It's a Purl, Man

Last night I was invited to attend and blog about “Let me Down Easy” a dramatic piece by Anna Deavere Smith which was put together for the American Repertory Theatre (ART) in Cambridge. This was a great blogging event that was put together by Sooz. I believe that this was an attempt to reach a larger audience about the arts. I applaud ART’s efforts and thank everyone involved for an evening of theater.

I do not consider myself a theater expert. I have seen some plays and other theatrical pieces growing up. I tend to watch movies , t.v., and read books for entertainment ( I am currently reading Kavalier and Clay). The last theater I took in was Blue Man Group  and John Leguizamo’s Freak. So please do not take my review as someone who knows modern theater.

That all being said, I didn’t much care of the piece. It was difficult to follow, difficult to become attached to, and it felt very academic/high brow… somewhat forced at points… and this was just the first half. I ended up leaving after the first half because I didn’t feel that I was going to enjoy the second half of the show. I wasn’t laughing when others were and felt very out of place.

“Let Me Down Easy” is a collection stories based on interviews that Anna has done all over the world. She portrays her interviewees in the piece. The topic of the parts she portrayed in the first act were loosely connected by a theme of grace. It started off with a back and forth between many different characters that was remonicent to a Robin Williams performance from Aladdin. Each character gets about 15 seconds and then it changes to another. In time these transitions bewteen the different voces slowed, but I still had a hard time becoming attached to any of the characters in order to have empathy and interest in there story.

I didn’t get it. Both the details of humor and the larger point of the piece. I think that the humor was at the expense of the interviwee or based on some inside joke that I was not a part of. The main connective material of the piece was thin and somewhat confusing. I felt that it was reminiscent of a freshman term paper where the author is grasping at many sources to put together their topic in the process.

Anna’s performance started to blend for me. While she was masterful at switching accents and outfits, I felt that there was a specific annunciation that drifted between all the characters. This may have been using her articitcs liscence, but I felt that this use of over annunciation was used to overramatize all the characters. Some of these interviewees are probably not as dramatic and some may even be understated, but based on the performance I saw everyone has drama written into their dialogue.

On a brighter, less critial note… I thought that the set design was very exciting and the transitions were well put together. The music, which was composed specifically for this show, was well suited to this piece. My only complaint was about the fact that they played a voice singing amazing grace as we went into the intermission. This seemed aqard seeing as all the other musical pieces were done by a saxaphone. I would have thought that playing amazing grace on the saxophone would have made for a more haunting and pensive tranisiton into intermission.

So that is what I thought.

OK, next week… back to a regular bi-weekly show. Sunday I will have a great show and share my experience from the first guild meeting and the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat.

OK, so I am hitting the road and driving down to Philly for Podcamp Philly the weekend after next. I will be heading down on Friday morning and was wondering what kinda fiber crawl I could do on my way down to Philly. I know I want to visit Rosie’s and Loop in Philly, but are there other stores on the way down that are near the highway that I should check out? (I miss knitty d and the city, they would know)

Please let me know if there are tips/tricks to getting to these stores and if you would be interested in meeting up at the stores… Thanks for your help…

ADDED: Just found this knit map web page, seems like good info for philly??

In hopes of promoting the fiber guild and my stash I went on a pretty fantastic ride on Saturday. It started at Athan’s in Allston. There is a great group of ladies who meet up there for fantastic food, conversation, and knitting. I got a lot of feedback about what would make for a good and bad guild, kinda rough for a guild that has yet to start, but good ideas non-the less. One idea that came out from this meeting was a shop hop for knitting store in the Boston area, perhaps this will happen in February…

From Athan’s I went on a southern Boston Metro area fiber crawl, visiting many yarn stores around Boston, looping to the south. Because I was on a schedule I did not have too much time to visit I will save a lot of description for future episodes of the show when I return to some of these places, but here is a quick wrap up:

• A Good Yarn in Brookline: I was happy to be greeted by someone who knows me and was excited about the Guild.
• Stitch House Dorchester: I dropped off some fliers (totally flustered by the time I got there, read on for more details).
• Snow Goose in Milton:(new to me) Wow… this store was hidden in an isle of a fancy supermarket (not exactly… but I would love to pick up some yarn between the tofu and milk isles).
• Sheep Street in Canton:(new to me) I picked up a frog notion case, couldn’t help it (I know the link is to the clover store, but please goto your LYS… oh yeah, don’t tell my pumpkin I bought the case).
• Fancie Purls in Norwood:(new to me) The owner of this shop is so sweet and supportive of the other local yarn shops (rock on!).
• SheepSkate in Dedham:(new to everyone) Currently the owner is doing a soft opening and learning a lot… Can’t wait to see the grand opening
• Black Sheep Knitting in Needham:(new to me) The Friendly staff put up with me at closing time, let me ramble… I think I should have brought more breath mints for my ride
• Putting on the Knits in Newton:(new to me) There are some amazingly detailed pieces in this store
• Spark Crafts in Cambridge: The store is going through some changes with the absence of Renee, but a haven for beautiful yarn.
• Mind’s Eye Yarns in cambridge:Home Base (why lucy puts up with me, I can not say?)

Here is a Google map with my original route. Due to time limitations, I was not able to make it to all the shops on my route.

This trip was a breaking point for me. While I was happy to visit all the stores and fiber… I realized something very important. I cannot rely on using Google maps alone to get to places. I cannot use directions alone when I am on such a diverse trip visiting so many places I have not been before. While it is possible to spend a day planning this kinda trip, I would rather not.

The breaking point happened early on in the trip. I was crossing from Brookline to Dorchester, which is a bit tricky for me, and I ended up in Roxbury center driving down what I think was going to be a parade route and I knew that I was not in the right place. For those non-locals, it’s like going from New York to DC and ending up in downtown Philly, you just know something went wrong.

After I found my way to Mass Ave, I went directly to the Best Buy and bought myself the cheapest ($150) GPS unit they had, The Magellan 3200. This is one of the smaller screen versions, but it worked great right out of the box. High scores on usability, it even asked if you wanted to shut it off when you unplugged the power from the car. It got me to all the places I had left to go with flying colors and saved me a lot of time with getting from place to place on the rest of my trip. The only draw back was that it had pretty boring computer software and did not announce street names, you have to pay more for street names in the Magellan line (which is typical).

So today I went out, returned the Magellan and got me a Mio Moov 200. For the same price as the Magellan, I could now hear street names in the direction. But, sadly… it lacks a lot of the ease of use I had in the Magellan. I found the buttons unclear and sometimes totally redundant. I could not set trip options like “toll roads” for each trip and I had to look up how to add favorites, LYSs of course, and the software that came with it didn’t allow me to edit my favorites or points of interest. So… I am going to return this one as well.

I am hoping that in the next week I will get to buy the last of the cheap GPS ($150 is the best price for anything good right now). I plan on buying a TomTom One 3d Edition. It does not have street names, but I hope that the interface is as good as the Magellan and the ability to share my favorites and places of interest with the rest of the TomTom users will mean that I help others in locating fiber places along the route. Oh yeah, they also give you regular updates to your maps as well as let you manage your favorites and points of interest from their computer software. If it is still to confusing to work, I will go back to the Magellan.

The reason I am sharing this with you is two fold

1. There is so little good usability information out there about GPS units. Since these are now so much cheaper, I think that there should be more information out there about what real differences are between them. BTW, Text to speech is the name of the function you need for street names to be announced on your GPS units.
2. Fiber stores and fiber farms are everywhere, get out there with a GPS in hand and start checking them out, they are so much closer than you think.

The ladies from Creative Warehouse and their Kuku knitted dolls

Many thanks to Jan Anderson super yarn rep of “All About Yarn” for inviting me to NENA. She is a gracious host and very proud of the yarn companies that she reps. Also, many thanks to the folks at Blue Heron for giving me a table and hanging out with me during the day.

Thanks to those of you who sat down with me at NENA, including:
Monica from Stix and Stitches from Montclair, NJ (the better Montclair)
Helen from Mt. Laurel Yarn Boutique in Sturbridge, MA
Cynthia from Knitting Central in Westport, CT
Janet from Country Village Yarn shop in Groton, MA
Laura from Creative Fibers in Windsor, CT
Elissa from Creative Warehouse in Needham, MA

Other stuff I talked about during the show:
Knit out 2008 in Lexington on October 5th from Noon to 5pm
Y Knit Podcast has a great episode about the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat

Finally:
Franklin Habit is speaking at the first Common Cod Fiber Guild meeting on September 12th

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In case you didn’t know:

I am starting a fiber guild in Boston. It’s going to be a Friday night group where we can all go for drinks afterward. We have set up two meetings and on one special event planned for 2008. We are in the process of taking of the Boston Knit Out organization. We plan to have meetings, continue the Boston Knit Out as a part of the World Wide Knit in Public, and we have a dream of a fiber un-conference (more to come on this later).

Last night I was voted in as Boston Knit Out president. This means that my group is going to be a bona fide charity. Which means we need to keep track of everything that happens with the bank account and stuff.

So… This has been my summer project and every time I think I will have free time to get going on the podcast, somehow a guild task keeps rearing it’s head… But soon, the Guild will launch and I will have time again. Friday we will launch the website and send out some press release information to the media.

After the luanch, on Sunday… I will sit down and put together the next episode. This is going to be the return… I swear… and because this show happens after the launch I can tell you all about the guild and explain the strange images I have been posting (the one above is of President Taft and company).

Talk to you soon… really… really…

I am working on getting the new fiber guild off the ground. I have been talking to people about speaking at our meetings. I have been working on graphics. I have been getting venues, tickets, and lawyers. I have been trying to figure out how to convince everyone to come out and play.

And now I am so close… I have two speakers booked, I have a space for the first year, I have a group of people to support the guild, I have the support of the Knit Out folks, and I even have a special event.

So… that’s where I have been… Next week I launch the Guild website and I can finally spill the beans on who is coming and what the whole group is about and what the name is…

In the mean time, I will put out that NENA show this weekend. I will probably not talk about the guild too much because I have to wait one more week… pooh…

also… if you recieved something from me recently in the mail, can you please let me know that you have gotten it. Thanks a lot

Next week… less fractured english and more sleep.

Dear listener…

Today was another wonderful day at camp not-a-lot-a-fiber. We started the day at the pool where we learned to block shawls. We then moved into the hundred yard dash where we learned to beat other campers to the cashmere sale. After dinner, we all gathered around and sang a round of camp town girls knit all day long… It was great…

What a lovely dream camp…

Back on this side of reality…

Today is the same as most of July… except July is almost over and I need to start getting the word out about the guild that is going to start in September, but I don’t have a speaker yet… yes… just another day in the house of Guido. Don’t worry, I will find a way. ( which is to say if you are a knitting god and willing to speak in September at a guild in Boston that doesn’t exist yet for a couple of beers, please email me)

The good news is that I will be putting out a new show next week… It’s going to be about NENA. If you are jonesing for a little podcast content about some of my real FiberCamp dreams please check out this podcast done by a friend Paul at podcamp.

Ok, back to the phone bank for me.

So many things to update you all on… let’s start with some thanks, Thanks to

Alanna
Andrea
Chelsea
DarkInnKnits
Cat and Eric
and everyone else who sent me an image or positive vibe for my podcamp presentation.

It went well. Actually, I think that the knitting gods were smiling upon me by stacking the room with knitters who started an interesting dialogue about creative process. I still don’t know how to accept a dropped stitch, but it is a part of the process and nothing to get too excited about.

Podcamp Boston 3 was a lot of fun for me. I presented, saw a battle deck (or a least half of one), I sat in on parts of sessions, but mostly I just hung out and helped podcast Newbies. For me going to these events are about gathering with community. it’s not that I don’t have asperations of my own, but for now I know where I am and am not looking for too much new stuff.

In this vain, I would like to start a FiberCamp where all knitters/crocheters/rug hookers/ and other fiber enthusiasts could gather talk shop, teach, learn, and generally hang out where the community is the point of the gathering.  So I am going to be working on this later this year, but for the time being here is a link to a show where I got into a conversation about this idea at Podcamp Boston 3.

EDITED: link to come…

But here is a link to an interview I did about knitting and podcasting for someone else’s show here

So we are now in July, already.

Time and I seem to be having some issues. It keeps slipping away like air conditioning out a window. I think I have plenty of time, and then it’s July. So why am I all at odds with time. Because I want to get things done.

Let’s see, I am still working on my knit/podcast presentation for tomorrow. (Yes podcamp is finally upon us). I would have thought that I would have an extra week to work on it, but no.. no such time.

Also… there is the fiber guild. It’s on its way, but now it’s July and I need to get some things pinned down so that we can start promoting it. But no…, July just shows up at the house all unannounced and doesn’t give me the time to make sure put out the clean table cloth or setup a new bank account. Stupid uninvited month.

So in closing… it’s been another year for me(July is also my B-day month) and I am still playing catchup. Perhaps this year of my life will be blessed with some extra time for knitting, podcasting, and super exciting guild projects. I can only hope.

And people say I appologize like I was Canadian…

Thought you all might like to check out the High Maintenance Machine site. The author of this strip not only lives in my city, but he also seems to live in my head. I find it strange that so many of the scenes he plays out on the strip have happened between me and my pumkin wife. My pumkin wife almost snarfed her drink once when she was reading the strip and found an really typical scene play out where I try to sing one of her favorite song by Bon Jovi only to destroy it… (also, she was at the Bon Jovi concert in Boston last night and assures me that he still has a cute butt)

I love this kind of comic book. I hope to some day make my drawing good enough to share stories through a small strip. Perhaps I can beg this guy to teach me the art of drawing and all… (read… add one more project for me).

I am going to sign off now for the weekend, I am going to Boston Podcamp and I will let you know how my presentation goes next week with perhaps a new show and all.