AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
What in the hell is wrong with me – you know how sometimes the simplest things are the hardest?! Well, after thinking about my endless sleeve dilemma (and whether to cast on a small purse project), I decided to go ahead. I had a long subway trip this afternoon, an hour there and another hour back, and it’s far too muggy to schlep my Peasy – and it’s too unwieldy for subway knitting, anyway.
So I cast on a very simple hat – the Sockhead hat, by Kelly McClure. COULDN’T be easier. Cast on 144, do 4″ of 2×2 rib, then 9″ of stockinette. I have some very lovely Addi turbos, and a fun yarn, wham bam. I cast on, carefully counting and recounting to be sure, before I headed to the subway. Knit the first round of ribbi….wait a minute. Why do I have an extra 2 stitches? It should be knit 2 purl 2 then knit 2, to start the next round! Plow ahead, just have one little section of knit 4, who’ll notice. The long ribbing section is folded over for double warmth, I’ll just be sure to keep it at the back when I wear the hat.
But I got to my appointment a few minutes early, and sat down to recount the stitches. 154!! Ten too many! What the hell. Rip out the 4 rows I’d done, will cast on during the subway ride back.
So I cast on, and started knitting – like 20 stitches, or so. Realized I was knitting with the long tail. Tink those stitches, start again with the actual yarn that goes to the ball, LORI. Then I realized I was just knitting knitting knitting. Dang it! Ribbing! Ribbing! 2 x 2 ribbing! Tink those stitches.
And stop for a while. I know this kind of thing happens to you too. Don’t you hate it when it does?
my NY age is 28? REALLY? (said the 51-year old woman)
No one ever believes me when I say I’m 51. I know, that’s true for nearly everyone, whatever their age. But it’s one reason I don’t mind being 51 – the buggy-eyed response, the NO WAY, the “your kids are how old?” I think if people had no reaction at all when I gave my age, I might not like being 51 quite as much. 
I started college when I was 36, graduate school when I was 40, and I finished my PhD when I was 45. What this means is that I spent the bulk of my middle years among people who were considerably younger than me. I thought we were the same, and it usually took a reflective surface to remind me that they probably didn’t. Still, I think it’s one situational reason I’m kind of young for my age, whatever the hell that means.
But I wasn’t prepared for this:
My New York age is “28″
This New York age puts you-generally speaking-into the young category. That’s what you were hoping for, right? Run and tell your friends. Then get drunk (as usual). Then sleep it off. Then pop an Adderall. Then come back and consider experimenting with a more mature type of New York life (just once in a while). Have you ever been to the Village Vanguard or the Living Theatre? Eaten at Elaine’s? Taken a date to Michael Feinstein? Before you laugh, check ‘em out and see what old-school NYC experiences you can add to the new.
What’s your New York age? Take the Time Out New York quiz and find out!
And I answered each question absolutely honestly. Which means I said I don’t even remember the last time I was out until 4am. For example. I get my caffeine from coffee (not cocaine). And still, at the end, I’m a 28-year old NYer.
Who knits a whole lot. They didn’t ask me about that one.
.
announcement to texans and new yorkers: nobody likes you if you think you’re the best.
Maybe, in your life, you once had a relationship that was unsatisfying, but there wasn’t really anything wrong with the person. Everyone said Oh, s/he’s so great, such a nice person, funny, etc. I did once, and I agreed with them! Still, “perfect” as he seemed to be, it was not a good relationship for me. Around that time, I heard Joan Baez sing a song that included the line I used as this blog post title: a saint is hard to live with at home. It cracked me up, it felt very familiar and personally true, and obviously it stayed with me.
This line came to mind this morning when I saw the following article in the NYTimes:
we're perfect
Yep – that’s what it says. More city preschoolers are perfect. Test scores show. To me, that suggests that the tests are imperfect, or imperfect for assessing what they need to assess. Had I seen those data, I’d have written an article pointing out the problems with the test. But New Yorkers – you know how they are – instead say that we’re just perfect.
As a Texan, I really get that, and it’s one thing I find dear about New Yorkers. Well, dear and really irritating. Just like people get irritated (or worse) with Texans for their/our grandiose views of themselves (ourselves). NYers and Texans should either get over ourselves, or at least keep our mouths shut a little more often.
And look at this – what do we see in my gigantic knitting bag next to my place on the couch:
peasy and mondo, mixing it up together in the bag
That’s my Peasy sweater (I’m knitting a sleeve right now) and my Mondo Cable Cardigan (also on a sleeve). Two sweaters! But lost in sleeveland, the seemingly endless land of stockinette tubes. Yesterday I did a little Peasy sleeve knitting, then a little Mondo sleeve knitting, then back to Peasy. It didn’t feel like too much of a break, switching to the other. I don’t have a purse knitting project going right now, and I keep thinking I ought to cast on something small and quickly-finishable, but then I know I’d just do that instead of sleeves, and the sleeve-knitting elf hasn’t found my apartment yet so if it’s going to be done, I’ll have to do it.
Everything there is to do in this world has a bit that’s less fun than the others. I read an article by Jane Patrick in one of the first issues of Handwoven, where she talked about how much she hated sleying the reed (I think that was the detail). Then she realized that’s a necessary task, she’s always going to have to do it when she weaves, so she tried to reorient herself to the idea. That happened to me when I took my intro stats course as an undergrad – at first I hated it, but I realized it would be my essential tool so I found another way to think about it, and now I adore stats. So my mission is to find another way to conceptualize the endlessness of sleeves.
Happy Thursday, y’all.
.
Popular posts: