Demonic Progress

Do Androids Knit from Electric Sheep?

It's a good question.

It is also an interesting blog, if you are a knitting-addicted kinda hardcore Star Wars and gaming fan. I'm enjoying it quite a bit :)

Click here to check it out: Do Androids Knit from Electric Sheep

Get Your [Knitting] Geek On

No wonder geeks like to knit, and lots of knitters are geeks. I mean, look at Ravelry, a huge on-line knitting community, or Sock Wars, or the Mystery Stole phenomenon. Who but a geek would figure out a way to spend hours of knitting time in front of a computer?

It makes sense, to combine knitting and geekery. Knitting is binary: knit, purl instead of 1, 0. Knitting patterns are like computer programs written in an object-oriented computer language. A knitting pattern has a library (list of materials to be used); calls functions (pattern stitches); has a set syntax; uses globals (special stitch abbreviations defined for that particular pattern only); mathematically increments and decrements (increases and decreases); creates loops ("repeat from *" until a certain requirement is met); and often has syntax errors while being compiled (errata, mistakes in the pattern). Yup, knitting is geek heaven.

Check out these Top 10 Geekiest Yarn Creations on the Web, if you think there aren't other knitting geeks out there. (I know, it is an old post, but I still think it is cool!)

Yarn Shop Humor

Heh heh, yes, I guess the yarn fumes do sometimes get to us at Unique One. Occasionally I run across images on the web that bring up charming details from the past...

We used to sell a great yarn, whose name escapes me, but it was from the Needful Yarns yarn company. However, the actual yarn ball band had the brand "Lana Gatto" on it. I am sure it was a great yarn, and I am sure that all yarns from Needful Yarns or Lana Gatto are wonderful. To be honest, I cannot remember one single thing about this yarn, whether it was wool or mohair or alpaca or spun snake, or if it was fingering or DK or worsted. The only thing I really remember about it was that at Unique One, we called it 'Evil Kitty' yarn, because of the picture on the ball band:

Do you blame us???

{goes off giggling madly}

Have a great day, and please share your own private names for any favorite brands, in the comments below :)

Oh, and a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RACHEL!!! to my sister Rachel :):) Hugs and kisses!

Poetry. Knitting. Knitting poetry.

I was walking down Bayview Street the other day, and happened to notice in the window at ABCD Books, a poem displayed. It was called "Man Writes Poem" by Jay Leeming. I actually stopped to read it and I loved it! I think you might, too, especially if you like baseball, and even though the poem is not knitting-related, I think you should read it! Click here to read "Man Writes Poem".

The following are knitting related poems:

Time is Knitting. A Poem.

Knitting for the Troops.

Here Comes Trouble

Yeah, I know, it's been a while...

So anyway, I noticed something recently, about knitters. Other people who own yarn shops will probably identify with this. I thought it was interesting and curious, so I figured it might be a good post to break my blog silence (which btw was caused only by my insane summer work schedule, not because I was deathly ill or had taken up some dangerous hobby like postage stamp collecting or anything.)

Unique One has the good fortune to be located in kind of a touristy area, so most of my customers are not from the area. Which means, most of them don't know me and I have never seen them before. It is important to remember that, they are complete strangers to me. Mostly. So I don't know what kind of criminal records any of them may have.

Let's say a typical customer comes into the store. She's from, oh, Baltimore, or Dallas, or New Hampshire (the land of "Oh, we don't pay sales tax in New Hampshire", hee hee) or Massachusetts. Or even Europe. This phenomenon I will describe is universal and worldwide in its occurrence, I think, which is just one more reason it is kinda a little bit scary, in an exciting and intriguing way. I'll call this hypothetical customer Gladys. She is a knitter. Possibly suffering from knitting addiction. My favorite kind of woman!

Gladys and her husband wander into the store, the husband secure in the knowledge that Unique One is just one more gift shop and/or clothing shop, a serene place to purchase sweaters, and he is not too concerned about the little woman spending much money because hey, who would buy a sweater in the summer?? (ummm about 900 people, sorry). So he happily follows her into the store. Imagine his dismay when he finds that there is OH NO a yarn shop in the back of the store. The sweater/clothing/gift shop was, in fact, just a front for this illicit business in the back. He has been duped!!! And once Gladys has discovered it, it is too late to lure her back out the door, because the yarn part of the shop is at least 20 yards from the only exit. For a woman, the male equivalent of this horrible discovery would be for him to saunter into a hardware store, trailing his wife behind him, only to find that in the back, it's a stripper bar, and there are at least 99 kinds of Cuban cigars available for sale as well. Luckily, men rarely find that to be true.

So Gladys' eyes kind of glaze over, and she starts breathing hard, saying ohhhhhh, a yarn shop!!! and her hands and fingers are going a mile a minute trying to touch everything all at once, and by the time she gets her armload of new stash up to the counter, it's $50 or $100 or $200 or about ten times more than her husband actually planned for her to spend in the nondescript gift shop when they first entered. But because he truly loves her, he pulls out the credit card or check book or cash, to pay, and then she starts to feel just a weeny teeny little bit guilty, not to the point of being willing to give up the purchase, but knowing she wants to justify the purchase a little, so she says the thing that I have heard a million times and always always always wondered about: "Well, at least it keeps me out of trouble!"

Hmmm.

First, I want to know, lady -- what kind of trouble do you tend to get into, that you need something to keep you out of it?

And then secondly, considering the huge number of times I hear this from customers day in and day out, year after year, from every state and every country around the world..... what is the connection between knitters and their heretofore bad behavior???? Because they all freely admit, on a regular basis, that knitting keeps them out of trouble. They are bad, I guess. Misbehaving without any control over it, really, and they need to keep some knitting in their hands to stay out of trouble. It's curious. I am glad to help so many women stay out of trouble , but I wonder what the world would be like if they neglected to purchase yarn and therefore... got in trouble. I am pretty sure the world would end. So I am, in effect, saving the world, selling one skein at a time. I feel so ... powerful.... !

And then the next question is, why do so many women, upon walking INTO the shop say, oh no, I'm in trouble now! Heh heh... seems like a paradox to me!

Have fun knitting, stay out of trouble (unless staying out of trouble means you have to stay away from your local yarn shop), and keep posted because we have got a TON of cool new yarns here at Unique One lately, and it is going to take me a few weeks of posting just to get all caught up!!

Love ya :)