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?

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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.

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Anyway, that struck me this morning when I was handwinding a ball of madelinetosh merino, in graphite, for my Mondo Cable Cardigan. The yarn is lofty and soft, and the subtle variation in color that characterizes madelinetosh yarns is physical and lovely. And the resulting ball is beautiful, showing the work of a hand rather than a machine.

handwound ball of graphite-colored lofty merino

Now and then a moment of simplicity strikes, you know? A moment of just stopping the buzz and noticing. I’m trying to help those moments happen more frequently.

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look at that! I'm knitting a sweater!!

this photo has the most accurate color - green pea soup

the lacy front panels

Yeah. I’ll be doing this a lot more. And if you haven’t tried knitting with it yet, Rowan Felted Tweed is AMAZING. I’m just sayin.

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Now, though, now that I’m in the period between having a stable income and figuring out how to have at least enough of an income, it has a new urgency. Frugal is my new watchword, at least in this interim period.

So last night I went “shopping” in my ravelry account. I looked at the excesses in my queue (though I’m not as bad as some! one raveler has 6,182 projects queued and 20,141 things faved. I’m going to have to unfriend her because when I look at my friends activity page, it’s always flooded by her and we don’t have the same taste). Anyway – long diversion there, sorry – I looked at my 183-item queue and put some real order in it. After I finish the projects on the needles, what do I really want to knit? Really?

I have 10 projects ready to go, matched with yarn that’s already in my stash:

1. Austin Hoodie, knit with my porcelain tosh merino light
2. Sockhead hat, knit with some cool sock yarn my youngest daughter gave me for mother’s day
3. A Noro striped scarf, using some really beautiful and soft Noro I stashed
4. Inaugural Sweater, with yarn I bought specifically for it
5. and A Very Braidy Cowl, with yarn I got from Kelly when she was destashing

1. madelinetosh, tosh merino light (colorway: porcelain), 2. Regia Galaxy – Jupiter, 3. Noro Silk Garden, colorway 267, 4. Noro Silk Garden, colorway 275, 5. Valley Sheffield, 6. crystal palace merino5 color 9454

And 5 more ready to go after those. There’s something that feels so good about imposing constraints, limits, order.

See? No more wedding talk.

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Late afternoon:

me, writing notes for my toast. They put me last because they (rightly) knew that my speech would be the most emotional.

A silent auction of some of Marnie's prints, to benefit the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)'s support of gay marriage

Tom's friend Gwendolyn did Marnie's hair and makeup

FINALLY! It’s 7pm, time to head down to the prairie, where the ceremony will be held.

we all walked through the forest, past the sugar shack, to get to the prairie where we waited for Tom and Marnie to appear.

and here they come! We all broke out into applause when they appeared. Tom's niece Ella had gathered a bunch of prairie wildflowers for Marnie to carry, at the last minute.

This is SO THEM. Even in this moment, there was a lot of laughter.

married! Joe just pronounced them married, after the most beautiful ceremony and vows. And there was much applause, laughter, tears, and joy.

Then we all returned to the Lodge, for a wonderful dinner catered by a local restaurant. They don’t do catering – they just did this for Marnie and Tom. They bought all local ingredients for the menu, purchased the morning of the wedding.

Marnie watches Tom order his food - I love her gaze at him

a moment's pause. I think she looks so beautiful, even in this thoughtful moment.

Night fell as we were eating dinner, and then we had the speeches and toasts. Without exception, everyone talked about how much Marnie and Tom laugh together, how absolutely right they are for each other, and how much they mean to us all. Marnie and Tom had their dance, then Marnie had selected a song to dance with her dad, and then there was our song, one that has enormous meaning for Marnie and me – L.O.V.E., by Nat King Cole. It’s a long story …. but you can bet I cried throughout the whole thing.

the tent, lit up with little bits of starlight and a lot of joy

Marnie's gannetts hanging from the tent rafters

FLYING HOME SUNDAY

Only because we had to, we flew out on Delta. I hate Delta. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever taken an uneventful Delta flight; I’m sure it would be memorable if I ever had a Delta flight that was uneventful because it would be the only such experience. We flew from Madison to Detroit, where we had to change planes (with a 1-hour layover), for the flight home to LaGuardia. Like all our other flights on this roundtrip, we got to the airport to find that the flight to Detroit was delayed by one hour. There were no other flights that would get us home that day, no matter how we arranged it. So we just had to hope for the best.

While we were in the air, someone – one of pilots, we think – came on and said this: “Sorry we got a late start, and we know most of you are worried about making your connections. But look! Look outside, it’s a beautiful day! It’s still a beautiful day to be flying!” And so on. Mr. Mindfulness, trying to reorient us. It made me laugh.

So we got to Detroit, the connecting flight knew there were 19 of us on the now-late plane, so we ran off the plane, raced down the terminal, and raced onto the very VERY hot plane. And then we sat. And we sat. And we sweated in the heat, and we waited. An announcement was made that we’re waiting on the pilot, who was coming in on another flight that had been delayed. Later, an announcement: the pilot has just landed! We should be taking off in about 5-10 minutes!  Later, another announcement: “Hi, I’m your new pilot with the replacement team. We have no idea what happened to the other flight crew. We should be taking off shortly.”

SO DELTA. We did finally land, only to face incredibly bad traffic. We got home considerably later than we dreamed we would. But I got a lot of knitting done; finished my Wowie Zowie socks, and got a great start on Peasy.

fantastic socks, taken against a backdrop of your standard Best Western bedspread.

Peasy! Easy! Fun!

the bit of lace on the front panels

And now, I begin my new life as (a) the mother of 2 married daughters, and (b) a freelancer. I’m finishing up the unpacking/straightening up details, finishing a lot of paperwork, and then I start my new life scrambling for work. Know anyone who needs (1) a manuscript developed, (2) a good writer, (3) a market research consultant, (4) a survey designer and programmer, or (5) a data analyst? If so, send them my way!

Thanks again for all your very lovely best wishes, they meant a lot to me.

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Since I had a couple of hours to kill between appointments AND since I knew it was going to be so rainy, I didn’t want to take Peasy with me. A smaller, less complicated project was in order, so I took my 2nd Wowie Zowie sock. And I just solved a mystery associated with the first sock.

The yarn in the 2nd ball is dramatically lighter-weight, much less stiff, than the yarn in the 1st ball! The ball bands indicated that they were identical in every way, down to the dye lot. Exactly identical. Every way. But when I was knitting that first sock, the yarn just felt so thick and tough, and the sock was like heavy cardboard. It did soften up a lot after I blocked it, but it’s still substantially heavier than the 2nd ball of yarn.

Perhaps that’s why I ran out of yarn so quickly! Perhaps it was just mismarked, and it’s whatever weight is heavier than 4-ply fingering. I don’t know – but I do know that the yarns are not the same.

I feel redeemed, somehow! I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong, before. The 2nd sock has a very different hand, much softer, more pliable. The colors are so strong, any differences won’t be very visible because they’re drowned out by ALL! THAT! COLOR!

Off to knit for a couple of hours, happy me!

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So after redoing my Peasy swatch in the wrong direction, I redid it last night in the right direction. The pattern gauge is 22 st and 30 rows = 4 inches. Going up a needle size, I get 21.5 st and 30 rows = 4 inches. Pretty dang good!

My problem is that I can’t figure out what that 1/2 a stitch difference is going to mean. In the gracious spirit of Amy Herzog’s Fit to Flatter series, last night I decided to just suck it up and take my real measurements, disregarding what the actual numbers were and just looking carefully at the relationships between them. Then I compared them to the Peasy pattern to see what size I really need to knit. Well, I’m exactly on the large. Exactly.

So does this 1/2 stitch difference mean the sweater will be ever-so-slightly larger or ever-so-slightly smaller? If it’s larger, that’s wonderful! I sit here and try to puzzle my through it and just get a headache.

note to self: you can do structural equation modeling! you are not stupid!

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happy! joy!

SUCH a wonderful, happy day for me! I finished the final little details of my old job, tied up every last loose end, left nothing undone, left on a very high note.

I finished grafting the shawl together, and it LOOKS GREAT! I was so worried that the graft would be obvious and weird, but you know the kitchener stitch is really amazing. It really looks seamless. Now I just have to weave in a couple of ends, then soak it for a bit and do the blocking.

Isn’t it great when the things that hang over you are finished? You know that glorious feeling of liberation and accomplishment and exuberance?

Yeah. I’ve got those going. After I finish the blocking, I think I’ll do the next swatch for Peasy, so I can work on it on the flight later this week. To my daughter’s wedding. Two girls happily married, that’s another great relief, you know?

blocking

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Casting on for the 4th time. GRRRR. The wedding shawl is knit from both ends, and then grafted together. I’ve finished the bulk of it – probably 90% – and now I just have to cast on and knit the smallish border on the other end (it’s a 95 st cast-on, and the pattern repeat is only 33 rows). So I sat down last night at the beginning of a movie, cast on (which is a little bit of a pain because you have to double the yarn for the cast on and then drop one strand when you start knitting). So I was casting on, long tail, and hadn’t left enough yarn. I made it to 86 sts. No biggie.

at least this section I'm knitting (frogging) doesn't have nupps!

Start over, get the whole thing cast on, great. Knit knit knit, made it 8 rows in when I realized I was knitting the wrong part of the pattern. Frog frog frog. Cast on. Knit knit knit, something had gone so terribly wrong somewhere and there was nothing to do but cast on again. By the time the movie was over, I’d cast on again and I was 9 rows into the pattern. Go to sleep and start fresh in the morning.

This morning I was knitting the 10th row…hallelujah, finally getting somewhere!…when I realized the row was only 91 sts. I’d gotten to the end of the row, every pattern repeat absolutely perfect, but I didn’t have those 4 sts I should’ve had before the garter border in the last 5 sts. Somehow, I had missed that when I’d knit the previous rows.

So I just frogged it again. I think I’m going to put it aside and make some blueberry bars for my dear husband, and then pick it up again. I’m using KnitPicks harmony circulars from the interchangeable set, and the metal end of the tips, where it joins the cable, is starting to change and make things difficult. It’s not shiny like it was, it’s kind of dull and the stitches don’t slide, which makes the knitting hard.

Knitting is fun! I love knitting! Knitting is my passion! I love knitting! Knitting is fun! (does that sound like I’m trying to convince myself? )

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