last one is off, it tends to work once an even newer combination is added next to it. Somehow it all works out -- for me and my tastes. But as the saying goes, your milage may vary!