Back in March I mentioned that one of my favorite Steelers from the 1970s, Randy Grossman, is also a knitter. Now I find out via this New York Times article that actor John Glover, who is currently on Broadway in Waiting For Godot, is also a knitter!

The picture of him accompanying the story is absolutely priceless, and is worth clicking through even without reading the story.

As a child growing up in Pittsburgh in the mid-1970s, I couldn’t help being a sports fan, including football. One of my favorite Steelers from the mid-70s was tight end Randy Grossman. Agile, fast, and a joy to watch.

Imagine my joy now as I find out that he is a fellow knitter!

Though Grossman’s mother, Florence, is an accomplished knitter and her skills have inspired him to push forward his with the craft, his foray into knitting came about from his daughter, Sarah. When Sarah participated in a knitting program while attending the Waldorf School of Pittsburgh, she started progressing as a better and better knitter and “she wanted to show me how to do it,” Grossman said. As a way to appease his daughter, he tried it and found it to be quite rewarding.

Now knitting on a consistent basis, Grossman decided to hold a class geared specifically toward teaching men the nuances of the craft with Sarah as his special assistant.

If you click through to the article you’ll see a great picture of Grossman knitting, and wearing a fantastic sweater that I’m sure he made. Stuff like this really makes me love life. Really.

I spent the weekend with two friends at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, the second largest sheep-based livestock and fiber festival in the U.S. It’s an overwhelming combination of county fair (complete with fair food), livestock show, livestock market, and fiber festival. It’s all about turning this

into this

And yes, I was as ecstatically happy as I look in the picture. Total hog heaven, or sheep heaven, to be more accurate.

Much of our chit-chat during the day involved the economics of this industry, as both of my friends who accompanied me are economists (and one is also a knitter). One reason why this event and others like it are so popular is that they provide access to small-batch, hand-dyed yarns that are not widely commercially available. For example, in the above picture I’m standing in front of the fabulous, wonderful offerings from Brooks Farm (and I dropped some serious cash there, as you can see from the pile in my arms). They only sell at festivals and online, not through bricks-and-mortar stores.

The growth of the Internet, and of online social communities for knitters through blogs and Ravelry, a sort-of Facebook for knitters, has increased the demand for such distinctive fibers. Folks like Brooks Farm have seen their businesses grow as more people become aware of their products. The evidence of this connection was very apparent at Maryland Sheep & Wool.

I also enjoyed watching the feeder lamb auction, in which individual breeders (many of whom I saw were young, about 12-16) display a sheared lamb, and the auctioneer facilitates a single-price, ascending, open-outcry English auction. These lambs were going for around $150-200, which is high relative to the overall market average for feeder lambs in the U.S. markets. High quality, local lamb, some of which I had for lunch, and it was glorious.

I enjoyed our visit, although I don’t think I could have afforded to stay much longer! Even a Swedish gentleman sitting with us at the conference gala dinner said that Swedes think Iceland is expensive, and that’s saying something!

This is my favorite picture of downtown Reykjavik (taken from the top of the cathedral), because it shows the variety of colors in the houses:

And this is the fantastically colored water out at Blue Lagoon, a mineral hot spring tourist destination situated adjacent to a geothermal power plant (combining two of my interests!):

The ISNIE conference was also quite interesting, although with fewer electricity papers than in the past. The paper from which I learned the most and that I found the most thought-provoking was “Copyleft Licensing and Software Development” by Alessandra Rossi and Massimo D’Antoni from the University of Siena. They analyze important differences in incentive structure and in reasons to choose the GPL license or the BSD license; the paper draft has more details on the model, the hypotheses, and their insights. Very interesting.

After the cut is a picture and some discussion of the souvenirs I bought from my trip; knitting-related, of course!

What else would a knitter get as a souvenir of a trip to Iceland?

We arrived Thursday morning, checked in to the hotel, and proceeded to walk around Reykjavik. Most shops and cafés don’t open until 10, so we were kind of strolling slowly until we could get a coffee. I knew at some point in the trip that I would have to get yarn, and I knew where to go, but imagine my surprise when we strolled right up to the Handknitting Association of Iceland and its main store. And it was open!

The yarn was gorgeous, and unlike everything else in Iceland, it was a bargain relative to its price in the U.S. I think that for the yarn and the pattern book in the picture I paid $65 tax free. I can’t wait to get started on the sweater! The blue is obviously the main color; the cream will be the cream in the picture, and the aqua, gray, and burgundy are the contrast colors in the yoke. The green and purple yarn off to the right is going to mix in with the leftovers from the sweater to make mittens, hats, whatever I have enough yarn to do. I’m so excited to have an actual Icelandic project, actually from Iceland!

There’s this really great outfit called Blue Moon Fiber Arts that makes some of the most gorgeous hand-dyed yarn for knitting that you can imagine; gorgeous yarn born out of the vision of one woman. I bought my first Blue Moon yarn, a variegated rayon in amazing shades of olive, a year and a half ago at Knit Purl in Portland, Oregon (a very nice and friendly store). Over the past year, lots of knitters around the world have fallen under the power of Socks that Rock, variegated sock yarn from Blue Moon. Indeed, I myself have a large skein of Socks that Rock, in the Cobblestone Country colorway. As soon as I’m done with the bamboo socks I’m making for the KP Spouse, I’ll be making these for myself.

Blue Moon runs a Rockin’ Sock Club in which you can sign up to receive a bi-monthly fix of Socks that Rock yarn for a year, among other goodies. Like so many other hobbies that appeal to fetishists, things like this sock club for this coveted yarn produced a frenzy, so much so that … Blue Moon’s bank closed its accounts and refunded all of the money to sock club members because they were convinced that Blue Moon was running a scam!

Is this the Patriot Act and the Bank Secrecy Act run amok, or just incompetent bank implementation of said regulation? It is certainly poor customer service!

For the Reader’s Digest condensed version check out this Yarn Harlot post and this post at January One. Just to give you a sense of how big a frenzy this yarn/club have produced, note the almost 200 comments on the Yarn Harlot post about the “scam”.

Note also Mr. Dubner’s notes on this event at Freakonomics. His wife’s been bitten by the bug too; will we soon be reading Freakonomics posts about how comfortable his homemade socks are? And he does comment that

Levitt’s sister runs Yarnzilla, an online and brick-and-mortar knitting emporium; and my wife has recently become a knitting zealot enthusiast. (I am always intrigued that so many people have embraced menial tasks — knitting, cooking, gardening, e.g. — as high-end hobbies, but that is a whole ‘nother story.)

I’d like to read that post, please, because it intrigues me too.

Woman does not live by economics alone (although sometimes I come pretty close!). I made this sweater:

This is the popular Rogue hoodie, which lots of folks have been knitting over the past two years. I started this in October, and finished it on New Year’s Day.

Yes, it was a lot of work, and for you economist non-knitters, this is a good pattern to illustrate the extent to which knitting truly is a mathematics hobby. Lots of axial and radial symmetry, and spatial logic.

Plus it’s beautiful and comfortable!

More pictures, taken on a gorgeous winter day in Chicago, after the fold.

Note the gorgeous Victorian buildings in the background; this is Armitage Avenue, one of the nicest streets in Chicago for strolling, boutique shopping, café-ing, etc.

Just to make sure it’s clear that we are in my fabulous hometown!

Showing off the side detail and the gorgeous plummy color.

OK, I’m throwing my knitting lot in with two teams, fair isle knit team and team Chicago:

For you non-knitters, here’s the challenge: cast on a new project that stretches your skills during the opening ceremonies, and finish it by the time the Olympics end.

My stretch: multi-color fair isle, which I’ve never done. I love fair isle, but have only done two-color in the past. For this challenge I’ll be making a fair isle hat.

As you would expect in a large city, Manhattan has a fair number of good yarn stores: Purl in Soho, The Yarn Co. on Broadway at 82nd St., String on Madison Avenue at 78th St., Downtown Yarns on Avenue A, Knitting 321 on E. 75th St., Gotta Knit! on 6th Avenue, etc.

A variety of different types of stores, locations, yarns, retail experiences, price points. Yarn stores thrive on product differentiation, both in what they sell and how each individual store positions itself and the experience it provides relative to its competitors. Yarn stores, and shopping in them, are examples of the extent to which shopping can itself be a valuable and creative process. They illustrate how competition is a discovery process — you don’t necessarily know what’s possible, and how you value those alternatives that you didn’t know about, until you get out there and experience them in the different retail outlets available to you.

In this context I find the Yarn Bus fascinating. As discussed in this column from this week’s New Yorker, the Yarn Bus is a free shuttle bus between Manhattan and Flying Fingers, a yarn store in Irvington, in Westchester County 45 minutes north of Manhattan. If you go to their website you can see a picture of the Yarn Bus in all its kitschy glory.

Since the couple opened up shop a year and a half ago, their voluminous inventory has attracted customers from as far away as Canada, Ireland, and Alaska. But persuading New York knitters to make the forty-five-minute trip up the Hudson has been a harder sell. And so, to render the reverse commute sufficiently enticing, Lundeen, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, and Goldschlag, his wife, conceived of the Yarn Bus, offering free shuttle service between Irvington and Manhattan.

The Yarn Bus is a fifteen-passenger van topped with three enormous balls of yarn and a pair of knitting needles the size of 9-irons. To build it, Lundeen and Goldschlag enlisted Prototype Source, a California company that is one of the nation�s leading makers of promotional vehicles, having produced such industry icons as the Hershey Kissmobile, the Yoo-hoo Stinkin� Summer Tour Garbage Truck, and the latest Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, complete with Mustard Splattered Walkway and Official Wiener Jingle Horn. To fabricate the giant yarn balls, the designers considered marine rope (too heavy) and real yarn (prone to rot) before settling on lengths of thin plastic tubing, coated with fibreglass to evoke a fittingly woolly look.

What’s the value proposition here? Why might this strategy succeed in the face of so many competing LYSs (that’s local yarn stores to you non-knitters) that are right there in Manhattan? I see three obvious ones. First, note that the store has a remarkable inventory, which is not necessarily likely in Manhattan given the higher rents; Flying Fingers may offer a wider range of yarns and supplies than its urban competitors. Second, the culture of non-urban yarn stores is often quite different from urban yarn stores, although across both categories there is a wide range of differentiated experiences. My favorite non-urban yarn stores are in rambling old farmhouses that make each room feel like you are going to make some interesting new discovery. Third, there is a strong current of community that runs through knitting, so I can imagine Manhattan knitters turning the road trip to Irvington into a “girl’s day out” adventure (I say “girl’s day out” because all of my knitting friends are women)! I mean, how kitschy-fun would it be to go with some folks from your stitch-n-bitch group on a yarn road trip in a van with big yarn balls and needles on the top? If the Yarn Bus can exploit these advantages, then they are likely to succeed.

This phenomenon also exists in other large cities, such as Chicago. We have wonderful LYSs here and in the suburbs (including my favorite LYS, Arcadia Knitting), but there’s still a lot of fun to be had in a road trip to Threadbear Fiber Art Studio in Lansing, Michigan, which has a massive inventory and two very personable and solicitous proprietors. OK, Lansing is not “non-urban”, but it’s still got lower commercial rents. I have to say that I have never had the pleasure of a Threadbear road trip, so if any of you Chicago knitters are planning one for the spring, let me know!

Thanks to Alison at the blue blog for the post linking to the New Yorker article.

My friend Knitress was right on both counts: Martha’s poncho was crocheted, and made from Lion Brand’s Homespun yarn. The Lion Brand website has a crochet pattern for it up now, and will have a knit one up soon.

Sorry, Manolo!

Personally, this design is too boho for my taste. But I can say after spending 2 days in the streets of London that the shops are full of the boho look for spring.

This post over at Manolo’s place shows a picture of Martha Stewart leaving confinement in the women’s prison in West Virginia. She is wearing an almost-boho poncho.

I know that prison has an extensive knitting program for the inmates, and one of my friends who lives in the region donates her excess yarn (is there such a thing?) to the program. So here’s the question for you knitters out there: do you think Martha knit that poncho herself? Looking at the picture, it’s possible — the main pattern is a simple yarn over lace, and the borders are a pretty standard scallop, so even if she learned to knit while there, this would have been a feasible project.

Whadday think? Knitress? Anyone?

BTW, I encourage the Manolo to get over his dislike of the poncho. Yes, the fashion mania for them over the past year has been a bit over the top, but they are a fun project to make and a versatile piece of clothing to own. I have made myself three different ponchos and I love them all. They are super fantastic!