gang of four

the Gang of Four are in my head this morning. "I will be a good boy, I said, i will be a good boy."
I don't even know the name of that song. Yes, Gang of Four rock band not political superevilfriends. There is a new Mao biography by the same woman who wrote Wild Swans, I should check it out. A little obsessed with mr. Mao, to the point where i would totally name a cat 'Chairman Meow'. It's freaky. Like naming your cat Hittler. But somehow lennon and Trotsky and Mao got the slightly tinged with ironic nostalgia treatment by history, at least here in America. They get artistic t-shirts.

here's a scaleable poncho formula:

one skein of el cheapo verigated baby yarn.
one US 8 circular needle, 18" in length.
4 stitch markers, but make sure one is distinctive.

cast on 52 stitches, nice and loosey-goosey, since they will barely fit on the neddle. In fact, use
double-pointeds to start out on. Knit 4 rows. Place your stitch markers every 13 stitiches, making sure that the marker at the start of the round is the distinctive one. now, every other row preform and increase by either making one on each side of every marker, or just a regular knit into the front an back of each stitch. whichever you prefer. continue on like this untill you have a an inch or so left to go untill your desired length, then start in whatever edge pattern you'd like. a nice sturdy strip of moss stitch? some fan and feather action? eyeletts to run a length of ribbon through? wonderfull. do no increases while doing your edging, unless you want to and it's easily incorporated. bind off.

now you have a poncho for a small child.

NOW, just move your gauge up and down, to get your size. just remember that the number of stitches works best when it's divisible by four. For grownups you might want to do a ribbed collar of some kind, or just a stockinete roll. measure your person's neck to get an idea of what to cast on. just add more yarn to get more length, obvi!

the kid poncho took maybe an hour, a grownup poncho worked in stockinete with a fan lace border took me maybe 10 hours, maybe.

It's always hard to tell when you only knit sporadicaly durring the week. No sense of time.

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I went super crazy on i-tunes the other day, buying up all these odd songs that I had been searching for. I still couldn't find the original 'lime in the coconut' but I now have a 'kiddified'
version of it, that soesn't suck too badly, since it is for my kid. every year i make a cd of his favourite music. The first year that mostly consisted of whatever songs i could sing to him by heart, which was very few. the Smiths: 'Asleep'. a very odd lulaby, but it worked. 'As I Lie' by J Church, "Birdhouse in your Soul" They Might Be Giants, and then when he was about six months he really started to enjoy some crappy punk-pop, like Green Day and Blink 182. So i learned "Minority" and "Warning" and "All the Small Things". At least it wasn't Barney. He also dug on "Egg" by Alice Donut. I felt even weirder singing him that one than I did 'Asleep"
Next he took to "Mad World", and i Looooove Tears For Fears, but i love the gary jules version featured in Donnie Darko almost more. Little boy called it the 'worn out faces' song.