welcome back, crotchety ol' cotter.

poor la flammouille desperately needs new cotters.

luckily, my roomate is letting me strip her old bike (which is old enough to have the cotters i need for mine) because she traded up... the up being a size joke since she bought a child's bike. being short evidently has its perks: she got a brand new bike for 99$. i got la janky straight from the 70s for 75$.

so since i'm putting the metal to the pedal (literally) on my bike, i'm going to relate to you some new knitting news.

i have been informed by no less than 3 people (one non-knitting woman, one man, and one queer) this week that knitting is for girls. so i had to give up knitting. but then i remembered that since most humans of any gender have opposable thumbs, and that the only biological parts required by knitting are fingers and not gonads, i breathed a sigh of relief. then i did this:

1. i bought a yarn winder. it makes center pull yarn balls in about 5 minutes. this is terribly, terribly exciting. trust me on that.
and what is that yarn all wound up for? it will be accompanying these guys below in being a quilt for my dear friends max and katie for their commitment ceremony next year:
2.

don't worry, those bitches don't never read my blog, so it's still a surprise.

and if you are interested in that kind of thing, i'm using roman stitch on the quilt squares (which means stockinette stitch for for rows, then two rows of moss stitch). with a nice friendly border of course. this is what it looks like up close and personal:

3. in other knitting projects, i've got some side business that involves me needing hand towels. i did not intend to make a camouflage dishtowel, okay?, so keep those snide comments to yourselves about anything camo-related.


two addenda:
1. camouflage originates from the french noun camouflet, a main feature of which is moufle, meaning muzzle. the verb camoufler originally meant to blow smoke up someone's nose, notably in a humiliating way.

2. you may feel moved to extrapolate from all this that i am getting absolutely no work done. and you would be pretty much correct, although today i did finish proofreading the forthcoming literary revue open-faced sandwich. which should be appearing soon, and which is quite excellent.