The Sweatshop of Love Blog

And just like that it’s October. I’m late with this revelation, too, because I’ve been caught up in postseason baseball, spending the first part of the week in Detroit watching the Tigers split their home games against the Yankees, and then scrambling to catching up.

So I have not been doing very much knitting. Lots of fighting about baseball, reading about baseball, freaking out about baseball. Baseball!

I’d give anything to blow off my work this afternoon and work on the one project I’ve got on my needles right now: FELTED YODA HAT!

My nephew Baby Nolan is going to rock this Yoda Hat for Halloween this year, which means only one thing for my new baby niece Ryenn!

Yoda and Princess Leia? It doesn’t get much cuter than that, does it? Hopefully I’ll have Yoda’s ears and Leia’s hair finished soon so I can get them in the mail to my sister in law Emily (who is now on twitter AND etsy, by the way) very soon.

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do for my own costume. With Waldo and a Cupcake off the market, I’m coming up short in the idea department. Any suggestions?!

Did I go to The Baseball Hall of Fame last week with the intention of writing a blog post about knitting? Absolutely not. But when you love two very different things, like baseball and knitting, you tend to freak out when those things unexpectedly overlap.

So fair warning: this is a real freak out baseball knitting love fest.

The Baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown NY – a tiny town in the middle of the state that just happened to fall not too far out of our way between Boston and the cottage we were driving to last weekend. We couldn’t NOT make it happen!

At the start of The Baseball Hall of Fame it’s a lot of memorabilia from the few baseball teams that have been around since the late 1800s. The New York Giants, who didn’t move to San Fransisco until 1958, were one of those original teams, so the start of the museum was Giants-heavy, including this spectacular knit warm up sweater, which still looked to be in pretty awesome shape considering it has to be around 80 years old.

This Yankee warm up sweater from 1925 hasn’t held up as well but looks very hand knit, doesn’t it? The way the sleeves and pockets are set in? There was no information on either sweater about their origins, and I couldn’t find any information about the history of hand knits in baseball online.

There were tons of knit stockings from every early team displayed, including these White Sox stockings from 1917.

Though not knitted, this mini-tapestry of Babe Ruth caught my eye. Ray Masterson creates these tiny baseball tapestries with 1,200 stitches per square inch. He started making them to pass the time during a 15 year prison sentence! He’s got a crazy story and is a great example of baseball crafting.

The elaborate embroidered jerseys everyone had in the early baseball days were all amazing. None were as detailed as the early St Louis Cardinals jerseys. Again, I couldn’t find any information on the history of the embroidery on the jerseys. In my next life I’m going to be a hand crafted baseball historian.

Once you walked up through the 1950s, though, most of the knitwear disappeared. Which makes sense! I can’t imagine anyone playing baseball in knits. Its a summer sport! I bet all the players were excited to see the back side of knitted garments.

THEN toward the end of the museum I came across these hand knit socks made by Meredith Wills, who I FOUND ON RAVELRY and sent a gushing HOLYSHITYOUAREAMAZING message. Because this knitter is in the freaking Baseball Hall of Fame! For knitting! I immediately put this sock pattern in my queue, momentarily forgetting how much I hate colorwork and mostly seriously dislike sock knitting.

Size 0 needles. I would have to frame them. Or, I would have to frame one of them because if I ever cast these on there would be no way I could finish one, much less TWO! Gah. We can dream.

In my baseball knitting research I did come across knitting patterns for baseball warm up sweaters available on ebay! Those are more my speed.

My pictures weren’t all knitting related. I did geek out over my Tigers a LOT. And PT geeked out over the Twins. We were both geeking hard core from start to finish.

It was basically the best time ever. Baseball has such an amazing, rich, long history that I just want to suck up through my pores. As much as it hurts me I keep coming back, and will for the rest of my life. And all that love also involving knitting?! Tears were shed. Tears were shed.

Needless to say, if you ever find yourself driving around New York state, make your way to The Baseball Hall of Fame. If not for a love of baseball, do it for a love of the history of knitting. And bring me with you! I’d go again in a heartbeat.

Luckily the question today for Knit and Crochet Blog Week was lame, because today is the happiest day of the year! OPENING DAY! I can’t possibly talk about anything but baseball! BASEBALL!

Now, I realize that not everyone feels this way about baseball. It’s hard to explain my love for baseball to people who don’t love baseball. Specifically people who don’t love baseball and are reading a knitting blog. But I’m home in Michigan this week with Baby Nolan and my mom’s new pug puppy, Otis, and I might have figured out a good way of explaining it.

Me, on opening day (today), watching the first pitch, knowing that there are like SEVEN MONTHS of baseball ahead of me, is like you looking at these pictures.

So, please excuse me. I’ve got opening day baseball to watch. It’s like you excusing yourself to watch BABIES PLAY WITH PUPPIES!

BABIES PLAYING WITH PUPPIES = Opening Day Baseball.

If I die, though, from the joy of holding a baby playing with a puppy while watching opening day baseball, know I died happy, and that I loved you.

I mailed off my computer to be fixed yesterday after, of course, some complications. And while I wait for Dell to tell me that they have to wipe everything off my computer to fix it (I know it’s coming, and of course I don’t have anything backed up), I’m dealing with being computer-less by knitting a TON and getting as much computer work in while I’m at my part time job as I can. Including writing this post, but excluding all of these things:

The Top 6 Things I’m Missing While My Computer is Broken

(in order of importance)

1. Baseball

Yes, the Tigers are out of it, but I still love to watch them. I’ve got the MLB.TV package where I can watch all the games, and I love it, and I miss my team. And I’ve gotten to the point where I want the Minnesota Twins to win the World Series, so I’ve got to start studying up and getting ready for the playoffs.

2. Fantasy Football Stat Tracker

So. I’m way into fantasy football. I like to stare at my team and my opponent’s team and get live point updates so I know who to scream at and which channel to watch to get more live coverage of the games involving the players I need to step it up/crash and burn. I’ve got it on my phone but it doesn’t live update. I HAVE TO CLICK REFRESH EVERY 30 SECONDS!

3. Video Chatting with PT

With PT still in NYC we like to have video chat dinner dates, and be on video chat while we watch football so it’s like we are watching it together. It’s kinda adorable. And I miss it. Though I miss it less than I miss baseball and my fantasy football stat tracker. PT is fine with the balance he has struck. Kinda.

4. Hulu

ALL of my shows are starting back up, ok? It’s hard to know there are new episodes of Hell’s Kitchen, The Biggest Loser, Project Runway, The Office, 30 Rock, and Amazing Race (and those are just the not-so-embarrassing ones) out there in the world that are unavailable to me.

5. Feeling Organized

I’ve got a googledoc file for everything. To do lists for everything from things I need to do today to things I need to do for the DIY Trunk Show that isn’t until November. Lists of blog ideas and pattern ideas and newsletters to update and all this little stuff I have access to all day every day because when I think of something to add to one of those lists I just pop open the file and write it down.

Now I’m carrying around a notebook with lists of lists and then bullet points for each list. It looks insane. It makes me think my system that works must be insane because it just does not work on paper. And it makes me feel insane, and that it’s not good enough that I’m writing things down on paper because what if I lose the paper? I still have to remember all the things I’m writing down just in case the paper blows away or gets eaten by a dog.

6. Feeling Connected

I cannot keep up with facebook, I cannot keep up with my reader, and I cannot keep up with twitter. I miss my blogs and my girlz on twitter. I’ve found that I can do without facebook (if not for my Sweatshop facebook page and the facebook group for my fantasy football league I would probably take this time to just delete it, but, alas, I’m networking, just ignoring other people).

But I’ve constantly got the feeling that I’m missing everything important that is happening in the world.

Honestly, it’s a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I got a HUGE box of yarn in the mail this week that I’m excited about knitting up into holiday presents, so I’ve got things to do that make me feel like I’m still being productive.

Would I like to be working on patterns that I want to release soon? Absolutely. Will this probably delay their release? Absolutely. But I’m alive. I’ve got two legs and two arms and everyone I love is safe and happy and healthy. So can I deal with refreshing my fantasy football stats every 30 seconds for 12 hours on Sunday?

Yes. Yes I can.

My Detroit Tigers are in the Bronx this week so of course I was going. I had never been to Yankee Stadium so I wanted to see the $1.3 billion spectacle.

10 Reasons I Hate/Am Ok With the Yankees

1. Yankee fans know their baseball I got to the stadium early to marvel, and everyone from the super old Polish lady on the train to the 7 year olds I sat next to while it was raining knew every player, that night’s lineup, the Yankee’s record against the Tigers this year, the Tiger’s lineup, the history of the pitching match up. I like being around people who love baseball.

2. Yankee fans are complainers If I believed everything I heard during that game I would think that:

a. It has rained at every Yankee game since the beginning of time.

b. Robinson Cano sucks. (He is batting 322 with 21 home runs and 73 RBIs at publishing time. Decidedly un-sucky.)

c. A swing and a miss for strike 1 is a boo-able offense.

3. Yankee fans are die hard, dedicated fans Who knows what would happen if the Yankees ever aren’t in a pennant race, but every person in that stadium had a Yankee shirt on. Most of them had a shirt and a hat and a drawstring backpack and kids with them wearing Yankee tshirts and hats. When it started raining they pulled out their Yankee umbrellas. They have a good team so of course they are decked out! It was fun to see every single person in one enormous stadium dressed exactly the same.

4. Yankee fans have absolutely no idea the Yankees are the best team in baseball While their tshirts say ‘Got Rings?’, their mouths say, ‘YOU SUCK!’, which is hard for me to understand. The Tigers are 10 games back in the AL Central and aren’t even playing 500 ball and I’m still not telling them they suck. They’ve had some hard knocks this season and are still fighting, which is all I can really ask for.

That logic would blow the mind of a Yankee fan, because if you aren’t hitting 1000, going 5 for 5 every night with 5 home runs, or have an ERA of .000, you just aren’t trying hard enough and deserve to get boo’d and told you suck.

5a. No rational person can afford to eat at Yankee Stadium

Normal ballpark food is expensive, but when a bottle of Bud Light costs $9 something is terribly, terribly wrong.

5b. Sushi is not, and I repeat, NOT ballpark food, you pretentious douches

Yes, Derek Jeter, you order that sushi. 4 California rolls at a ballpark are totally worth $18.

6. The Yankee grounds crew does a choreographed dance to YMCA while raking the infield I have many issues with this:

a. You’ve worked your way up in the grounds crew world. You started in Cleveland, went over to the Cardinals for a few seasons but you earned your stripes and are now on the grounds crew of the New York Yankees. But before you start doing your job you have to learn choreography to one of the most obnoxious songs in the history of the world, the YMCA.

And you think something you never thought you’d think: GOD I wish I were back in Cleveland.

b. Why the hell are the Yankees playing the YMCA to begin with?

c. Not only do the Yankee fans not boo this display of ridiculousness and complete mockery of the institution of baseball, they drink it up! They all LOVE the YMCA like it was 1979, or like they are all 8 year old girls.

7. Yankee fans know how to follow directions Not only do they all love the YMCA, during the course of the game they danced wildly to Cotton Eye Joe, pulled out their American flags for God Bless America, got super noisy whenever the jumbo-tron told them to get noisy, did the wave when a man wearing a Jets Thomas Jones jersey started it, and yelled and clapped in unison whenever anyone around them started, ‘Let’s Go Yankees!’ clap clap clapclapclap. It was like kindergarten for angry fat men.

8. Yankee fans have embraced my Curtis Granderson

When one of my favorite Tigers got traded to the Yankees in the off season this year I was crushed, but he is doing well for the Yankees and they seem to really like him! There were tons of Curtis tshirts everywhere and was one of only two players not to be boo’d by Yankee fans.

Curtis and Derek Jeter is your guess? And A Rod? And Posada? And Teixeira? No no no, silly. Curtis Granderson and Nick Swisher were the only two Yankee players not boo’d during the game Monday night. Clearly two of the biggest names on the Yankees.

Wait. No. They aren’t at all.

9. Yankee fans are really, REALLY angry… The game did not go well for the Yankees Monday night. The Tigers jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the 2nd and knocked out their starting pitcher Vazquez in the in the 4th.

I’m not an obnoxious fan, but I’m a cheerer. I was living in Chicago by the time I got really into Detroit Tiger baseball so I’ve been an away-from-home fan my whole fan life. I’m not afraid of getting boo’d or harassed from home fans but when Miguel Cabrera hit a solo home run off Joba Chamberlain in the 9th to make the game 3-0 the angry yelling and boos were so loud and intense that I wasn’t about to stand up like I did when Ryan Raburn hit his 2 run shot in the 2nd.

10a. … but they didn’t give up hope that the Yankees could pull it out

In the bottom of the 9th the Yankees loaded the bases with 1 out. I took a picture of the scoreboard before things started getting hairy for the Tigers so I’d remember that they were ahead at some point just in case they blew it.

These fans really thought they were going to score 4 runs in the bottom of the 9th to win the game! Maybe that is what years and years of winning does for you, but if the Tigers had bases loaded with 1 out in the bottom of the 9th I would be silently crying, knowing they weren’t going to pull it out so then on the off chance that they did win I would be totally surprised!

10b. But were still SUPER angry about it their hopefulness For instance, the Tigers closer couldn’t throw a strike to save his life. He walked the 9 batter to score the first Yankee run of the game, bringing Derek Jeter to the plate with the bases still loaded.

Angry Yankee Fan Next To Us: DON’T SWING AT ANYTHING JETER!

Ball 1 is thrown

AYFNTU: GOOD EYE JETER! KEEP THAT BAT ON YOUR SHOULDER!

Ball 2 is thrown

AYFNTU: KEEP IT UP JETER! DON’T SWING AT ANYTHING!

Jeter takes strike 1.

AUFNTU: Why didn’t he know that was coming? You don’t think he’s going to throw you a fast ball down the middle on a 2-0 count? JETER YOU SUCK!

Derek Jeter, who sucks, miraculously hit into a game ending double play and the Tigers somehow walked away with a 3-1 victory.

Despite the intensity of that last half inning, I had a great time at the game. I couldn’t afford to eat anything, was really confused about the Yankee Stadium music choices and misguided fan intensity, but I only got yelled at by fat Jersey Shore trash who had no idea what they were talking about and slept through innings 6-9, and I went home with a victory.

I would go back in a heart beat! Wearing a tshirt that says: Hey Yankee Fan! Chill Out. And the YMCA and Cotton Eye Joe are Really Stupid.