Jean Zimmerman

Category: Knitting

  • Cowlin’ for You

    I ventured out today. After two and a half weeks in a foot cast, I was ready. The sky was an egg, the fall breeze fresh, the sun silky on my arm propped up at the passenger window of the car. There was sushi, at our local place not usually the best, but which tasted…

  • Leafy Air and Cheese

    I can breathe again. I took a trip to Michigan and Wisconsin, the Great North Woods, which has leafy air worthy of inhaling. Also, sweet black cherries worthy of devouring. They sell them, washed, plump and juicy, from little stands at gas stations. I experienced a hailstorm that hit just as our sailboat anchored in…

  • Saying It in Silver

    Do you like sparkle? I do. I’ve been happy lately to usher Savage Girl into the world, delighted to see people get ahold of the book and resonate to the story. There’s nothing like a fresh book out there reaching people to make you feel good — after all, isn’t reaching people a big part…

  • I Brake for Knit Projects

    If I had to choose between these knitted winners, it would have to be the animal heads. No, the full-body suit. No, the meat. Definitely the meat. After this short commercial break, we bring you back to the Oscars, live.

  • Knitting and Giving

    Here is a Christmas tale involving soft wool, magic sticks and a sense of loving duty. A missionary working in Shichigahama, Japan, a place devasated by the tsunami in March 2011, instigated an outreach program called Yarn Alive that brought thousands of skeins of donated wool and a little knitting instruction to the people of the…

  • From the Chimney With Care

    They’re waiting. Waiting in plain sight, hung from the chimney with care, assembled of felt and yarn and sparkles. Everyone in the house for the holidays is an adult now, but still we hang our stockings. The practice of hanging a Christmas stocking… why hang a sock to collect treats, or put out a shoe…

  • Bit by Bit

    Stitch after stitch. The easiest in knitting is the knit stitch, worked over and over, row after row, dignified by its pattern name the garter stitch. Time honored and simple, it’s the foundation of sweaters and scarves all around the world. I man the couch (woman the couch?), man up (woman up?) to knit stitch…

  • Witch-Healers and Bonesetters

    Returning home with my foot in a plaster cast–yes, the time arrived for further surgery, the other foot dropped, so to speak, but now I’m an old pro–all I could think was what if I injured that limb a couple of hundred years ago? What if I didn’t have Dr. Voellmicke, the finest doctor in…

  • Tweet or Not to Tweet

    The gloaming is coming earlier these days. The Cabin, cozy as it is, can be small. Our winter is heated by wood more than sun. Fewer outdoor adventures, unless you want to really bundle up. A dive instead back into a small pink knitting project. Oliver wants to lay down on the already-cold grass. I…

  • Crushes on Crutches

    At the movies I saw a woman on crutches. A young, pretty woman in a color-block sundress. As I watched, she hopped around the serve-yourself beverage kiosk, assembling her ice, her soda and her straw, putting the whole drink together before her boyfriend politely carried it away for her. I saw her next swinging her…

  • I Am the Walrus

    I’m about a foot shorter and slightly less blubbery, and my tusks have not come in, but my habit of lolling on the couch is pronounced. I could be lying atop a Greenland ice floe. A tooth-walking seahorse (Odonus rosmarus) through and through, cast-footed variety. Basically sedentary. Shellfish savoring. Laughable? Don’t people sort of snicker…

  • A Hut of Candy Floss

    Magical, feel good potions of the day: a tall iced coffee, a small pain smoother, a delicate skein of candy floss. There’s a lot you don’t know about crutches before they come into your life. Like what good yarn-winders they make in a pinch. This silk-angora begs to be knitted into a Barbie evening wrap.…

  • Day 1-In Which I Learn to Hobble

    It was a success, the surgery, though I awoke from the anesthesia blubbering like a baby. It’s normal, said the orthopedic surgeon, come to check on me. A lot of people cry. Then it was hip, hop, on to the wheelchair, on to the crutches, off to my new full-time lair, my living room, my…

  • Simple Stock With a Side of Butter

    We in the northeastern U.S. have been deluged with a cool spring rain for several days now. Not good weather for adventuring, though I managed to get out and about yesterday and sample some history and some garlicky pork chops. The weeds are thriving. Our sump pump is heaving, with the Cabin set as it…

  • About To

    Cloudy and damp, good planting weather. And just the right climate for the annual plant sale at Teatown, the nature preserve down the road from the Cabin. Teatown has 875 miles of trails, a large lake, hemlock forests and laurel groves, a wildflower island and, dear to my heart, a collection of wounded raptors, lost…