so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good bye, i leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye, goodbye!
It’s time, yo! We’re off on our fall vacation, to Vietnam and Malaysia (and the island of Borneo). I won’t be posting here until Sunday October 16.
We’ll arrive in Hanoi at 9:30am on Saturday, which is 9:30pm Friday (NYC time). However. From the looks and sound of the typhoon that’s approaching Vietnam, it’s extremely likely that we’ll be stuck in Hong Kong for a day or more. Not that Hong Kong is a bad place to be stuck — in fact, we wanted to see it — but I’m just so eager to get to Hanoi, and I don’t want our train trip to Sapa to get screwed up. Keep your fingers crossed, say a little prayer, send good thoughts, burn incense, please do whatever you do!
My travel knitting will be my little yellow featherweight cardigan and my KtyKozue scarf, in case it’s too muggy and sticky to deal with the malabrigo.
The title of this post is goodbye in both languages, so here you go in more familiar tongues: goodbye! au revoir! despedida! kveðja! hwyl fawr!
I wonder if s/he wants to put this in some wedding vows, or something?
THIS search brought them to me?? Really?
So much going on, of course, including an early-morning meeting with my dear son. Now: packing, cleaning, caking a skein of yarn, copying my pattern, general futzing, trash-taking-out, dishwasher-running, trying to hold my excitement to bearable levels.
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. –Eleanor Roosevelt
The title of the post is one of the great lines from the movie Moonstruck, spoken by Nicolas Cage to Cher. (I love that movie so much.) This morning I was running through Google Reader while knitting the second sleeve of my sweater and drinking my morning coffee, and hit this post on the wonderful blog A Femme d’un Certain Age. Obviously, it’s about women like me, written by a woman who is around my age — which I always proudly state. Fifty-two. Yeah!
Anyway, that post I linked has photos of famous women in their 60s+ (and it’s just the most recent; she’s written a couple before this one). So you scroll past and see these older women, all made-up and hairdoed and beweled for the camera, and some have had a little work done, some have had a LOT done, and some have very scary faces, hard and plastic, like masks. The blogger said — and it’s not like I disagree — of course every woman should do what makes her feel best and acknowledged that sometimes things do go awry.
I’m of two minds. Yes, definitely, every woman should do whatever makes her feel best. Of course. And/but every time we completely deny our appearance, we just perpetuate the idea that women shouldn’t age. Every time white hair isn’t ok, every time wrinkles and smile lines aren’t ok, every time the dreaded saggy neck isn’t ok, we keep the story going. Only taut, blemish-free, wrinkle-free women allowed here.
I always suspect that one embarrassing reason I don’t mind saying my age is that people are always shocked, never expecting I’m in my 50s. Maybe if they were shocked because they didn’t know I was only in my 50s I’d feel differently. 
But as they say, this is what 52 looks like, people! This is what 52 looks like. I know several women in their 50s, and this is what it looks like. It looks soft, it looks alive, it looks relaxed. And every time we go out in the world looking like ourselves, we show younger women what it looks like, and that it’s good.
My 52 has a chunk of white hair in one spot with others showing up all over the place (including in my eyebrows!). My 52 has a deep pair of creases between my eyebrows, from years of frowning while I think hard (yay, I’ve spent a lifetime thinking hard!). My 52 has crinkles around my eyes (yay, lots of smiling!). My 52 has a saggy neck that I struggle to say yay about, that kind of shocks and horrifies me in certain light, but hey. My 52 has a saggy neck. I rub cream into it and let it go out as it is. Nora Ephron said that the throat is the thighs of the head, which totally cracks me up.
So….the title of the post — let me connect the dots for myself because it seemed so clear when I started. Women who want to unwrinkle, degray, well they aren’t monuments to justice! Who says women have to be gray and wrinkled just to reorient others’ ideas of what an aging woman looks like! And I get that, even though I disagree for myself. But one of the real benefits of aging is relaxing, getting it, understanding myself a little better, accepting myself a little more. And it shows in my face.
picture swiped from Marnie's facebook wall, so it's a copy of a copy of a copy. But that's me in Chicago, holding a Bitter Woman Ale and smiling at Marnie and Tom before digging into a giant sandwich. And being 52 the whole time.
i talked myself into feeling better by writing this post!
I have to start with something good — my flagging spirit needs it. The body of my Wintry Mix sweater is complete, as is one sleeve! With one sleeve, assembly, and the large cowl-ish collar to do, I won’t finish before we leave Thursday night. Which brings me to the craptastic news:
Typhoon Nesat, heading straight for Hanoi
Sigh. Yep. We’re arriving in Hanoi Saturday morning, though we’re betting we’ll get stuck in Hong Kong at least one day because the currently-projected 75mph winds will cancel/delay the little trip to Hanoi. I just don’t want our trip to Sapa to get goofed up…..
Such a first-world luxury problem. I will stop complaining now.
“The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body” — Publius Syrus
When I was young, I got migraine headaches associated with my cycle. Then, at age 28, I had a complete hysterectomy and — surprise!! — I got them whenever I was exposed to volatile organic compounds. Anything with a strong smell, like perfume, PineSol, most cleaners, bleach, and even natural smelly things like mildew. That has not been fun to live with all these years; now, when I smell a hint of perfume, it’s associated with fear and terror of the pain to come. I have plenty of sumatriptan on hand, and (usually) one hit will knock out the migraine before it develops, but often it takes two. Of course, that just changes one problem for another, because the after effects of that large a dose of sumatriptan are pretty miserable, themselves. That’s what happened to me yesterday.
So I had huge plans for the day, cleaning plans, organizing plans, getting-ready-for-the-trip plans, and they were all scuttled. I lay on the couch, against a heating pad for the brittle-tight muscles, and moaned all day. Barely moved all day. Except for my hands. Since my Wintry Mix sweater is so simple to knit, and worsted on Addi Turbos, I didn’t even have to look at what I was doing: perfect for my situation! One sleeve is completely finished, and yesterday I got the body done, divided at the sleeves, and I’m working up the back:
the fastest sweater I've *ever* knit
Since this is a busy and short week, and we’ll pull out of town late Thursday afternoon, I probably won’t finish the sweater before we go. DANG. It’d be fun to hunker down and finish it in such a short time. I definitely won’t take it with me; it’s quite hot and steamy where we’re going.
And here’s the best thing about having a situation that is excruciatingly painful: when it’s over, Joy! Rapture! Bliss! Clouds parting! Sun shining! All is right with the world, I can do anything! And on that note, I’m off to do chores! Whee! [edited: nope. No can do. Rebound. Stupid migraines.]
so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night / I hate to go and leave this pretty sight.
I’ve become a grown-up-lady-knitter. I know, right? Me? Sure, I swatch now, I do knitting math(s), those are grown-up knitting things, big deal. But you remember how I mentioned that due to my 15-pound weight loss, my beloved dark & stormy hangs on me now? I’ve been thinking hard about Noreen’s great suggestion just to wear it as is, as a big old comfy sweater, which would also make my weight loss visible (“gosh, have you lost weight?”) Well, I think I’m going to frog the entire sweater.
sigh.
I’m trying to be all mindful about it: yes, I got all the pleasure out of knitting it. Yes, I enjoyed wearing it last year, very much. Yes, it was a beautiful birthday present to myself. Yes yes yes. Wah! Wah wah wah! Y’all.
Here’s the deal. My waist is my best physical attribute. It’s small relative to the rest, see?
me on the left, with my dear oldest friend in the middle and my son on the right.
So while I have it, while I’m young, I want to highlight it (and hide other bits!). My huge dark & stormy does the opposite — it hides me.
I’ve never frogged a giant sweater before, so I don’t know: do I need to soak the yarn (post-frogging) and let it dry, to get all the knitted-already-ness out of it? Or can I just go ahead and use it? It’s madelinetosh vintage, which is superwash.
I think I’ll give it a big kiss and a hug, pour a glass of wine, lay the sweater out and set up my ball-winder, and just frog it directly into cakes (unless the answer is that I need to soak it).
This is a good thing. This is a good thing. It’s reclaiming gorgeous yarn to refashion into something that will be flattering. This is a good thing. This is a good thing.
Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
Tell me, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
‘Cause I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
hiding!
You know how it goes: when something particular is happening for you, you start to see it everywhere. The pregnant woman syndrome, the broken arm syndrome. This often extends to things I’m thinking about, too. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be myself, to really be myself, and I seem to see it pop up in things I read here and there, and I hear it in conversations — focused and overheard. I read a great line by Anne Lamott: “So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren’t? How do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and affectation, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic Spanx that keeps us smaller and contained?” (I posted her full essay here, last month.)
It’s funny how just being who you are can be so bloody difficult. Of course we’re social animals and we have to bend and tweak ourselves to grease the social world that surrounds and helps create and support us. Of course. So I may love to sing showtunes at the top of my lungs at 4am (I don’t), but I live in a very crowded city, in an apartment building, and my neighbors wouldn’t appreciate that aspect of me (as I wouldn’t appreciate it in them), so I hum them softly at 4am and reserve my song-blasting for some other time and place. But that’s not what I mean, really. I’m really talking about how hard it can be to go ahead and relax into who you are and just be that. Hell, I’ll quit futzing around with the ‘you’ and ‘we’ and just say: It’s so hard just to relax into who I am, and then be that.
It’s not helped by the fact that part of who I am is [until now] an insecure person filled with self-doubts. I guess, to be accurate then, I’ve been being myself all my life! But underneath that, and coming increasingly to the surface, is the fullness of who I am, which I’ve kept tucked away under the pressure of being nice. It’s a particular problem for women, but for southern women in particular, it’s deadly. It struck me the other day that I’m so damn nice, always wanting to be nice, and it’s dull and boring. “Isn’t she so nice,” well who cares. Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, of course, but when I think of the people I’m most crazy about, I feel that way because of the particulars of who they are. I like them because they say at least some version of what they think, they’re not shutting it up in order to be nice. So I might not always like what they say, or agree with it, but I very deeply like that they say it.
So here is my declaration of who I am, which I’m trying to face and relax into and be:
- I’m often outrageously exuberant. I can get really worked up over how great butter is, if I’m in the mood. Exuberance is often mocked by cynical people. Note to self: go ahead and let them!
- I’m an introvert and socially awkward (a) with strangers when we’re supposed to chat, and (b) when there are more than 2-3 people around. Parties are sheer agony for me. Extraverts don’t get this, and can be quite impossible to deal with on this topic, pushy and head-shaking, like what’s wrong with you. Note to self: smile at them and say what I think.
- Gratefully, I have more interests than time. I love architecture, art, music, theater, dance, travel, creativity of any kind (and people who are creative), books, poetry, writing, public readings and lectures on almost anything, and photography. But I can feel guilty about seeking out those things when I’m around someone who doesn’t have many interests, or who doesn’t share mine to a degree, and just let them go and not pursue them. Of course, this breeds resentment, not a good idea. Note to self: go ahead and pursue everything, life is short! If they’re left alone and not babysat, maybe they’ll need to find interests of their own, which will make them more interesting!
- I have a wide emotional bandwidth, as someone once said of me. I do of course usually live in the gray boring middle; working hours pass with not much more emotion than interest, boredom, restlessness, curiosity, things like that. I’m not in agony! ecstasy! most of the time. But I can sure go there. I feel things deeply and out to my fingertips. Joy is a very easy one for me; bliss is not rare; love and happiness, commonplace; sorrow is not rare; grief is not uncommon; despair, yeah, I’m quite familiar with it. People with a narrower bandwidth can find my range thoroughly exhausting. Note to self: It’s fine if they need a break from my experiences, that’s good for them and no skin off my nose.
- I’m not physically unattractive; my smile and open spirit make me more attractive than my actual features might be, otherwise. I’m fine, but not so attractive as to be threatening to anyone, so this one doesn’t get me into too much trouble with people.
- I’m thoughtful and smart and articulate. That one is even harder to say out loud than the previous one, which is mighty damn hard. (I talked about this a couple days ago.) I struggle with this one and am afraid to speak about things for fear of (a) being dumb, or (b) being rejected because no one likes the smart girl. Talk about a childhood mistake! So I’m trying to relax into this one and just be. Note to self: don’t be so afraid!
- I’m jealous and insecure, and suffer terribly because of it. I have a very critical and small side of my personality, which causes me to suffer a lot. Anne Lamott says we’re not punished for our sins, we’re punished by them, and see how smart that is?! These parts of me punish me terribly, and I’m always working on transforming them into something that feels better.
So there.
Way down south way down in Borneo, we’ll dance til the break of dawn-io, way down, on Borneo Bay. (Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band)
our little sampan, with our own crew of 3
I feel kind of breathless about this — it’s coming up so quickly, and I’m so excited — but a week from this Friday, at 1:30am, we’ll be flying off to Hong Kong for our next great adventure. From Hong Kong we fly to Hanoi (one of my favorite cities in the whole world), then we’ll take an overnight train to Sapa, in the mountains near the Chinese border. Back to Hanoi on the overnight train, then we’ll fly to Kuching, on the island of Borneo, then to Malacca, on the Malaysian peninsula, then up to Ho Chi Minh City where we’ll travel out into the Mekong Delta, on a private sampan. Our last night we’ll stay in a beautiful lodge in the delta, before heading back to Ho Chi Minh City for our flight back to Hong Kong and NYC. We’ll be gone for 16 days.
I always thought New York City and Paris were my favorite places in the world, and I do love those places, with all my heart and everything I am. But I very deeply love Vietnam — can’t say why, exactly, though I can list all kinds of things I love about it. I keep finding myself on the verge of tears, so happy that I get to go back there. I went to Vietnam in 2005 with my husband (6 months before we got married), and it was my first jarring travel experience. Before then, I’d been to Montreal and Quebec City, Cozumel and Isle Mujeres, Paris, London, and Glasgow. None of those places were jarring, they were Western and familiar, obviously. But Vietnam, it just blew me out of my socks. After a full day, I kind of hit a wall and didn’t think I could bear it. The alphabet was different, I had no idea what was going on, I couldn’t make sense of the money, almost no one spoke English, the food was sometimes mysterious, I couldn’t read anything, and some of the rules were unknown and scary, like the time we were taking a photo and an armed policeman ran toward us. That panicked feeling passed, and I relaxed a bit, though I continued to feel that sense of Otherness for the entire trip.
But the people were so gentle and busy and fast and laughing, the architecture (in Hanoi especially) was so distinctive, like Parisian architecture is. In both those places, you know where you are. The food was fresh and delicious (but don’t ask me about what my husband ate in Hue, he still can’t talk about it). The countryside is beautiful. But mainly, I think, it’s the people. I feel like I could live there and be very happy.
Will I feel the same sense of Otherness this time? Probably not, because I’ve been there before and I’ve now traveled to a lot of places that were uniquely foreign to me. I’m just so thrilled to be going back, I keep getting all choked up.
after some kvetching, a comment on the pleasure of handmade tools. plus quotes! yay!
Yesterday a 100-year old water main broke and flooded one of the subway lines on my side of town. Apparently there was an 8′ wall of water that entered the subway, though I haven’t heard that anyone was hurt. All the people who ride that line now cram onto mine, so getting around via subway has been something of a nightmare. Longer waits, extreme crowding, mass grouchiness. This morning I had to get up early to venture over to 86th and Central Park West to have a bit of blood drawn, which meant an unpleasant subway trip to have an unpleasant experience, at 7:30am.
The reason I go to the lab, instead of having my friendly doctor’s friendly phlebotomist bleed me is that I have invisible, tiny, rolling veins. Me and lots of people, I know. I’m often dehydrated, which doesn’t help, so I’ve been focusing on staying hydrated in the hopes that it would help. Usually, at the lab, they’re quite good — one quick puncture and vials fill. This morning, though, after my unpleasant subway trip, the phlebotomist stuck me, then started that harrowing action of moving the needle around under my skin, hoping to snag a blood vessel. Moving moving moving, twisting, harrowing (well, that’s a big word for this, but it was mini-harrowing). She finally gave up and tried a new puncture a half-inch to the right, and after a bit of moving around, hit the vessel. Man do I hate that. I haven’t looked yet, but I’m sure I’ll have a giant bruise, which will secretly delight me.
Since I woke up at 4:30, I got some good knitting done on my Wintry Mix sweater, regaining the ground I lost on Sunday. I have one kind of marker on the sides, one for each of the 4 shaping locations, and one for each of the 4 bottom trim shapings. And one marking the front of the sweater.
sweater perched on my laptop -- sorry for the blown-out monitor behind it.
But it occurred to me, as it always does, how simply wonderful it is to have beautiful handmade tools. I bought the markers at the sides (with a green glass bead) and at the shaping spots (with a red glass bead) from Falling Stitches, and every time I shift one from the left needle to the right, I get a little sizzle of pleasure from them — more than the plastic locking markers I bought from KnitPicks, for sure, though they serve their purpose beautifully in their own way.
When I first got married, way back in 1979, my starry-eyed dream was that eventually, every single thing we used would be handmade — if not by me or my former husband, then by an artisan. Every towel handwoven; every plate handthrown; every wooden spoon handmade; every piece of furniture, handmade. I’d still love that, even though it’s unreasonable for someone with modest means like me. So now, I take the pleasure wherever I can, even if it’s just a handmade stitch marker.
Finally, this morning on Yes and Yes, I read these three fantastic quotes:
- “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” – Benjamin Franklin
- “I promise I shall never give up, and that I’ll die yelling and laughing” – Jack Kerouac
- “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die” – George Bernard Shaw
They each inspire me!
“O strengthen me, enlighten me! / I faint in this obscurity, / Thou dewy dawn of memory.” (Ode to Memory, Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Maybe it’s because I’ve been under a lot of stress, or because I don’t get uninterrupted sleep (not to mention not enough sleep), or maybe it’s just because I’m getting older, but my memory is not what it once was. I used to love experiencing my mind working; it was fast, zipping zipping crackling with blue light. I could remember details, texture, nuance, and not only that, it was reliably pretty accurate.
But that was then, and now I just don’t remember — and luckily(?) I also don’t even remember that I don’t remember. It’s not awful, it’s not like I have Alzheimer’s or anything, I’m just forgetful now. Because I hope to age with grace and acceptance, I’ve decided to see this as charming. Isn’t that charming, I have to write everything down. That does just beg the next problem of remembering that (and where) I wrote it down, but you can’t have everything.
my memory bank
I have moleskines stashed everywhere, and going through them can be hilarious. I just thumbed through one, looking for the next clear space, and read this:
“remember the ironing, everything damp & rolled up, stacked in a basket. Huge coke bottle with a metal ‘shower head’ for sprinkling.”
I have no idea. But isn’t that charming? Today I’m grateful for moleskines, and a sense of humor.
plumbing and sounding the depths.
A friend of mine introduced me to Denis Johnson a couple years ago (Jesus’ Son, an amazing and wrenching collection of short stories), and he became one of my favorite writers. This morning I read a bit of an article by Lorin Stein on Paris Review about Johnson’s work, and the writing was gorgeous. Stein wrote:
Sometimes, if you wander long enough out-of-doors, you look up and find yourself in a suddenly devastating place: on a glittering slab of granite, say, hanging a thousand feet above a mountain lake. Your blood quickens, the clouds stretch, the light turns everything to gold and something enters you, shakes you, seizes some root of your soul and pulps it. Maybe you make your way down to the lake for a swim, or just sit beneath the sky for an hour, dazzled, but what lasts is the feeling that you have found something important, something precious, something that would be world-renowned if only it weren’t so hard to find.
It’s a proprietary feeling, too, when you find a place—or a song, or a painting, or a sandwich—that you love, that moves you. You want to share it with only a few other souls, believers, maniacs, folks who won’t trample on it. Because who wants to see her sacred meadow flattened by the sandals of tourists?
I first read Denis Johnson’s novella “Train Dreams” in a bright orange 2002 issue of The Paris Review and felt that old thrill of discovery … It’s a love story, a hermit’s story and a refashioning of age-old wolf-based folklore like “Little Red Cap.” It’s also a small masterpiece. You look up from the thing dazed, slightly changed.
YES. He captured so perfectly the experience I constantly seek in movies and books, the experience of being moved and changed and never quite the same. On Sundays, I always seem to crave a movie that will do this to me, and I’m usually thoroughly disappointed (though this weekend I very much enjoyed Thomas Merton: A Film Biography (netflix streaming) and Edge of Dreaming (netflix streaming)). But you know what I mean, don’t you — that jarring experience of reading or watching something that just takes you to the depth of what’s important? That moves you away from the silly, the unimportant, the trivial?
When I was a young girl, I had a hard time. A very hard time. I was that too-smart, unkempt girl on the front row, the one who always had her homework, who always made the top grade, who read a bit too much, who was awkward and strange, who was without exception the last choice in PE, the one who made the chooser groan. Surprise! — I was unpopular. This caused me a lot of anguish and I decided that one way I might be liked was if I were dumb. So I tried very hard to fail, to at least make Bs, to “forget” my homework now and then (isn’t that sad?!). But I never could succeed at failing, so I just hid my mind and played it down, acted dumb whenever possible. Suffered fools gladly, by acting like I was one, too.
I never really got over that tendency, though I am trying very hard. Marnie takes herself and her work seriously, a trait I admire very much especially since she does it without taking herself too seriously, if you know what I mean. So when I read things that scoot me over inside myself, or watch movies like the two I watched this weekend, I remember a little more clearly that I am the deeper one hidden inside, much more than I am the foolish one I often pretend to be.
*tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink*. repeat dozens of times.
Dang it. Saturday I started and finished one sleeve for my Wintry Mix sweater — cool, so fast! I also cast on and got about an inch into my new brilliant yellow featherweight cardigan. All systems go. (And it warrants saying again: man alive is malabrigo lace soft!)
Yesterday I cast on the body of the sweater and got very far in the curved garter hem area. Not as far as I’d have liked, but I wasn’t feeling well and had to spend a good bit of time coughing and hacking and whining. And you know that’s a time-consuming business, whining. Last night I picked it up to knit a few rows when I noticed that something was way out of whack. The front and back each has 30 purls, 30 knits, and then 30 purls, and then the shaping begins by systematically expanding the knit section at the expense of the purls. There’s nothing confusing about it. But when I picked it up last night, somehow — somehow?? — one of the purl sections was wider than when I started, even though at that point it should’ve been ~half as wide.
I looked at it and looked at it, counted and recounted, and just couldn’t figure out what the hell I did, so I frogged back to the base row of the pattern, where everything is neat and clean. 30-30-30, 30-30-30. Dang it. I just hate it when that happens.
The heating oil delivery truck has been idling right outside my window for a couple hours, delivering oil into the basement I assume, and the noise and smell are making me kind of sick. I hope your Monday is off to a better start!
there’s very little as nice as knitting that’s working out as you hoped.
A bit of housework, a chat on the phone with a daughter, a disastrous pasta-making effort, and some knitting.
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- My “Oops I did it again” featherweight cardigan, cast on and underway.
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- Sleeve #1, one full ball of yarn. Close to the sleeve cap shaping, just another 13 rows.
So two things to say, here:
- MALABRIGO LACE, y’all. Oh boy do I get it now. It’s as soft as everyone says. It’s luscious, creamy, delicious, I want to run away with it. The color is so rich; the color in the photo is true, on my monitor. Deep yellow with a hint of orange. I don’t ever want to knit with anything else, as long as I live. I think I’m going to love this one even more than my red one. Hannah Fettig, you’re a genius with the little cardigan. So simple, nothing really, but wonderful.
- A sleeve in a day, along with the rest! Kind of amazing. I always had sleeves categorized in my head as “ugh, now it’ll be weeks.” Not with this yarn and these needles, man. Speedy Gonzales (speedy ka-dah-dis, if you’re my dear Katie). The angora and silk in the yarn gives it such a luxurious hand, I really like the fabric a lot. Amy Herzog, you fit-to-flatter wizard.
Homemade lasagna for dinner, even if no homemade pasta — smells so good, happy hands, soon-to-be-happy tummy, happy day. Ah! Time for a daily gratitude. I’m so grateful to be a maker, for which I take no credit. It’s just the software I came with, and I’m very very grateful for it. Grateful for the impulse, grateful for the experiences, grateful for the pleasures, grateful for the desire, grateful for the end results, grateful for the making life.
Where did Hitler keep his armies? IN HIS SLEEVIES! hahahaha….kindergarten jokes never get old.
For reasons having to do with confusion, I decided to start on the sleeves for my new Wintry Mix sweater. The yarn makes some mighty gorgeous fabric, I must say. Berroco Blackstone Tweed is 65% wool, 25% mohair, and 10% angora, and it’s very soft and drapey, but substantial, too. I really love it; the color I picked, evergreen, is such a dark olive green it doesn’t read as green, but the tweed flecks are nice and it’ll be a solid piece in my sweater collection.
I can't make the color show up correctly in photos -- it's actually much much darker than this, and this has too much yellow. The sleeve has a 4" section of garter at the bottom, providing a wonderful textural contrast.
This is my first set-in sleeve sweater, so I’m a little anxious about that but I’m sure it’ll be just fine. I think it’s kind of genius (even though I did this out of confusion and anxiety) to do the sleeve/sleeves first, while I’m so excited, so I’m not stuck in the sleeve wasteland. Yes? Right? Good idea!
After the laceweight cardigan, this one is hauling, man. Worsted on 7s goes so fast, especially in a sleeve with a small circumference. But I think I’m going to go ahead and get my little yellow laceweight cardigan going today, too. That color is screaming at me, and I’m dying to see it as fabric.
Isn’t it great to be excited about your knitting? What are you working on that has you this excited?
Never EVER underestimate the power of a nice apology. You’ll win friends and admirers.
DANG IT. I just got an email from The Plucky Knitter — providers of the yarn for my forthcoming Vodka Gimlet — letting me know that due to circumstances beyond her control, my yarn won’t be shipping next week, as promised, but instead mid-October.
Now first, you’d think that since I have three other sweaters ready to cast on, plus a scarf underway, plus a blanket mid-way, this could not come as bad news. You’d be wrong. The color of the yarn I chose (Oz) is just this gorgeous emerald green as you’d expect. Oh so beautiful, breathtaking, I can’t wait to see it. So I was all geared up to be bitter. Indignant. Self-righteous. Mad. Peeved. Pissed off. And all the other synonyms. But her email was just so upset and sorry, and genuine, and filled with remorse from someone who doesn’t usually have to write emails like that, that I couldn’t even be mildly bitter. It’s OK, Sarah. It’s OK. I somehow like you even more, after receiving that email.
It doesn’t hurt that she’s going to include a skein of a new yarn she’ll be stocking in November (Plucky Rustic, an aran-weight wool), and that I get to participate in a private shopping event in her online store, just for those of us who were impacted. You know? That’s what I call customer service. Yay for Sarah, leaving me a bigger fan just as she tells me my yarn will be one month late.
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- Berroco Blackstone Tweed in Evergreen, for my Wintry Mix (Amy Herzog)
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- Cascade 220 Heathers in Montmartre, for my Flux (Signe S. Simonsen)
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- Malabrigo Lace in Sauterne, for another Featherweight Cardigan (Hannah Fettig)
Yeah. I’ve got enough to do. Kelly is helping me work my way through figuring out what size Wintry Mix to knit, given my slightly-different gauge. I have a reliable way of understanding gauge backwards; mine was 19, should’ve been 18, so I thought I was knitting bigger and looser. I teach stats to undergrads, but this is beyond me. And then when you add in ease, well…..boggle. I just can’t figure it out.
And on this post, I log off for the day. A few more hours of work, then some dinner and knitting…..something. Whee!!
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace / as I have seen in one autumnal face (~ John Donne)
When we have particularly nice weather here in New York, I always think of my dear daughter Katie, sweltering and cracking with drought in Austin. She and I both hate the breath-removing heat, and she’s been in such a long run of it. So with all my apologies, Katie…..
OH MY it’s gorgeous here. We’re just in this very lovely cool, dry, sunny period right now. The kind of weather that makes you pause, tilt your head, sniff the air a little bit, and go back inside for a scarf. It’s fall, it’s here. The sky is an unbelievably clear blue. For my money, it’s the most glorious time in this part of the world, and makes up for February and March (well…..almost). If I didn’t live here, it’s the time of year I’d miss the most, it’s the thing I’d long for about New York. As I write, it’s 53 degrees — heading to a high of just 65. See?
oh my. perfection.
I just feel a little twinge — it’s really so pretty, I want to do something this weekend, go somewhere, get out in it, revel in it, glory in it. But that would seriously interfere with my knitting time, which is pressing on me, hard. Why can’t there be two of me. Seriously.
I hope it’s gorgeous where you are on this September Friday!
Oops!…I did it again / I played with your heart, got lost in the game / Oh baby, baby / Oops!…You think I’m in love / That I’m sent from above / I’m not that innocent [of resisting buying MORE yarn.]
My desire — my burning need — to knit has returned with a vengeance. Really. I’m back to resenting every second I have to spend doing anything else. I work on the couch, in the same place I knit, and my knitting bag is right there, right there to my left, piled high with projects on the go. On the table at my elbow, next to the lamp, is a large oval Shaker box with random pretty yarns and small in-progress projects. Right there. Like Odysseus passing the sirens, I must lash myself to the mast (um….my laptop?) and put sealing wax in my ears, to try to focus on work. I resent eating, I resent sleeping, I resent working, I resent it all. (One thing I don’t resent, though, is my strength training program to which I return today, with another kind of vengeance.)
So despite the fact that I have three sweaters up on deck, with patterns and yarns purchased and in hand (Wintry Mix, Flux, and Vodka Gimlet, yarn actually arriving for that one any day now), I slipped. Goofed up. Had a moment of weakness. Fell off the wagon. Had a blackout. Acted impulsively. Was giddy. Was reckless. Was impulsive. I went to my LYS to get a set of needles for my Wintry Mix. I SWEAR. That’s all I went for. I wasn’t going to even look at the yarn. The shop owner is devious, though, and hides all the needles and notions in the far back corner, so you have to walk through the gauntlet of gorgeousness to get there. But I was good. I went straight for the needles, picked out what I needed, and strode to the cash register. Strode, I tell you.
And then, as if it had a mind of its own, my reckless mouth asked, “do you carry malabrigo lace?” “Why yes, of course,” she said, pointing to the wall. “You don’t carry cadmium, do you,” I asked, three-quarters of the way to the wall already. And then I saw it. It wasn’t cadmium, but it has to be close. Sauterne is the color, and it sings to me the siren song of a second featherweight cardigan. I love my first one, my dragon’s blood red one, so let’s go primary: How’s about one in yellow? I asked myself. And I said to myself, I said, “Self? I think you need one.”
malabrigo lace, in sauterne. it's like there's sunlight inside the yarn.
Dang it. And whoopeee! This weekend I’ll be swatching for all four sweaters, and winding all the yarn into cakes. Is it the weekend yet?
Chicago, Chicago that toddling town / Chicago, Chicago I will show you around – I love it / Bet your bottom dollar you lose the blues in Chicago, Chicago / The town that Billy Sunday couldn’t shut down
I had such a wonderful time in Chicago with Marnie and Tom. That’s a kind of obvious statement, I guess. If Marnie and Tom, then wonderful. I arrived mid-morning Friday and left early Monday morning, so we had a nice long time together. One of these days my kids and I are going to live in the same place, or near enough to make visits more frequent. It’s boggling that I only get to see them once or twice a year.
Everything we did, saw, ate, whatever, was great — they’re such fun to spend time with because they’re smart and thoughtful, they laugh all the time, and they’re gracious hosts. So I’m necessarily leaving out so many pictures, but here were some of the highlights of the trip. There are lots of photos, so I’ll put in a jump.
CLICK to continue reading toddling... Continue reading »
I have a finished object! Doing the happy dance — it fits!
Meet my featherweight cardigan, light as a moonbeam but brilliant and strong in color. I adore the ground it walks on and will have to make myself not wear it all the time because the yarn’s pretty fine and might wear out with overuse:
the color is dragon's blood
I seem to be fated not to take a good picture of it; just before I finished knitting it a few days ago, the rain clouds moved in and it’s been gray and rainy ever since. It’s nice today, but I was too busy and couldn’t get outside. Finally I decided what the hell, take the picture indoors anyway, it’s better than nothing. Then I learned my camera battery was dead (and I can’t find my charger…grrr) and I only got one shot. It’s not the shot I wanted, but it’ll just have to do. You can see the gist of it, anyway. It’s unstyled, and I’m wearing it over long sleeves because I’m taking it to Chicago tomorrow, where it’s considerably cooler and wearing it over a camisole would leave me too chilly. It’s ok this way, but when I wear it for real I’ll do a bit more stylin. And I meant to drop that last g.
I think I’ll kind of think of this like a shawl with sleeves. It is very very thin so it’s worn for its charm and good looks, really; over a turtleneck it could give a pop of color, as I might wear a shawl (or shawlette, which is a word I hate though I love the object). We’ll see.
Details here, on ravelry.
I got my yarn today for two of my sweaters, and I wish my camera battery weren’t dead (or I knew where the charger is…grrr). I’ll show it to you as soon as I can. I don’t think I’ll take either with me to Chicago, because I need to swatch and pay attention and think and do math (for you Europeans: maths). I’ll probably take my KtyKozue scarf, christened the Zen Grin by Pip. Hi Pip!
the downside of weight loss
Since I finished my beloved Dark & Stormy cardigan, I’ve lost 15 pounds. It was slightly too big when I finished it, and now it swallows me. Seriously. I look like I’m wearing my dad’s cardigan.
excuse everything about this photo please! the sweater was not yet blocked, that's not really a muffin top at my waist, and i'd just been awake for ~30 minutes. the eagerness of the final bind-off, you know. so this is how it fit 15 pounds ago.
So, OK. Huge on me. What would you do? Would you try to shrink it? And if so, how? Since I live in NYC, I don’t have my own washer and dryer. I have to go down to the basement and use the industrial machines, so doing fiddly stuff is a bit of a pain but I’d do it if it meant I could salvage my sweater. I’d do anything except put the 15 pounds on again. Seriously.
What would you do?
we clearly need to overthrow the Weather Czar. this is crazy.
Good grief — we’re in the midst of days and days, after days and days, looking ahead to days and days, of rain. Gray skies, cool temperatures (60 yesterday), drenching downpours, what happened! It was just very very hot, what happened here? And, of course, my beloved central Texas is going up in flames. My beloved oldest daughter is packed and ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice, and nearly had to do so. A place I’ve loved a lot, Bastrop, is mostly just gone, burned up (that fire, which is still burning, is visible from space). They haven’t had rain in months and months (and before that, just a whisper of rain), and they broke all the heat records this summer, and well, that’s just a recipe for the disaster that’s unfolding there.
yeah. terrifying.
If only I could be involved in the redistribution channels — it’s obvious, redirect all of our rain and cold weather down to the scorched, killing, devastation and destruction going on. I don’t believe this, but there’s a way it feels like the Biblical end times these days. Earthquakes and hurricanes, raging out of control fires and deadly drought, and don’t get me started on things of a politically-induced nature.
Sunday I finished my adorable little red number, my featherweight cardigan. I keep thinking I can surely get a photo tomorrow, surely tomorrow it won’t be so gray and gloomy and shadowy, but tomorrow hasn’t come yet. It’s fabulous, I couldn’t be happier with it. The color is great, cheery, powerful, the fit is wonderful, and the fact that I love wearing a cropped sweater that ends at my waist is priceless.
While I wait for the yarn to arrive for my three new sweaters (me! knitting three new sweaters!), I’m spending my knitting time powering through the blanket I’m making. It’s Anne Hanson’s Totally Autumn pattern, in a rich chocolate brown Cascade 220 Heathers. This is the project that went through the trauma in Turkey of my having to pull out the needles at the Istanbul airport, so I’ve kind of recovered from that disaster and now see the end in sight. The work will come to a standstill when my sweater yarns arrive, but maybe I’ll just try to put in X number of rows per day on the blanket so it’ll eventually get done, instead of languishing.
Busy busy busy times for me — appointments this afternoon, seeing a play tonight, breakfast tomorrow with my oldest friend from Alabama, writing group tomorrow night, fly off to Chicago early Friday morning to visit Marnie, home on Monday, poetry group Tuesday night. AND I’m trying to finish the details for my trip back to Vietnam and over to Borneo, during the first two weeks of October. Which is just three weeks away. Yikes. Busy busy busy.
wow! I’m proud all right, proud as a whitewashed pig! (~the widow Sugrue, Darby O’Gill and the Little People, 1959)
Artists toil away in poverty and obscurity, making awesome things, giving it out to the universe, and recognition can be slow. Hard to come by. There in spirit, but spirit doesn’t cover a loaf of bread. You know how proud I am of Marnie’s work, and today Chicago is hearing about it. She was featured on the Chicagoist website! She made a wonderful set of graphic prints of the prerecorded announcements on the L train, and that was the primary point of the Chicagoist post. Here’s the one they featured:
They wrote:
Few things become unwanted earworms more quickly than the automated “L” station and train announcements. People have had harrowing nightmares where “Attention customers: an INBOUND train toward the Loop will be arriving shortly” plays endlessly, with the train never arriving at the station.
Monkey-Rope Press is the brainchild of illustrator, printmaker and bookbinder Marnie Galloway. Galloway’s Etsy store is a glorious time suck of amazing prints, none more so than these letterpress posters of “L” station announcements. We also love the bicycle subculture pugilism prints.
It’s never too early to begin your Christmas shopping.
!!!!!!!!! IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO BEGIN YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING!!! Let the shopping begin!
getting old is the pits, but it’s better than the alternative!
I’ll set the scene. It’s 9am, I’ve had my scrambled eggs and cups of tea, and I’m at my desk finishing some paperwork before I start working. It’s a beautiful day outside. I’ve been awake since 5am.
Endorsing some checks, I suddenly get up because I have to go to the bathroom. All that tea, you know. I take a step away from my desk and think where was I going? Oh yeah, to the bathroom.
I walk down the hall and think why was I going to the bathroom? I think maybe I’ll remember when I get there.
As I enter the bathroom, I say out loud, Now why was I coming here? Was I going to get something?
And then I laugh out loud at myself. Oh yeah. I had to use the bathroom.
Today I’m so grateful for having a sense of humor about things. Otherwise this would’ve been very disturbing. Happy Friday, y’all!
i’m dwiving in your caw…you tu’n on the wadio. You puww me cwose, I just say no. I’m on fi-yuw.
That’s the most hilarious thing ever — I’ve been laughing at it for decades. When I realized that my knitting desire was on fire again, that’s how I heard it in my head. And yes oh yes, my knitting desire is rekindled, to put it mildly. With the slight shift in the air to the idea of fall, if not yet the implementation of fall, and with the release of so many great new sweaters, my “buy now” mouse finger is itching and I just want to get after it and do nothing but knit. I’ve queued two new sweaters and I just bought the yarn for them, and (of course) I still have my Vodka Gimlet yarn coming, mid-September.
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- Flux, by Signe S. Simonsen
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- Wintry Mix, by Amy Herzog
For the Wintry Mix sweater, I just bought the recommended yarn, Berroco Blackstone Tweed, in a beautiful dark green — evergreen. And for the Flux sweater, which has a really beautiful series of braided cables on the front and back, I’m just going with good old Cascade 220, in a lovely heathered lavender called montmartre, which is a change of pace from the dark saturated colors I usually use (plus red, my old standby). I’d rather have used my beloved madelinetosh for the Flux, but my budget was blown.
Now I’ve really got to buckle down and finish my little red cardigan. I know what I’ll be doing over the long weekend….how about you?
these are two of my favorite people in the whole wide world: Katie and Marnie, my girls.
This is the whole point with this daily gratitude thing, I guess. Sometimes you have to make a hard effort to find something to be grateful for, and that’s the very time it means the most. On easy days, on happy days, gratitude abounds but it’s just part of the scene, like the lamp on the table. But on the other days, remembering (seeking, searching, finding) something to be grateful for, those days it makes a difference.
Today I am grateful for my beautiful daughters. OK, so that made me start crying and feeling grateful, not just for them but for being in the world no matter what else happens, despite whatever small rocks may be in the path. They are in the world, they are my daughters, we love each other, we watch out for each other, we have each others’ backs. They make me smile, nothing delights me like seeing their faces, seeing their names in my email inbox, hearing their voices, hearing about their lives.
One of my dear dear friends has one child, a son. He’s grown, he’s everything to her, she adores him and delights in him and her life is infinitely richer because of him. One day I was talking about my daughters — one was coming to visit, maybe, I don’t remember — and she said that she doesn’t know what it’s like to have a daughter, she wishes she had one. And of course I absolutely positively adore my son, he may be the sweetest gift of my life, I’m not sure how to say it. Daughters and sons are both wonderful, obviously, and they’re different — at least mine are. In a lot of ways the relationship is identical; there’s the same delight, the same preciousness, the same connection and closeness, but still, something is different — for me, anyway.
So thank you God / universe / great wheel / blind luck / good fortune / whatever for giving me these two wonderful human beings. Fine human beings they are, and they’re my daughters.
Dec 2004, here in NYC. Marnie always thinks it makes a more interesting photo when one person is doing something different. Since this picture was taken, the three of us have gotten married.
a housekeeping question you may not be able to answer
Olly olly oxen free
Just as I got ready to open this new post, I realized the flaw in my thought process. I have gathered that a couple of my friends are not being able to leave comments here, and that’s a problem for me because I love to hear from you!
So my thought was to create this post and ask you to let me know if you are unable to leave a comment. DUR. How can you leave a comment and let me know you can’t leave a comment. Silly me. But you can send me a note on rav (I’m LoriNY), or you can send me an email to thrums.ny at the gmail business. You know what I mean. I want to get your notes, if you are inclined to leave them! You always make me happy. Well, most of you. I’m not happy with the ones who want me to try their viagra.
If you’re having trouble, and take the extra step to let me know, please let me know what happens, why you can’t, so I can try to figure it out. I just checked all the backroom settings and everything looks ok. The weird ways of the online world, I’m telling you.