Holy Where did all of These People Come From Batman?

Over a thousand people visited here today. That about what I get every couple weeks. I have also received a couple dozen email questions. All of this stems from a chance meeting with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.

She Cranked on The Marley a bit and apparently thought this was all interesting enough to put on her blog. Thus the huge up take in my daily readers. This brings me back to the questions. There have been many and they fall into several categories.

Once upon a time I promised that I would answer any comment left on the blog or email sent to me. I guess I never though more than three people would read this thing at any one time. So here goes. If I don't answer your question satisfactorily please let me know. I have grouped some questions and answer for brevity's sake.

Question 1: Are you Single, Married, Gay? Married to a woman. Once upon a time that would have sounded like an odd way to answer that question. It is a brave new world.

Question 2: What is The Marley? Why the Name?The Marley is what clowns call a Long Scarf. It will be made from 200 skeins of 3oz. worsted weight Canadiana verigated yarn. It is named The Marley because those 200 skeins of yarn will be turned into icrod and then knit into the scarf. The icrod is thought to look like dread locks. Ddancer made up the name. It is the tradition of our Clown Brigade to name every scarf that is longer than 100 feet long. We currently have two long scarves. The Barry and The Judy.


Question 3:What do you do with a Long Scarf? This is clown prop that is used for various routines. There is walking through a mall with a long scarf such a pictured here. There is also a tug of war routine and pulling it off someone and making them spin like a top.

Pictured is The Judy. She is named for Judy Garland and was named by CarlaK. The name works on several levels.

I am the clown in front. Behind me is Segeant Knit Whit {who knits during our stage shows}. Behind him is Sergeant Major Jimbo. We are in our humor Therapy costumes and not our Salvation Army Uniform costumes we use during our stage shows.

Question 4: Isn't using a machine cheating? HMMMMMM....... I just posted something like that. The answer is that you bet your sweet bippy it is. We have two hundred skeins of yarn that need turn into icrod. We would be completely insane if we did that by hand.

Clowns as knitter are what most would call project knitters. Our goal in life is to make a particular thing. Of our two scarves that we have one is very old, The Barry. And The Judy is a springy scarf that is good for some routines but not others. The Marley will be stiffer and better for the routines that The Judy is not. Our clown Brigade is one year old and we still have many things to build and make. We must do some of this very quickly because it will be used in the next couple months for our Spring shows.

Question5: What is with you sign off? Well be safe out there is fairly obvious. It is dangerous world out there and we must keep our head about us. Keeping you stick on the ice refers to Hockey. Namely that you care supposed to keep your stick bellow your knees. If you do not this is called high sticking. This is not a good thing for many reason. The primary reason is that it very tempting to clobber someone with your stick {see picture}.

It is mainly a reference to fair play. I lived in Canada for a while and am a hockey.


Question 6: What is a clown knitting group like? Well is is like any other knitting group with the addition of balloon animals and small children. This is me in the back actually making the swatch for The Marley. Our group is not exclusively for clowns. We have a clown practice just prior to our knitting group. So sometimes there is overlap. Actually the only real difference is that we have more men in our knitting group. Be sides that there are few differences except for the occasional odd project. Only about half our our knitting group is made up of clowns. The rest are just Pittsburghers that come to our group. It is open to the public and meets every Monday at 7:00PM at the Bee Hive.

Question 7: Donations - We have a couple projects we are working on. First is knitting items for our homeless shelters. Basically any knit or Crochet items or yarn can be dropped off at Knit 1 in Squirrel Hill. Those items are given to residents at our family shelter and Men's Shelter. We also have a knit together there on Sundays at 1:00PM.

Donations - Monetary- Several folks have asked how they can support our humor Therapy program. These donations may be mailed to our Corps: The Salvation Army Steel Valley Corps P.O. Box 395 Homestead, PA 15120. Please make Checks out to The Salvation Army Steel Valley Corps and put Clown Brigade in the memo section.

If anyone is interested in attending service at out Corps {Church} we are located at 104 E. Ninth Ave. in Homestead. Church services at at 11:00 AM. I will post our next round of shows once we have all of the locations locked in.

Well that covers most of it. I thank everyone for stopping by. If anyone decides to link here let me know so I can add you to my link list as well. Once again thanks for dropping by.

Be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

Z