Hi! I've been knitting. And you?

What I'm here to tell you about today is this totally awesome folding table. I don't use the word "awesome" a lot (mostly because I think that I used up my lifetime allotment of "awesome"s between the ages of 8 and 18.) Few things really are awesome, but this might be one of them.

I find the majority of folding tables to be of a utilitarian appearance, at best. "Ugly" might be a better way to describe them. This table, however, I could imagine resting it quietly against the wall in my (non existent) craft room. Because I am a New Yorker living in a compact space, I am always looking for clever things to make horizontal surfaces appear and disappear out of thin air. It's there when you need it, and completely gone when you don't.

I'm not going to bother to steal a photo from AKKA. Just go to the website and have a look There's a video, too. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that this table is available in the United States (or Europe). I'm not sure if it's even in production. Maybe by the time I have my craft room, I'll be able to put one of these in it.

Okay, I'm on a knitting deadline for a Spiders' mitten swap. Gotta go!

...yeah, right. If only I had the energy to give you a knitting year in review. Besides, you don't care! You're too busy getting ready to party.

Y'all have a great time tonight. Be careful, drive safely (if you're planning to be out on the roads), and all that good stuff.

We'll ring in 2010 with some dinner and dancing. These guys are the band, the 21 Club is the venue.

Sometimes we do manage to take advantage of the amazing city in which we live.

This is a picture of Sven and me, but not at 21 and not dancing to Double Down. This was at our second wedding party in Cologne. Why yes, I did knit the bolero I'm wearing. Deets to follow in the new year.

I've completed you!

I can't say much about the specifics of this pattern, but I'll let you know as soon as its released. It was a wonderful, relaxing, satisfying knit using a lovely yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light. I now have an extremely cute knitted object to wear.

So, the edge photo up there? At the end of my knitting, I realized that I needed to tink back about a half and inch of a long ribbed band. Usually I would just undo the bind-off edge and remove it from there. Not so fast. Unfortunately, I needed to take the half inch from the cast on edge. It's not impossible to do, it's just a lot more time consuming and tedious. It took me a couple of subway rides and lunch breaks to get it all done. But once I did, I bound off and was done.

I'm sorry to be so cagey about the project, but stay tuned, you will love it--trust me!

Let's just say that I took a snow day yesterday....

It was not hard to tell that last weekend's storm was the first of the season. Before the snow started, I ventured outside to stock up on essential supplies: bagels and lox. There I was at the checkout of Blue Apron, when one of the clerks noticed teeny flakes falling onto the pavement. A very audible "awwww" went up in the store, and a few customers craned their necks to look out the window. I may have been one of them...

All I can say is, remind me of this post when it's still snowing in March.

It was a fine weekend for knitting. Knitting, knitting everywhere, even on the 4 train:

Just a little mention here: I'm on Twitter, and I protect my updates. Every time I mention this on the blog, I get a few new follower requests. Sometimes I'm like "Oh, yeah, hey, hi!" and know who you are immediately because of your user name. Sometime, however, I don't. And when I don't recognize your user name, or know anything about you from your Twitter profile, I'm tempted to click "Decline." Most of the time, that's exactly what I do.

I don't want to be snobby, but I only want people I know to follow me on Twitter. Therefore, just drop me a note and say "Hey, I'm So-and-So on Twitter."

In yesterday's post I blithely dropped that I needed to stop by Seaport Yarns to replace some DPNs which went into hiding.

Let me say here that I will never, ever set foot inside that store again. Never. Ever. Again.

A couple of years ago I wrote a review about Seaport in its prior location, on Nassau Street. The new store is still in Lower Manhattan, but on Broadway. It's still in an upper-floor location, the store is still a mess, and the same office-cum-yarnstore environment remains. I tolerated the store when I needed something quick because it is mere steps from my office. But last night the owner's bitchy 'tude finally tipped me over the edge. I'm sorry that I came in right at 6pm as you were closing (although the man on the phone did tell me that the store would be open to 8.) Furthermore, maybe you should answer the phone with "Seaport Yarns, Broadway" or "Seaport Yarns, Portland" if you don't want people confused as to which store they called. Maybe I should have looked more carefully, but

The entire five-minute interaction left a bad taste in my mouth. So bad, in fact, that more than 12 hours later, I'm writing about it. There was some discussion on Twitter last night. Apparently I'm far from the only one who has had this type of experience with the store.

There are many, many more yarn shops that deserve my money more than Seaport Yarns. I can't believe that the economy (combined with the horrible environment, poor service, and iffy location) hasn't yet sunk the place. I think that one of my new year's resolutions will be to shop only at stores that make me happy.

Seaport Yarns ain't one of them.