A good friend and I went to see Cyndi Lauper at the Paramount last night. It was a lot of fun. Prior to the show, I was speed hooking a baby blanket while she and I chatted. When the show started, I tried to put everything back in the bag and managed to drop my hook on the sloped theatre floor. This wouldn’t have been a big deal with any other hook, but this was my perfectly round $8 speed hook. I waited for the intermission and then paced up and down the aisles obviously searching for something until a couple of ladies asked if I’d lost something and held up the hook. So, in case you are wondering how far a crochet hook will roll on the Paramount floor, the answer is 3 rows.


David Rhodes opened for Cyndi Lauper. He’s an extremely talented guitarist (Peter Gabriel’s guitarist since 1979). His singing, however, didn’t speak to me. The auto-tuning on his guitar broke just before the show and I actually preferred to watch him tune his guitar rather than singing creepy songs about his beekeeping. Him telling us he couldn’t tell jokes with his accent while trying to tune and talking to his guitar was actually funny.

Cyndi was great! She’s totally cute and energetic and has a great voice. She sang several of the songs off her new album and updated versions of some of her classics. She managed to stand on a front row chair while singing and danced all night long. She was coordinating her next song at one point and a guy in the audience yelled, “Goonies never say die!” and the whole crowd errupted with cheering. A whole place full of Goonie lovers = good times!

This square was the most difficult for me. I’d never knitted leaves before and when reading the chart, I cast on a stitch for yo, so I ended up with the wrong number of stitches a couple of times in a row before it hit me like a bolt of lightning and I was able to complete it. In hindsight, I have to wonder what I was thinking, but am happy to have figured it out.


This square is made up of cables from the Great American Aran Afghan (GAAA) book. The leaves by Judy Sumner (Chart B) are framed with Ann Strong’s Double Texture Cables (Chart A).

I plan to try leaves again soon using wool…..in green, I think. :)

Laughter is the best medicine or so the saying goes….but for knitters and crocheters, a new hank of yarn comes darn close.

Sometimes life gives us small challenges and sometimes it gives us large challenges. Sometimes, a day in our life seems like a large challenge, but looking back, it really was a small challenge. However, when I am in the moment, and something is really getting me down, I find that nothing heals my soul like a trip to the LYS (local yarn shop) with a good friend. You walk in and see all the color, feel all the soft yarn, dream of all the things you can knit. Soon, the challenge has decreased in size without you even realizing. Because after all, if you can knit, you can triumph.

I have always felt that God speaks in small ways and everything happens for a reason….and so it was that I discovered a hank of yarn that spoke to me. Lovely blue Malabrigo yarn. I’ve been dreaming of working with Malabrigo since I learned to knit a couple of years ago. But somehow, the right opportunity had not presented itself. The shop only had one hank so the budget was not in jeapardy and it felt like a slice of Heaven. I bought it.


I do not yet know what this little ball of encouragement will grow up to be, but it sure perked up my day.