Tricoquine in the land of the stinky cheese

Knitta what?

On my way to work last week, I noticed this sight in the heart of bo-bo land, on the corner of the rue Oberkampf and the avenue Parmentier. What was it? A funky sock atop a cross-walk signal? A random act of knitting?  I shrugged it off in that blasé Parisian way that all foreigners must adopt to fit-in and continued on my way.

Over my morning coffee, I scanned my bloglines feeds and came across this picture on JuJu's blog. It looked like it had a similar street ethos as the creation on my corner - could it have been the work of the same masterminds? JuJu identified hers as the work of the Knitta Please gang who came to Paris on the occasion of Bergère de France's 60th anniversary.* Read more about it in Les echos (sorry French only). Sounds kind of commercial for a soi-disant gang of knitters but is very cool and creative in its ésprit none-the-less. This is not your grandma's knitting...

When I showed Ribbit the knitted graffiti on the way home from dinner the other night - he just looked at me and said "you crazy Americans".

Lexicon:

soi-disant (adj): so-called (although apparently this adjective is not recommended by grammar purists who instead insist that one uses prétendu)

*Bergère de France, for those who don't know, is one of the main purveyors of cheap acrylic yarn in France. 

Getting creative

It has been great fun to take in all of the feverish Christmas crafting in the blogosphere - knitting, quilting, sofies every piece more gorgeous than the next.

There is no Christmas crafting at our house, no Christmas at all for that matter, but that doesn't mean that the frigid temperatures don't awake our desire for knitted lovelies. My work schedule has slackened somewhat over the last few weeks and now that we are officially moved into our apartment, albeit still sans drawer pulls, I can devote more time to the gentle arts.

Last weekend I cast-off the Charlotte's Web shawl I sailed through at the beginning of Fall.

I am very pleased with the marriage of the different colors as I made a real effort to avoid the same color families but if you look closely, you'll see that from one skein to the next the second skein picks up on colors from the first and segways into the colors for the next.

I opted out of the cowboy fringe border and decided to play it simple. One of these days I'll get around to blocking it. Now that we no longer have carpeting, blocking something this big is quite a challenge since I'm not allowed to put pins in the mattress.  I have also been itching to get my hands on these blocking wires but in these dire times of mortgages and holiday presents, I can hardly justify their hefty price (and she doesn't seem to offer international shipping).

Knitting in San Francisco

It feels good to blog again!

Where I last left off, I was preparing for a business trip to San Francisco, making lists of sights to see, restaurants at which to eat, shops that I couldn't possibly pass up.

Bilan of my list: I made it to two yarn shops and a Mexican restaurant. Not a very good track record.

But I reconfirmed my love for San Francisco when I saw a public transportation ad on television (perhaps MUNI or maybe BART, I can't remember) that encouraged Friscoans to take public transportation by giving them a list of things they could do during their commute that they would not be able to do in their cars, one of which was to knit. Priceless!

I may have packed my suitcase just hours before leaving for the airport, but I made sure to print out maps from the hotel to Artfibers and Imagiknit.

Speaking of the airport, I suffered a minor setback when my addi turbos were confiscated by the wildly erratic and irrational Paris airport security claiming that they were an objet tranchant. Right, just about as sharp as a ballpoint pen.  Imagine a 12 hour flight with no knitting. I was beside myself and it was only 7am! 

The solution was to run straight to Artfibers as soon as I checked into my hotel. Lucky for me, it was a mere 3 blocks away.  Jetlagged but jubilant, I hopped, skipped and jumped up the stairs to the second floor and was greeted with this: glory to the yarn world. Color, texture and touch bursting at the seams.

I browsed, I touched, I yawned (I'd been awake for over 24 hours), I repeatedly told the shopkeeper that we just don't have yarn like this in France...

and then I bought...

330 yards of Golden Chai (100% golden tussah silk) in color 10

This yarn reminds me of Tilli Thomas pure & simple, but with more beautiful colors and less expensive.  I chose this color because it matches my eyes...

250 yards of Alfabeto (70% silk, 19% superfine kid mohair, 5% wool) in color 7

I bought this in view of making a small swallowtail shawl for my future mother-in-law

lots of yards of Andromeda (30% angora, 70% silk) in colors 6 (left) and 5 (right)

Do you see a theme -- I have gone crazy for pure silk and silk blend yarns.  What I loved most about Artfibers are their fibers -- matières nobles -- as they say in French. Luxurious fibers at reasonable prices. Can't go wrong with that, and they ship to Europe, don't worry, I asked.

One last shot of Andromeda (color 5) and Alfabeto

Lest you think that my pocketbook had exploded after this yarn extravaganza, the following day, in-between two meetings, I hoped on the F-line street car to the Castro to pay a visit to Imagiknit.

Looked promising peeking through the window...

and in the end, la pêche était bonne. See for yourselves:

Koigu...enough said.

The only disappointment was that the store did not have the Charolotte's Web shawl pattern that I would like to make out of this painter's palette selection and it seems to be impossible to find...any one have any suggestions?

Lexicon:

bilan (m): literally, in accounting, a balance sheet. It is also used more informally as "progress report" or "results"

objet tranchant (m): sharp object, as in knitting needles :)

matières nobles: fine materials

la pêche était bonne: literally, the fishing was good or the result was fruitful

Knitting in Public #6: And what do you do in your spare time?

It's Edith Piaf time, again.

Several weeks ago, after a long stroll through Paris from the Canal St. Martin to Les Halles on one of those unseasonably warm and luxurious days we have been having as of late, Ribbit and I decided to rest our feet at the movies. What to see? The Last King of Scotland was sold out, as was The Lives of Others which was a big bummer but Ribbit suggested another round of Edith Piaf as portrayed by the brilliant Marion Cotillard in La Môme.

The acting was impeccable, the emotion overpowering but the best moment in the film is a scene between Piaf and Marcel Cerdan the French boxer who became her lover, in a fancy French restaurant in New York:

Cerdan: So what do you do when you're not singing?

Piaf: I knit.

Knitting in Public # 5: La vie en rose et noir

Last Thursday Ribbit, the best husband-to-be ever, took me on a date to see Piaf: La vie en rose et noir at the Théâtre Dejazet on the place de la République. I say best husband-to-be since we were easily the youngest people in the audience by about 30 years and well, liking Piaf as a young person is a little passé. For those of you who may not know, Edith Piaf is the greatest (in my opinion) French female vocalist/songwriter of the last century. From the first time I heard one of her songs (in the very sub-par Beatles movie "Backbeat"), I was smitten. I still remember making my mom drive me to Music Millennium in Portland on my 15th birthday because all I wanted was the La môme anthology. Needless to say, I love Piaf. Her voice and music are the soundtrack to my Paris, an avant-guerre, franchouillard, Bellevillesque* kind of Paris.

Piaf may have begun her career singing on street corners of Paris in the 1930s but she soon became la reine du music-hall parisien, collaborating with some of the great Frenchmen of the time --Jean Cocteau, Yves Montand, Charles Aznavour.

You're probably wondering right now how knitting fits into all of this. Just listen. So stated the narrator of the play, Louis Leplée, the king of the Paris nightclub scene, discovered Piaf singing on the street corner and offered this hard-knocks sprite of a woman (she wasn't even 5 feet tall) a gig singing at his club Le Gerny's on the Champs-Elysées. He gave Piaf her first big break and her nom de scène : La môme Piaf*.  But Piaf did not have an outfit to wear on stage, so she worked day and night knitting herself a little black dress. So the story went, Edith apparently didn't have enough balls of wool to finish the second sleeve of her dress and went on stage sans sleeve. Someone in the audience lent her a black lace shawl which she promptly threw on to cover her bare shoulder.

So there you have it, one of the greatest female singers of all time was a knitter too...

Click here and here if you'd like to learn more about Edith Piaf.

Lexicon:

avant-guerre (m): refers to any period before a war, in this case, before WWII

franchouillard (adj.): denotes negative aspects of the French middle-lower class

Belleville: a working class immigrant neighborhood in Paris (where Piaf was born), mostly located in the 19th arrondissement

môme (f): kid (colloquial)

piaf (m): slang for sparrow, the bird.  La môme moineau, moineau being the correct word for sparrow, was already taken by another singer, Lucienne Dhotelle so Leplée coined her Piaf, in a nod to her street cred, and because she sang like a little bird.

Knitting in Public # 4: Spotted on the line 8

Several Saturdays ago I took a little trip on the line 8 to the Ecole Militaire stop to pay a special visit to a jewelery designer...  Some of you who live in or who have had the opportunity to visit the City of Lights know that the line 8 is a special kind of train.  Normally the seating on the metro trains is arranged in two sets of two side-by-side seats that face each other (try to say that ten times fast), with two jump seats, called strapontin, on the other side.  If you can't visualize this, I'll make sure to take a photo on my way home tonight.  However, on the line 8 (and also on the line 1)  there are some very friendly seats at the front and back of each car where there are a set of three seats facing three seats.

On this particular Saturday I happened to snag a friendly seat and was working on the Interlocking Balloons scarf from Scarf Style in the softest Blue Sky Alpaca when a middle-aged gentleman and his wife sat in the two seats to my right. 

Now, perhaps a little background or paranthèses on French behavior in the metro.  I know that I am generalizing, but in many cases, when confronted with something or someone out of the ordinary, French people will stare long enough to make the someone quite uncomfortable (especially if they are American and are told from a young age that starting is not polite) but are actually too shy (or perhaps "polite") to actually ask the person what it is that s/he is doing.  Or instead of staring, some people will just have a conversation speculating about what it is that you are doing, most likely loud enough for you to follow along. Generally, it goes something like this:

Stage directions: Tricoquine (played by Kate Winslet) sitting quietly on the metro, knitting in hand, purse on lap, Ipod tuned to latest Meet the Press or NewsHour podcast.  French man with beret and French woman with scarf sit in the seats facing Tricoquine.  They proceed to stare at her for several seconds and then:

French man [whispering in French] : tu te souviens quand maman me tricotait des pulls, chérie? qu'est ce tu croie qu'elle tricote la jeune fille?

Translation: Remember when Mother used to knit my sweaters, darling? What do you think the young woman is knitting?

French woman [whispering in French, slightly annoyed that her husband is still a momma's boy]: oui, je m'en souviens, Jacques, comment est que j'aurais pu oublier ta mère, c'était une sainte. [elle lève les yeux au ciel] Mais bon, je crois que cette fille tricote une chausette.

Translation: Yes, Jacques, I remember. How could I for forget your mother [rolls eyes] she was a saint. But anyways, I think she's knitting a sock.

At which point Tricoquine wants to yank out her earphones, remind the people that just because she has little white cords coming out of her ears, she isn't immune to the world around her, kindly thank them for taking notice of her work and explain that no, it isn't a sock or a sweater but a scarf. Oh, and please kindly stop staring, its making me nervous.

Back to the regularly scheduled story.  Fearing a repeat of the aforementioned scenario, I notice the gentleman craning his neck over my shoulder to see what exactly it is that I am doing.

All of a sudden he opens his mouth,

- how many needles are you using, there?

A bit startled, I look at him as if he were speaking alien tongue.

-well, Monsieur (which after 12 years of speaking French, I still cannot pronounce properly), there are two, I say, showing him my addi turbo size 3.5mm circs. 

-No, No, No, he tisks, what was that other little one in your hand, pointing to the green cable needle now perched in my lap.

-ah yes, of course, it is a cable needle, you know to make torsades, I explain, showing him the cables I had just made.

By now, his wife and the three people in the seats facing us are looking at us, either because they can't possibly imagine strangers talking to each other on the metro, or they are genuinely curious, or both.

We proceed to have a conversation about the scarf, he and his wife compliment me on my handiwork, and I receive nods of approval from the three passengers facing us as I show them the scarf, Vanna White style .

The couple got off a few stops later and we wished each other bonne journée. It goes to show you that sometimes people will surprise you.

PS: I still haven't finished the scarf.

Knitting in Public #3

Knitting is hot in France right now. Even the liquor store Nicolas is getting into it.

Imagine my excitement on Saturday afternoon when I stopped by our local Nicolas (normally I go to La Cave de Noë, 53 rue de Lancry, 75010, and am never disappointed) and saw the above catalog circular on the counter when I went to pay for my Bourgogne Aligoté (perfect for making kir). Wouldn't that fair isle cover make a cool gift for your favorite oenophile?

PS: A member of Paris-Tricot sent us a link to a Knitty.com Wine Cozy. I am sure that one could adapt this pattern to knit a fair isle cozy.

Knitting in Public #2

• KIP's honorable guest mascot for this edition is Thierry Lhermitte's character "Pierre" from the infamous and immensely popular 1982 film "Le Père Noël est une ordure" (Father Christmas is a Louse) about a Christmas Eve gone awry at a crisis hotline office.

This zany Christmas movie is shown every Christmas season in France and despite having seen it myself about 5 times, it still manages to get a good chuckle out of me. Although this time, I spied with my knitter's eye a truly wonderful Christmas knitting moment. Thèrese, who works with Pierre at the crisis hotline gives him a fetching handknit vest with armholes down to his waist -- as the French say "a real serpillère*".  (see photo at left) I think we all have our stories of handknits gone wild.

One of the things that I have noticed now that I am a "knitter" is the large number of knitting references in popular culture.  I suppose it is akin to when you buy a new car, you suddenly see the car everywhere.

I also had some personal knitting in public experiences this past week.

I am a self-proclaimed serial metro knitter -- my daily metro ride to school takes me 45 minutes from start to finish and offers some unabashed and guiltless time with my two pointy sticks.  On the way home from class last Friday a homeless man boarded the train and began his speech about being an SDF* and offered several magazines and calendars in exchange for a few euros or a ticket resto. In France there is an organization for the homeless that provides homeless people with magazines ( Cheap Eats in Paris, History of Paris Street by Street) and calendars with kittens and puppies that allow them to solicit people for money for food or lodging by offering them a small gift in return.  This particular gentleman had a great sense of humor and as he passed the set of benches where I was seated, remarked to me "Je l'attends pour le 24" -- "I'll be waiting for it on the 24th".  He was referring to the sleeve of my red cowl neck sweater that I was furiously trying to finish before arriving at my stop.  At the same time, he got a jolly chuckle out of the people seated around me.  Now if only I could organize a holiday knit-along to benefit the homeless...

And yesterday I KIPed my way through a Chai Tea Latte at Starbucks rue des archives while knitting this Chrismukkah gift for someone who shall not be named :

Eowyn by Rowan is my first try with cables! it could not have been easier. Details of the project can be found in the current projects folder.

Lexicon:

serpillère (f): dust rag/mop cloth

SDF (sans domicile fixe) : without fixed address, the politically correct word for a homeless person

ticket resto: a restaurant voucher good as cash and valid in most restaurant, usually in denominations of €5-7 that employers give their employees for use at lunchtime

Knitting in Public #1

Gromit, of Wallace and Gromit fame, is the official mascot of my newly inaugurated series "Knitting in Public".  In fact, it was during the screening of the new Wallace and Gromit film "Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit" that I decided to create this feature.  Side note: Ribbit and I were the only adults non-accompanied by children in the theater.

In fact, during the opening scene of the movie, Gromit is shown knitting a lovely green pullover for his dear friend and companion, Wallace.

Knitting in Public (or KIP) is a Net-wide, world-wide phenomenon that even has its own holiday, June 11th.  The concept, however, is astonishingly simple -- all you have to do is knit in public. Well ladies and gentlemen, I do that nearly every day on the line 2 direction Porte Dauphine on my way to school in the morning and on my way home in the afternoon.

Although I get the occasional stare (staring in France is a national sport but don't ask me how they stay so thin) on the metro, most people smile politely, the same way you smile at people you feel sorry for. One of my first KIP experiences was with an older gentleman who told me how his wife used to knit him socks. Obviously the whole "knitting is hip and trendy" thing hasn't quite caught on here as it has in London and New York.  Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to show Paris that knitting is cool and not just for grandmas and I hope to bring to you in this series, all of my KIP adventures in Paris.

Nevertheless, KIP has taken a turn for the better in Paris, with 4 very exciting things which happened this week:

1) I saw my first Metro Knitter (besides myself, of course). She was young, branché* and knitting something blue -- I confess to being too shy to express to her my delight at seeing another consoeur* and instead feebly buried myself in my own knitting (all the while sitting across the aisle from her).  Although in my defense, she didn't say anything to me either!

2) Paris Tricot was on TV!!! Remember back when I slyly mentioned that I was going to my first knitting group in Paris and it just so happened that France 5 television was going to film a segment for a tv program ??  Well, we were on tv during the show Alteliers de la Mode yesterday morning for about 1 minute. I even saw myself and Mr. Ribbit's Noro sweater.  14 more minutes of fame to go...

3) Yesterday while waiting for Mr. Ribbit at café Sésame on the quai de Valmy (10th), I pulled out my knitting (still the Noro sweater...) while sitting at the counter and drinking my café crème. The hipster barista asked me what I was making and we proceeded to have a conversation about how knitting is cool and not ringard* and that his sister was in the process of knitting lots of cool stuff for his baby-to-be-born.  I will definitely go back, especially since they serve Illy coffee and the café is smoke-free.

4) PARIS-TRICOT, yes Paris knits!  Last week I went to my second Paris Tricot get-together at the Café Benjamin on rue de Rivoli and stayed until 10:30pm. I have to admit that before my first Paris-Tricot I was a little worried that I would be alone with a bunch of old ladies with cats. Given the age range of shoppers at the Bon Marché knitting section, I had reason to worry. But no! They are a group of fun, funky and dynamic women (and one gentleman) from their 20s to 40s. Should you find yourself in Paris on a Thursday night, don't hesitate to stop by between 6 and 8pm. http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/paris_tricot/

Happy Knitting!

Lexicon:

branché: hip as in "she's hip"  (I believe the actual meaning comes from brancher meaning to "plug-in" therefore someone who is branché is plugged into the latest trends)

consoeur (f) : colleague

ringard : square as in not cool

PS: I have betrayed you -- I started a new project -- a red cowl neck pullover for myself in Manos and I didn't even tell you about it.  I will post pictures in the current projects album by the end of the day.