on the sticks

Mother's Day: with or without?

2010-05-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

Perfect Mother's Day last weekend. Completely off-plan: was going to be alone time for me, scoping out my favorite knitting store and getting rest while daddy spent the day with kidlets.

Daddy got horridly sick Saturday night. So instead I took Sprout to play basketball at local playground while daddy stayed home with Blossom (who was supposed to be napping but whose eyes Blinked Awake five minutes after I left). Then lovely nap with Blossom. BBQ dinner by the feeling-much-better daddy.

Made me wonder: how many of us really accomplish the self-time Mother's Day? How many of us really want to? It seems like a good idea, but whenever I've tried it, I just miss my kids and feel slightly unhinged and cheated. My favorite activity on this day turns out to be mindful, wondrous, observation of them: how did they get so big? why are they so amazingly beautiful? who are they turning out to be? how can I be ever more encouraging of who they are and more present to them?

And why does a gift made by your kid blow the top off your head? Is it the proud smile and completely transparent vulnerability of them offering up themselves for your approval and delight? What greater joy than accepting the gift with pure and also theatrically exaggerated expressions of gratitude! How wonderful, the giggles of collusion that they surprised you (despite telling you repeatedly what the surprise in the bag was, and what it was for). Ahh, it makes my ribs ache just thinking of it.

Seasons of Life

2010-05-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

In January, my long marriage flew wholly off the rails after grinding along for awhile. It wasn't because of having kids--we adore them, we adore parenting them together (most of the time). In fact, we adore them so much it has been easier to focus on them than the worn spots in our relationship or our individual psyches. The why will be saved for another time, but we have both been working hard at it after a few months in which we had to decide if it was worth trying at all.

Last weekend, we did a family photo shoot with two amazing photographers, Sara and Scott. It has been a dream of mine for awhile. I had a list (yes, I'm a little type-A) of the photos I wanted. I waffled up until the last minute of whether I needed to let the photographers know I was ambivalent about pictures of me and the husband or, truth be told, of all four of us together.

I needn't have worried. These are consummate seers: they captured what was there. What I see is a family where there's lots of love, two people who adore parenting their kids, two astonishingly gorgeous and secure and lively (in their own two different ways) children. These pictures gave me so much hope. First, because our kids look whole and healthy--a small grace note amidst the effort we've made to ensure our rough patch hasn't damaged them forever. There is not much couple-ness in these pictures, but that feels true and right. We have been bruised and are rebuilding that. But it also helps me see why family can tug at the couple strings: there is simply so much to do to build that larger unit, two little people who need attending to, that you are--literally--called in two different directions. I am proud that we give our little ones one-to-one and sometimes two-to-one attention, and the reality of that is this: we get less of each other. It's not bad, it just is. This is the season we are in. But we must be in that season mindfully, or risk running off the rails again. No marriage can afford to go on autopilot. As my Friend A and DH say, we will be all that's left of this once these two little people launch themselves into the world, so they can't get all we have.

The family pics also tell me this: this is why it's worth trying. Together, we are the N's. It started with a marriage, but now it is something so much larger than that. In my darkest, most selfish, most agonized moments, I had friends who reminded me of that when I couldn't feel it--that the family alone was a reason to try. I'm thankful for that.

Age: what's it good for?

2010-05-06T12:58:00.000-07:00

It happened again today: the question. Am I Blossom's mother or her grandmother?

Eeek.

Despite my not-now-prematurely silver hair, and two bouts of nine months of doctor visits where my chart bore the icky designation "AMA," I am always surprised. And a little worried: as the third adopted child of a fiftysomething (true story) mom, I remember too well the squirmy embarrassment when people asked me whether she was my mother or grandmother. Life repeats? I don't want this for Sprout or Blossom, that squeaking hot paralyzing sense that something. is. wrong. with. your. family.

Got me thinking: what are the plusses of life-seasoned parenting? (Don't need to catalog the drawbacks: I'm reminded every time I climb the stairs with my 17-lb baby and lament my wonky hip.) Well, let's get it out of the way: resources. We fortysomethings have usually toiled away at careers and can more easily provide the requisite Robeez, right? (At least until #2 arrives and the monthly daycare bill rivals the mortgage payment.)

Wisdom? I'd say so, but life's tipping point--the one my therapist assures me comes to everyone at some point, where you question the whole foundation you've built your world upon and nearly every single one of your life choices--has spectred its way into my world of late. But maybe that's wisdom of the first order, knowing that you will face confidence-shaking moments, that life can infinitely surprise you, that you must be open to the awakening, that being cautious and denying life is the greatest risk of all. It sure has made me realize what I want for my kids is safety, freedom, the unshakable knowledge that they are cherished (not in a fussy protective way but the grounded-to-go-and-meet-the-world-my-young-one way).

Patience? Yes, most days. Not when facing the Aristotelian essence of dawdling that is a three-year-old boy brushing his own teeth. Especially after a hard day toiling away at that Robeez-providing career.

Here's what it must be: presence. I lived long enough without these little creatures, and then made a decision to bring them here. I know now what I would have missed without them. It makes me savor their every word, thought, emotion, developmental milestone. I want so much more for them than I got, even though what I got was okay. I want to be better for them, to be all that they deserve. I want to, as my Friend A says, parent from the inside out. And maybe, at fortysomething--if you've been paying attention--you know that inside better than you did at 20. Despite huge missteps and bumping my head on the same mistakes over and over again, I do.

relatedness

2009-07-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

Recently had my 39th birthday. Wrote this post partially the day before:

I am an adult adoptee. For most of those years, I would go foggy--not entirely painfully--with wondering who, where, why, is she thinking about me? around this time. Not so much since Sprout's birth.

Today at lunch I listened to This American Life: Switched at Birth, an episode about the Millers and Macdonalds. Two babies switched at birth in 1951. One mother who knew immediately the baby was not hers, whose husband made her take no action for fear of offending the doctor who provided their large family with free medical care, who said, heartbreakingly in the interview, "I knew I'd lose my husband's friendship if I [pressed the issue] and that would damage my marriage. . .I had seven children to raise." Her talk of gratitude for the child who then became hers--a sunny, popular child unlike her six serious others, a gift to the family. The two grown women's reactions and dances to find their places once the story--an open secret in their small town--came out. The other mother's sense of grief and loss, that she did not get to raise the baby she'd wanted so much and waited so long for. A story of fears and jealousies and irreparable actions and inscrutable behaviors and then ham-handed attempts to remediate. . .

I think about this today because my own adoption--like so many--was couched in the socially norming idea that you can rewrite biology with laws, religon, and the resolute blindness of patriarchy. The belief that you can disregard that growing a child inside you means something--not everything, but not nothing either. It is the second and last birthday I will spend pregnant with the only individuals I've ever known to whom I am related by blood--this time a daughter.

It is arrogance--largely male arrogance, I believe--that causes us to try to rewrite the most basic rules of being human. Not counting the Amazons and perhaps any other matriarchal warrior tribes throughout history, what mothers have not thought of war as a tremendous waste? Regardless of the sociopolitical conflicts at issue, don't we all just think from our wombs that, jesusgod, I spent all these months and years growing this (usually but not always) boy up?

This mother let her husband take away her child because of his own misguided belief that one child was as good as another. And she had to let him because without his husbandly protection (such as it was--by all reports the family was abysmally poor because of his choice of careers), she would've been cast adrift financially and socially. Her voice, her speech pattern, her girlish but squeamish laughter while she told this grim story--sounded so much like my own adoptive mother's resigned explanation of her making herself smaller to suit my incompetent and blustering father, I could hardly listen without throwing the MP3 player across the room.

It's not easy being a modern woman. Sometimes more choices just makes my head spin. But I know to my core that I don't need a man, that I can make my way in this world--and my children's ways if necessary--without one. But because I know how slippery a slope it is, it seems like a good day to ask myself, what are the compromises I make to be partnered, even with someone I love so much? Just how imprinted am I with the mores of the culture and family I grew up in, not so dissimilar from the crazy woman who allowed her baby to be given away: that the husband is the head of the home, and that the woman's job is to comply, to make herself fit his need, his idea of her, his want? Where it has insidiously shaped me, what has it cost us both?

a new day

2009-01-20T19:49:00.001-08:00

Already the pundits are at work dissecting--was it a memorable, historical speech? Does Justice Roberts' blunder make any difference? But all I know is that, for the first time in more than 8 years, I can watch our president speak and not cringe. I can listen and feel proud. I can be inspired for the hard work to come. It seems like we've reclaimed some sober, conscious, optimistic, measured, idealistic leadership in the world. Even if this weren't a historic day because of our president's race, it feels like a momentous one of reclaiming the right American values of thrift, hard work, sacrifice, and moral responsibility after so many years of neoconservative parsing of domestic and international law so that we could "legally" do unspeakable things, all behind an unprecedented veil of secrecy. Tomorrow there will be political decisions. Likely there will be moments of failure and compromise and falling short of what we believe is possible. But today, I'm terribly optimistic.

january is for hats

2009-01-12T20:57:00.000-08:00

January and I are not friends. This year, however, the fallow stormy post-holiday blah and too much work busy have a side effect: my knitting addiction seems full of possibility, a luxurious use of time when there's no house to sell (2008) or baby to prepare for (2007). Suddenly all I can think about is knitting hats. I have great stash yarn for hats, have scoped a couple of gorgeous hat patterns on ravelry, coveted a friend's hat at my NYE party.

So I've decided to frog this (it isn't happy trying to be this cable scarf, but I think it wants to be a hat):

On another note: Madrona's just a few weeks off! It's my annual preserve-mom's-sanity weekend "away" from home. I can't wait to take classes on Latvian mittens, Yarn Harlot's knitting faster, Sally Melville's knitting essentials, Elsebeth Lavold's Viking cables, etc. Rumor has it there will be some Blue Moon sock yarn as well. Anyone going?

omg, it's actually an FO!

2009-01-12T20:42:00.001-08:00

Leaf lace socks
Originally uploaded by on the sticks

And a short knit (for me). Great Evelyn Clark pattern but needed to make it shorter and with a stretchier cast-on and ribbing--wee bit too tight. Love the STR yarn, but I really like this pattern in lighter, solid-color yarns.

here's what's been occupying my time

2008-08-11T21:02:00.001-07:00

Sprout likes smoothies.

(it's been awhile since a Sprout photo)

If only I could post with sound--he's been talking nonstop lately, much of it intelligible, especially when he signs along with it. Tonight I was treated to a monologue--very involved story--about doggies and corn and daddy and bye-bye in the car. Consequently, we've been laughing a lot lately. My mother, who's getting quite senile these days, asks me several times in each weekly phone call, doesn't he bring you joy? don't you love being a mother? isn't he wonderful? At first I thought I must not be giving her the right answer because she just keeps asking. I keep saying yes! yes, and yes! Now I realize that my mother has one of those peculiar cruel fates of mothers--she loves her children desperately and doesn't understand them one whit. Meanwhile, I'm making my own set of mistakes that Sprout will blog in 30 years, probably ones I don't even know yet.

finished Sprout daycare blankie

2008-08-11T21:00:00.001-07:00

Finished Sprout Daycare Blankie detail
Originally uploaded by on the sticks

Oh, yeah, another one! This one was done at the time of my last blog entry, but no pics. The crochet border turned out a wee bit wonky on one side, but all in all, it's a great blanket. It's now been washed several times, and the Lion Brand New Cotton Ease blend is holding up well. Sprout remains indifferent to blankies, but this one is long enough that he stays covered most nights. (oh, hey, I love this "blog this photo" feature in flickr--saving a step makes all the difference in actually posting or not!)

don't look now, but something's almost finished!

2008-08-11T20:54:00.001-07:00

Sprout's JoJo sweater by BeesKnees knits
Originally uploaded by on the sticks

Finally, an almost-FO! I've had a few delicious days off this month and so finally cranked through the hard parts--picking up stitches along the button bands and placket and around the collar. It's pretty clean, though I won't show the undersides just yet. I spent a long time picking out the (almost) perfect buttons. I know it's crazy, really--I held it up to him the other night, and he'll MAYBE get to wear it a couple of times. Oh, well. I shouldn't have let myself get stalled at Thanksgiving, but getting ready to move and then moving and work and all. . .let's just say it doesn't help my procrastinatitus. But I do love how the stripes (Lang Jawoll Aktion colorway 132.0192) turned out. I don't have a pic yet of the cute little square intarsias on the back, but they turned out really cute, too. Now I just have to do the sewing-up (ick).

journeys

2008-05-28T20:43:00.000-07:00

Almost 6 weeks ago, a major journey came to an end, and a new one started: we have moved from our first house, our home of 12 years, to our next house.

It's a journey we started in earnest at Thanksgiving and is the primary reason why I haven't blogged or finished a knitted object in months. Last night I finished Sprout's daycare blankie, begun nearly a year ago, and will post a pic soon.

Returning to the new normal has begun. There are still boxes to unpack, rooms to paint. Items get placed, then moved, then moved again. I could not imagine ever tiring of shopping for house furnishings, but after 4 different shower curtain purchases in an attempt to match the counter in the guest bath, I can't face another white sale, Pottery Barn catalog, or cardboard box to break down.

A problem with journaling (or blogging, if one is an infrequent blogger) is that I feel compelled to "catch up." It's a further deterrent. All I really wanted to write tonight is this: the view out my office window is tall trees, wind, and a broad swath of sky. It's a feast of restfulness after weeks and months of motion. The quiet is like food, nourishing in a life that seems lately filled with meetings, conversations, words, tasks. Also I'm discovering that motherhood really is a joyful servitude--there is never, ever, ever, nothing to be done, and I'm like every mother I ever wondered about why she couldn't just sit down for awhile: driven. So this moment and view is sweet.

Now I'm off to do the dishes, but if you're a mother: sit down, just for a moment. In solidarity for all your sisters.

still here and preparing for madrona

2008-02-10T09:47:00.001-08:00

The last few months have been a blur--houseguests and holidays and long hours at work and getting our house ready to sell, Sprout learning to walk, illness in our own and extended families. Through it all, I've been looking forward to one thing: the Madrona Fiber Arts conference. Now it's only a week away, and I get to take a class from Evelyn Clark on lace knitting, a class on continental knitting, and an intarsia class from Lucy Neatby. Not to mention the fact that--even though the conference happens close enough to home that I can't really justify it--I get to stay in a hotel for two nights! I will finally test the theory that motherhood means you never sleep as well again. Surely if it's going to happen, it will happen in a hotel with no baby/dog/husband crowding, snoring, or waking at 4 a.m.

And I've been cranking away at knitting. Still OTS: the Sprout daycare blankie (which I'm hoping to finish before he goes into the toddler room next week and really needs a good stout blankie for mat napping), the alpaca cable scarf for my brother, the Sprout sweater (I got hung up on it after Thanksgiving, when I'd finished all the pieces but had no place to block or assemble it because our house now has to remain in pristine buyer-ready condition), and a couple of easy Fixation baby hats. I also placed a KnitPicks order for 9 colors of Telemark for the intarsia class but am dreaming of making the Interweave holiday issue cover Fair Isle beret once class no longer requires the yarn. Sorry no pics of yarn, but here's a recent one of Sprout, making the face that he now seems to think is required whenever a camera is pointed at him:

grandparent love

2007-10-28T21:21:00.000-07:00

I didn't grow up with grandparents. My last one died by the time I was 5 (and all I remember about that was that she--a mean paternal grandmother--died in late October and I missed trick-or-treating because we had to go to LA for the funeral).

B's parents are visiting. So watching Sprout with his Oma and Opa is a new and wondrous thing (these are B's parents--mine are largely absent from our life, though I know they love him and us in their own way). And watching B watch Sprout and his parents with Sprout is new. It's a reminder that this young son, my flesh and blood, is also that to someone else. And in this way, he has a life entirely separate from me, wholly about what he has from his father.

It really is a wonderful life.

still here

2007-09-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

From my blogosphere activity (aside from lurking), it looks like I've been all-mom, no-knit. I've actually been knitting a ton--at least it feels like it, because Sprout has begun to sleep earlier and I seem to spend evenings with sticks in hand whenever possible. Projects (see WIPs in sidebar) are a really cute sweater for Sprout (the JoJo pattern from BeesKnees knits) and the daycare blankie (OK, Sprout's been in daycare for nearly 3 months but my excuse is it hasn't been cold enough for a good thick blankie).

DH is confused by this addiction but patient and silent about how much $$$ I spend on yarn. Recently we went to visit family in my hometown, and I went to one of my favorite yarn stores (I literally dream about moving back to my hometown--a really bad idea generally--just so I can shop at this store). It was a whirlwind weekend, full of family and friend obligations, and an hour was all I could justify to shop without Sprout and B.

I'm agonizing over which sock yarn to buy for the Sprout sweater, when the door bell tinkles, and my slightly damp DH wheels the Sprout-laden stroller through the door. Poor boys, caught in a late-August cloudburst! Then DH tells me they're visiting me in the yarn store because Sprout woke up from his nap in our hotel room across the street (yes, I planned the lodging strategically) WHEN THE FIRE ALARM WENT OFF and DH had to gather our 2 suitcases, the baby in carseat, the diaper bag, etc. and singlehandedly get them all down 6 flights of stairs. My hero.

as good as a kick in the pants

2007-08-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Sprout's 6-month birthday. Want to know what he got for a present?

He got mauled by a kid in the doctor's waiting room.

We were waiting to see the doc because Sprout has an ear infection (no anti-antibiotic rants, please--we're going to meet his maternal grandparents for Labor Day weekend, and I don't want him flying with bulging eardrums). I had him on my lap, facing out into the waiting room. He wasn't making a peep, wasn't doing a thing but looking. There's one other family in the room, a dad and toddler-age son (heretoafter known as "Demon Child").

Demon Child comes over and stands in front of Sprout, looking at him. Then, no warning and lightning fast, he reaches out, grabs Sprout's cheeks, and digs his fingernails talons into my beautiful helpless baby's face. I realize too late what he's doing--my first instinct is to pull Sprout away but know the damage would be even worse. I have to get the kid to let go. His father--obviously as dumbstruck as I am--stands there, paralyzed. I blurt something and shove the kid away. Sprout begins to scream sounds I cannot describe and is beginning to drip blood. Nurses arrive to escort us to our respective appointments, sense the frission in the room, and separate us. The nurse for my doctor leads me out of the waiting room, and as soon as I'm through the door, I say, that kid attacked my baby. Get me the doctor right now. And I want to make an incident report. Right now.

I think she takes offense at the right now's. Her words to me when we get into the exam room (work hard to imagine the appropriately snide tone): "What are you going to do when he goes to school, Mom?"

Fast forward: an hour later, Sprout is sleeping comfortably at home, his wounds coated with antibiotic ointment. He's going to be just fine, hopefully no scars. His naive mother has learned a lesson: never again will a strange child come that close to my baby, and I will greet any who approach with "Don't touch the baby." I registered a complaint against the nurse, advised the medical director that they train their staff to deal with such emergencies better, and heard that the father was advised to be more watchful of his child around others. It's a poor set of actions when, bottom line, if I'd just been less trusting, it would never have happened.

And here's why I love Sprout's daddy: he gathered Sprout into his arms, said, "Little guy, there are mean people in the world, and something bad happened to you today. We'll do our best, but we can't always protect you out there. But you're home now with mommy and daddy, and you're safe, and we'll make sure this is a safe place for you."

sprout likes rice cereal

2007-08-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

We started the rice cereal a couple of weeks ago. He took to it like a house-afire:

One of our friends had a baby on Thursday--the induction that worked! When we went to see her that night, in the same hospital where I gave birth, it brought it all back. On our way out, we saw our doula, who was giving a birth center tour. Despite all the chaos of getting him here, I'm grateful for every part of that experience.

It's wonderful to love my life so much. My new job is a huge challenge, but every day flies by, I'm so excited to be doing the work and having fun. Sprout seems to love daycare, settling into a schedule of naps and bottles and playing. He plays hard, smiles and chortles a lot, and sleeps well every night. DH is wonderful and funny and makes a helluva halibut taco (Sunday dinner, yum!). I don't get luxurious sleep or endless knitting hours anymore, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

never say never

2007-07-18T21:26:00.001-07:00

Time flies--6 weeks since the last post? In that time, I savored my last few weeks of maternity leave, returned to work, visited with the in-laws who came to care for the Sprout the first few days I returned to work, and then Sprout started daycare.

The 12-row scarf was finished and Sprout's daycare blankie impulsively started (despite my previous vow not to buy new projects until the old ones were done). The daycare blankie, done in Lion Brand's New Cotton Ease (a durable economical choice but mostly I just loved the muted brights), is 17 stripes of 16 rows of different stitch patterns. It's texture and color and love and best hopes for his good napping in daycare in every stitch. It was painful to start, thinking of him having to start his life away from me, but I felt driven to give him something handmade. I don't have an FO pic yet but will post soon.

The days fly by, and suddenly he has hair and is discovering his toes and loves his ExerSaucer:

FO, new WIP

2007-05-30T17:59:00.000-07:00

Here's my promised FO--a Fair Isle hat for friend A. The finish time of a month includes at least ten days where it was actually done but awaiting tails woven in, so it's a very fast knit, even for me!

And a new WIP:

These days when I finish one project, I'm starting another that has been waiting in the wings for awhile. I bought the Artyarns Supermerino and Regal Silk yarns for this one last year on a business trip and had the yarn shop people wind it for me because I thought I'd work on it while I was on the trip. I cast on (or chained up, since it's crochet) right away but the pattern never clicked. I've never understood the architecture of crochet stitches in the same way that I get knitting, so after several failed tries, I set it aside. But I decided when organizing my stash a few weeks ago I'd better start working on those projects that have been wound before diving into others. Since I don't have a lot of stitching time these days, I'm going to knock off those that can be done quickly first, and keep them running alongside the seemingly eternal alpaca muffler. I figured this one would work up fast (only having twelve rows and all), and I'm already on the last row. However, the last row is worked in the fiddly Regal Silk and is a fringe made of 16-chain/single crochet tentacles, so it might take as long to do that one bit as the whole other 11 rows. I don't like the colorway as much as the shop sample, which I think was done in blue, but it's nice to be working with such fine fiber.

A closeup of the first three rows, with the offending Regal Silk at top.

a happy (first) mother's day!

2007-05-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a dream come true. I know that my dream really came true the day Sprout was born, but yesterday it all hit me in a new way: I'm a mom! After waiting so long, to finally have this little sweetheart with us, is indescribably wonderful.

Coincidentally, my best childhood friend H flew in for the weekend, and was good for lots of auntie games and kisses:

Sprout borrows his middle name from four people: my dad and brother and two of B's best friends. Here's one of them, fresh from running a Mother's Day half-marathon, right before the brunch mimosa and Percodan kicked in:
B brought me white roses and "helped" Sprout buy me a beautiful gift from our local jeweler. After years of Christmas/birthday/ anniversary gifts, the owner knows B and has been waiting for baby's arrival. Apparently he no sooner started looking in the case when she liberated Sprout from the carrier and started loving on him. I know people love babies in general, but this kid is a traffic stopper! (He sure didn't get it from me--I just downloaded two pictures of me that look like I'm a 70-year-old meth user cross-addicted to HoHos).

And here's an extra fun yarn porn shot for good measure (because, as I've said before, if you can't be knitting, you can always stash).

Isn't Socks that Rock amazing? I love that Blue Moon Fiber Arts is fearless with color. I bought them online so was a little disappointed that Lucy didn't have more blue in it, like in the online picture. Can't wait to knit these up. I did some stash organizing yesterday (three large Ziploc bags is my whole stash, so it didn't take long), and I'm committed to finishing the last item I have OTS (my brother's alpaca muffler) and then knitting up those projects that I've actually already wound into balls, so they don't stay stretched out any longer than they already have been.

nervous

2007-04-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

This is not the nervous part but is knit-related, so I start with that: there is another WIP on the sticks, the bulky Fair Isle hat that was supposed to be friend A's Christmas present. After a false start with wrong sizing, it's working up fairly quickly, and I'll have a picture of an FO soon. Sprout is sleeping through the night most nights, I feel like a human being again, and there is time for several rows of knitting most days--I think I appreciate it even more now that the time for it is scarce and measured.

So why nervous? I'm going to meet my doulas for lunch today. Patti's bringing the pictures she took of us during labor and birth. When we were setting the time today, she said, "Now, do you want the pictures of the actual surgery? They're pretty graphic." I said, yes, I need to see them.

I still mourn the fact that I didn't see him come out of me, one way or another (our anesthesiologist was not going to consent to drop the drape so I could see Sprout be born), so I'm hoping Patti got a picture of him all covered with goo. I don't care how graphic it is, I just really want to see it, so much so that I've had butterflies about this lunch for weeks.

But hey, by sometime this afternoon, I will have seen a full-color picture of my uterus, and hopefully of my b being born! How cool is that?

fo: heike socks (at last)

2007-04-20T16:39:00.000-07:00

After a year + on the sticks, here they are

Pattern: Sensational Knitted Socks, Baby Cable Rib
Yarn: hand-dyed, handspun superwash from Handspun on the Web, no colorway name (75% wool, 25% nylon), 400 yards
Needles: Size 0 Addi Turbo 40" circular
Method: Magic Loop, 2 at once
Begun February 7, 2006
Finished April 20, 2007 (lots of dormancy in between)

They're called the Heike socks after the woman who dyed the yarn--I love how it flashes and pools and just wish I'd also taken a picture of it in the hank, it was even more beautiful. There was barely enough yardage, though (I had to partially unravel my gauge swatch and was holding my breath to the end), and that was even with making the cuff fairly short. I didn't love the yarn to work with--it was very loosely plied, which made working with the sz 0 needles hard (too easy to catch or split the yarn), but I think it will be durable. They're surprisingly comfortable--I generally like short row heels better on me, but this heel flap doesn't bother me, and they're just the perfect length. And they have the added cache of being the knit project that I worked on while in the hospital, and my first FO since Sprout was born.

To end on an even happier note, here's a gratuitous baby shot from this morning's smiles:

knitting again!

2007-04-16T20:41:00.000-07:00

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, I knit my first stitches at home since having Sprout. I got a few more rows in today while he was sleeping--dinner was made, laundry was done, milk was pumped, hospital bill paying was caught up, and it was more important to me than showering (that's probably TMI). It was glorious, and if the yarn doesn't run out, I hope to post a finished object of Heike socks here in a few days.

Happy tax day from my little sprout:

cravings

2007-04-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

1. sleep

2. knit

3. sugar

Which of these do you think I get most often? Only one can satisfyingly be had on the run. I'm starting to understand why new parents talk about uninterrupted sleep in the fondest, most ardent terms. I've even begun fantasizing that maybe my first Mother's Day present could be a night in a hotel. Solo. Where I could do #1 and #2 to my heart's content. I took my knitting with me when I went to urgent care earlier this week (pulled back muscle from hauling around growing moose-like baby), and they were so efficient I only got three or four stitches done, after it took me a few minutes to remember the long-abandoned pattern.

But all that pales in importance when I see this:

Happy Easter!

the new love of my life

2007-03-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

Here is Sprout, just minutes old, with his proud papa:

He (finally) arrived on the 27th of February, 5 days post-due, despite all medical intervention to get him here earlier (it's starting to sink in that this child will always take his own sweet time). How it happened is a long story, but he arrived after about 24 hours of labor and one C-section. We're just grateful he's here and is healthy and growing like a little monster.

still waiting

2007-02-25T08:41:00.000-08:00

The last ten days have been the longest of my life.

Here's the short version: for medical reasons, we tried an induction of labor on the 15th. Nothing happened but a long, frustrating day in the hospital (and some very bad news about a dear friend of ours that arrives via a cell phone message while we're waiting). After a battle with my doctor over my blood pressure that necessitates some extra lab work (he is sure I'm developing pre-eclampsia, I'm certain it's just white-coat fever), they rescheduled us for the following Monday. We called in five times and waited all day by the phone, but there was no room at the hospital for an induction. We rescheduled for Wednesday. After a day full of Cytotec, no contractions, no dilation, so we switch to Pitocin. I spend several hours hooked up in every possible way: IV, blood pressure cuff, fetal monitor, feeling like I'd rather be in jail because I could at least walk my cell (good news is, baby B's heartrate just chugs along at 140-160 bpm, he's doing belly flips and punts and hiccups, he's a little locomotive). No contractions.

They take me off the Pitocin so I can get a few hours sleep (for some reason they moved me to a birthing suite delivery room, where the bed is really not meant for sleeping, so there's not much of that), then start again at 5 a.m. I am just beginning to have contractions at 8 a.m. when the new doctor comes on call. She and my doctor recommend continuing with Pitocin and checking me again several hours later. Mentally exhausted (partly because the next words out of new doctor's mouth--keep in mind I've never met her before--are "You know you're going to have to go on the South Beach diet when this baby arrives," and tells me again about my baby's risk of sharing my chronic health condition) but committed, I agree.

A half hour later she comes in and says, "I just got new information. The special care nurseries at all three local hospitals are full. If we continue this induction and your baby arrives before nursery space becomes available, if he needs to go into the nursery, we'll have to send him to (names two cities, one three hours away, one five hours away)." Now, I've talked with the pediatrician and know that there's a slight risk of baby needing some special intervention, but hearing it like this and imagining my little guy whisked off, is just too much. I burst into tears. Doctor keeps talking (amazing how medical professionals don't even skip a beat when someone is crying in front of them), and I say, I need a few minutes to consider this. They tell us that if we stop the induction today, they'll be sure and get us in on Saturday (when, theoretically, the nursery situation will have improved). Absolutely certain. B and I talk, we decide we need to keep going. We'll deal with the nursery situation when/if it materializes.

They turn up the Pitocin, and I try to prepare myself for another long day (and the new, previously unimagined possibility that, since today's our due date, this baby might actually go overdue!). Half hour later, the nurse and doctor come back. Doctor says, "Your choices have changed." This time they tell us that we no longer have the choice of continuing the induction in their hospital today. We can either go to another hospital two hours away, which appears to have room, or come back on Saturday. I ask, what if the nursery situation hasn't improved on Saturday? Well, they backpedal, then it's the hospital two hours away.

I'm a freakin' wreck by this point, but I'm taking this as a sign from the universe that this baby is not being induced (I'm starting to think of it as "evicted") today. We call our doula and our friend, who meet us at the hospital. Our doula confabs with the nurse, then comes back in and says, I've never seen this before in 30 years of doing this work, but it's true. There is no room at the inns all around us. . .

We have lunch with our doula and friend and go home. B feels like we've been bumped from an airline flight and is pissed. I say, "Yes, but you feel like you've been bumped from an airline flight because it was oversold. I feel like I got bumped because someone thought I looked like a terrorist."

I know I'm all sensitized with pregnancy hormones, but it feels somehow personal to me. Trying to advocate for myself, trying to be allowed to manage my chronic health condition in the hospital without too much intervention (which has meant fielding disbelieving calls from pharmacists who say, are you sure you take this medication in this dose? and nurses having to provide extra monitoring, who are vocal about their frustrations that my baby is active and doesn't like to stay on the monitor, as well as about how difficult it is to locate him through my belly fat), dealing with my doctor who has turned out to be the most conservative monitor-Nazi possible, not allowing me to move around at all even before the Pitocin was started, dealing with shift-changes that change the induction protocol, being moved. . .and all for nothing. We've lost nearly all the five days B was going to be able to take off work after the baby arrived, just waiting around in the hospital. We've now been in the hospital for three days, and I'm terrified of what this is costing us.

So, it's keep my eyes on the prize time: when this is all over, there will be a baby B. We just have to wait it out. I'm not sure now what to do about inducing again, but I suspect my doctor's going to freak when he finds out we got booted--he didn't even like waiting full-term. I suppose it's a good exercise in parenthood--letting go of my own agenda. Still, I'll be glad when he's here and home and all these extra people are out of our lives.

knitting socks and waiting

2007-02-18T22:22:00.000-08:00

I love knitting so much. After several months absence, I've returned to the Heike socks, started last February. Where their tiny sz 0 needles and the little pattern of cables seemed interminable a few months ago, it suddenly is just the right thing to knit while waiting to birth this little bellyball. At our first (failed) attempt at induction on Thursday, knitting helped ease my frustration with all things medical and let me forget the growing discomfort in my nether regions (it was failed, but not entirely failed--some unproductive contracting). Tonight it seemed just the right thing to help me forget the. . .yes, growing discomfort in my nether regions.

We go back tomorrow for induction attempt #2, if the discomfort doesn't wake us up in the middle of the night as real labor. Boy, this baby is stubborn--I told him yesterday that, if he wanted to do this on his own, he needed to do it sometime Sunday. He waits of course for the last possible minute, just like he waited for the last possible moment two weeks before my deadline 36th birthday last summer to make his presence known. He is his definitely his father's child.

an old post about mother love

2007-02-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

In a week or a little more, I will be a mother. I came across this post, written for another blog, about knitting for my mother (2/2/06). I'm posting it here and now because it seems appropriate, and because I have been blog-AWOL for awhile.

My relationship with my mother has been complicated for a very long time. As I prepare to be a mother, I am now conscious of all the ways I can let my child down without ever meaning to, with all the best intentions. Forgive me, mom, for being hard on you, and thank you for all your good intentions.

I’m knitting a pair of socks for my mother. I don’t like them very much. They weren’t intended for my mother. They began with an experiment in dyeing yarn with Kool-Aid, and because Kool Aid makes its chemical colors garishly bright to appeal to children, the yarn was a mud of uncommitted but distinct stripes of grape, kiwi green, turquoise blue, and 1970s pink. The 1970s pink was familiar precisely because of my mother’s love for it, the shade of most of my public dresses until I finally said no more and rebelled against lace. I chose the yarn for these socks (my third pair ever) because I wanted to learn a new knitting technique, making two socks at one time, and didn't want to spare more valued yarn on something where mistakes were so likely to happen.

But when my mother saw the socks at Thanksgiving, she loved them. Of course she did—they were all the colors I rebelled against, the soft tenuous colors that she clothed herself in my whole life, the colors she always wanted for me to love. She likes faint things: faint living, faint colors, faint powers of persuasion. Glad to have a home for these socks that wouldn’t remain in my drawer, I said, they’re yours. But something happened as I spent the next months finishing them. They were, like all knitted garments intended to become a gift, a reminder of the recipient. As you stitch away, leaving microsopics of flesh on them and wearing away your already sketchy carpal tunnel, you’re giving something more than just the end pair of socks (which, if I were honest, have a pointy heel that would never accommodate my broad back of foot). You're weaving in thoughts, intentions, hopes, wishes, fears, for the one who receives them.

Last night, several inches from completion, I turned my attention back to the first row of these socks—a ridge of stitches before the crinkly rib. I did what I do with all balls of yarn before deciding to purchase: I rubbed the sock against my face. The first row, tight and even, torn out more than once while I tried to make just one thing in my life perfect, for once—not compromising or deciding I wouldn’t mind later—was a masterwork. A small one, nothing like the whole bins of garments the most well-blogged knitters turn out, but my own small one. I am grateful to have a masterwork to give to my mother. I look at the sock and think, it will be warmer than the socks she has. She needs warm socks.

A week or so after I started these socks, but before my mother had claimed them, she did let me take her shopping, a rare occasion--she hardly ever lets me buy her things, and when she does, she rarely wears it (like all Depression-era mothers, she always saves the nice things for later). I resorted to subterfuge to get her there: Mom, I need to buy a bathmat, so you can take a shower for church. Our tub is really slippery. (We’d already had one fall that resulted in Dad wearing a bloody headwrap to Thanksgiving dinner.) Shopping trips are also minefields--reminders of days we shopped together for dance dresses and school clothes, reminders for both of us of how much she needs (why she needs so much and is so poorly cared for is a long and rotten story), and how uncomfortable it is to have your child provide necessities. I bought her jeans, a turtleneck, and a fleece jacket that, it turns out, go with the socks. It was all she would let me do. She was genuinely delighted and grateful in the way that breaks my heart. I wish so much I could change things for her, but I've failed at making any real difference in her life, though I've been trying for years. So I do what I can do: I give her a pair of socks.

I sent the socks off to my mother shortly after writing this. She loves them, and so I learned that the yarn wasn't a mistake--it was for her all along. We can't always give the people we love the exact thing they need, or enough of it, mothers or children alike. Sometimes we just love them imperfectly and fully, do the best we can and hope they know this. That's what I'm thinking as I wait for baby B to be born.

not long now

2007-01-25T21:53:00.000-08:00

36 weeks today, and counting.

No contractions. Sprout is approximately 5 lb. 15 oz., on schedule to weigh in about 7.5# at birth. Only one more childbirth class. Papa B's "man shower" is being planned, and two out of three Mama baby showers have occurred:

Sprout's room is nearly ready:

I'm feeling mostly great, just a little more tired and waddly than usual. Sprout's still kicking like crazy (though he's moved head-down and so the sensations have changed.

still here in the new year

2007-01-02T20:58:00.000-08:00

But not knitting much. 2006 was not a knitting year for me, only a few FO's. I still have the Heike socks OTS from last February (sz 0 needles are too eensy, I've decided). It was a fairly healthy stashing year, and I'm no longer letting myself buy yarn, not until I knit some of these projects!

For Christmas, B gave me the KnitPicks Options needles, and they rock--nearly as good as Addis! Just in time to make Fair Isle hat #2 for my friend A's belated Xmas present (leave it to me to think on December 23 that it's a brilliant idea to start a gift). Also, since MIL sent a check this year instead of packages, I've treated myself to the Vogue Stitchionary volumes 2 and 3 from Amazon, and they're arriving any day now. I promise pics of all soon.

We're in the single digits of weeks before Sprout arrives: 7 officially, probably less. I'm getting slightly more uncomfortable, and the docs want me to come in twice a week for nonstress tests. I'm glad they're being conservative, but I do hate the doctors' appointments. They've spent so much time talking with me about risks (despite there being no indication so far that any of the risks are materializing), I hold my breath at each one. The things that keep me from going out of my mind with misplaced worry are husband (who reminds me "my half's tough") and the constant activity coming from my belly: bongos, trapeze acts, fish flips, thumps, grumbles, and rolls. I'll worry that Sprout has ADHD later--right now, these movements are the most reassuring thing in the world.

first fair isle FO

2006-11-11T20:35:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, I took my first knitting class, to learn Fair Isle.

I have a hard time committing to classes when I get the brochures--they always seem like a lot of money, so I put it off. Then when I get the impulse, there's nothing interesting open. But this time the knitting angels were with me--I've been feeling stressed and punky and really needed to do something fun, so it was fortuitous that there was a class the very next day.

It was a good class, and I've now finished the hat (all but weaving-in, so no pics--there's an in-progress picture in my OTS sidebar). It was a lot of money and would've been even more if I'd used the 4 colors recommended for the pattern. But I had this vision of a very simple Christmasy hat, something for our annual trip to the cut-your-own-tree lot. I used Nashua Creative Focus Chunky yarn in Carmine and Natural, a nice single-ply wool/alpaca blend that makes a nice halo.

I definitely could've learned it from a good Fair Isle book, but it was fun to be with other knitters, and I made a lot of progress in the 3-hour class. I was glad I've been practicing Continental knitting.

Sprout is very kicky these days. And grandparents bought him his first shoes:

I get ridiculously happy whenever I look at these.

new on the sticks

2006-10-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

A good start on brother's alpaca muffler. The yarn is 100% prime undyed alpaca, silken and featherweight but a little sheddy.

This pic doesn't show the sinewy cables well, but they are actually quite lovely in person. I've wanted to knit this pattern for awhile (from Tricoter's menswear book) because I remember the shop sample being one of the loveliest things I'd ever fondled. Now I'm wondering--was it really that beautiful? Because while I like this quite well, I'm not besotted.

Maybe because I had several false starts on this one--tried the pattern multiple times but couldn't get anywhere near gauge or width with the needles they suggested, even though this yarn is the same gauge as what was recommended. Then tried the balloons scarf from Scarf Style but found the pattern didn't show up well in this yarn (the shop example where I bought the yarn was the balloon scarf but in a lighter gray). Finally had to modify the number of stitches, and stupidly didn't multiply right for the cables, but decided I could live with the result. This is very, very easy knitting, and it's humming right along, so it should be ready for brother's arrival at Thanksgiving.

an FO!

2006-10-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

Glory hallelujah, it seems impossible, but here it is:

Technicalities: I knit tightly, and my gauge is almost always too many stitches per inch, but it will fit the intended fine because she was between sizes. It was my second project with the Denise needles, and I didn't like them at all--the cables were too chunky to knit in the round easily, the tips blunted, the joins catchy. I guess they're fine as backup needles, but not my first choice. Anyone using the new needle set from KnitPicks?

This FO seems all the more astonishing because these days I'm too pooped to fold my laundry, because I've had the pattern for two years, bought the yarn this summer, and have promised it to the baby's mother a long, long time. It's so good to be done with it!!! And there's enough yarn left to make one for our baby B when he is ready for trips to the pumpkin farms in a couple of years. Now I have to quickly transition to the alpaca muffler for my brother, because I just heard yesterday that he's coming from China for Thanksgiving.

I love my brother. He's a peripatetic spirit, a world traveler. He's delighted that we're having a boy, who will be (partly) his namesake. (Partly because the middle name we've chosen for baby B is shared by my father, my brother, and two of DH's best friends). When I told him I was pregnant, he told me he wants to be like Auntie Mame (yes, he's gay) and take this little one all over the world. He sent me an e-mail yesterday, and this was all it said:
1. Birth
2. Social Security #
3. Passport

Adventures await. I think I'm beginning to feel the Sprout moving, and it's freakin' me out.

if you're not knitting. . .stash!

2006-09-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

I know I've been blog-AWOL for awhile. "I'm growing a person" is my excuse for just about everything I don't get around to these days.

I actually have been knitting: swatching for the pumpkin hat I'm making for one of my friend's kids, linen washcloth (that was almost done and will have to be frogged, it turned out so ugly). But I did visit about 5 LYS's on our recent Oregon trip, and managed to get a few things (see stash in sidebar). The Prime Alpaca is for a muffler for my brother for Christmas, though he'll probably get it in February, since he just moved to China and won't be back for the holidays.

We got some news a week or so ago. Does this picture tell you what the news was?

Yeah, the doctor said, "If that's not a boy, I'll eat my hat. . ." It's early yet, but we've been having all these ultrasounds. I suppose there could be a surprise (it was a 3rd leg after all?), but doc seemed pretty certain. While I'm dying to blog his name (it's a really, really, really great name), we'll just refer to him here as Baby B. Or Sprout.

I'm starting to waddle already. Why should be evident from this picture, where I look as if I'm carrying not only my original heftiness plus a baby plus about half of Texas as well. The irony is, I've actually lost 3 pounds since I got pregnant (baby is growing fine, thank you!), but you wouldn't know it from this. I hope it's the oversized sweatshirt, which I bought in the Tillamook cheese factory, because I mistakenly packed for the height of summer instead of September on the Oregon coast. It is the sweatshirt, right???

And here's my sweetheart, the darling man who knocked me up:

2nd tri rocks

2006-09-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

Thank the holy lord god for 2nd trimester relief from queasies and exhausteds and everything-smells-bad. And for the perinatologist and his lovely nurse, who said her job is to be a cheerleader and partner. And for my regular OB, who championed my referral out of HMO to specialist for the chronic medical condition. Pregnancy is turning out to be much more fun now that I don't have to face dead baby panic every doctor's appointment, or other dreadful and humiliating things resulting from medical incompetence and doctors who forgot to put on their human suit before coming in to work. I am beginning to feel like myself again, only with this new reality incorporated.

Here's my latest (humble) WIP: a half-done linen washcloth (no, not a warshrag):

I am once again addicted to all things yarn. This morning, the chill in the air promised fall. Soup, knitting, Halloween--some of my most favorite things in the world. I told my friend that I would need to measure her toddler's head this weekend so I can begin on the pumpkin hat in plenty of time for trips to the pumpkin farm.

This time of year, I miss Utah so much. B and I are leaving Tuesday for a brief trip to the Oregon coast, but I've been daydreaming about changing our plans and just heading out for the State of Deseret instead. My oldest friend could help me shop for maternity clothes (I actually split a seam in a pair of pants today), I could dawdle at the Needlepoint Joint (yarn nirvana), and we could go to the Christmas Shoppe at Gardner Village (they have a mean Halloween section, too--bizarre and ironic how the mormons love this little pagan holiday so). But we have promised ourselves that this--possibly the last baby-free vacation for a long while--will not be spent staying with friends, shuttling family around, or doing anything other than just what we want to do.

I haven't praised my lovely husband lately, but he's just amazing. At my doctor's appointment, I was reading a mother magazine, and they said the husband who did the dishes, cooked the dinner, and cleaned up while running a load of laundry was a myth. I can tell you it is not. How did I luck into this wonderful man? And, to top it all off, he's wicked funny and profoundly smart. I was telling him tonight we were having a quandary about the meaning of the word "plenary" at work today (don't ask). Did he know what it meant? I wondered. He couldn't explain it to me, he said, but he did indeed know. And then he proceeded to use the word plenary in every sentence (sometimes accurately, sometimes cleverly, sometimes just punnily) for the next hour.

Oh, I realize I forgot to show the birthday ceramics painting project I did with Friend A. Here it is (the bowl--the square plate I made in February 2005). I know it's a noodle bowl, but they didn't have another shape I liked, and I thought the cut-outs would work for serving spoons just as well as chopsticks.

gettin' my knit on again

2006-08-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

Something great happened tonight: I felt like knitting again! Maybe it's the realization from last week that I really do need some better tools for relaxing right now. And since this bellybean is my kid, not friend X or Y's, it makes no sense to abandon my favorite form of relaxation and go in search of something else that so-and-so thinks is better.

So I knit some on the Heike socks:

They are on tiny sz 0 needles. They are taking forever. I realized that I'm pretty bored with them--it's just miles of the tiny twist cable to go until I can do something interesting, like a toe, but I'm pretty happy with how they're turning out. I made the cuffs shorter because I was afraid I might run out of yarn, but I like the effect just fine.

But I also have some Adrienne Vittadini linen yarn stashed, and some Euroflax. I've been thinking for awhile that linen washcloths would be the ideal summer knit project: portable, not wool, something easy and different. Besides, the women at work have been so completely wonderful to me that I have this dream of making them each a linen washcloth and giving them some very lush soap as a thank-you when the baby's born. Tonight I made it as far as picking several stitch patterns from my Harmony Guide Volume 1 and casting on a few stitches.

B and I are definitely in nesting mode. We've been looking at houses (we were hoping to move next summer anyway, and now that fire's really lit under our butts), and this is what we bought ourselves for our birthdays tonight (more than a month after my birthday, and just a few days before his):

The saleswoman was so nice--very helpful (aren't commissions great?), and when we discovered the bonus for purchasing the set was a stinky nonstick chef's pan, she gave us the matching stainless chef pan instead. We didn't need the pretty stainless teakettle--we have an InstaHot--but I'm a firm believer in free. B keeps telling me that I won't be able to cook on high heat anymore (which is probably how our 10-year-old Teflon-coated pans got trashed anyway). He says he's worried about my "cheesy burny things" (I'm not very good at grilled cheeses).

Apparently my sweet husband was so excited that he had to unpack just one of the pans. I came out to find this on my stove:

And I think we've figured out how Harvey manages to keep himself covered with fleas, despite all our best efforts to eradicate them (yes, that is half of our rootless thus dead lawn on his back, and at least this time I caught him before he came back into the house):

not one speck of knitting news

2006-07-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

It seems like the instant I discovered I was pregnant, I lost all interest in knitting. Completely. I'm missing my former obsession terribly, but alas! It has no shown sign of returning.

B and I were talking last night about baby preparations (of course), and I said, I have no desire to knit anything at all for my baby. Once we know the sex, I might dive in and make a Sadie-like blankie (but not one in pieces).

But I think I just feel so different that I'm not sure how all the old me pieces fit. I read other knitblogs, and there are all these women with new babies who are churning out tons of projects. I've always been a slow knitter, so now I wonder if there's any hope for me, or if I'll be knitting my 12-sock stash when I'm 80! Oh well, it's the journey and the process, right? And summer has always been a slow time for knitting anyway (it's all that wool!). Maybe it's time to dive into my Euroflax washcloths. I bought some really lovely Crabtree & Evelyn soaps in May with the idea that I'd like to give my girlfriends some washcloth/soap gifts.

welcome to the queasy!

2006-07-16T07:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, friend A and I went to celebrate my birthday by painting some ceramics. She made a great salad with chicken and veggies and white peaches, and I just wanted to eat peach after peach after peach. I don't know if it was a craving so much as everything else just makes me want to hurl.

B said the other day, "I've never known someone could get so excited about feeling sick."

The smell of my reasonably clean refrigerator makes me sick. The smell of Harvey's breath makes me sick. The smell of ice makes me sick. Isn't it great?

No puking, which I think of as a very good thing. But Friday, I walked back to my office after a meeting across campus. I was feeling better than I have in weeks--energetic, focused. I got to my office, sat down, began eating my morning snack, and thought, "Hmmm. I'm going to throw up." Hit me like a freight train. I walked slowly to the small office bathroom (thankfully empty, because there's often a line for our one-seater), waited, and breathed. The urge lessened a little. I walked out and casually said to a colleague, "Do we have any trash bags?"

Everybody knows now. I decided to tell, even with a month left to go in the first trimester. I wanted to control the message.

I'm doing fairly well with eating, but by the end of the day, I'm starving and sick too. So dinner has become a spin-the-wheel kind of proposition. Last night, the only thing in the world I wanted was egg foo yong. Bizarre, no? In general, the cravings have been for the tangy and the spicy. So we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant. Guess what? No egg foo yong on the menu. We ate an appetizer and soup and I ordered mu shu chicken, ate a few bites for the veggies, B had spicy eggplant. We then went to the other Chinese restaurant, where I know they have egg foo yong.

Yes, we went out to two dinners. Cost more than our fancy birthday dinner at the waterfront fish house the night before (strangely, I've also been craving fish). I hope the second trimester relief from queasy holds true, or we'll go bankrupt.

Friday, we got this:

First baby present, from one of my girlfriends. In my head, it's not a blanket--it's an act of faith. Thanks to my distant friend A, who knows that I sometimes need help with hoping and believing.

grumpy today

2006-07-13T17:33:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was my 36th birthday. It was a dream day: we got to tell our parents we are pregnant! By Tuesday, I'd told my girlfriend posse. One of them had told her parents, who are also good friends of ours. I'd told my oldest friend, who had been staying with us for the weekend. All this telling meant I arrived home to three bouquets of flowers, ostensibly birthday flowers, but I suspect the blastocyte had something to do with it.

After we told the parents, we went to our local dessert splurge place, bought three different slices of designer birthday cake, ate three bites of each, and tossed the rest (eating for two means something different for me--that I can't indulge). It was a wonderful, wonderful birthday.

Yesterday and today, the fun wore off. I am worn out with doctor's appointments, especially within the freakin' HMO. I had a specialist appointment yesterday (where the doctor and nurse ended up having a fight in front of me because they couldn't agree on how to treat my chronic medical condition--after telling me in my first appointment a few weeks ago that they were going to "learn along with me," since I'm the first pregnant patient they've had with this condition), and my OB appointment today, where the doctor literally greeted me with--nope, not "congratulations--but "Hmm, 36 years old. You have a 1 in 200 chance of a Down's Syndrome baby."

Now, I know that the HMO needs to cover its big bureaucratic ass. I know they need to advise me of the risks. But, because of my chronic medical condition, I've researched the risks (and, oddly enough, I had a very specific conversation with the same OB back in February about the risks). But I'm telling you, if they don't stop talking to me about birth defects at every fucking appointment, I'm going to go postal.

Please don't write me comments saying this level of frustration isn't good for the baby. I also can't take one more person telling me what I ABSOLUTELY MUST do to ensure this baby is healthy or happy.

I'm a smart woman. I'm not a risk-taker by nature. But I'll be damned if I've ever tolerated anyone telling me what to do. And I just want--need--to enjoy this pregnancy as much as possible. It will probably be my only pregnancy. I'm somewhat change-averse, and this has been a big change. I like my privacy, and despite my decision not to tell my officemates, I discovered today that all but one of them knows (it's hard to hide twenty-five doctor's appointments in three weeks).

the News

2006-07-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

I had to capitalize this title, because it's pretty Big News.

B and I have made something with a HEARTBEAT. (eek)

Yes, in the midst of all this crazy summer, I seem to have gone and got myself knocked up.

This is a knitting blog, not a Nann's whole life blog, so suffice it to say: this is a much-desired, long (long!) awaited event. There's a long way to go, even before we're out of miscarriage territory--it's only 7 weeks, but at the ultrasound yesterday, we saw and heard the little flutter that says our blastocyte is pumping away.

We have the first OB appointment on Thursday. I've already had four appointments with other doctors/nurses, because as an older, overweight mom with a chronic health condition, I'll be watched more closely.

How is it that something so normal, that people have been doing as long as there have been people, can seem so momentous when it happens to you? And, at the same time, I think I expected it to transform me overnight. Well, I'm still here, just in a slightly more queasy package. But I'm learning patience--the two weeks between positive pregnancy test and this ultrasound were perhaps the longest of my life, and there's a long, long way to go.

While it still seems surreal, every once in awhile, the joy steals into my day. B's been doing a break-out happy dance every once in awhile.

update and FO

2006-06-10T07:47:00.000-07:00

It's been four weeks now, and we can only conclude that (barring some miracle), the sweet Lu is gone. It's our greatest hope that someone found her, has fallen in love with her, and is giving her a soft place to sleep.

Today I uploaded pictures from my camera for the first time in weeks and found this:

This is Lu in her accustomed spot in our guest room, a few days before she went missing. I took this picture just after a good rub of her white soft belly, which is why pesky, jealous little cousin Harvey had to jump up on the bed too.

Lu's mama and I went to see The Omen the other night (not scary enough). We were reminiscing about Lu, and got to laughing about how much hair she had. I said I loved to give her belly rubs, but when I took my hand away, it was like I had a glove on. (I only recently thought of all the doghair sweaters that could've been knit, if only I'd known how to spin.) Lu's mama is doing her grieving and holding up as well as possible.

Many thanks to to Yvonne for kind comments on the last post. Yvonne's blog is a good read, and I'm sad I missed the spinner's conference (it was definitely in my neighborhood, and I can't believe I forgot about the vendors).

But I haven't been in my right mind because this has truly been the spring of crises (immediately following the dog search, there was another intense experience that is just now quieting). All this on top of a new job! But I have been knitting some, and it has helped a lot. Here's proof:

They only took me three months, but TA DAHH! Lacy Scallops Socks from a sockbug pattern. I prefer to think of them as Hell Socks, because I had to frog them so many times and had some difficulty deciphering instructions, and because I finished them on 6/6/06.

Gratuitous Harvey-and-socks shot:

My legs really aren't that pasty white, but the cellulite (eek!) is real.

I cast on for Wobby Circles Tote (I'm not signed up for the KAL, but it's the best URL to see what I'm talking about), but my gauge was off so I frogged and have no pictures to show. Now I'm swatching first (when will I learn?).

In all the sadness, lately, there have been many many wonderful moments of friendship, love, and gratitude. B and I are blessed in our friends--we live far away from our families, and we are fortunate to have a great family of friends (many of whom are coming for a summer dinner tonight, so I have to sign off soon) who offer support, a listening ear (I have been chattering like a magpie lately, trying to process all that's happened), and a quiet place to rest. Thank you to all of them!

Here's a picture that reminds me of why I love my life so much, even in its most stressful moments (note: no geese were harmed here):

grieving

2006-05-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in awhile.

A terrible thing happened last week at our house. We were petsitting our friends' dog while they were on their honeymoon. This dog, who I called Lulabelle, is my friend A's beloved, cherished child.

Three days before they were supposed to return, it was a beautiful spring day, and I decided (a decision I will regret forever) to leave Lu and our Harvey in our fenced yard for the afternoon. Lu, who had been missing her mom but seemed to perk up in the yard, found a weak spot in the fence and got out.

She's still missing 8 days later, despite every imaginable effort--including more than 500 flyers, daily visits to Humane Society, a trained canine search and rescue dog, an ad in the paper and several places online. We have followed up on every lead, no matter how slight.

We have had to put up with calls from crazy, mean people, yelling at us for putting flyers up or for not listing our address on the flyer so they'd know precisely where to search (yeah, lady, I know how you feel. I'd have liked a big red arrow to know where to search, too). We had one creepy man call to ask if he needed "to come make sure it didn't happen again."

We are not careless or cavalier people. In fact, I'm usually hypercareful, and so am beating myself up even more for not checking the fence thoroughly before leaving her out there unattended. We love Lu and would not have harmed her any more than our own. We are sick about it, and to think of the grief I've caused my friend during what should be a very special time in her life is nearly unbearable.

It has been an awful time, and though we are not giving up hope (in this journey, many people have told us their dog got lost and made it home under remarkable circumstances), we have begun to reach the end of what we can do, and are moving into the period where we just have to wait. I never realized how big my little world is until I had to begin to search it without knowing where to begin.

So, if you share your life with an animal, kiss them and love them today, for my friend A and her sweet Lu--

frogging and funk

2006-05-06T06:13:00.000-07:00

I love knitting socks. I hate gussets. Picking up stitches evenly along the heel flap and without leaving holes is the bane of my existence (yes, I know the trick that's supposed to correct the hole at the top of the gusset, but because I seem to be a loose knitter no matter how hard I try to tighten those slipped stitches, it doesn't always work for me).

For some reason, on my sockbug lacy scallops socks, I've additionally struggled with translating the instructions for the pick up stitches/first round gusset part. (On the second gusset, the instructions are different, which I just can't wrap my brain around.) For example, how does one both pick up and knit stitches in the same row when knitting in the round? The working yarn isn't in the right place.

Well, one morning it popped into consciousness right after I woke up--you have to pick up one stitch, then knit it, then pick up the next, etc. One frog down. But now I find that I do have holes up and down the gusset where the heel flap edge has been stretched as I've picked up repeatedly. I don't want to spend all this time knitting these socks and always notice the gusset holes. It's back to the frog pond, I think, all the way back to the first heel flap round. Damn. There go my lovely turned heels, and I have to knit the weird heel flap pattern again.

So this pair of socks has been languishing. And my Heike socks, I've lost a little faith in my calculations and am not sure they'll fit. Maybe it's impending sandal season that makes me feel less socky.

I've not yet cast on for wobbly circles tote. I think I'm in a knitting funk. Starting a project before I finish the two WIPs seems like a bad idea--knitting is one area of my life where I can balance my need for variety and process with my desire to produce a perfect finish. I'm slow but dogged. I don't want these socks to linger any longer, and I want them to be beautiful. So frogging away--since Harvey woke me up at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday, I might as well go dive in before I wake up and come to my senses.

back to (more) normal

2006-05-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

It's a rare day (even for my off-work Mondays): nothing I have to do! It's a good thing--I think I got food poisoning at a salad bar last night and spent most of the 2-4 a.m. hours wishing to die. A great day to sit on the couch casting on for the Wobbly Circles Tote (or at least winding bobbins)!

I took advantage of the relative lull yesterday (after weeks of building up to my friend A's wedding, which went off hitchless on Saturday evening) to run up to the Seattle Knitting Expo. I had one hard-target goal:

I also debated buying colourway Alina and Dutch Canyon. Pebble Beach was nowhere to be found (at least not in STR), but I was arriving late on the last day of the Expo. I also saw some Sleeping Dragon sock yarn in Indian Corn and Spring Fling, but not in Spooky, so I didn't get any (I think my affinity right now is for the highly saturated colors and sproingy plies of STR, and Sleeping Dragon was much more subtle and soft). Other than that, I almost bought some Zephyr, but I just don't like the colors I saw. I really need to finish winding and start knitting that deep red merino laceweight yarn.

So, if there's no more barfing today, I'll probably spend a good bit of it knitting and writing. Happy May day!

new FO: swirly mohair scarf

2006-04-18T20:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's great to knit a pattern that is simple and straightforward but produces interesting results. This would've been a great SNB pattern if I ever went to either of my knitting groups anymore.

When I bought the yarn and pattern at knit/purl in Portland, the very helpful and enthusiastic clerk told me that the really fun part was watching it turn ruffly as you bound off. So I knitted all weekend, and finally was ready to bind off (doesn't look like much, does it? at least my fresh bridey henna is pretty):

Then I started the bind off et voila! right on schedule, the swirly begins:

Here's Harvey modeling the finished item (doesn't it make him look poodle-y?)

And finally, swirly mohair scarf at rest:

bridemaking

2006-04-16T06:39:00.000-07:00

Our friend A has turned into a bride!

An amazing day yesterday. We (the bride's maids) had planned a journey, several outdoor rituals, some henna adventures (see pics below). Nothing went strictly according to plan, and despite my usual type-A-ness about things like this, I had prepared myself and didn't care a bit (I was talking with another of the planners last week, and we both remarked how this was the kind of occasion where the planning of it is just as transformational as the day itself).

We ventured off to Vashon Island, and the day poured in varying degrees. We found ourselves wandering through lovely greenness, did our rituals as best we could in the downpour and when bad maps forced flexibility in locations, and found our way to Sound Food, a gorgeous little restaurant and bakery--looked like an afterthought from the outside but was warm and rustic inside with imaginative food, very welcoming to drenched travelers. They also had a patio out back, a wee garden where we initiated and bedecked our girl.

Then off to henna. Let me just say, Kara, our henna artist, was the greatest. We found ourselves at her friend Jane's moon loft (a little journey through a threshhold and down a path), next to the purple yurt (say "purple yurt"--isn't that fun?).

Kara's husband, Hawk, a wonderfully calm and safe guy, accompanied her and tolerated remarkably well the girl chatter (even our discoveries from reading "educational material," ahem, The Joy of Sex, on our travels throughout the day--do you know what the goldfish position is?). A photographer, Hawk took a bajillion digipics that they'll be putting up on the web for us later. These are the few I took (I forgot to get one of my own hand until I got home, that one's at the end):

knitting teaches me patience

2006-04-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

My life is full of wondering and seeking right now. On many of the "big life" fronts: work, family, identity. I am fully engaged and engrossed, processing hard.

So last night I wrote this in my journal: "it was knitting that taught me [how much work goes into something of merit]. You simply cannot knit something faster than you can knit it. It refuses to grow by will alone. There are no tricks for making it grow faster than a stitch at a time. You can become a better knitter (only through the process of knitting many individual stitches), and you can become a faster knitter (only through the process of knitting many individual stitches). It is the 1st law: everything takes as long as it takes. There are no true shortcuts.

The main learning this morning that follows the learning I wrote of is this: Oh, I have sometimes considered it a failure when I couldn't grow something by will alone. Or rather, when I'd put a bunch of hard work into something--but perhaps not yet enough--I considered the project failed if will and want couldn't bring the finish line a wee bit closer to me. And then I doubted that my will was strong enough to sustain a longer-term effort.

In knitting, will does nothing without the stitches. It is there to provide the sheer grit and stubbornness to keep making the number of stitches (or ends woven in!) required to create an FO.

Silly rabbit.

This is partly an ode to friend A, whose bridemaking we embark on today. She is my true-life example of someone who sets her sights on the goal, and then works her guts out. For as long as it takes. And today we celebrate not only her marrying, but a whole host of dreams that are coming true for her at the same time she's marrying. These dreams are coming true after years of laboring in the desert, after disappointments and thwarted effort, a long haul over which I often thought, "I'd have given that up by now." Not her.

My wish for her today, sent out into blogland, is that more of us can be like her: fearless, driven hard by her dreams, taking rest when needed but always picking up her pack again and going on toward her vision of the future.

sick in blogland

2006-04-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

Today it seems that every knitblog I visit, the blogger has been sick with the crud. So healing wishes go out to all suffering with spring flu!!!

My new swift has already come in handy. It does seem like it's making the untangling of the nasty merino laceweight somewhat easier. But I've been so caffeinated and somewhat stressed lately that I can only attend to it for a few minutes. The swirly mohair scarf is coming along, but those 1440-stitch rows take me approximately 2-1/2 hours to complete, so I'm averaging a half a row a night.

This weekend is my friend A's bridemaking. We've planned a journey, rituals (including henna), and she knows none of it. I think she's going to have a good time.

those who can't knit. . .buy!

2006-04-10T14:51:00.000-07:00

Now up to 3 projects OTS, with very little actual knitting time available. So instead, I've been buying knit-related items, and doing knit-related things (yes, I know this is all potential knitting time, but I'm also having problems with my hand and having to take breaks).

Friday I had a lunch up north and decided I wanted to finally spend my Hilltop gift cert that Friend C gave me for Xmas. I had had wanted us to go together, but our schedules conflict enough that it's just been impossible. I had a leisurely browse in Hilltop West, finding nothing I really wanted. I had decided that I would spend the gift certificate on something tangible--a tool like a swift or sock blockers or a really nice basket. Then, in an "I don't know how it happened" moment, I found myself buying 4 skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca Silk in Verte, a deep inky black-green (I think it was the stroking on my cheek that did me in) and saying, "Sure, let's call the East store to see if they have the other two skeins for my project."

My project was somehow a muffler for my brother Paul, using an amazingly subtle cabled pattern from Tricoter's men's sweater book. Paul is a wonderful, fun, spontaneous, warm guy (who's moving to Cleveland shortly, thus my desire to create some handknit warmth for him). But he also loses things, and he's notoriously un-careful about stuff. And, after making it over to the East side store and picking up my two more reserved skeins, I've just dropped $70 to make him a muffler that I'm certain he'll leave in a restaurant or, even worse, throw into a hot water wash-and-dry!

I came to my senses sometime on Saturday, when I decided that my original plan was better. I'm not giving up the idea of the Tricoter muffler for him, I really do want to make him something warm for his first Cleveland winter, I just need to find a more durable, less fussy, and yes, I admit it, less costly yarn.

So I drove up to Hilltop East again today (thank god for Mondays off, however long they last) and exchanged the yummy silky goodness for this:

And, not incidentally, this Bearfoot in Elderberry (which had been haunting me since I first saw it on Friday):

Sock yarn is such a cheap thrill.

But, lest you think I haven't been doing anything knit-related, here's evidence to the contrary (please, oh please, do not print out this picture and knit from it--pity me the fact that I don't have PhotoShop to blur the details, just leave it ALONE and go buy the damn pattern!)

Does this girl need an intarsia class or what? Figuring out how to get the most mileage out of each section was a good exercise in spatial relations, but I can't help feeling like an experienced knitter would a) laugh her ass off and then b) teach me a better trick.

To show how happy I am to have some spring energy, I'm providing evidence that I actually made an effort with a recent home-from-work snack for B and me, on the "home-from-work-snack" plate I painted last spring (all toooooo often, our home-from-work snack is chips eaten out of the bag while standing over the kitchen sink):

new OTS

2006-04-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been really busy, very little knitting time. Yesterday I spent a much-needed movie fest/knitting day at home. Today I feel a little sluglike because of that, but I accomplished quite a bit of the swirly mohair scarf:

It's funny how 90 stitches become 180 become 360 become 720. . .you see where this is going. In two more rows, I'll do the increases again and will have a whopping 1440 stitches on the sticks. Then I have to knit seven rows of that, which I'm trying not to remember is really like knitting a pair of socks. Sure, I'll finish it this weekend! I'm such a slowpoke.

Incidently, I'm not too pleased with my yarn substitution. Perhaps it was because the yarn was old and had been knocked around a bit, but it's just too fuzzy for me. Though the color is wonderful, I should've stuck with the Kidsilk Haze the pattern called for. I could've chosen that lovely silvery lavendar color. . .Well, maybe for gifts.

Side note: this is my first real project using the Denise needles, and after a small kerfuffle with the cast-on edge catching on the joins, I've been quite pleased. They're so lightweight I wasn't sure I really liked them, but for this project they're working great!

knitting makes me brave(r)

2006-03-30T19:08:00.000-08:00

I have been AWOL but not at all forgetting about blogging. In fact, I've been out field-tripping at LYS's in two different states!

Last week, I went to Oceanside, California, for a work trip. The brave(r) part is this: I have a lifelong fear of getting lost. Knowing I was going to be in an unfamiliar locale, navigating on my own in a rental car (not a common occurence in my only moderately work-traveled life), had me nervous about getting lost but very determined.

Fear makes me mad--I recognize it as a sign of "big growth ahead," so I get very focused on conquering it. But something was different this time: MapQuest (thank you, internet gods! for this brilliant invention), and yarn. I knew there were several yarn stores in the area, and that made me really want to go exploring. That made the idea of conquering my fear of getting lost even more interesting and compelling.

It was an amazing trip--whenever I step up to meet fear, my life expands beautifully. The training I was attending was brilliant and life-changing. I stayed by the ocean in a charming little hotel, had cappucinos each evening, spent an endless evening in Barnes & Noble just browsing whatever came to my attention, ate delicious Armenian food, and slept in a giant big fluffy bed. And went to three LYS: Noble Knits, Common Threads, and The Black Sheep. Surprisingly, I walked away with only a moderate stashing:

Sometimes the journey is more important than the product. I went focused on finding something for a knit project, and the only thing that really spoke to me was this quirky, youthful, bohemian crochet scarf. Though I bought the hook to begin the project, I instead got immersed in Wicked and spent almost no time working crochet or the two pairs of socks on the sticks I brought. Go figure.

I had one day at home, and then I was off again, for another work trip to Portland, Oregon. I had enough time after the drive to explore three yarn shops in a very efficient, cruise-the-stacks-in-15-minutes fashion. Here's what I walked away with (aren't packages like this enticing?)

Some of it was stash from Knitting Bee in Beaverton:

I was on the hunt for Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock, and they didn't have any. Though I love this Mountain Colors colorway, I have no idea why I bought it (translation: no project in mind). It has mohair in it, which generally makes me itch a little bit.

They did have a Fair Isle felted bag class that I wish I'd registered for (or at least bought the patterns), and another pattern book that I can't remember now--some Scandinavian name. I bought the Mission Falls book because I really liked the pattern ideas, but not one of them comes in my size. Knitting Bee looks like a great shop, but I don't think it's destined to become one of my favorites.

Yarn Garden up next. I only had 15-20 minutes for this browse. I didn't buy anything, though I found it impressive, and would love to go and spend time knitting away in their sipperie.

On a whim, I called knit/purl at 5 p.m. to find (hallelujah!) they were open until 6. I dashed over and spent the next 40 minutes debating, while their staff rearranged the Koigu/Lorna's Laces wall. Lesson: when you find yarn you like, don't walk away. When I was there in February, they had gobs of Socks that Rock, a whole wall full of delicious merino color. Now they had it pushed away in a small cubby--either because they were running low or because they're deliberately making more room for Koigu/Lorna's Laces. I grieved, then bought a hank of STR in the colorway closest to Pebble Beach that I could find. I also decided I needed to make their twirly mohair ruffly scarf in deep true-red. Things I walked away from (which I may or may not regret): the giant yardaged hank of natural tan alpaca for a scarf for Paul (newly moving to Cleveland), and the kit for Color on Color from Scarf Style. I just really like knit/purl--they have all the good stuff, their shop is modern and inviting, their staff is knowledgable and nice, and they get that the details (like the beautiful pearl-blue logo stickers they use to seal the packages and on their bags) matter.

The last yarn shop trip was another new and great little Portland shop, Lint. I'd been noodling the idea of making a felted bag, and they showed me the one Leigh Radford (a Portland resident and one of their teachers) had in IWK Spring 2006 issue. Their shop sample was in a great pink/brown combo, so--with the help of my colleagues who'd come along--I snapped up some Lamb's Pride, Manos, and Classic Elite Montera, ready to make the tote. I'm wishing that I'd chosen ice blue, green, and salmon to go on the brown background instead of the pinks, but the shop sample was gorgeous.

Now when will I have time to knit all this lusciousness?

Stashing is fun. I'm not allowed to go to yarn shops for a good, long time.

playing catch-up

2006-03-17T05:57:00.000-08:00

I have been a bad knitblogger. No knit pictures in a couple of weeks, so here's an update on Koigu lacy scallops: one heel turned and, for the moment, off the (same) sticks. Sigh. I am such a tortoise.

And, while I have not been stashing, I haven't been entirely sin-free in the knitbuying department. Here's my enrollment package from the Crafter's Choice book club. Not entirely knitting books (I have one more coming, but I'm not sure whether to order the dyeing book or Mason-Dixon Knitting), but the surely if I'm making 30-minute meals, I'll have more time for knitting?

I'm not yet facing the fact that I don't have enough years left to knit all the stitches for which I have patterns.

[ed, note: when you are blogging with one hand because your lazy puppy is snoozing in the other arm, he still looks snootily at you if the typing key noise disturbs him. Ingrate.]

We've been having weird March weather. I recently woke up to this:

All the better for sitting and knitting.

I encountered a hilarious blog today: dachshunds galore!!! These little critters seem to have some traits in common: blankie tangling (now that I type that, it sounds kinda dirty), circus-doggie, draping themselves languidly across humans.

have you been sorted?

2006-03-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

this was kind of fun.

be sorted @ nimbo.net

It is amazing where you'll find yourself in the blogworld. This morning, all in advance of doing my morning pages, I've been to Wil Wheaton's clown sweater blog post, redlipstick, and Malcolm Gladwell's blog, the New York fashion show slideshows looking at french fry dresses. All from links in knitbloggers' posts. And because it was so random, I didn't even note URL's for links. It's like six degrees of separation. . .But I can tell you, I almost always start at zeneedle. It's a psychological thing--I love to see the Utah mountains in her posts. It always feels like home.

One place it didn't feel like home was in last night's premiere of Big Love, HBO's new series about a modern Utah polygamist family. The characters were saying all the right words, "prophet," "Relief Society," "mission," "time and all eternity," but they just didn't sound right. I think it might be the regional accent that's missing: they just don't sound like Utahns. Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin don't have that flat, willing wife drawl.

I watched on A&E a couple of weeks ago a show about polygamist cults (yes, as distinct from the main cult), and some of the men just looked like sex-fiend mountain men, but one of them definitely had the cadence, tone, timbre of official Mormondom down. It has just been since I was an adult that I've recognized that all the Mormon apostles have the same speech patterns and tones, and been smart enough to wonder, hmm, I wonder who their speech coach is. Because they don't come out of their farm team pulpits sounding like that. But as far as the show goes, I'll suspend disbelief because of the views of the mountains and the desert. I liked the comment on the show's bulletin board: "It seems to me that postmodern Hollywood types trying to do a program that accurately portrays Mormonism would be like an illiterate blind man trying to read Proust." Amen. It certainly would've been more interesting, instead of portraying the wives as one-dimensional sex fiends, to explore the much more (likely and) complicated and complex issue of faith and religious power as a duck blind for sex fiendishness.

As strange as polygamy is, it is the true legacy of the origins of the modern Mormon church. I think the true crime is that modern Mormonism sanitizes its history to earn legitimacy. Isn't it convenient that, as soon as it was clear Utah wouldn't become a state while polygamy was sanctioned by the church, um God revealed "oops, I was just kidding"? It was a freakin' administrative decision--why couldn't they just call it that? Well, I suppose because they had to convince those that they'd convinced in the first place by telling them it was a divine revelation, and not just Joseph Smith being an adolescent wanker.

good luck, friends!

2006-03-06T22:54:00.000-08:00

Today's non-knitting post is in tribute to our friends who shall be known as the "triple L's." They flew off to a recruiting trip for graduate school today, and I had to document it photographically. Here's to following your dreams, pals!

Action airport shot of Lee, looking slightly unhinged (just the way we like him best):

blogging as therapy

2006-03-05T06:33:00.000-08:00

"Continuing in our series of posts about the benefits of blogging..."

I don't know if it's a series, but I do lately seem drawn to metablogging, exploring the questions of blogging in the last few posts. Yesterday I was having a hard day. I needed to go for a walk but was resisting. Then, driving home from the grocery store, I saw this:

In the spring, we have days when this mountain just glows.

I thought, I want to blog that, and that was enough to get my shoes on, Harvey in his harness, the mp3 player going with The Year of Magical Thinking, and out the door. Once at the viewpoint, I discovered no memory card in the camera, so back home to get one. A good walk, thanks to blogging.

I read in someone else's blog recently that knowing she had subscribers to her blog often made her get up and do things she wouldn't otherwise. Apparently, it works the same for me just having a blog, and having pretend readers.

tinking

2006-03-04T10:02:00.000-08:00

Somehow when I went to do my latest pattern row on the koigu lacy scallops socks, I had the wrong number of stitches on one of the quarters. Eek! Never tinked before on the magic loop, and I didn't want to tink the whole round, just the one top of the one sock. I knew how it was supposed to work--that I'd end up with a long loop of free yarn for every row (basically as if the whole row were one long dropped stitch), and by jove, it did exactly that. I had to go back to the last pattern row, then reknit. Blessedly, my gauge was spot on, so the long loops were just enough yarn to reknit those sections. Thanks be praised to the knitting gods.

Harvey has been getting up earlier and earlier, and because I'm such a light sleeper, I can only battle him for so long before getting up myself. I am feeling incredibly sleep-deprived. The good part is that I've been doing my Artist's Way morning pages, and working on other projects, but I'm just stretched a little thin. H woke up at 4:30 yesterday, and I couldn't go back to sleep. So I tried this out:

Our friend gave us his old stovetop espresso maker, and I've been wanting to try it out with the espresso blend that my friend's friend roasted. I wasn't sure how it would work on the flat-surface stove (which I didn't realize was so stained and ugly until I saw the picture--ick!), but in a few minutes, there was this:

And then shortly thereafter, this (a reasonable approximation of a latte, though the milk was just heated, not steamed):

And here's the little rotten that started it all (most of our pictures of Harvey are in blankies on the bed, because that's where he usually is--this one happens to be in a pile of clean, fresh-from-the-dryer laundry):

right to blog?

2006-03-03T05:32:00.000-08:00

Over at Annie Modesitt's blog, there has been a tempest in the teacup of the blogiverse. From what I can tell coming late to the party, there were some unflattering comments on another blog (one devoted to trashing knitwear that the anonybloggers deem inadvisable), and Annie's kinda riled up about it.

(I can say this without fear of flamers because I write an unread blog. So if by chance you stubbed your toe on a knitting webring and somehow fell across this little blog, and you live to knit Annie Modesitt designs, don't throw a hissy fit. Read on.)

Now, I generally don't like Annie Modesitt's designs. (Stop yer hissy fitting--can't we all just get along?) Too busy for me, though I acknowledge their technical knitterly elegance. And when the same bloggers trashed the IWK cabled shrug I've been longing to knit, I must admit, it smarted a bit to have my taste questioned in blogography. That said, when I stumbled onto, then lurked on her blog and read all the stuff, I thought: you go, Annie girl.

See, I have been reading The Artist's Way again, and re-reading my morning pages from the first twelve week TAW (to be honest, I stretched it out to a good 20 weeks because I just wasn't doing it right). Annie is doing her art. She is taking risks and following her vision and showing up to do the work so, by god, that makes her an artist. According to Julia Cameron, those who are doing the art are tremendously threatening to blocked artists. Vitriol is the whiff of the blocked artists.

Partly it's just fun to be snarky in anonymity. I was thinking today how paralyzed I might be if I actually knew anyone read this blog. My nice girl would get triggered, and I suspect very shortly I'd stop being interested in blogging at all. Right now it's just a place to put up pictures of something I'm passionate (but very slow) about, and to play with language a little bit--the grown-up version of those little books I was always making as a kid. You start getting readers, and then you have to start mentioning them in your blog and linking to their blogs and hosting knitalongs and running contests. And then pretty soon you have no time to knit. I'm glad there are bloggers out there that do all those things, because I really like reading their blogs.

But where the bloggers crossed the line, Ms. Modesitt says, is that they attacked her kids. Well, she put her kids in the knitwear, and then in the photos. Not exactly sheltering them. As the saying goes, though, I'll protect to the death her right to work this all out on her blog.

Ahh, blogging. The ability to have both high-school-style girlfriends--and girlfights--virtually.

b is bloggered

2006-03-02T18:30:00.000-08:00

No knitting news today, so instead, pictures of my beloved (who probably doesn't mind that I blogged the dog before I blogged him):

We've been married nine years, together thirteen. We have friends getting married soon, and so I've been thinking about marriages.

Ours sustains me, challenges me, infuriates me, grows me, and gives me a place to rest. He has taught me to be kinder to myself. I learned from his optimism that hope in the face of contrary evidence is a wise, not a foolish, thing. He's fast and smart and funny. He's stubborn and persnickety. Someone said to me once, "It's obvious that he adores you." I have worked hard since then to make sure it was obvious--to him especially--that I adore him.

disappointments

2006-02-27T09:32:00.000-08:00

I finally mastered the picot edge for sockbug's lacy scallops socks and got them completely on the sticks. I don't think the dark Koigu really shows off the lace pattern well, but I like the colourway a lot. They'll just be a little subtle, I guess.

Today I had lunch with a really good friend in Seattle. Afterward I decided to head to Yarn Gallery to check it out.

And there I had it, the knitting experience I have been dreading: there was nothing there I really wanted. They had the clear Regia boots in my size (bad for the feet, good to show off the hand-knitted socks), some nice alpaca laceweight in a springy green, the Barbara Walker treasuries 2, 3, and 4. I left with Chibi needles and a sweater de-piller.

Uh oh. Sign of knitting waning as passion? I don't mean to be hypersensitive to this, but usually my interest wanes around the time I get all the accoutrements for a hobby.

Um, on further reflection, probably nothing to worry about. I'd spent the morning working on the computer, and then surfing for sock yarn. I like the Sleeping Dragon stuff, and I'm dreaming about several colors of Socks that Rock. I'm trying not to let myself get all practical and think, what the hell am I going to do with 20 pairs of hand-knitted socks that must be hand-washed?

But what does seem to be true is that the LYS's are less and less compelling to me (with the notable exception of Knit/Purl in Portland, which had Koigu, Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, and tons of STR). Like so many I've been to lately, Yarn Gallery is chockablock full of novelty yarn. For sock yarn, they only had the requisite cubby of self-striping Regia, which since making Heidi's socks just puts me in mind of burlap.

I guess I am a specialized yarn snob now. When I told B about this tonight, he said, "Big surprise. We like something that's expensive and hard to find."

Why is it always that way?

And now, for a little serendipity (since most of my Harvey pics have devildog eyes or miss the pose altogether). . .who knew Harvey's tongue was so long?

heike socks (aka baby cable rib)

2006-02-24T20:59:00.000-08:00

I'm loving working on these, though I think the yarn doesn't show the pattern extremely well. They'll be snug and still stretchy, and the pattern's a good one to knit when I'm chatting (I've even figured out how to fix the all-important twisted stitch if I space out during the pattern row). I tried to get a good close-up of the pattern stitch but my camera dyslexia prevents that.

I took them today to my doctor's appointment. This is the first time I've ever done that, but truthfully, I'm a little obsessed with these (see last post). I'm often nervous at the doctor's. Before, if the doctor said he had to step out, I just sat there and well, worried. Today, I thought: good on ya! Take yer time, I'll just sit here and knit. While I was knitting, I thought of several important questions I wanted to ask. Knitting: your key to better medical science!

blogging about knitting is like dancing about architecture

2006-02-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

(okay, first--it's not my line. It's bastardized from Playing by Heart, a tweaky little indie flick in which Angelina Jolie plays a part with some great lines that just show off her Angelina-Jolie-ness.)

But it's true--blogging just takes away precious knitting time and can't capture the real thing. And yet, I feel compelled to do it. And read other blogs that talk about it.

All in all, knitting, I'm finding, is proving to be a hobby of some staying power (hallelujah, that's saying a lot for ADD me, I thought it would never happen). A passion even?

Last night I started knitting at 6 p.m. and put my needles down finally at 12:30 p.m. I listened to audiobooks, watched a terrible movie with tasty Heath Ledger, flipped through some reality TV, and knitted. In bed. (I have been needing a self-time fix lately. Thank God B understands me: when we were first talking about moving in together, I said I didn't think I could because he'd find out that some nights I needed to put my pajamas on at 6 and go straightaway to bed. He said he already knew that about me. It's been years since I've done it, but the last few weeks have been particularly people-infused, and my little introvert synapses are fried.)

So I thought when I turned out the light that I'd probably got my knitting fix for several days. But when my eyes popped open at 6 this morning (thank you, Harvey), the first thing I wanted to do was knit. So I knit a bit at lunch. And I just wanted to keep knitting. And now I'm home, I just want to keep knitting. Or read blogs about knitting.

I had a glimpse of the possible depths of the addiction when I went to Madrona a few weekends ago. I just went for the shopping, but I've been feeling a Stitch and Bitch hunger, so I stayed around and plunked myself down in the lobby, meeting two really nice women. We were knitting along, and I realized, I envy them. They had extricated themselves from their daily lives, taken themselves off to a hotel for several days, and every minute of the day, they got to knit, or think about knitting, or talk about knitting, or look at other people's knitting, or learn things about knitting, or buy things related to knitting. And eat. And sleep in a bed that had no snoring husband or dog that likes to get up too damn early. Heaven.

Think I need a retreat?

reports from knitapalooza pnw

2006-02-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my self-appointed Knitapalooza Pacific NW. I've been looking forward to this day for so long! The plan involved hitting 3 more area yarn shops with two new knitting buddies. We had a great time, starting with lattes at Forza, then heading off to Canvas Works for my first visit. My favorites there were the Lantern Moon bags (including Lou's little lantern tote and palm leaf totes),the books selection, their silk yarns and sock yarns). No STR, though, sigh, and no other in-love-with sock yarn. My friend Lou bought some beautiful shell pink yarn for a vacation shrug. Marianne got needles and Wrap Style. I just got this.

Tradition requires a stop at The Oyster House (the clam strips alone were worth the trip), so in we went. An accommodating waitperson had about the same success with my camera as I do, so you get a nicely bright dock view in front of our dark faces:

During our recent cold snap (I haven't often needed two layers since leaving Utah, but my toes and fingers have now been frozen for days), the days have been clear and vivid. A little maritime flavor:

Lou left us after Canvas Works, but Marianne and I pressed north to Hilltop Yarns, with me swatching Koigu along the way. They were having a sale! I bought some bright (okay, slightly garish) Koigu for $5/skein! Marianne found an in-shop scarf pattern and bought the last eensy beensy skein of Alchemy Monarch (70% cashmere, 30% silk). The Lantern Moon bags were 20% off, but they didn't have the selection of Canvas Works, and I didn't feel the need to break out my gift certificate for any "must-haves." Here's Marianne in the Alchemy cupboard corner:

While we were at Hilltop, another customer told us that Tricoter was having a 25% off everything in the store sale. I've been scared of Tricoter but thought well, hell, now's the time to go, with reinforcements and all. It was very definitely on the swank side, with an emphasis on over-the-top couture sweaters, but great service: they offered to wind a hank I liked into a ball so I could swatch and decide whether I wanted it. It was a pretty pink/gray/green hand-dyed and hand-spun thing that I really loved in the hank. The love affair was over when I swatched it, though, and so I said, "No thanks." I then got the distinct feeling that doesn't happen very often (they looked at me like I had switched to speaking Swahili and I thought, hmmm, are they now wondering how they'll sell that very expensive hank of yarn? Maybe they should've thought about that before offering to wind it). While I may have been projecting, I no longer felt like part of the crowd. (There were lots of people saying things like, "Now I must knit something for Mummy.")

Without swatching, I did buy a hank of Nassau from Great Adirondack Yarn Company in Hawaiian Punch colorway for a winter-into-spring scarf (now starring in sidebar WIPs). It's a 50 silk/50 cotton blend. Marianne bought some yummy high-end yarn for a great reversible cabled scarf pattern from Tricoter's menswear book, so I think she redeemed us. And I learned that, if you have kinked cable needles, you can steam the cables to get the kinks out (or use a hairdryer).

Side note: I realized later, if I'd just bought the pink/gray/green ball and taken it home and then swatched it, I'm certain I wouldn't have been disappointed or considered it a failed purchase. Part of the fun of buying the yarn is seeing if you like it when you get it on the sticks, trying to find the perfect pattern for it. It's a bit like Christmas, with these specialty yarns.

But once again, I didn't feel overwhelmed by their offerings. While I can see how the color thing works well for designers and makes it more efficient if you're looking for a particular color, I think my primary draw is the fiber itself. Do I feel like cashmere or cotton? Linen or hemp? I have to do the face-stroking test before the love happens.

It was getting late, and a call to The Yarn Gallery confirmed we wouldn't make it there before closing, so we pressed on to our dinner destination, requiring a trip across the 520 bridge. Here's our lake and our mountain:

(I may have said before that, as a transplanted Rocky Mountainer, it took me years to understand the appeal of this particular view. It always looked like a backdrop to me. Then one day I thought, everyone loves this mountain so much, I should really look at it and see what all the fuss is about. Ahh, the power of purposefulness and observation--of course I looked and immediately saw and understood. I have been reading Timothy Egan's The Good Rain, to learn more about this land, and I recently attended a meeting with an invocation by a woman who is an elder of the Puyallup tribe. Now I find I don't like to think of it as Mount Rainier--it shouldn't be named after some white guy who never saw it.)

A great day, not much splurging for me (B's greatly relieved):

But I learned, a moment after this picture, that Koigu apparently looks a lot like a dog toy. Harvey's not usually interested in my yarn--he often gets inadvertently tangled and has to get it off his nose, but this is the first time he's ever seen it and thought, "Why, that looks like mine."

A small chase ensued, but it's safely back in my stash. And, if you look at my WIPs, you can see I didn't waste any time in getting something on the sticks (using my Denise needles for the first time!).

gauge is kicking my a**

2006-02-15T22:54:00.000-08:00

I'm having to become a swatcher. I've started two pair of socks lately, and both gauges are off. Both will have to be frogged, swatched, and re-started. I just want a damn project on the sticks! Something I can pick up and knit during the Olympics (no, I didn't sign up for either of the knitalongs). Now, one might argue I could swatch during the Olympics. My 40"Addi needles, the ones I use for socks, aren't as good for swatching in stockinette (lots of extra Magic Loopiness).

Saturday is Knitapalooza day. Three of us from the work knitting group are going to these shops: Canvas Works, The Yarn Gallery, and Hilltop Yarn. I actually am prepared with a non-yarn wish list, just to be safe: sock blockers, a yarn gauge (see above), a tape measure, Chibi needles, or an umbrella swift. I like to give myself lots of range, see.

easter egg socks finished

2006-02-13T06:28:00.000-08:00

And they're in the mail to Mom. I followed the Carole Wulster pattern in Socks: The Next Step and I think they're a bit long for Mom's 7-1/2 foot. They fit my size 9 feet quite snugly, but they still fit. I suspect, though, that she'll forget they can't go in the dryer and will felt them a little bit before long.

Here's how sick I am: today I have the final stretches of my botched root canal--the endodontist appointment that I would've started with if my dentist hadn't just gone in and pulled the root without telling me what he was doing and offering me the choice. I'm actually looking forward to it. Well, not it exactly--and not because I'm still waiting for pain relief. I'm just looking forward to the hours on the couch afterward so I can knit. Sick, sick, sick.

I spent two hours yesterday doing the damn picot edge for sockbug's Lacy Scallops Sock. Mind you, this is the second two hours, because I like doing my socks two-at-once. And at the end, I find there is a weird wraparound piece of yarn, I think from my joining the knitting yarn to the provisional cast-on. It may be a startover kind of problem, not easily fixed. Now this mess is what I have:

Well, it's official. My post on what to make A. for her wedding has vaporized. What to do, Blogger, when your post goes bye-bye after it's published? No "recover post" button for that, is there? Damn Blogger! I'm reminded why it's free. I've tried uploading the same pictures three times now!

a knitting week

2006-02-11T06:41:00.000-08:00

First, some pics (if Blogger can stop choking on uploads today):

Harvey's been especially naughty this week. Don't know if it's spring, but as it turns out, I've been pretty naughty, too.

This is what started it all. Last Saturday, I sensed the impending end of Easter Egg socks. There are many, many sock yarns and patterns waiting in the wings. I like the two-at-once Magic Loop method and knew I wanted more Addi's. I really really meant to only buy the size 2's, but found that the ones in old packages were marked cheaper. I got four pairs of 40" circulars in sizes 0, 1, 2, and 3 for $44! This pic also shows the status of Easter Eggs.

Then, at the Superbowl Party on Sunday, my friend Carla and I exchanged Christmas presents. Just like an O. Henry story--I had given her a yarnshop gift cert so she could pick out some stuff and I could finally teach her to knit, and she had given me this amazing Manos (how did she even know the right colorway?) I've been coveting and a gift cert from Hilltop Yarns. Editorially, they really are my favorite shop. All the right yarns, and they get the presentation stuff right, too: this came in the black box, with pink tissue and a pink printed ribbon. Gorgeous.

Tuesday, I finally decided to try and locate the evening SnB group in my town--I'm just not making it to the noon-time work group. I met up with the PacificNeedles--great, friendly and welcoming to newbies, in a coffee shop about five minutes from my house. Several of them said they'd like to learn how to do the two-at-once/Magic Loop for socks. The only downside: I realized that my lovely new sock yarn is also a handspun, prone to breakage. It's such a brilliant colorway, but I'm not sure whether I'll continue with it as socks or use it for something that won't need so much durability. Supposedly it's part nylon, but I'm not seeing it. It's gonna get frogged anyway, because my gauge is way off for the pattern I'm working. Here's a pic of the socks-in-progress anyway:

Thursday was the knittin'ist day of all. I had a meeting in Portland, and when it was over my colleague and I visited this little shop, since it was just a four-block walk from the hotel (the front-desk manager didn't bat an eye when we asked for a knitting shop nearby). I walked in and died. Lorna's Laces, Blue Moon Fibers in all types and weights (including a hank of silk that I should've bought), Koigu, Louet linen, Zephyr. Everything I've been wanting to try. I was too stimulated, and so I just bought one hank of Blue Moon lightweight in Beryl for the leaf lace or raindrop lace socks. Extremely helpful staff at Knit/Purl (I learned how to select variegated sock yarn by holding it out, then squinting to see how it will look knitted up), very knowledgeable, and they even had a kit for the Color on Color scarf/wrap from Scarf Style! A dream place.

That night, I also went to the marketplace at the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat. I found out about it too late to register for classes but the marketplace is free. Also very convenient to my house, I was planning to go this weekend but thought why wait? I did a spin through the marketplace and lo! Blue Moon was there, too! So I bought another hank of Socks that Rock in Atomic #6. I desperately wanted Pebble Beach, but they only had it in their Tencel blend and I just couldn't afford it. I love their colorways--they have a great range of brights and darks, and even mix them well. So here's my STR stash from Thursday:

I also met a really wonderful woman, Brenda, who's apparently a Stitches West and Madrona regular, though she's from the East Coast. I whipped out my socks, we chatted, and she showed me another way to do the provisional cast-on (I tried and flunked starting the picot edge for sockbug's lace socks in Koigu the other night).

And finally, though it's not yarn, my last splurge: a way to listen to Knitcast and Shopaholic and Sister and other guilty pleasures while knitting without having headphone cords to get tangled. In fairness, I must mention that the mp3 player itself is not new, just the speakers.

(Hey, does Blogger routinely lose previously published posts? My last one appears to have vaporized. . .)

in the land of the living

2006-01-23T20:46:00.000-08:00

No postings, no pictures. I've spent the last week fully incapacitated by Cold No. 5 (not nearly as lovely as Chanel No. 5) and No. 31 root canal. I'm in a right good funk after five completely couch-potato days where I hurt too much and was too full of snot to do anything but watch bad daytime reality TV and eat very soft things only on one side of my mouth. I feel so unplugged from reality and my life that it couldn't have been much worse if I'd gone feral and naked off in the woods. Harvey was a snugglebunny (he really does sleep for ten hours a day, I discovered, every day, and is just a happy little snoring stinker if he can do take his naps on the mama)--without him, I think I'd have felt like an asylum inmate. And what's more, I didn't get nearly enough knitting done. Once I figured out the short row heel mess on the Easter Egg socks, they just became boring boring stockinette again, and there's something truly mind-numbing about two at once on one long circ. But I don't really feel like starting anything new. Maybe after all those months of debating whether it should be the sadie blankie or the faina's scarf or socks, it's nice to only have one project going. But I'll bet it also means I don't knit when I would like to be knitting because I just don't want to be so bored.

a day full of januaries

2006-01-09T21:47:00.000-08:00

It's supposed to be a knitting blog, I know. But the lovely thing about having no readers is that it doesn't matter if I stray from knitting for an existential soliloquy. I have a few new pictures to post, but they are stored on my laptop and our network is not working.

A long day full of work. I went in at 6:30 a.m., worked until 5, went home, ate something, kissed B and had a small sleepy-nap, and returned to work from 7-9 p.m. Since I also had a LARGE latte at 7 p.m., I find myself buzzing with that ultratiredness/caffeinated combination. Since my hand hurts from battling/frogging the short-row heel four times yesterday (the damn instructions are just WRONG, I decided, since Ms. "Che Guevera" Wulster says to slide the heel onto the cable when it's still on the left-hand needle and thus not at all in the sliding position), I decided to wind down by reading knitting blogs instead of knitting.

I love knitters. Just browing the PNW blogs tonight, I find that many of us share fears, frustrations, and frailties, and today, that helps. If that sounds like a january statement, it is. I always get a wee bit blue and jumpy in january. Perhaps seasonal--right now it's pouring rain like an open fire hydrant outside, and it has been for 20-something straight days, with no end in sight. It's definitely existential, our family virus: time is ticking, and look at all that I didn't accomplish last year. Will this be another year of failed intentions? (somehow I always forget in that question how much I did accomplish)

I came home on Friday in a right good funk, and B, who is patient and loving and nevertheless hates the januaries, listened for a bit. These days I am fortunately pretty good about talking myself down out of the tree when I get going--I do what I've recommended to clients, I stop the circling thought and remind myself of its distortions, of how much I did accomplish. I allow myself to just be as sad and fearful as I need to be in the moment, and the moment passes. It helps so much to acknowledge that this is both the dying of the old year and the birth of the yet unknown new year, a fallow time, a time of darkness and possibility at the same moment. There are losses to grieve, hopes that hang by a thread, disappointments. But I began last year to feel in one small corner of my heart that I am enough, that my pace is enough if I just keep trying, just keep moving. I want to reclaim that feeling, and I am grateful for the way the januaries remind me of what's important. And, this morning as I got ready to go to work, I rememered the Carbon Leaf lyrics: "Pace yourself when outrunning fear/take cover when it's dark/and keep an even keel." In other words, take care of the baby.

mea culpa, holiday absences

2006-01-06T19:02:00.000-08:00

A month since my last post--heresy. Don't kick me off the KAL's, please. I'll share a knitting story:

We flew to San Diego on December 16 to meet the fam and then catch the cruise the next day. I'd had a hellish time getting away from work (both jobs), painfully cracked a filling at lunch two hours before we left, had felt old and fat and frumpy on the shuttle to the airport--filled with students from the college where I work (last day of finals and all)--was realizing I had spent way too much on swimsuits, had packed a seriously overweight bag and still had the nagging feeling I'd forgotten something. (I'm getting to the knitting part.)

The thing I was looking forward to most was popping on my mp3 player ("Shopaholic and Sister," a guilty pleasure courtesy of audible.com) and knitting along on the Easter Egg socks (while trying not to kick myself for all those times in July when I told myself it was too early to start knitting Xmas presents). So I settle into my seat and pull out my knitting. The flight attendant comes by, coos, and asks what I'm knitting. Socks, I say, all puffy-chested with pride.

Then I notice that the woman sitting across the aisle is staring at my knitting. I'm beginning to feel very interesting and accomplished when she says, "Do you mean to tell me they let you bring those on the plane?" (gesturing at the needles) I nodded and said something about they've changed the rules. She then says, "But they're really sharp, aren't they?" I hold my sz 1 Addi Turbo out and say, sort of, wondering if I look like a terrorist. She harrumphs and makes some snotty comment about how it doesn't make sense with all the other things they won't let you bring on the plane, etc. etc.

Sometimes I hate people.

The socks are coming along but Carole Wulster should never write another knitting book. The instructions for the short-row heel are unintelligible.

coming along

2005-12-08T18:36:00.000-08:00

[But first: what the hell has happened to my sidebar??? I didn't touch it, I promise, but half the buttons are little XXXX's. Damn, I don't have time to fix it but will have to live with it until January.]

Easter egg socks are coming along. My joking about "sock revolutions" aside, and despite nearly unintelligible instructions, the Wulster booklet has produced a fine ribbing, quite unusual and lovely but very simple to do while having a conversation. (Now if only I could take a decent picture, but I just can't seem to understand what my digital camera needs from me to stay in focus.)

Stopped into the campus bookstore today, where there is a woman who used to own a knit shop. We got to talking, and I asked for help with my Continental purling. She whipped out a pen and a crochet hook, cast several stitches onto the pen, and taught me some tricks. I love knitters who can improvise! I was so humbled I asked if she could help me with the mess of laceweight hopelessly tangled, and she's going to bring her swift to see if we can tackle it.

I think we'll also plan a trip to Canvas Works. I've never been there, and she says there's a great oyster restaurant nearby. But she wanted first to make sure that my husband had something to do on Saturdays so I wouldn't be leaving him alone. Very sweet. I didn't tell her how often poor B gets left to his own devices on the Saturdays that he doesn't work. Hey, I'm a busy girl, and I love my girlfriends!

Which reminds me--I'd just like to say--B is the best, best, best DH. Funny, smart, twisted, devoted, innovative, a fixer, great cook, and an all-around good guy. I never thought, after twelve years I'd only like him more all the time--I think I was raised to believe that you married in the first flush of love and it was all downhill from there.

I'm supposed to be balancing the checkbook right now. I hate chores.

more lovely sock yarn

2005-12-03T17:36:00.000-08:00

At our campus holiday craft bazaar yesterday, I found this gorgeousness:I was so impatient to wind it that I didn't get a picture of it in the hank, but it was exquisite. I now have more sock yarn than I can knit in two years, probably but can't stop buying. This stuff was dyed by the woman who taught the knitting class my coworkers took.

tag, i'm it

2005-12-03T17:31:00.000-08:00

Got tagged with my first meme by Lissa. Don't know meme etiquette, so forgive me if I faux pas:

What is your favorite yarn to knit with?
I'm slow, so there haven't been that many! I like sport- and fingering-weight yarns, though, and anything with cashmere or merino.

What's the worst thing you've ever knit?
I have my share of hideous acrylic scarves from when I started knitting again last year--the big-needle kind that stretch out in the middle, but stay too wide at the ends. Don't look for them in my FO's--I can't muster the enthusiasm to even photograph them. The most expensive of them is now like a big spaghetti noodle and is already pilly and fuzzy. I can't stand to wear them much anymore, but at least they got me back to knitting.

Most valuable technique?
The Continental knit stitch. It's saving my wrists and hands. Now if I could learn the purl properly (instead of ending up with a backwards leg), I'd be set. I just can't seem to keep tension unless I wind the yarn around my left-hand fingers in a bizarre way that doesn't allow for a proper "pick." Second place: learning how to avoid the hole at the corner of the sock gusset. Third place: YO's and SSK's, the key ingredients for interesting lace patterns.

Your most favorite knitting pattern?
I like a lot of Fiber Trends patterns, especially Evelyn Clark's lace socks.

Your favorite knitwear designer?
I don't have one--I'm a peripatetic knitter, drawn to one thing one day, and another the next.

Best knitting magazine?
IWK, hands down, for sheer knitting lust. But I'm a plus-size girl, and the sweaters are never big enough, dammit. Anyone know any good guides to pattern-alteration mathematics for Myers-Briggs INFP's?

Favorite book?
My current favorite knitting book is Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. I'm addicted to socks, and it just feels like such a good value, with a bazillion sock patterns and many toe/heel variations.

Your favorite knit blogs?
My favorites are in the sidebar, but Margene's is my only must-read. Partly because she takes gorgeous pics of my home country, that make me both more and less homesick. Partly because she's fast and seems to crank out more knitting than I ever hope to.

Knit item you wear the most?
The last few weeks I can't stop wearing Faina's Scarf--it's cuddly and warm. I keep giving away (or promising) my FO's so I don't have many to choose from.

Am I supposed to tag someone else now?

new WIP!!!

2005-11-30T22:03:00.000-08:00

Check it out in my WIP's (sidebar): the Easter Egg socks. I'm really having fun with the two-at-once using Magic Loop, though I've decided that tangled yarn is my life's curse. It helped so much over Thanksgiving--rife with family drama--to have this project to work on.

Non-knit-related comment coming: I decided, after dropping Mom and Dad at the airport yesterday afternoon (after 1-1/2 weeks containing: one dangerous fall that resulted in a Gorbachev-style head scrape, some small yelling, a stolen purse and smashed window, a Turducken, twenty-seven loads of dishes, two movies, more lattes than a normal month, four trips to Sea-Tac, the full roller-coaster of family emotions, the world's best husband, and record-setting blankie time for Harvey with various family members) that closing a family visit is like getting up from a serious fall: you check yourself for brokenness, testing all your limbs to make sure they're still there, that you're still made up of the parts you were previously. I'm delighted to find myself intact. I'm also mostly delighted with how I withstood it, this complicated mess that is my family of origin. There were some transcendent moments that I know I will always remember, especially with Paul. I only had one 15-minute timespan that I'd erase if I could (the small yelling). Maybe when I'm 80 my Italian temper will have cooled, and I will have learned to entirely stay centered.

As it was, I felt buffeted and tested but not found wanting. Mom said yesterday as I was shepherding them through the airport, "You think of everything." I didn't need to say back, "I think of everything because growing up with you taught me to always be prepared for the worst." I suppose it's a good sign that, in this case, the yelling happened because I have let my guard down enough to not be prepared for the condition I found them in.

what's that, you say?

2005-11-18T07:21:00.000-08:00

Why (in my FO's), it's a finished Sadie blankie!

I am beside myself with joy! I finished it just after midnight as our wedding anniversary was turning into the day after. B was snoring, Harvey was snoring, in bed beside me as I wove in the last ends on the backside. The mama will get it this weekend after a good wash. I took it to show the work girls yesterday, and everyone loved it. I imagine it was something like having a child: at the outset, you say, "Well, that doesn't look so hard! How hard could it be?" and then, when it's done, you know it will be years before you contemplate doing something so ridiculous again.

Or maybe not, because I found myself thinking last night, if I were to do one for another friend's nearly-three-year-old, I now know all the simple ways to weave many ends in as I create the blocks.

But this also means: today I can start a new knitting project!!!!! Look shortly for socks on the needles, and also a shawl started when I can get the laceweight unknotted and wound. My dilemma is, what to start??? I have stash and patterns for socks galore, and I really want to try something two-at-once, but not toe-up. Can I try this new technique and a lace pattern at the same time?

blunked socktoberfest

2005-11-05T04:58:00.000-08:00

(That was supposed to be "flunked," but blunked sounds just fine, too)

Officially flunked, as it's now Nov. 5. And you may notice there's no Sadie blankie in my FO's. The good news is, I'm very close on that--maybe this weekend? I could post a picture now, and say it's done--because I have finished the front--but I am an honest girl, and it just wouldn't feel right.

I am literally itching to take up another project! I taught a colleague to knit on dpn's this week. She's making a Christmas stocking in Cascade 220 as her first project in the round. I thought pretty canny: no second-sock syndrome. But I could hardly keep from snatching it and knitting away--she was really picking it up quickly, and that made it look so fun I hungered for it. But we have to remember: nann is working hard to finish what she starts, and it is a noble fast from new projects.

Part of the reason I flunked is that my two jobs--counseling and training--have both been operating at high pitch.

I wore Faina's Scarf for the first time yesterday! It's been torrential rain the last week, and cold, and yesterday was a Maroon Friday (spirit day at my work). It was good to have her back in my hands again, I've missed her so! She really blocked nicely, and the fabric is very fine and light.

Harvey has been awaking at 4 a.m., wanting his breakfast. It is crazy making, but it has helped immeasurably with my NaNoWriMo novel (won't be blogging THAT--just another exercise in proving I can finish things). I have a couple thousand words to catch up this weekend, so with that and S Blankie and regular Saturday/Sunday errands, I should keep me hopping. If I don't fall asleep in my lunch.

I'm looking forward to adding a couple of WIP pictures next week, along with one very belated FO.

living in a knit-free zone

2005-10-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

No knitting news. Life is consumed right now with work (the fun of having two jobs is not apparent this week), and in the bit of free time, trying to meet my goal of having the Sadie blankie ends all woven in by Halloween. I have been most successful by trying to carve it up into do-able bits: two rows worth of ends per day. There are 15 rows, with ends to weave on both the front and back sides. The other night my fingers itched for another project, but I am resolute: no more casting on until this one has been delivered to Sadie and her patient mommy. It would be too embarrassing to have her birth blanket finished for her first birthday.

Heidi got the socks. She was kind about it: "They will stretch a bit, won't they?" Damn. Now I have to make her another pair, but it won't be until January. Maybe some nice Fixation, so it won't be the end of the world if they end up a little snug. And I just might as well put those 2.25 mm needles away for good.

socks done and more yarn

2005-10-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

Heidi's socks finally done--I tried them on the other night, and the tightness problem was not as bad as I originally thought. So I finished them off (see the FO's in my sidebar--not very exciting, just a plain old jacquard sock, but they're done!).

Had coffee with my friend Aimee in the harbor yesterday and of course, had to make a trip to Yarn Garden, to see if they had anything new. More sock yarn, yea! but out of Addi's in sock sizes/lengths. It's such a pleasant shop, great location with an almost-view of the harbor. I just wished they had less novelty yarn and more basic stuff. But they were having a sale, and I couldn't pass this up:

Big soft flat plumps of Anny Blatt No. 5 in Raisin, a yummy purplish brown, at 30% off. I couldn't afford enough of it to make something really big, so I just got enough for a scarf (like I or any of my friends need more scarves). I think I'll do something from Scarf Style--maybe Backyard Leaves, which seems to be the right gauge. Can't wait to try the Denise needles.

The owner said that it was just beyond the price point most were willing to pay. I can't help wondering if they stocked more natural fibers, they'd get more hardcore customers. But perhaps Tacoma just isn't the market for it.

Oh, and I went to exchange the red laceweight. I met the woman who took the job I was originally thinking about--seems nice. Both she and the owner looked at me kind of funny when I was talking about the weight being off and said, essentially, it's the yardage, dummy. (Though they were very kind about it and the dummy part was just me feeling stupid.) And the worst part is--I know it's all about the yardage. It's just that the pattern was so specific, referring to grams/yards in two places, that I thought it must matter for this design!

And then of course when I got back into the car, I thought of all kinds of ways I could've checked that little fact out while preserving my dignity: Google, a phone call. . .I was just so fixated on needing to get my money back.

But tangles seem to follow me everywhere: now the laceweight is in a big hanky mess on the dining room table. I am winding it slowly. But I actually did some work on Sadie's blankie last night and have vowed! to get it done by Halloween. I will have to weave in two rows' worth of ends every day to do it (which seems to take about an hour), but I am so ready to have it done. I really have made myself promise that I will not start another project while it's unfinished. I will allow myself to wind laceweight yarn, which I can only do in bits because it is so frustrating, but nothing else.

will heidi really notice. . .

2005-10-11T20:30:00.000-07:00

. . .if one sock is blood-flow-constricting tight and the other is a little loosey-goosey?

Don't mess with me, I'm in denial.

hell of a day

2005-10-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

I swear to God, if it's not one thing, it's another.

We are STILL battling fleas. After 8 weeks of this, I'm finally ready to call the steam cleaners, the flea busters, the yogic swami, to get rid of them. 'Nuff said about that (though I wondered yesterday, when I was at a client's home, and she picked a flea off her dog, if maybe I have been unknowingly fighting the battle on more than one front, hmmm).

I spent the weekend really tucking into my work. I don't know if it's the prospect of the newly designed job in the future that re-energized me, but something has. I delivered a training today, and I really dug in and worked hard on it. Not perfect, but I felt good about it.

But when I was leaving at 7 a.m., I pulled out of the driveway and noticed that B's car window was smashed: yup, a CD-player grab. That might've been what woke Harvey up at 2:30 a.m., then me, when I was thinking it was just my poor itchy body. I hope the $3.50 the little druggies got for it at the local pawn was worth it for GOING TO HELL FOR STEALING. Just when there seems to be a light at the end of the money-going-out tunnel, something else happens, so I have decided just not to stress about it. Life's little emergencies are what Visa is made for, right?

Wishing tonight

2005-10-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

I am really feeling a little wistful tonight. I think it has something to do with it being a beautiful October night, a time I’d typically feel a little of the dying light.

(There seems to be spooky around every corner, which I love. Last night we had friends over for soto and fun, and we started telling our true-life “ghost” stories. I was surprised to find that I have a bunch of these! B freaked me out, though, telling everyone that when he was sitting in the family room the other night, he thought he saw the glass move from one spot on the table to another. Because it was him, he easily convinced himself it was just a trick of the eye.)

Our house is the coziest place in the world tonight: Sunday evening, dinner in the oven, laundry going, night settling down in the softest way around the eaves, peace and quiet and tremendous love. All material needs met, even abundance in many things. This is the time of year when my Cancer-ness comes out in full swing. And I even felt extremely lucky when I went to work this afternoon for a couple of hours: I have a great little office with every tool I need to be successful, and despite my procrastination, I got really excited about the training I’m doing on Tuesday when I finally sank my teeth into it. This job change, while it eliminates my knitting time, is, in many ways, my dream job. In it, as David Whyte says, all my experiences and learnings and talents will come together in a way that feels really good.

stinky day of knitting boo-boo's

2005-10-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

I'm just generally having a pretty grotty day, knit-concerned. This morning, I tried on Heidi's nearly finished sock #2. My gauge is clearly way the hell off, and the sock is too damn tight. First one fits fine but has holey gussets, and now this. Can't bear to think of frogging it, but as B says, nann, you can't give people s---!

I also realized that, in my LYS lust yesterday, I bought lace-weight yarn that has some off-kilter WPI. The pattern calls for 183 grams for 1275 yards, and my 1300-odd-yards skein weighs 100 grams. I set it up against another lace-weight I had, and it's definitely much finer. Damn.

I am a take-backer, so I will swallow my embarrassment (remember, when I was angling for a job, I told the Owner that I was pretty good at yarn substitutions) and exchange it, but for what? More sock yarn? Zephyr (which, while I have been wanting to try it, will push the cost of this project beyond what I was hoping for the SIL Christmas gift)? And I'm not sure Zephyr has a red this beautiful.

If I were contemplating any other lace projects, I might keep it, but I am also feeling the push of pending job changes which will compound my tortoise-osity by getting rid of all my knittable time. This turns the stash from a pleasant indulgence into an albatross around my neck.

And, though I generally think I've lucked out massively, career-wise, with the pending changes, this makes me slightly less enthusiastic about them.

an intervention, please?

2005-10-08T14:26:00.000-07:00

I cannot be trusted at the LYS.

Despite vowing I would not buy another project until the Sadie Blankie ends are woven (and Heidi's socks are finished), I not only bought this today

(didn't my KA cakes turn out lovely? But I've had to tell B to stop calling the device a "yarn baller"--it makes me a little squeamish)

but also this

In my own defense, I told MIL that I could make the SIL a shawl/stole for the Christmas cruise to Mexico. But I recently decided, with job changes pending and my tortoisey pace, I would have to renege and hope MIL found the pashminas she bought in Turkey last summer for Christmas gifts.

But isn't the laceweight pretty? I was going to order from KnitPicks (almost guaranteeing I'd fail to deliver the project by our sail date of December 17), but I didn't like any of their reddish lace yarns. This is a true, beautiful clear and deep red, not a touch of orange. And even though I have patterns that would surely do for a shawl/stole, this one just seemed like a good balance of lace complexity and consistent fabric. That's my story, anyway.

I also decided (same reasons as above) that the yarn store job was an absolute fantasy. Fortunately when I went today, the help wanted sign was gone and Owner said she'd found someone perfect.

Never doo-doo where you eat, is my motto: this is turning out to be my favorite LYS without having to travel to Seattle, and I wouldn't want to spoil it by having to work there and tarnish the dream. And it's weird: all my local knitting friends said, steer clear of that place, the owner's really mean. I've found no meanness whatsoever, just a person who's pretty intense (hmm, sounds familiar), serious and knowledgeable about the craft, and carries all the stuff I want to try: Manos, Koigu, Shepherd Sock, rosewood needles, Zephyr, a healthy selection of sock yarns. Even some of the stores in Seattle don't have it all in one place. The shop's in a rotten neighborhood, doesn't have classroom space, and the parking stinks. But I'm finding that, while ambience is nice, if the shop doesn't have the stuff, it's useless. So if you live in the South Sound and want to know which LYS it is (I'm really bad about being discreet, surely you can already figure it out), e-mail me.

top 10 lessons learned while kool-aid dye-ing

2005-10-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

10. I will never, ever drink KoolAid again (not a lot of danger of that anyway, but now I understand the powers of Red Dye #10--all the KA I ingested between ages 6-11 is maybe just now starting to wear off my innards)

9. It isn't over until the fat lady knits: both dye jobs look better at every new stage. The red/orange/purple/brown batch will make lovely sockies.

8. The zipper on the Saran Wrap is really sharp. (Casualties: one thumb)

7. Just when you think you have an untangling "system," it will fall all to hell, and you'll be back with the "the bunny goes under this branch and into this hole" method. (Hey! a new system--I should get a kid who just learned to tie his shoes to ungangle my yarn!)

6. If you're not a pink-loving girl, leave the pink lemonade KA on the shelf. (It seems like a good idea but probably never is.)

5. If you hang the drying yarn where DH's bath towel normally goes, make sure to move it before he takes a shower.

4. Expect the DH to say, "What the [bleep] is that smell?" for 3-5 days afterward. (Even if, like mine, your DH rarely bleeps.)

3. The smell is not really improved by hanging yarn over a heater, like where DH's bath towel usually goes.

2. "It's very harmful for yarn to remain in a hand-balled state. A ball-winder is essential for reaching optimal resting tension. Therefore, I must purchase a ball-winder for the good of my yarn. It's necessary to protect our yarn investment." (Some DH's might need a few more scientific words thrown in to find this convincing, and the our in the last sentence is really a judgement call--it could go either way.)

1. When the "ubiquitous they" say to tie your yarn in four places, they aren't kidding.

NaNoWriMo

2005-10-07T06:44:00.000-07:00

November is National Novel Writing Month--50,000 words in one month. This is my "come to Jesus" moment. I'm going to do it. The 30-day part fits with my ephemeral attention span, and there's no better shock to a stuck system than just jumping in. I'll take a break from clients and do it. Now which one will I write? I'm trying to just let myself tell a story. I recognize the bones of a story in lots of other places but seem to struggle with the map when it's time for me to tell one.

Yesterday had The Job Conversation. Since we also talked about being "dooced" in staff meeting, I won't say much about it, except to say that my gut says it's about the best of all possible worlds. I have been itching to get back in the full-time game. I've had my year and a half of half-time, of leisurely meet the pals for coffee days (I'm glad I recognized they were special and enjoyed them). There has also been a fair bit of sittin' around, trying to figure out what to do next. I am a little bit structurally challenged. The full-time paycheck also seems like a really good thing, too. I haven't mostly minded being poor-er, having to think twice about things I didn't before.

The idea of Utah hasn't faded entirely, but I think we're still on the hook waiting to find out what happens with B's business plans. Why does it seem to take us three times as long as anyone else to do stuff? I have begun to recognize the extent to which I wait until the right possible moment. I am hounded by perfectionism, and I think I must get over it this next several months. It's killing my effectiveness in so many areas of my life.

So NaNoWriMo is my shock treatment of choice.

kool aid day

2005-10-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

With the fruity scent still hanging around in a nauseating wet-wool kind of way, here's pics of this weekend's Kool Aid dye day.

I started with KnitPicks dye-your-own merino fingering weight for socks--doesn't it look nice and cooperative?

I am an impatient girl. Stubborn, even. Perhaps what comes next is predictable.

Not much later, here's what it looked like (I even called KnitPicks customer service to see if there were some trick to it, but apparently God help you if you try to separate the one big hank into bits, since it's wound with a weird layering at one end and tied in triplicate).

I'm still fighting it, and I expect it will be near Christmas before I finally get it wound. The silver lining, though, is that I'm not missing the ball winder--it would be absolutely no help with this fiasco.

Not feeling as enthusiastic at this point, but I press on with hank #2, mixing colors:

And leapt in! What the hell is this mess???Fortunately, I liked the skein somewhat better once it came out of the microwave.

And the next one, while so Easter-eggy I can hardly imagine wearing a pair of socks made from it, seemed a little better yet, technique-wise, though still a little splotchy.

I am unimpressed with my color skills, and grateful that yarn comes in lovely colors all made. Don't think I'll be doing this again. But here's something I'm really good at, cooking at the same time:

day at LYS

2005-09-30T23:03:00.000-07:00

A splurge today: finally bought the Denise needles, plus the extra 40" cord, at one of my LYS's. It was that or the ball winder--the winder would've been slightly more practical because I have a few hanks to wind, but now I feel like I can knit anything! and gauge be damned! I'm prepared for all eventualities. Well, except for socks on circ's--while I have sz 1, 2, and 3 doublepoints, I am liking the two circ method a lot, even more than magic loop. Building up my stash of Addi Turbo's for socks will take awhile, at $12 a pop.

Unfortunately, I didn't savor my time at the shop much, because they had a "help wanted" sign posted in the door. I fantasized for a moment about the glamour of working in my LYS and then actually asked her what she was looking for. While I am absolutely confident of my ability to learn any knit-related thing, I'm sure I'm still considered a beginner. I'm just too slow, and my lack of interest in sweaters means I have no big knit things to show her. Still, who else would apply for a minimum-wage job just to hang around yarn? Probably a zillion people these days. And I have to say, I have often known more than the help in yarn stores about different yarns, pattern companies, substituting yarn and calculating yardage. But the last thing I need is yet another job.

Heidi's Regia socks almost done--hopefully tomorrow. I'm also planning my first Kool-Aid dyeing session tomorrow if there's time between house chores (I'm hopelessly behind in balancing my checkbook, laundry, etc.). I just looked at the new Six Sock KAL socks--they seem pretty technically challenging, but I don't so much like the look of them. I don't really have anything in my measly stash that isn't committed to something else, and there are so many sockbug and Evelyn Clark socks that I really really want to knit.

hallelujah! stash package arrives!

2005-09-22T22:41:00.000-07:00

A better day, today. Good news on several fronts, plus this in the mail.

Really glad I ordered the color cards. I've heard how saturated the colors are, so I was expecting strong tones but there are some colors that don't look remotely like the pictures online or in the catalog. Now I can order away with confidence (although waiting three weeks nearly did me in this time). I do wish they had more lace yarns in subtle colors--so many are screamer bright variegations.

I've been holding off ordering yarn for the cable shrug in Fall IWK, and the KP alpaca/merino/silk blend (Elegance?) would be so yummy in the brown. Black would be more practical, since I no longer seem to own bottoms or shoes in any other color, but somehow brown feels more luxurious. However, since I'm a tortoise, since I just signed on for 6 Sock, and since I promised MIL that SIL would get a stole for the Christmas cruise to Mexico (I don't know if I'm ready to tackle the Forest Path, so maybe I'll try a Hanging Vines?), I doubt that there will be a cable shrug this fall. Either way, it's a good excuse to splurge on the ball winder and the Denise needles.

And here's this: making presents always seems more economical, but when it comes right down to it...it just means I feel like I spend most of my knitting energy on other people's projects. I'm just too damn slow.

still waiting, knit picks!

2005-09-21T18:55:00.000-07:00

Some finds this week at Fibers Etc.: the IWK Summer 2003 issue (with Forest Path Stole!) and the IWK Winter 2004 (with Waving Lace Socks). Also the new Sensational Knitted Socks. It was a good week for a little retail therapy: a variety of cumulative hellacious life experiences plus no Knitpicks yet (18 days and counting, but they tracked it and said it will be here by Friday).

However, in the unluck vein, just after I bought the sock book, I got a flyer from Crafter's Choice offering four crafting books for $4 plus S&H. Of the knitting books I've coveted, there was the sock book, Loop-d-Loop, Wrap Style, Knitting Over the Edge. (They also had a companion cookbook site, where I found 30-Minute Meals and Alton Brown's book.) Ah, well--better to support my LYS.

fleas = socks & debbie macomber

2005-09-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

My dirty secret: we have an infestation. Cautionary tale: when your pup is just a wee button and you think it will be dandy to have him sleep in your bed (undercovers) think about bites, bites, and more bites. Until you have "speck fear," where every small smudge is a buggy.

And so I have been knitting socks. Not to protect from bites, but because it is the way I comfort myself when I am freaking out about having fleas. When I have washed every blessed bit of bedding THREE TIMES in the the last week, bathed the dog FOUR TIMES, applied Advantage until the ASPCA might consider it DOGGIE ABUSE, and STILL I find little cinnamon-colored streakers on Harvey's haunches, or worse yet, on me!

I think the low point came tonight when I realized I am afraid to sit down anywhere in my house, lest Harvey sit with me and. . .yup, more fleas.

Ever knit socks while standing up?

Last night I was so beside myself I did the unthinkable: I pulled Debbie Macomber's A Good Yarn off the shelf to read while I took a flea-drowning bath. Never mind that I knew it was a bad idea from the moment I plucked it from a grocery store book aisle, and had a hard time keeping my lunch down for all 200+ drivelous pages. Lord, Julia Cameron is right when she said artistic success is often about audacity, not talent. Is it possible DM is actually good and just chooses to write that way? If so, I'm sure she's laughing all the way to the bank, and since I've been having trouble getting my ass up to write all summer, I have to admire her crank-em-out productivity, even if I think it, well, reads like crank-em-out. Or just crank. What frightens me is that there must be KNITTERS who like her book. We're generally pretty smart folk, right? But I've been reading about the conservative comment-bombing on At My Knits End and I realize maybe not. It passeth understanding the ways in which we feel justified lecturing each other, even via blogworld.

Still no KnitPicks. Twelve days and counting. The frantics are starting to set in.

fall is here

2005-09-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

This is one of those fall days I love living in the Pacific Northwest. We have a rain thing going on, there was a big Saturday breakfast.

Harvey did his weekend circus-dog begging to lick the plate (sorry about the full-frontal doggie junk on display in this pic). Entirely untaught, he just one day planted himself on his little square ass, where he can wait for 2 solid minutes, pivoting if something better than the promise of egg yolk and Tabasco catches his attention (well, anyway, it passes for entertainment at our house):

and there will be time again to work on Heidi's Regia sock:

and it looks like there will be B's tasty soto (Indonesian chicken soup) for dinner. Heaven.
Another lesson learned: Heidi bought me two pair of the Inox teflon-coated 24" circulars, US sz 1, as a birthday present (and to make her socks). While the packages are identical, one was priced a few cents lower. After several inches of stockinette, I find they are not the same. One is longer by an inch and has very pointy sharp shafts. I don't mind the differences as much as I mind their TERRIBLE joins (I have to knit tightly to make gauge, and I am so tired of tugging miniscule stitches past the joins).

I also recently bought my first pair of Addi Turbos (40" US sz 1 circs) to try the magic loop and two-at-once. It's true what everyone says, they're fantastic. But Addi defines sz 1 as 2.5 mm, while every other sz 1 needle I could find is 2.25 mm; I couldn't make gauge with the Addis on this project, so they sit while I struggle with the Inox needles.

impatience

2005-09-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

This vanilla blog is really bothering me. I've been learning how to mess with colors, skins, badges, etc., so I can do something to it. I am torn between wanting to do it myself and wanting it done. I like many sites by Missa of MoonArts/knitblog, and she is soon to post free pics of knitting needles. I'd like to create a banner and button at least, but I must face the fact that I am graphically challenged.

I am also waiting on my KnitPicks package: 8 of 14 days. Lesson learned: when you order yarn with free shipping, you will always wish you ordered more because the moment you click "submit," you are aquiver with anticipation. And who wants to go through that twice? But I told myself that frugality was critical, and it really is appropriate nann=cautious to order all the color cards and test some yarn first. (I am so square. I must plan even my risks.)

But this week the baby silk (alpaca, silk dk?) is on sale at elann--perfect for MIL and SIL Branching Out's for Christmas.

How the hell will I get all these presents knitted in time?

unfaithful (and chintzy to boot!)

2005-09-10T06:48:00.000-07:00

I must admit, I've been (gulp) dabbling with Typepad. My natural frugality (ergo Blogger) has been trumped by ease of use. But this morning, I finally found some clear instructions on how to use the free image posting here to upload affinity badges/buttons to place on my knitblog sidebar without stealing bandwidth. I will try it later. With blogger, flickr and gimp and my own stumbling around with html, perhaps I can actually maintain an all-FREE blog. (It's sick, but when I went to work half-time as a trainer and even-less-time as a family counselor, I began to play the "how cheap can I do this?" game, and my mother's teachings came flooding back to me.) But I declare: I have never ever file-shared mp3 files, despite being surrounded by college students who seem to think stealing is justified if you're "poor." (Just to be clear, we're the kind of college where "poor" is what you see a mile or two from our campus, but hardly within its dormitories.)

I do love the ability with blogger to mess directly with the html code, because I am dreaming of having a new moonarts photo as a banner on my knitblog (she's posting FREE images of knitting needles soon!), and I found a template awhile back that I'd like to use here--Typepad only gives you access to the html with their pro account but makes it really easy on their midrange account to change colors, use a picture for a banner, etc. I hate knowing that I'm committing myself to an $8.95 monthly subscription for the life of the blog. As B has begun to ask me when I'm considering a non-fiber purchase: how much yarn would that be? (And lest you think he's supporting my burgeoning yarn habit: he is not. It's simply an effective diversion from the momentary object of greed.)

I am also having an affair with Audible audiobooks. Another subscription service, but I am telling myself I can stop any time. And so far, I've been offered several free audio books, just enough to keep me hooked (isn't that what the crack dealers do? give you a free taste?). Last night I had a counseling client way out in the woods (why do I always get these in the fall, when it's so spooky?). I can get quite a chunk listened to in a two-hour commute. It even made the recent 13-hour drive to Utah really go quickly.

And I have finally committed to an mp3 player: the Creative Zen Nano Plus (this after trying and returning the iriver ifp 899, the Rio Carbon Pearl 6 gb, the iriver t30, the Zen Nano). It has most of the features I wanted, so I'm okay giving up Napster to Go. Because--yep--it's another subscription service, and unlike Audible, one in which you don't own anything at the end. I loved the browsing of music and listening to unlikely (for me) things, though. I have determined that it's the way of modern commerce to sell renting, not owning. How clever!

what does it say about us?

2005-09-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

Harvey has started his autumn habit of getting up extremely early to fill his tummy then going back to back up against warm knees in bed while I am left sleepless and pondering. This 5 a.m., there was the haze of fall mist around the streetlights across our back yard. We were in E'burg with L&L for the Kittitas County Fair yesterday, and the wind blew all day long against the slanting sun. It's coming, the mourning season that I love so much.

Much of our drive over the mountains we spent debating the government's lack of response to the flood victims. B is so much more pragmatic and, truth be told, much more clear-eyed about our country than I am. When I said something about this being the richest country and shouldn't we be able to take care of our poorest, if (god forgive us) not on an everyday basis, at least in this moment of utter immediate need, he reminded me: we became the richest by a system that emphasizes amassing personal wealth. We became the richest by blowing past the "least of these."

It is unfathomable to me that there are people in the hurricane zone still waiting for any sort of relief. I cannot understand how we can mobilize a war seemingly overnight and not get people out of a city--even a flooded one--before they begin dying of starvation, thirst, lack of basic medical supplies. President Bush, should we not attend to our own third-world country first? I read three or four newspaper articles yesterday that I could not comprehend:

The U.S.S. Bataan is 25 miles offshore with 600 beds available and the ability to make 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day. The commander says he'll respond when called but has yet to be. His quote was something like, we won't force ourselves on anybody. Would there not be a hue and cry if this man were court-martialed because he "forced himself" on those whose lives he could save? And then I thought: maybe not, for in a few months, the charity concerts will be off TV and CNN will have moved on to other things.
Thirty percent of residents in New Orleans lived below the poverty line. Thousands simply couldn't get out because they had no means and nowhere to go. Evacuation plans didn't account for elderly and immobile. Some people even had cars but couldn't afford to buy a tank of gas.
An anesthesiologist at one hospital where people were sheltering has set up a place to euthanize pets of people there. People who saved their pets from the flood now cannot get them out (there is no room or time to spare for pets in the rescue operations, understandable when there are thousands of people still waiting) and are asking him to euthanize them so they won't just starve to death.

I just cannot believe we couldn't have done better. Could we have invaded Iraq 3 hours later (if it's costing about 10 billion per day) and fixed the levee instead? I heard George Bush say on the morning show Friday that there haven't really been international offers of assistance, because WE HAVEN'T ASKED FOR HELP. Goddammit, if one (more) person dies because of his stupid unwavering confidence in his own righteousness, this agnostic girl hopes there is a judgment day after all.

cannot comprehend

2005-09-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

Too much devastation today. I can’t even process or comprehend the pictures coming in from New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama--or the feeling that the poor just keep getting poorer. Where is the justice in this world? I know, godlovers say it comes in the next, which must be scant comfort to those who get none.

I was reading a blog this morning—yes, I came to it from a knitlink—that made me wonder again why there are some women whose role in life seems to be purely ornamental. As far as I could tell, this knitter’s job was to hold up her husband’s gorgeous and enormous house, to make sure she stayed thin enough, and to be-deck herself (lest you think I am all snotty, she was truly lovely in some of her fantastic knitted garments, and her enthusiasm for knitting was genuine and contagious).

Here’s my question: if you, in your cells, were fashioned to be ornamental, do you know that you are content or discontent with being ornamental? (if a tree falls in the forest. . .?) I squeeze my eyes closed hard to imagine myself being ornamental (a far stretch indeed!) and then have to remind myself that it’s impossible on the most basic level—I simply couldn’t be. I was designed far, far differently—not more, not less than, but with an altogether different network diagram. But it doesn’t keep me from being envious of those who are and who are content to be.

Here’s my own confession: I have been infected with the sickness of greed (I think I’ve directly plagiarized that from the Last of the Mohicans movie, but it resonates) the last couple of months. Yesterday morning, I woke with it in full force. It isn’t just greed for things, although that is definitely a part of it. It includes greed for time, health, experience, views, etc. Just overall dis-eased.

And then I began to see the pictures on the morning show (I’d been in training all day Monday and Tuesday and so only vaguely knew the hurricane was happening). Whole neighborhoods...well, you know. We’ve all been glued to CNN. It’s a combination of stunning shock, and then underneath, a thread: what would I be doing in those circumstances, with everything, everything stripped away? These people have jobs, homes filled with beloved and hard-acquired things, or none of the above. They have pets they love as much as I love Harvey, and some couldn’t save them. They had taps with running water and now there is terrible thirst. They have diseases that require medicine that needs to be refrigerated, carefully timed and administered. Like the old man who needed oxygen--having survived the flood, they will die anyway. They need every basic thing restored and supplied, and even though there will be (at least temporarily) an outpouring of every basic thing, it will require huge mobilizations to put them together with those things.

B was reading on his listerv last night about a man, safely out of harm’s way, who got his family out but his home and business are lost. This, a huge tragedy and heartbreak in any other circumstance, may be considered a best case scenario in the near future. All the same, it means that there is so much more heartbreak to come—so much that we will, as distant Americans do, become immune to it and forget very quickly. There are people who committed suicide rather than live their lives in the reality that is coming. And already the game of blame—some of it very rational given the crazymaking question of how in this day does it take so long?—begins.

sock junkie

2005-08-31T06:29:00.000-07:00

When Harvey was a shoe-size pup, I said to B one day: what if I don't love him when he grows up? What if he is not as cute when his little snub nose grows into a full-size dachshund snout? B said, ridiculous!

As I blocked Faina's Scarf last weekend, marvelling at how the yarn got softer after a block and stretch, how the fabric changed, at how light it was in my hands when all folded up, I thought about what project comes next. I am trying to be a serial monogamist with projects, only having one affair at a time alongside the tedious marriage of end-weaving. I was pretty certain that I would do Heidi's socks, which I look at as someone else footing the bill for my addiction. It doesn't apply in this case, I was delighted when she asked me if I wanted to make her socks, but I am starting to notice how people ask you to knit stuff as if they're asking you to pass them a Kleenex. But I did think: what if I don't really like knitting socks after all? What if those tiny tiny stitches drive me nuts and I develop massive "second sock syndrome"?

After one very frustrating night when I tried to get them on the sticks via Socks! The Next Step and its inscrutable instructions (to be fair, I probably shouldn't have tried to do this the same night I had a meltdown about the medical condition), I have been knitting happily away. So I guess it's like Harvey love: it never gets smaller, only bigger. I am now waking up early to read knitblogs or surf pattern rings or knit a few stitches. I was nearly late for a meeting yesterday because I wanted to sit in my car listening to The Secret Life of Bees from audible.com and knitting just one more row. And I don't do late for meetings.

And besides, I think miles of stockinette is just the ticket for teaching myself to knit Continental. The throwing has hurt my wrist more lately and made my right pinkie alternate tingly and numb. So far, the remapping of synapses in my brain is going fine, but I find it harder to purl Continental, and this project so far has no opportunity for practicing that.

If nothing else, Socks! The Next Step is a fantastic read-out-loud-in-bed kind of book. B took his his turn the other night and now cannot stop laughing about the sock "revolution." He's mustered Harvey into the guerrilla sock revolutionary army, and Harvey keeps singing, "Can you hear the guns, Fernando?" And if you've never heard Harvey sing, well, you're missin' something. We all want to be part of the revolution. And we'll be well socked because of it. (Mea culpa, all my good-girl apologies to Carole Wulster.)

off the sticks

2005-08-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

Last night, I blocked my first thing ever--faina's scarf.

It's still drying in this muggy Washington August day, and with blocking, it has become a new thing altogether. I'm worried that I've stretched it out too far (B said last night, "It's really beautiful but tell me this. . .why is it so freakin' long?"). The fabric is now truly lacy with sharp yarnovers, clear chevrons, and is very fine, silky and airy instead of a curling-up softy dense nubbly pet. I followed the directions, and wet-blocking made sense to me, but while I celebrate my first real completion, I mourn a little for the loss of the thing that was the companion of my process. This is why, I suspect, knitting is so soulfully good: when done, you get to carry/wear/envelop yourself with an infusion, not just an object, of your own desires and workings and thoughts.

And then again, get off it, nann--it's just a scarf! Can't wait to sling it around my neck when the cold mornings come this fall and winter.

home again

2005-08-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

Outside in this glorious august night, the neighbor sprinklers are spritzing. Le Ann and I went for Pagliacci's on a whim today, and yesterday I visited three!!! of the Seattle knitting stores (plus Sephora, C&B, Pottery Barn). Weaving Works, I think, is my new favorite. Acorn Street was long on novelty and good needles, books, but short on really interesting yarn, or maybe I was just yarned out after leaving WW (long on needles, books, fleece, yarns, project table). I like anywhere they don't start looking at me funny when I don't buy much after two hours. I promise, soon! when I've worked my way through the mini-stash (five projects seems like a lot, but at least I have projects in mind for each of the things I bought).

Needlepoint Joint in Ogden, though, will become my fantasy in the same way that B dreams of Chuck-a-Rama's two kinds of gravy whenever we leave Utah.

I bought my first Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock (at center in green, for the Fiber Trends Lacy Leaf Socks), my first Regia (actually Heidi bought it so I can make her a pair of self-patterning Fair Isle-style and now I'm thinking it might actually be harder than it looks to make twins), some Adrienne Vittadini Cara linen in a lovely silvery wheat /bronze color (the same color as my high school graduation dress, as it turns out).

I still have some Cascade 220 for a pair of worsted socks, some pink Fixation for their free pattern socks, and some fuschia Fortissima Socka (what was I thinking?) for the lacy socks in IWK summer or the Fiber Trends raindrop lace socks (pattern courtesy of NPJ).

Like my food greedies at a buffet, my stash seems to make no sense and looks odd when all put together. I don't think the Cara will be easy to knit, but I want to do a dresser scarf for the guest room with it (maybe with beads?), and even if it just sits, I couldn't let it go--not when each $9 ball was marked down to $4. If I'd had some good sense and a bigger budget, I could've made out like crazy with their sale, but I still haven't ordered from Knit Picks, and they just keep adding yarns! Also, the great woman at NPJ who helped me pick out circs for socking very generously gave me several free patterns for felted pumpkins, and they had a glittery beaded/felted pumpkin kit I might just have to send away for. Can't believe, though, that I didn't make it to Knit Craft. Man, it's so easy for me to forget what I want to do and give away my time to others.

I'm also learning: if there is a pattern that you love and you see, snatch it up. I got frugal in my last several trips, and here's what I stupidly missed (because post-MS also comes with listmaking):

the Harriet bag from Two Old Bags (online--still could get this one)
that great cardigan from Oat Couture (Mount Vernon knit shop)
that sinewy, "carved out" beaded green scarf on earthfaire.com (don't know what it was called or who it was by, or I might be able to find it again)
the Himalayan silk vest/poncho thing

There are so many things I want to knit. Tonight I frogged back a few rows of Faina's scarf. I keep telling myself it was because I really do have enough yarn to make one more pattern repeat plus the last 50 rows of decreasing, plus the fringe (which is really quite questionable, actually), but I suspect it was actually more than frugality: I am loathe to have this project done. I have loved it so, the yumptious maroon marino and cashmere has been a comfort, even in the dead of summer (I keep thinking of Laura Ingalls Wilder's mother telling her, "cashmere wears well and is serviceable in all but the warmest days of summer"--eeek, how many times did I read those damn books!), and the pattern has been an orderly meditation of yarnovers (my, I like lace). I knit it all day on the way home from Utah, and still I am addicted to it. Every time I picked it up, I was addicted to it. I'm sure I will feel the same even about the next project (Heidi's socks) , but this is the project that was my first splurge of yarn, the first pattern I really wanted to make.

Le Ann had good wisdom today, from her latest sermon, on the things that clog our hearts (metaphorical hearts, not like French fries, etc.): anger, greed, jealousy, guilt. The antidote to greed is to give. The antidote to jealousy is to celebrate. She didn't remember the other two antidotes, but it doesn't matter because these two are my demons. I've been trying to recall lately when they arise that these two things are simply evidence of a deep but confounded want, or a frustrated wish, and that the wish and want are holy. It's the personality that twists them, and the urgency that is really fear. She also said that greed and jealousy are also our way of not trusting that the universe will take care of us. Hmmm.

free sock patterns!

2005-08-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

I'm cheap. And I like interesting socks. Found some today at sockbug.

Last night, as we were collapsed in the 90-degree heat with Harvey (seen here in his normal nosey state):

we were talking about the hours and hours involved in the upcoming road trip. B said, "You're going to knit the whole way, aren't you."

I have been in such a state about the endlessly ended blankie that I had forgotten. about. knitting. in the. car. That's a good 11-12 hours of knit time! Even at my turtle's pace, that's many many rows! And, if we stop overnight on our way home, even more! Here's how it went from that point: B, waxing on about all the lovely talking time we will have (first of all, who's he kidding, I've been on long drives with him before, and he's NOT a talker). Me, thinking, "But I can't count Faina's scarf and talk, too." I really have begun to think of myself as an all-things-knit addict, because I find myself peeved when he interrupts my knit-related activity.

Now if only I could figure out a way to knit on the first leg of the trip, which I'm driving solo. Maybe in that eastern Oregon, northern Idaho part.

knitting nostalgia

2005-08-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

Somehow I've discovered the webring for Utah knitters. Can I be one (again)? Their pages are rife with photos of cool socks (it's Nancy Bush country, after all) and mountains. And even better: Knit Craft, Mickey Burdett's stacked-to-the-rafters shop! Who knew it was still there? and Needlepoint Joint, which was the scene of my first fiber lust, though it's moved from the mouth of Ogden canyonlatter to trendy and accessible 25th Street--oh, excuse me, Historic 25th Street. I think I'm feeling nostalgic, as well as just wanting to plan for my trip--I leave this Saturday, and the thing I'm looking forward to most is returning to my knitting roots by visiting these shops.

And, as usual, I've whiled away the evening downloading free sock patterns from various knitblogs. Instead of working on 1) my mediation test or 2) the 900+ ends to weave in or 3) laundry. My knitting porn addiction, as B would say. . .

throes of addiction

2005-07-31T08:12:00.000-07:00

It's this bad: to bed at 1 a.m. after a fun nite with friends, eating Buck's yummy Indo food (forgot to take a picture of the table) and my homemade mango ice cream, sitting out into the wee hours with flaming tiki torches and candles on the table. Barfing Gene notwithstanding, very nearly a perfect evening--I think 8 is about my perfect party size. And sleeping Sadie spent the last half of it in her unfinished faces blankie, proving that tails woven in is not prerequisite for usefulness, just for cosmetics. I cannot describe how lovely to have Le Ann ask for "Sadie's blanket" and I able to give it to her. I am Nann, creator of warm and functional objects!!!

Now: up at 7 to feed an insistent but no longer pukeybreath Harvey, I start surfing knitblogs (less guiltily than in recent weeks, when I was only avoiding the ends-weaving-in syndrome). Every day I keep finding more yarn shops in Seattle. Do you think it would kill some of them to move a bit south? I'm stuck with growing but too-novelty-focused, slightly snootish Yarn Garden in GH and deliciously-stocked-to-the-rafters-but-intermittently-open-and-no-website Fibers Etc. Where is the famed T-town Renaissance where yarn is concerned? Yeah, yeah, I hear the siren call of "open my own shop" out there, but I push it into the same brainspace as the "open our own Indo restaurant" madness.

However, unlike everyone else I've talked to, I had a great experience at Lamb's Ear Farm, but perhaps it was because the owner wasn't there, just a baby-jumper-knitting young ski-capped guy. Cool. The Yahoo LYS reviews say the owner is a nightmare, and I've had two people tell me that they felt like the staff was watching them like shoplifters--perhaps because of the nightmare layout, with that totally hidden-away back room? But they had some decent books (partly I judge this by whether they have any of the Barbara Walker books), and a nice selection of yarns, some Koigu (almost bit on that one but thought better of $30 socks for the moment--I think I'm saving those for a yarn shopping EVENT, like finding it on a visit to Paul in NYC), lots of the Cascade 220. But jumper-knitting guy was helpful and didn't even smirk when I (looking at jumper) said I'd never done intarsia. He just said nicely, this is fair isle. I'm such a technique groupie.

So the next project made it into my mini project bag, this skanky shop bag from Skeins. Perfect size for socks, perfect handles. For this I spent $45 and a weekend sewing my knitting bag and various project ditty bags? to carry my projects around in a shopping bag? But a nice shopping bag. And the project? A pair of ice-cream pink Fixation socks using the free-with-purchase pattern.

I have to start with this one instead of the IWK Summer 2005 Evelyn Clark "Go with the Flow" socks because, dammit, I have been too cheap to pay full price (no coupon to chintz my way out of it) the required sz 1 dpns. How I love wrestling with the porcupine! And because my magenta superwash Fortissima Socka (another impulse buy, this time at Mount Vernon, on the way home from my retreat) is a little scratchy.

blog slacker, but looky here!

2005-07-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, I haven't blogged in almost a month. Wine trips, working lots, medical stuff, best friend visit, birthday party, 35th b-day retreat off in the scary woods. . .all that takes its toll on knitting time. Plus, when you have a project like this staring you down. . .I've been reading other people's knitting blogs because I'm forbidden to start another project until this monster is complete. Looks close, right?

Not so fast, buckaroo: all those fuzzy things hanging down are ENDS TO BE WOVEN IN. And there are more on the backside. Eek. The whole thing consists of 188 individual crocheted blocks stitched together (so technically, it's not on the "sticks"). Yes, Fiber Police, it's Red Heart acrylic, but lighten up--it's an on-the-floor, pull-on-the-faces, needs-to-be-durable BABY BLANKET. I'm still batting for the natural fibers team. It came from a Leisure Arts pattern book--the original was made in cute crayola brights but the baby-in-mind's room is pastels and safari animals. The tan faces are actually earless-for-now dogs--the ears have ends to be woven in, too! Though I'm really pleased with how it turned out, I would have to be certifiable to do it again, though I have enough yarn to do another one. Only if I can never afford another item for my yarn stash to make a new project. I'm having trouble loading closeups of the animal faces, probably because I had my camera settings wrong and these are jubungai pictures.

I thought giving myself three months 'til due date to finish it was plenty, but Sadie is now four months old! I've been having nightmares and denial about this thing, because I calculate that there are something like 4o0 ends (I figured out only halfway through making the blocks that I could stitch over the ends as I was starting a new color, duh). Despite my vows to not pick up another project until it was done, here's what I've been working on in the meantime:

These will always be the Leprosy Socks to me--I used Cascade 220 Quatro in 9434 Colorway (I am a bad impulse shopper in LYS's, this time The Yarn Garden in Gig Harbor--I don't even wear turquoise blue!). The pattern was Knitting Pure & Simple's Beginner Socks in worsted weight. Easy--too easy. Why do I listen to yarn shop owners who are used to working with the beginner novelty yarn crowd? I have never met a knit stitch I didn't like or couldn't learn from a book. So of course I got bored with the idea of endless stockinette stitch and decided to add my own pattern to the instep. If you can see it at all (not a good match with the colorway), you can tell that I should have started it a few rows earlier, when I separated the stitches into heel and instep. It was a boring waffle weave stitch from my old pattern dictionary (once, it seemed like it had a lot of stitches but now when I look at it compared to the Walker books, it's the two-moss-stitch-one-cable-stitch snack version).

And finally, here's the project that started it all:
Faina's in a delectable maroon (for Maroon Fridays at U of Puget Sound!) merino/cashmere blend from La Lana/Mondial? Not sure if I'm reading the label right. The pic is terrible at showing the lovely chevrons (I think this is about midway through the third repeat). Sadly in need of blocking--perhaps merino has too much stretch for this pattern--even with the seed stitch border, it wants to curl up on itself like a hug, and I'm now certain that the cast-on edge is too tight and will always be kinked up, making the fringe look all hurky.

So today, since I have a stupid summer cold and Buck is working, and I am trying hard not to dump it all and go visit the Seattle yarn shops (still have Acorn Street, So Much Yarn, and Tricoter to have seen them all this summer), and because I want to buy a little yarn at Needlepoint Joint when I get too tired of parents on the upcoming visit (it's Nancy Bush country, my dream is to get a signed copy of Folk Socks while I'm there and some Crystal Palace dpns), I will spend the day weaving in acrylic ends. It seems a good sick-day thing to do, and we are nearly ready for the annual Indonesian dinner with friends tonight, thanks to a lot of sous-chefing last night.

want more life!

2005-07-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

Found this today: Steve Jobs' recent commencement address at Stanford.

Not exactly knit-related, except that it is permission (no, an imperative!) to do more of what I love. Plus, knitting is a meditation that seems to call out the questions in me, while also offering the affirmation of liking to do something. Jobs uses David Wyte's "follow your curiosities" that has been my own mantra for finding out what it is I love. In the melee of the last few weeks (four weeks ago, we went to the doctor and all this began again), I've forgotten that turning my face from the curiosities is just simply saying, I can't bear to. . . what's the use? Julia C. says this is actually fear. Isn't it all?

Had a bit of it on the 4th while I was walking, dreaming of finding the perfect kayak and making the perfect socks (or really, just the next socks). Then turfed it yesterday with all the old stallings. If life is so short, why is it also so easy to waste?