Annoyance
don’t go dissin a Texan. That ain’t a smart move.
someone came to my blog with this dumb search!!
In case you can’t see that for whatever reason, the search that led an Android user to my site this morning was “never marry a texas women.” First, dumb searcher, I’ll go ahead and do what I never do, and that’s to deliver a verbal smackdown for your grammar. Women is plural, so you don’t use the article “a.” Dumb person. But then I already knew you weren’t too bright because you’re trying to find information about never marrying a Texas woman. We Texas women are fine, I have to say, and include this list:
- Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long, the ‘mother’ of Texas
- Emily West Morgan, the famous “Yellow Rose of Texas” who helped win the Texas Revolution
- Oveta Culp Hobby, Colonel Women’s Army Corps, first secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare
- Barbara Jordan, the magnificent
- Sandra Day O’Connor, first woman on the Supreme Court
- Ann Richards, Governor of Texas and all-round DAME OF THE FIRST ORDER can I get a hell yeah
- Cecile Richards, Ann’s daughter and President of Planned Parenthood and a dame in her own right
- Melinda Gates, philanthropist deluxe
- Ima Hogg (such an unfortunate name, must’ve given her character!), philanthropist deluxe
- Lady Bird, of course, planter of many a tree, bush, and shrub
- Lots of models, including Jerry Hall, Angie Harmon, and Kelly Emberg (and 15 Miss America winners, one of whom became Miss Universe, suck that Googler!)
- Debbie Allen, dancer/actress; Kathy Baker, actress; Barbara Barrie, actress; Joan Blondell, actress; Carol Burnett for god’s sake; Joan Crawford oh yes she was; don’t forget Farrah Fawcett; Jennifer Love Hewitt, actress; Mary Martin, and Margo Martindale, actresses; Ann Miller, what a hoofer; good god the actresses go on and on and on
- and don’t get me started on musicians: Erykah Badu, Marcia Ball, Miss Vikki Carr, Nanci Griffith, JANIS F-in JOPLIN, Beyonce, it just goes on and on
- Mary Kay Herself, queen of the pink Cadillac and businesswoman extraordinaire; writers Sarah Bird, Sandra Cisneros, Patricia Highsmith, Katherine Anne Porter, and Naomi Shihab Nye; journalist Linda Ellerbee, and God luv’er Molly Ivins, co-DAME with Ann Richards; Liz Smith, columnist and broad
- Care about science and medicine? We’ve got Angela Belcher, MIT professor and MacArthur Fellow; Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau, designed the first production plant for penicillin; and Karen Uhlenbeck, mathematician and National Medal of Science (women in traditionally male fields, notice!)
Of course we have some infamous women too, include Bonnie (as with Clyde), Belle Starr, and Andrea Yates. (head hanging). We can’t win them all.
Here’s a page of famous women in Texas history, here’s a summary of who we are (dammit!) as Texas women, but I leave you with the quintessential Texas Woman, Ms. Ann Richards. I’ve posted this video before, but it’s a good one. “Make that basket, bird legs!” Dang, I miss that woman. She was one of a kind. So whoever you were, searching for “never marry a Texas women,” perhaps you’re doing us a big favor. Nyah.
oh-so-very much to do. oh-so-too little time.
Why is life so great, so rich, so filled with opportunities, and we can only partake in them serially? Time is limited, there’s not nearly enough of it, and while I overly-multi-task (to my own detriment; when I’m reading and knitting and watching a movie, what the hell am I doing?), there are some opportunities that must be taken singly. Living in Manhattan presents many more opportunities than time (and money) allow, and it can be overwhelming. Just reading the weekly issue of The New Yorker and scanning through the things going on that week is overwhelming! Hell, there’s enough going on in my own small neighborhood each week to keep me busy, and when I bring in the rest — the museums, the galleries, the parts of town that are just fun to walk through, not to mention goings-on in the surrounding boroughs — I curse my need to sleep. And work.
Aside from my recurring pleasures of poetry group, book club, and dinners with friends, these are just some of the things booked in my calendar in the coming few weeks:
Faust, at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center:
Aida, also at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center:
Richard III at BAM, with Kevin Spacey as the hunchbacked wicked king (will he be as delicious as Ian McKellan was?):
The Cloud Gate 2 Dance Theater of Taiwan:
Marcia Ball and Beausoleil (the video is just Marcia Ball; Beausoleil is a cajun zydeco band, amazing):
See what I mean? SO MANY WONDERFUL EXPERIENCES! I’m sticking close to home on certain days of the week to help my husband through something difficult, but there is still so much. I do wish there were more of me, or I could shift myself through parallel paths in some way I can’t even conceive. Because this doesn’t begin to touch the list of books I want to be reading, the list of movies I want to be seeing, the time I need for a book I am writing, the beautiful outdoors I want to be photographing. Life is so precious, and so short, and we’re here to eat it up with a spoon, to get it all over our faces, to let it drip down our chins, to gorge ourselves on it, whatever it is. That’s why we’re here. That, and to be kind to others. To help each other when one of us is down, because our own turn at down will come soon enough.
Friday thoughts on this strange and windy day.
she’s mean and nasty, a real hateful person. yuck.
I have a stalker, since last July. She’s a very nasty person, and I’ve found a way to block her from being able to access my blog. She’s so crazy and obsessed, she had a friend of hers stalk me too. Luckily there’s a plug-in that allows me to ban her IP address, and whenever I track down another of her minions I ban them, too. This may sound paranoid of me, but I’m telling you: she is nasty.
There is someone in the Bronx who googles “Lori [last name] blog” to arrive at my blog every day or so. I’m about to ban that IP address, so if you see this, you there in the Bronx, get in touch with me (thrums.ny {at} gmail.com) and let me know that you’re a nice person and unaffiliated with my nasty stalker, and we’re good. Otherwise, I just have to ban you and I really don’t want to do that unless I have to. I’m going to leave this post at the top for a couple of days to be sure the Bronx visitor has a chance to see it. Sorry for the unpleasant interruption of All Things Thrums (or do you prefer the House of Thrums — equally and overly pretentious, it makes me laugh a little more). 
“I’ve a grand memory for forgetting.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
“I’m really good at forgetting.” ~my daughter Marnie, age 5
Curses — foiled again by my age-related failing memory. I just received four skeins of The Plucky Knitter Primo MCN (fingering) in a gorgeous red shade she calls Barn Door, and I can’t remember what sweater I was going to make with it.
1540 yards of fingering weight -- for the perfect sweater if only I could remember
I know it wasn’t a pattern I’d made before, and I think it was a cardigan. I think I actually wrote it down on a little notepad file but didn’t save it. Curses! Foiled again! Dadgummit! If you have a favorite cardigan knit with fingering, please let me know!
It’s c.o.l.d here this morning; it’s risen to 14 degrees and heading up to 29. Perhaps its because of my flu, but I just cannot get warm. I’m wearing a long-sleeved thin undershirt, a turtleneck, a cardigan, and a fleece jacket on top of it all, and I have a scarf around my neck and thick socks on my feet. I’m covered with a hand-knit blanket, and another blanket, and I’m still cold. I had a big bowl of very hot oatmeal and cups of steaming tea, and I’m still cold. I think the flu must be ramping up the chill.
On that shivery note, back under the covers for me. Don’t forget to suggest sweater patterns if you have a fave! Stay well y’all.
grrrrr. One of those days.
When I was a young mother, I did everything. I made all our clothes, I made everything we ate from scratch, I was the Brownie Troop Leader, I had my giant floor loom and a giant-er Navajo loom and my big spinning wheel in the living room, I played guitar and sang in the elementary school, I was a Maker Deluxe. In this vein, I planted a vegetable garden, a couple times, because it just fit with what I was doing in my life, for my family. Oh, I loved gardening. Except I really, really didn’t. I didn’t like the feeling of dirt under my fingernails. I didn’t like having to deal with bugs and weeds. I didn’t like one thing about it. So my first vegetable garden produced what it produced in its first blush but without the necessary care, it didn’t really last. The following year, oh, I love gardening! I planted another one. And I really hated gardening.
It took me a long time to figure out that what I love is the idea of gardening. I really love that idea. The idea of preparing the ground, planting and watching and watering, seeing the plants, the flowerings, the vegetables begin and then grow. Pulling that food out of the ground and putting it on my table. Love every bit of that idea. I just really don’t like to garden. I wish I did, but I don’t. I felt so much better when I realized this distinction, because it helped me understand this conflict and it relieved me from ever having to attempt to garden again.
Last night I had another insight, though perhaps it is more temporary. Another thing I like better as an idea is Manhattan — definitely the incredible crowds of people in Manhattan. From a distance, the crowds of people pouring through the subway stations, the hordes of people on the sidewalks, they make this city vivid and so alive. From a distance, it’s easy to see that all these people are Manhattan, really. That we all live together, in each others’ faces, in public, and we mostly do it very well. We create whatever private space we need around ourselves as we are crammed together in small spaces. From a distance — the George Washington Bridge, say — all these people on this island are exciting. All these people dashing about, creating the busyness that characterizes this city. I really like all these people from a distance.
But under any kind of stress, as I was last night, my feelings change pretty dramatically. I hate all these people! Good god, I just want to get from here to there. Nothing’s easy. The subways are often screwed up for any slight reason, and if it’s raining hard, or long, everything is just that much more difficult, including subway commutes. Since the subway is underground, obviously, and we’re on a small island, a whole lot of rain at once can bring the subways to a crawl. Once, the trains just had to stop, and we all had to leave. What this means is that (a) it’s raining very hard, (b) hundreds of people are streaming out of the subway at once, into pouring rain, so (c) getting a cab is impossible. No subway, no cab, no luck.
everything's less fun in the rain, here
Last night I went downtown, to the NYU area, for a knitting meet-up. I love and adore all my friends and various groups, but I’m the only person I know here who makes things, and now and then someone says something that makes me feel like I’m seen as weird, because of it. People will ask if I’m making something because it’s cheaper (um, no), and they’ll look at me quizzically. At a minimum, they don’t seem to get the impulse to make things. They do other things, but they don’t make things. When I was a young mother, most of my friends made things, because they were my friends from the weaver’s and spinner’s guild. So I’ve been longing for real-live in person friends here in New York who make things. This one meet-up takes place pretty far from my apartment, requiring two different trains and then a long walk, but it meets on a night that works for my schedule and I’d wanted to go several times before but then had to cancel. Last week I RSVPed for the meet-up and was determined to actually go.
And then, yesterday afternoon, it started pouring rain. Not just raining, but pouring rain. And it was windy. I thought about not going, but I decided to just suck it up and head out. The bulk of the trip is underground, and the long walk in the rain would be fine. I wore my raincoat, took my umbrella, and headed out.
Times Square -- one of the major subway stations on the west side of town
It was nothing less than miserable. By the time I got to my subway stop, which is one block from my apartment, my jeans were soaked to the knee, and my feet were soggy. The wind kept whipping my umbrella inside out. Going down the steps into the subway required tip-toeing through the lakes of rain, and the trains were very crowded. Transferring trains at Times Square nearly done the old girl in; I think everyone gets cranky when they’re trying to get around in this kind of rain, and the rain causes train delays so the crowds are worse than usual. And this time of year the city is filled with tourists, who are taking it all in and don’t know the rules of the road, so they poke along, they stop in the middle of where people are walking, they stand at the top of the stairs, blocking them, they struggle to figure out the Metro Card system, it’s not their fault but they muck up the works even more. We’re just trying to get home, it’s cold, we’re wet, it’s crowded. I finally made it to the second train, only to find out that due to debris on the track, the train I needed wasn’t running. I don’t know that subway line (or part of town) very well, so coming up with an alternative way to get there was mysterious to me, and I nearly turned around and went back home. At this point I was realizing that I don’t like people, I don’t like Manhattan, I don’t like any of it. That maybe this is one of those “gee, I like the idea of it” deals.
But I got there, and after the long walk, I entered the bar dripping wet. My hair was hanging, wet, because the wind kept inverting my umbrella. My pants were dripping, my toes were pruning, my raincoat was dripping. I found the group in the back, introduced myself, and sat down. And not one person spoke to me. They looked at me while I was introducing myself, then they turned their attention back to their knitting, and to each other, and went back to their conversations. I ordered a drink and sat there, smiling, trying to figure out what to do. I thought I’d just go back home. I felt terrible.
Finally two other women arrived and sat by me, and the proximity led them to speak to me. I ended up having a nice time with them, and may go back (but not in January, unfortunately, because the two meetings fall the same nights as my poetry group and my book club meetings). A couple hours later, the group started to disband and I headed home. The rain had slacked off, the crowds were a little less intense, and I was freezing cold because my feet and jeans had been soggy for all that time (and still were!). I got home and crashed, went straight to sleep; I’m so shy and introverted, and it’s exhausting putting myself into a new social setting with strangers.
I’m going to hold off on making a final announcement to myself about how I feel about Manhattan, and Manhattanites. Maybe I like more than just the idea of them, but I need dry feet and pants to feel it.
I should’ve titled this post The Unbearable Whiteness of Ballet
Last night I met my friend Temma for dinner (Indian food, so delicious) before we saw The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. [and thank you again, Temma, for inviting me!] Let me start by describing what the performance meant to me, before I get to my primary point. When I was a little girl in the sticks of Texas, I used to watch the nutcracker on television each Christmas — Baryshnikov, as I recall. Remember how they used to put “culture” on tv, back in the old days? Anyway, I’d watch the ballet on tv and it couldn’t have been more remote from me and my life. I imagined it taking place in some other universe, not the one in which I lived, or the one to which I could even aspire. It was Fancy. Cultured, sophisticated, rich with meaning and tradition and beauty. Not my life. Not even remotely like my life. So getting to go — and to Lincoln Center, no less — was the realization of that little girl’s dream she couldn’t even dream to dream.
We were surprised there weren’t more children in attendance; Temma was looking forward to seeing little girls with ribbons in their hair, and I don’t think we saw a single girl like that. Our seats were on the 4th ring, right in the center, so we had an outstanding view of the stage and the orchestra. As a long-time flutist and piccolo player, I’ve played that music and could hear every piccolo solo, every note from the flute section. This production is the George Balanchine version of The Nutcracker, and it’s extremely traditional. The children who danced were quite good, and Temma and I kept wondering what it must be like to be the main little girl, what a thing for her. (But then, where do you go from there, when you’ve done that at age ~9, on the stage at Lincoln Center)?
The main thing that surprised me, though, was the supreme whiteness of everything. The dancers were all white — whiter than me, even — as was the audience. There may have been people of color somewhere in the audience, it’s not like I could see every single person, but if there were, there weren’t many. But what struck me and eventually made me kind of sick was that there were only really, really white people on stage. I find it hard to imagine that in all of New York there isn’t a single brown person worthy to dance in this performance.
all white, all the time
Coming immediately on the heels of the brilliant and hot performance by The Forces of Nature Dance Theater, I realize the contrast made this experience stronger than it might have been, otherwise, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
So it was a mixed bag, for me: deep pleasure at spending that time with my dear friend, deep pleasure over the dinner, deep pleasure for getting to do this thing I’d been too poor a child to dream about — all those, great things — and deep disgust over the pure whiteness of it. Temma and I are going to see more dance performances in the future, but I’ll be more interested in modern dance and a greater mix of people, as will she.
This afternoon: Krapp’s Last Tape, with John Hurt! Another fantastic day for me. Happy Sunday, y’all.
good grief. two stitches forward and three rows back.
Last night I finished knitting the back of my lovely Laurayana sweater. I was watching a movie at the time and didn’t have the needles I needed to cast on one of the sleeves, as I’d planned, so I just cast on the front. Everything I needed was at hand, so I thought I’d just get it going and do the sleeve today.
- Cast on, knit knit knit. Figure out the transition to the pattern, ok, knit knit knit.
- Along the way, a few stitches tinked. OK, for some reason, a lot of stitches tinked.
- A couple times, an error noticed two rows below, stitch dropped down and repaired. Look at me!
- Oops! Was supposed to begin shaping at 3″ from the turning ridge. Noticed it at 3-1/2″, figured it would be ok anyway. Knit knit knit.
- Several rows in, suddenly noticed that the ribbing just above the turning edge is wonky; along the center design panel, on the right, it didn’t end with k2 so what came above just kind of hung there. HMMM. Ugly. Double-checked the pattern, yep, it’s a mistake in the pattern. HMMM. Ugly.
- Knit a row. Ponder. Maybe no one will notice.
- Purl a row. Ponder. Yeah, no. It’s ugly. Am I a sloppy knitter, or a careful one?
- Frog down to the turning row, slip stitches back on the needle (semi-wonkily, but fixed as I knitted the first row, turning the stitches appropriately).
- Finish that row, realize I didn’t resume the ribbing after the center panel. Tink back to the marker and knit the ribbing….get to the last 3 stitches, oops, must’ve made a mistake in my 2×2 ribbing. Yep, back at the very beginning. Tink tink tink. Re-rib.
argh.
Now I’m watching The Third Man and “knitting.” Since it’s going so badly — so ‘wonkily’ — I’m trying to decide: should I put this down and do the sleeve? Maybe that’ll be the remedy for wonkiness. Should I get out the swift and ball up my siltwash and do those swatches? Maybe that’ll be the remedy for wonkiness. I already tried a brisk walk in the lovely park, a coffee at Starbucks, and I stopped at the store for a beautiful bottle of wine, for later. None of that seems to be ridding me of my wonkiness. Just one of those days, I guess.
Do you have a remedy for times like this? I’m all ears.
Tonight the music seems so loud / I wish that we could lose this crowd / Maybe it’s better this way / We’d hurt each other with the things we want to say (I want to say SHUT UP!!)
What is it about this song?
Everyone thinks they can sing it, for one thing. For another, it’s a common choice for street musicians; I think I’ve heard it all over town, under- and above-ground, and in other cities. Today, I was crossing town and walking through Grand Central Station, and I heard it — because you can hear it from a long, long, LONG way away. A subway musician was playing Careless Whisper. A saxophone was wailing loudly, and I was filled with dread as I got closer, having to keep listening whether I wanted to or not (I didn’t). Turns out, it was a young black woman wearing a teeny black cocktail dress and very high heels, playing a sax. She’d hung a small iPod — the shuffle, I believe — on the microphone, and it seemed to be providing all the other musical parts. In other words, she was playing accompaniment to recorded music. Just her and her sax.
And boy o boy was she overly emotionally expressing herself. She was working it, squatting, waving her body around, leaning forward, leaning back, contorting her face around the mouthpiece. If it had been any other song, I might’ve just laughed (not out loud, just in my head) at the silly over the top-ness of her act. But that song. Oy. Anything but that song.
the guy could handle the whole deal by himself. he didn’t need no stinking dinner partner.
Will had dinner with me tonight, to finish my birthday celebration. It was great — we ate at a diner in my neighborhood that has my favorite salad ever, of all times. He was still zinging around from his crazy busy day at work, so I chattered for a while to give him a chance to settle in and unwind. But sitting next to us was this very strange old man who was talking and gesturing — a lot, and loudly — to a dinner companion who just wasn’t there. He was lit, let’s just say it that way.
It was like getting a glimpse into the guy’s mind, because whatever he thought came out of his mouth, and it was influenced by the slightest things going on in his proximity. So when I took this picture of Will:
my crazy son who cannot take a picture seriously
the drunk dude at the next table started talking about cameras. He stopped the waiter and asked him about cameras, told him stories about an SLR he used to have that could only take great pictures. The waiter humored him for a second and then slipped away. Then the guy started talking about something else, and then he abruptly said MAMMY! while lifting his hand.
It alternated between being extremely annoying, kind of funny in a trainwreck kind of way, kind of sad, and back to extremely annoying. It hit annoying two times out of every four rounds through the emotions. Mainly he was annoying. Yeah.
Today I tried to take a new picture of my Wintry Mix sweater so you could really see it, since the photograph I took in the Catskills made it look like the shoulder was weird and rumply in a way it isn’t, really. It’s a very dark green and I was indoors, and it’s just hard to get a good shot of it. This is the best I could do; see the great cowl, and the beautiful shape? It’s a wonderful sweater if you’re in the mood for a bottom-up pullover.
Wintry Mix, by Amy Herzog (yarn: berroco blackstone tweed, in evergreen)
It’s a great sweater; obviously, I wear a very thin long-sleeved t-shirt underneath it for extra warmth and because it feels a little better. The blackstone tweed is 65% wool, 25% mohair, and 10% angora, and it’s just the tiniest bit uncomfortable for some reason. That’s not really right — it’s just a tiny bit more comfortable with a very thin shirt underneath. I really love the sweater, and can’t recommend the pattern enough. I changed it up so the collar is more a cowl than a big flat Peter Pan-type collar, and I love it that way. And Will approves — he’s been my fashion approver for a very long time.
here I sit in the Chicago airport. what do i do, but put down some words and pick up my knitting needles!
I woke up at 3:15 this morning, though I didn’t need to wake up until the luxurious-er hour of 4am, but since I was awake, I got up and had a cup of tea, packed my electronics, and left my apartment. It was raining, which really sucked, because it meant I needed to bring my umbrella….which I certainly wouldn’t need in Texas, for heaven’s sake. I schlepped out in the dark rainy night and headed to Broadway to get a cab. I’ve done that a lot — cabs on Broadway are common enough, and I’ve been out around that time of morning and had no problems finding a cab.
I must’ve been out just earlier enough to make a difference, because I stood in the dark rain for 8 or 9 minutes, watching the completely empty street. Once a cop drove past, but that was the only vehicle of any kind. Finally, a cab pulled up and I guess the driver didn’t feel like getting out in the rain to help me so I struggled to get my heavy suitcase in the trunk while holding an umbrella and balancing my purse and backpack on my shoulder. It’s hard to lift a heavy suitcase with one hand and do the necessary turn and flip to get it into the trunk of a cab, let me tell you. The lip of the open cab trunk is higher than most cars, so it requires a very high lift before you turn and flip.
Anyway. I got to the airport and got on my plane, took my seat, and started knitting. Sweet. The pilot told us the flight was going to take longer than planned because we were flying into a very strong headwind. This gave me pause, because I had a close connection in Chicago, but plenty of time to make it. Not more, but more than enough. So I thought ‘well, either I’ll make it or I won’t, and freaking out won’t make any difference, won’t make the plane go faster, won’t make me arrive earlier or later.‘ Nice. I can’t always pull this off, but I’ve become increasingly able to do it over the last couple of years.
The view out the window was particularly beautiful; for a long time, it was very dark and the light was that eerie scene of an airplane’s lights bouncing off clouds in the dark. But as the sun rose, the clouds became this gorgeous powder blue, and everything out my window was one or another shade of that color. The sky was slightly darker light blue, and the blanket of clouds below was lighter light blue, but the whole view was that beautiful, tranquil color. I enjoyed it so much.
So we arrived at the airport, the pilot drove the plane in from another town, it seemed, and we finally taxied to the gate where the gate folks fumbled to get the jetway connected. I knew. I really did. I knew. When the doors finally opened, I had 12 minutes until my connecting flight was scheduled to leave. AND! As these things happen, I arrived at the far end of Gate C in Terminal 1 and my connecting flight left from the other far end of Gate F in Terminal 2. I ran. Like Forrest Gump, I ran. I ran and ran, ran and ran, ran and ran. I got to the gate and learned they had just closed the doors. Like, just. If I’d gotten there 30 seconds earlier, I could’ve gotten on my flight.
the tarmac at O'Hare -- my view for a few hours
But luckily I’m me, and have my Kindle and my knitting and my laptop so I can deal with the 5-hour wait. The worst part is just these lost hours with Katie. Boo.
A little change of pace, something I’m dying to tell you! Last night the coolest thing happened, though it was really just a tiny thing. I was standing in the subway, and I noticed a small man walking toward me — I thought he looked like an imp, a little elf or something. He had red-gray hair and he wore these funny wool pants that came to mid-shin, and he wore odd little leather boots. His clothes were strange, and something about him was just so unusual. I looked a little closer, and it was Philippe Petit! The man who walked on the tightwire between the two World Trade Center towers in 1974. It was actually him.
I felt such awe, and could not take my eyes off him. Such an audacious person, such a truly alive, audacious thing he did. Watch Man on Wire, if you haven’t already seen it (it was available streaming on Netflix the last time I checked — I’ve watched it 4 or 5 times). I just learned that he’s Artist in Residence at St John the Divine….which is in my neighborhood, which explains why he was getting in the subway at my stop. Which means I may run into him again.
bold and alive
I so wanted to speak to him. I so wanted to thank him for taking that walk, but I felt shy and didn’t want to intrude. When we were both in the train, at opposite ends of the crowded car, I caught his eye and smiled at him and he looked away. I did it a second time and he looked away, but after that he kept looking at me. I wish I’d had the courage to thank him, but the thing is I can’t even say why it means so much to me and touches me so much that he did that.
[read more: a piece on him in the NYTimes, and a brief PBS biography]
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!
*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!
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!!
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?
“I’ve had enough surprises, it’s better if I’m the one doing the surprising.” Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
I KNOW — Eileen, not Irene, but it’s in my head. Apologies if it’s in yours now. So far, at my place anyway, the hurricane is a big fat ‘meh.’ Some wind, sure, some rain, but really? Really? This is worth closing the subways, closing all the stores, evacuating thousands of people, taping up windows? There are leaves and small branches on the street in front of my apartment — see that often enough with regular storms, and frankly I often see worse — and that’s about it.
The worst part for me is having no voice, a shallow scraping non-stop cough, and goopy eyes. Yeah, that’s much worse. So no worries, loved ones who live far away and worry, it’s just a storm, and not even an interesting one.
Today I’m grateful for Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Well, grateful is one feeling I have about him. Others include envy, jealousy, awe, wonder, reader-love, and curiosity. This is a memoir about his father, really, who was a homeless alcoholic con man. His father wasn’t in his life growing up, except as a presence out there, a kind of vaguely menacing life lesson. His mother committed suicide when he was 22 — at least she didn’t leave a note blaming him, but like any suicide, it has a profound impact. He grew up to battle some of the same things his dad did, and he saw his life in parallel with his dad’s. If any of this is in your own history, I promise you’ll vibrate and cry with the way he describes things. If it’s not, you’ll read in the kind of awe people feel when they see a tragedy start to unfold and they can’t stop it. Here are some of my favorite passages:
I look at the photos, at Travis, look in his eyes as he speaks, somehow I’d learned to do that, like a tree learns to swallow barbed wire. (Travis is a homeless guy at the shelter where he works.)
“I was unable to throw myself in the ocean,” she writes, the handwriting more erratic as the painkillers seep into every cell, shutting out lights in empty rooms.
I see no end to being lost. You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn’t a station you reach but just the general state of going down. Once you make it back, if you make it back, you will stand before your long-lost friends but in some essential way they will no longer know you.
Then there is a whole chapter that’s nothing more than the euphemisms and synonyms for being drunk. I keep thinking that’s it, but then the next one in the list is the most common thing ever, and it just keeps going. Tight. Tiddly. Juiced. Plotzed. Potted. Pie-eyed. Inebriated. Stoned. High. Swimming. I say off the wagon. I say gone out. I say a slip. I say in my cups. I say riding the night train. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say the blood bank. I say drinkie-poo. I say a drink drink. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Faced. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Seeing double. Taking the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Looped. Lit. Pages and pages of it, it’s stunning.
Nick Flynn is a poet, primarily. His father always said he was a writer, always wanted to be a writer, and Flynn actually is. This book is heavy, definitely, but not grim, despite the content. There’s a way he writes about his parents that is compassionate without being overtly so — he doesn’t ever say things like “but she did the best she could,” it’s more his emotional stance in describing their lives. It’s a remarkable book, one of those that grabs you and reminds you that there are amazing surprises to be found in the world, and this is one. I am so enormously grateful for him and this book, and for the power of words and art to transform a single experience into a universal one.
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~Thomas Mann
the dreaded blank page
No one professes to love words more than I do, I’m pretty convinced about that. Not only am I paid to read and write all day long, my graduate research focused on the words we use and what that means about us psychologically, I’ve been a voracious reader since I was 3 years old and had my own library card, and I write a lot. Here, now and then, very long emails to friends, a bit of poetry, and some personal writing. Also: I say I am writing a memoir.
I believe in daily writing, and read The Artist’s Way back in the 80s and imagine that doing morning pages is a brilliant idea. And since I know the research about the striking power of doing regular stream-of-consciousness writing, I think it’s not just brilliant but great for you in every way, physically, emotionally, psychologically, creatively. I adore Anne Lamott’s exhortation to write shitty drafts, and think that’s so liberating. That’s right, this one is expected to be shitty! I can do that!
I want to be a writer, I think it’s the most exalted thing to do. Books saved my life as a young girl, giving me a way to imagine other possibilities than the life I was living. The Hunchback of Notre Dame gave me the idea of searching for sanctuary, even if you’re a hideous outcast. Life saving. No exaggeration. If I could write words that could give someone that kind of thing, well, I can’t even imagine that.
And now, reality:
“Tomorrow morning I’m going to do morning pages.”
I’ll just go through my Google Reader this morning and do that tomorrow.
“Just write a shitty draft of a few paragraphs and see where they go.”
I think I’ll make some tea and look at the NYTimes, I’m just not in the mood to do that right now.
And so on. And so forth. Etc, etc, etc. One of my clients has written a really incredible book, so exciting and vivid and creative, and I feel lucky to be working on it with him. I’m kind of in awe of how he came up with it. He tells me it’s a kind of job, it’s work, he doesn’t wait for ‘inspiration,’ he just works at it, keeps working on it. Another of my brilliant clients (interview with her here) says writing is misery, she does it every day. I read an interview with a writer this morning, who said the way you get better is by putting your butt in that writing chair every day and just writing. Of course I know that. And she made a little video of a song she wrote which includes the point that you just have to “push that c^*ksucking boulder up the motherf^*#king hill”. Go Nike and Just Do It.
I found a website called 750words (http://750words.com/) that presents you with a totally blank screen and your words are counted while you type, at the bottom of the screen. So of course I signed up and wrote today’s 750 words (which translates to about 3 pages). What did I write about today? This. My inability to write, and why I do this, by which I mean I don’t do this. We’ll see.
Do you stop yourself before you start, like I do? How do you make yourself do it anyway? I’m looking for ideas.
Gloom, despair and agony on me-e!
Deep dark depression, excessive misery-y!
If it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all!
Gloom, despair and agony on me-e-e!
(bonus points if you know the origin of this lyric!)
What in the world is wrong with me. I imagine my knitting friends never do this, just as they always put in lifelines on lace, and always do the things they should do in their knitting……but I can’t seem to learn. I have no idea where I am on my traveling woman shawl. I didn’t make any kind of note about what row and repeat I stopped (in the middle of), and the last time I touched it was before I went to Turkey, back in May. I’m on a wrong side row, so that’s probably just purl across, and I imagine I can figure it out, but that’s precious knitting time lost! WOE IS ME.
Seriously. Why can’t I learn this lesson. If you knew how many times this happens to me, and how each time I smack my forehead and say “from now on, I’m making notes about where I stop!” and yet here I am, you’d just shake your head and walk away. Hopeless, I seem to be.
I’m halfway through one sleeve on my gorgeous little red featherweight cardigan, and itching to start Kty’s new scarf, but decided (a) I needed a brief intermission knitting something heavier than laceweight, and (b) I ought to work a couple rows on the traveling woman shawl every day so I can just get it done. And then I go and pull something like this. I’m sure y’all never do this. If you know some neat trick (other than the obvious….”make a note, Lori!”) I’d love to hear it! I usually just open the pdf on my laptop and set it aside so I can refer to it as I knit and watch tv, so I don’t have a paper copy nearby.
I think I’ll go drown my sorrows in a gorgeous garlicky lemony anchovie-ey homemade caesar salad. And maybe a little white vino. Yeah.
If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies, and even the ground where they are (and fly pesticide won’t work). — Exodus 8:21 (with an amendment)
Aside from fire ants, I don’t mind ants — regular old in-the-house ants. I know some people are freaked out by them, but I don’t mind them. I try to get rid of them, but I don’t mind them. Weevils? For the last year, every other bag of bread flour I’ve opened has had weevils in it. It makes me mad, a brand new bag of flour, but they don’t creep me out. I’m not crazy about cockroaches, or their gigantic Texas cousins, the water bugs, and like them to be gone immediately please. They’re so ubiquitous in Austin, living in the leaf litter, that you just have them whether you like them or not. I was in the shower once and saw one crawling on the far wall of the shower, CREEPY, and though I didn’t want to, I kind of had to turn my back for a second and when I turned back, it was gone. WHERE WAS IT????!! That was one of the fastest showers I ever took.
But flies, I really really really detest flies. In the south, there are screens over the windows so you can open them without becoming fly infested. They might dash in when you open the door (“shut the door, you’re letting flies in!” I always heard as a kid), but that was it, really. Up here, in NYC, there are no screens. Can you believe that? No screens. And since we keep the windows open whenever possible, year-round, we live with flies. Most of the time, it’s the annoying one or two, but once a year every single year, there is a fly infestation of near-biblical proportions. A plague.
Where do they come from? No idea. Yesterday I was wondering if there was something dead in the walls, a rat or something (happens in a 112-year old building in a rat-infested city), but I’d have smelled that. Nothing smells bad. There is no food left lying about, there is no obvious origin for them, but my apartment is absolutely filled with flies. Two days ago I used half a can of spray thinking that’d get them. And indeed, they started walking pretty slowly, easy enough to swat a bunch of them. The next morning I was shocked not to see dead flies everywhere, I thought surely the morning would be spent cleaning them up. But no, absolutely no dead flies. Just a lot of flies walking around, a lot flying, and a giant swarm in one room. So at the end of the day, I used an entire can of fly-specific pesticide, fumigated the living room which is closed off from the rest of the apartment, and left. Spent the night closed up in the bedroom. Expected to see dead flies this morning……..nope.
What the hell??! These flies are not only completely resistant to pesticide designed especially for flies, they’re either the fastest-breeding flies in the world, or they let their buddies in at night while I sleep. I’m feeling possessed and hopeless about it. Last year when this happened, the pesticide fumigation route worked, the first time.
Isn’t that gross?
the definition of eternity
4″ laceweight 1×1 ribbing.
why? and on top of that, why are all today’s whys about technology? I’M NO LUDDITE!
- WHY did Firefox move the refresh button to the other damn side of the bar?! I don’t buy their “we wanted to clean up the real estate” explanation. They could have as easily put it in the address bar on the left, as on the right, when they were moving it off that toolbar. This is irritating me so much, I may just abandon Firefox altogether. GOOD GRIEF.
- Twitter. I have it, my posts go out on my Twitter feed, every day I get notifications of new complete-strangers following me (why?!). I just don’t really get it. When I worked in midtown, it was fantastic for letting me know exactly where the cupcake trucks were parked at any given moment, but beyond that I just don’t get it.
- iPad. I can’t believe I’m saying that — I’m a devoted lover of all things new and technological, usually an early adopter. I have 5 computers in my tiny home, and there are 2 of us here. I have a laptop and my Droid, and I did have a Kindle but I gave it to my son. I can get a new Kindle for $139, or I can get an iPad (or something like it)….but why?! Why would I get that? I know people who have an iPhone and an iPad (and one person also has an iPod). So much redundancy! I just don’t get it. With my droid and my laptop, why do i need an iPad, besides the coolness of it?
- Why I cannot capture the green in my Saroyan. No matter how I photograph it, in what light, and do how much post-processing, it looks brown. It’s not brown, it’s green. It has streaks of gold and brown in it, but the thing is green. I just tried again, thinking that maybe, perhaps, mysteriously, it would photograph correctly now that it’s finished blocking, but no.
this is pre-blocking, but it doesn't matter. it took so much fiddling to get it to turn out at all green. this color is NOT right. WHY???
Really. Why. It’s not like it’s some extreme color, or in an extreme setting in terms of light, with one color blowing out everything else. I do not understand this one little bit.
I am finishing our taxes today, and I’m going to do some housework, laundry, all that jazz, and figure out my next knitting project. I’m thinking of making the mothed sweather (rav here, knitty here), in a very pretty espresso-brown wool (with a bit of cashmere in it). I’ve done a couple quick projects recently (saroyan, obviously, and my killer red shawl) so I think it’s time to get a bigger thing underway. Happy Saturday y’all, whatever you’re doing!
time to be very good to ME, for a change, says me
In addition to my great-great-grandmother Molly — remember her, I told you that she went to bed at age 50 and stayed there for 40+ years because she was tired? — I knew another woman who got tired. She had just 2 kids, a boy and a girl. Anyway, one day when the boy was a late teenager, she got tired. She just got tired and fed-up, and one day announced that from that point forward, she was just going to say no. Whatever anyone asked her, she was just going to say no. And by golly, she stuck to that to the end of her life, many decades later. Even at the end, when her legs were cut off because of diabetes, if anyone asked her something she said no.
- Mom, will you take me to…NO.
- Mom, can I have…NO.
- Honey, do you want to…..NO.
I seem to be constitutionally unable to stick to these kinds of resolutions, but I get the urge to make them. There are days I really get that urge. From now on (which usually lasts until someone asks me for something) I’m just saying no. This comes on me when I’ve felt taken advantage of for too long, like I’ve been giving and have not even been [much] acknowledged, for too long. It’s a sign I need to stop and take care of myself for a while, do something nice for myself for a while. And that time is now, I’m really feeling the no.
sweet little Kiki, holding 2-day old Katie
My former father-in-law, dear sweet Kiki, was a very dear and loving man. He was wonderful to me, like a sweet father I never had, and he loved me a lot. Like, a lot. He’d take me out to the country for whole days, out near Devine, in southwest Texas, and spend the day with me gathering plants and wildflowers that I could use to make natural dyes. We had such a good time together. He was so gentle, and kept careful logs of the purple martins’ lives in his back yard, and the rainfall…he did that for years. His little logs are precious, I wonder who has them now. Anyway — all that aside, he was a major grudge-holder. It didn’t even matter if he remembered why, he’d hold that grudge for decades. And he made what he called “silent secret decrees;” the best example of this had to do with emptying ashtrays. His wife, my dear mother-in-law, was a heavy smoker. Somewhere along the way he’d made one of his silent secret decrees that he was never again going to empty or clean an ashtray. He didn’t tell anyone, he just never did it. Ever. Not once, in a couple of decades.
That’s an amazing stick-to-it-ive-ness, even if it’s not really nice — the “no,” or the silent secret decrees. I don’t know how people do that. I make those vows all the time and they last as long as toilet paper in the rain. They last until the first thing happens that would call on me to stick to it. Then I cave. Are you this way?
sperm and smelly feet. ah, new york, you charmer.
There were a few interesting things I saw on today’s journey downtown:
- In both the Times Square and Union Square subway stations, there was someone playing the saw. Really? That seems pretty odd to me.
- Coming out of my subway station at home, I saw a guy ahead that I’ve seen before. He’s easily recognizable because he wears white shoes, white pants, a white jacket with a white hoodie underneath (with the hood up) and he has a white bag. I want to know his story! Every time I see him, I think of the sperm scene from Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *but were afraid to ask”:
did you see the movie? Parts are so so funny...
- Going downtown, the 1 train smelled awful, like someone dumped a bag full of extraordinarily smelly gym socks that had been fermenting for a month or two. I had to fight gagging.
Not the most fascinating stories today, but they caught my attention. Hope you’re having a good Wednesday…
I’m in the flow of editing a thoughtful and beautifully-written manuscript, with an even more beautiful one waiting in the wings. Cue the telephone:
*ring ring*
me: Hello, this is Lori.
her: Um, yeah. I saw you on my computer. [long silence]
me: Yes? Can I help you?
her: Um, yeah. You’re an editor. [long silence]
me: [trying to manage my irritation and corresponding rise in blood pressure] Yes I am. Can I help you?
her: Um, yeah. I need an editor. What do you charge. [long silence]
me: [trying with a little less success to manage my irritation] Well, if you’re looking at my website, you’ll see the page titled RATES.
her: [silence]
me: So as you’ll see
her: [interrupting] Yeah. What do you charge.
me: Well [deep breath], as you see, it depends on what kind of editing you want. There are different types of editing.
her: [silence]
me: Why don’t we start this way – why don’t you tell me a little bit about your project.
her: Um, yeah. It’s a book.
me: [fighting mightily against a growing tide of wanting to kill her] A book? Is it a novel?
her: Um, yeah.
…..I described the types of editing and we somehow agree she needs {surprise!} the deepest level of editing. I give her a quote…..
her: Um, yeah. Will you sign something about giving me the copyright?
me: Well, that’s not necessary, but I’ll sign something if you want me to.
her: Um, yeah. See, I don’t live up there, you feel me?
me: Not really, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll sign something if you want me to.
her: Um, yeah. So I’ll give you my address and you’ll mail me stuff.
me: No, you email your manuscript to me
BANGING MY HEAD ON MY DESK. This went on for several minutes. Am I holding my breath? Um, no.
in the corner for a time-out, madelinetosh. you are in the naughty file today.
“Lori! You are an editor! You missed a gross misspelling in the post title!”
No I didn’t. Ha, so there. Fooled you. It’s defeat, yes, and it’s de feet. Last night I pulled on my beautiful lovely wonderful favorite socks, my kai-mei in tosh sock, and what did my shocked eyes see?
NO!!!!!
I finished them April 29, 2010 (my anniversary, coincidentally!), so I haven’t even been wearing them a year. And they’re in rotation with all my other handknit socks, which I only wear during cold weather, so this is entirely unacceptable I must say. Really. Perhaps Tosh Sock is not meant to be used for socks, silly me. Do I take good care of them? Why yes I do. Handwash, air dry, lotsa care. Maybe I have bad feet? Why no I don’t.
Of course the only remedy is to make another pair of kai-mei, but I’ve learned my lesson and won’t be using Tosh Sock for socks, ever again. I’m all about the process, love knitting, loved making the kai-mei especially, but I don’t expect to get just a few wearings before the yarn disintegrates. For heaven’s sake.
I had big trouble with another madelinetosh yarn (merino, in this case), which I used for my Mondo Cable Cardi. I’d had it on for maybe 2 seconds (3, to be generous) when the whole thing turned into a giant thick pill. All that work, and it looks like a bad sheep’s fleece. I could continuously scrape off the pills, but I’m not kidding, the pilling happens faster than I can get them off. It’s strange to be complaining so bitterly about a yarn I’ve been so in love with; I do still adore the colors, she’s an amazing colorist, but the yarn bases have now let me down twice. Hmm. That’s a lot of money to pay.
Anyway, one more turn of the feet, and another Cookie A sock (angee) — here’s Katie’s next pair. One sock down, the other sock is now at the mid-foot region.
Katie's Paddy Socks -- Angee (CookieA of course)
This is KnitPicks Felici, in the sold-out colorway called green vegetables. It hasn’t been the best quality — there have been a number of places where the plys were abraded and the yarn was down to a lone-ply holding itself together. What’s up, you yarn makers you?!
mass murdering fuckheads come from areas you least expect them — e. izzard
UGH, you know how it is when you are just SO damn cranky, you’re miserable because you’re so cranky, and you can kind of see that everyone around you is thinking “good god, she is SO cranky, shut up why don’t you.” Yeah, that’s me this morning, and I’m stuck with m’self. Yesterday afternoon, out and about with Will (what a wonderful day we had) I noticed that my throat was starting to hurt and feel all scratchy, and then my eyes felt dry and scratchy, and my whole self felt pretty yicky. Last night I went to sleep around 1, and I woke up at 5 drenched in sweat and feeling gross, so I got up.
I’d promised to make some apple-brown sugar-cinnamon scones this morning, and I wanted to do that – a double batch, so they’ll last a couple of hours. But it was one of those mornings, the kind that degenerates into WILD ASS crankiness, every little thing was wrong, went wrong, went worser and worser, the butter was frozen, I didn’t have cream, the brown sugar was hardCUSS CUSS CUSS CUSS!! Hurl things! Heavy sigh repeatedly! Ugh, I wanted to get away from myself in the worst way. And every single song just irritated the HELL out of me. God, change that one! Tori Amos, change that right away, she always makes me want to kill someone! Not that, change that. It was horrible being me.
But as I was getting outrageously outraged by such piddling little mundane silly things, I thought of Eddie Izzard’s bit about Hitler as an art student: “…can’t get the fucking trees…damn i will kill everyone in the world!” It made me laugh at myself, and track down the clip for you. This really is one of the best Eddie Izzard bits, along with cake or death. Happy Sunday, Happy Valentine’s Day Eve. Don’t be grumpy if you can help it.
how far could you go, if you really really REALLY had to?
I was going to include “cutting off your arm” in the post title but thought better of it. Last night I watched the movie 127 Hours, with James Franco. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. I always think I don’t like him, but every time I watch him I really really do like him; maybe one of these days my automatic opinion will match my learned opinion. Anyway, it’s the movie that’s about that real-life guy who was climbing all by himself and his arm got crushed by a giant rock, and he eventually had to cut off his own arm to save himself and get out of there. GRIM, right? I had little to no interest in seeing it — (a) I had my automatic opinion about James Franco, and (b) I thought who wants to watch a guy cutting his own arm off, not me sister.
It was amazing. It was just amazing. I couldn’t speak when it was over, for quite a while. It’s a visually stunning movie, with wonderful editing and sound editing, but the thing is that it is really about what it’s really about. I mean, it’s not about a guy cutting his arm off (though he does). It’s really about facing yourself, facing life, facing it all, in a very real and rare existential moment. I get extremely irritated by people’s whining about “but what does it mean, it has no meaning, blah blah blah” the luxury problems of spoiled wealthy people. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t true existential moments, moments of facing the abyss of what it really all means, and what it means to be here, and that in some fundamental way it’s just you and that moment, alone. And that’s what the movie is brilliantly about, and it’s brilliant. James Franco is brilliant. The soundtrack is brilliant. Everything, I completely loved it. It’ll take a while before I can watch it again, and I hope it stands up to a second viewing. You’ll want to have your knitting with you so you can look away and concentrate on something else during some of the more difficult scenes, but you shouldn’t let them make you miss seeing the movie.
So what’s the sweater part of the post title? Two unpleasant things:
- I’m frogging my Eve’s Rib Shrug. It’s just been such a pain in my ass the whole time, and it’s not going to look the way I thought it would in the wholly misrepresentative photos (i.e., it won’t be as long as it seemed and the actual shape isn’t flattering to my (*cough cough stomach*) figure. I love the yarn too much to let it languish. So yay to making a decision but damn to all that time wasted. I’ve learned that Carol Sunday’s way of writing patterns simply doesn’t work for me, and it’s not worth it. It’s a shame, because her designs are often truly gorgeous.
- I’ve also decided with regret that I’m just not young enough to pull off the Laar sweater. There’s the ample bosom situation, but more importantly there’s the fact that I’m just too “mature” for the style. And I’m tired (see above) of putting in so much time and ending up with something I don’t like. So now I’m considering my sweater queue and yarn I already have in my stash, and as I promised myself, I’m taking my time with the decision. No more leaping without looking. My regret isn’t that I’m too old for that particular style, it’s just that it really is a beautiful little sweater and I have such lovely yarn for it. But one thing ravelry teaches us is that there’s always another sweater.
My precious oldest daughter Katie arrives in NYC this evening, and she’ll be staying with me until Wednesday. She’s on a family mission of import and urgency and probable sorrow, but it’ll be so good to have her here. I don’t get to see her….or any of my precious kids….nearly often enough. Intermingled with the moments of difficulty that bring her here will be lots of love and laughter, plenty of knitting and stash-pawing, some movie watching and card playing, probably, and lots of good food.
OH! Also, just to feed any schadenfreude out there about the high life in NYC: this morning I woke up and went to the bathroom only to find brown water dripping [again] from the ceiling, running down the pipes, dripping down the wall, splashing in the windowsill, bulging the ceiling. The guy who lives upstairs has bad plumbing and we always have to pay the very icky price. So happy waking up, Lori! Just in time for company, too. NYC, you’re such a charmer.
crappiness squared. cubed, even.
Whatever, whichever order is better, the bottom line is the same: it’s now Sunday at 5-something pm, the weekend is nearly over, and mine was awful. Not big-time awful, like someone I love getting hit by a train or anything (poo, poo, I spit and curse at those gods), just quotidian awful. The kind where you suddenly see that it’s Sunday at 5-something pm and you didn’t get anything good done, and yesterday all day was one crappy thing after another and turns out today was, too.
As always, I had such hopes, such dreams, such plans. I was going to knock out 1.5 socks (didn’t happen). I was going to do some writing (didn’t happen). I was going to take a walk (didn’t happen). I was going to catch up on some work (didn’t happen). I was going to bake some goodies, plus 2 loaves of bread (didn’t happen, with half an exception). I was going to watch a good movie or two (didn’t happen). I was going to curl up on the couch and feel cozy and happy (didn’t happen).
So what did happen? I have no idea. But it was all crappy, and I feel grumbly and grumpy and crummy and crumpy and crumbly. And tomorrow begins another week.
With whom do I take this up. Who do I take this up with. I want cake. Good thing I’ve lived long enough to know that life goes in cycles, that down today won’t last, and then again, neither will up tomorrow. Cake, though, is the eternal constant, perhaps Einstein’s c.
Oh! And last night, at ~3am, a woman across the street started shrieking, help me! OH GOD! Someone help me! Please!! Shrieking, on and on, lights were going on, we were all rushing to our windows. I immediately thought of Kitty Genovese, the woman who was murdered in NYC in the 60s, in full view of neighbors…none of whom did anything. It is the stuff of social psychology. The shrieks and screams last night were pure horror. And a manifestation of the shrieker’s psychosis. We’ve been through this before, with her. We’ve all called 911, the police have come, it’s just a crazy woman. But I feel for her, so much, because even if it’s a psychotic experience, she is clearly in hell. Unfortunately, so are we. Life in NYC, you’re always “interesting.”
is there anything worse than babka fail? [OF COURSE THERE IS.]
Continuing in my long series of complimentary advice — you’re welcome — is this one:
Never make babka when you’re upset.
And its corollary:
Never ever make 2/3 of a recipe of babka when you’re upset.
For some reason, babka recipes make 3 loaves (these are good: one, two). Well, we’re just two little people, even though one of us (hint: not me) eats on the scale of a small family, especially where sweets are concerned. But anyway — we don’t need three babkas. So I put the list of ingredients in an Excel spreadsheet, multiplied each line by .66, and bingo: the ingredient amounts I’d need for 2 babka instead of three.
Would’ve been great, it was a smart plan, blah blah blah, but then, inside the recipe would be a statement like “using 10 T of butter” which did not represent the entire amount of butter. So I had to figure out what portion of the 3-loaf recipe 10T counted for, then try to take that portion of my butter. You can see the nightmare. I’m sure.
in case you don't know, this is chocolate babka (not the lesser cinnamon babka, cf Seinfeld). it's a very eggy, buttery bread wound up and twisted around a filling of chocolate, sugar, and cinnamon. RIGHT?
I was not having a great morning, after a bad night of sleeping/not sleeping, and my nerves were shot from too much coffee. Shaky hands, brittle mind, the whole “you shouldn’t be making babka, Lori” shebang. Which, of course, I stupidly ignored.
Hence, this advice post, in which I hope to spare you the similar anxiety and angst and absolute abject…running out of A-words here…failure. (Unless it’s not a failure, in which case I’ll post later.)
why? why? why? was it hubris? that’s the usual suspect with greek gods…
I have made an executive decision. The goddess of knitting is Ariadne. She’s the one who gave Theseus a ball of yarn so he could find his way out of the minotaur’s labyrinth. Remember her? That girl?
I figured any woman who is clever enough to come up with a use for a skein of yarn AND who is handy and familiar with labyrinthine things must be our patron woman. And I have clearly pissed her off somehow. I’m trying to find a corner clear enough to do a burnt offering, though I have no livestock to give (pa rum-pa-pum-pum). Maybe I’ll put some yarn scraps in a bowl and set fire to them.
Or maybe I’ll just use my Dark & Stormy Cardigan. Yeah, that one. That gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous sweater. That somehow grew — like the Grinch’s heart — 3 sizes. After careful blocking, it became the cardigan for a giant. And I’m no giant, even though I’m pretty dang tall. (ok, it’s not 3 sizes too big, but it’s at least one size too big.)
The yarn I used, madelinetosh vintage, is superwash. I don’t know how much success I’ll have tossing it in the dryer, but I’m ready to give that a try. My hair is already thinning with age, so I don’t want to pull it out. With my family history, I’d better not take up drinking to soothe my spirits. So all I can think of are (1) burnt offerings, and (2) a hot dryer. Which means going to the coin-operated dryer in the basement, paying for a whole hour (the minimum), and hoping no one comes in to do laundry while I’m trying to shrink my sweater.
p.s. and yes, for those who might ask, I knitted a swatch, I washed it, I blocked it, I let it dry, I kind of whipped it around in the air a little to try to stretch it out, and it didn’t grow.
who IS the knitting god and how can I appease her? anyone?
I woke up all out of sorts this morning. You may not believe this, but it’s nearly impossible to find an image of “half a bubble out of plumb” in Google images. Of course it didn’t help that I first typed ‘half a bubble out of plump.’ Paging Dr. Freud. But that’s me this morning, half a bubble out of plump. One card short of a full deck. One egg short of a dozen. One skein short of a sweater, to turn this into a knitterly saying.
After frogging everything I’d done last night on the g^*#_&damn, motherf^*#*%&* Eve’s Rib shrug, I decided to knit a quick winner, as I posted earlier this morning. Maybe I should’ve just honored the whacked out state I’m in and decided to do something else, BUT NO.
So I cast on, and was on row 3 when I noticed further down after the pattern rows it says “if you want to avoid a seam, do a provisional caston.” OH WELL, I thought. So what, I’ll seam it. My hair’s long, it’ll be hidden anyway.
So on I knit. The cable crosses are 8 stitches, so it’s cumbersome and tight, and somewhere along the way I dropped a purl stitch. I saw it and hooked it back up there with my crochet hook, but I noticed on the return row that I’d somehow bungled it. OH WELL, I thought. It’s right next to a cable, that kind of thing won’t be noticeable.
So on I knit. I finished the cable crosses, did the return row and then two more stockinette rows and the pattern seemed to say it was time to do another cable cross. That didn’t seem right. The photo shows long sections between cable crosses. I looked at the pattern again — yep, repeat row 1, repeat row 2, cable cross. So on I knit. When I was working the return row I thought this canNOT be right. So I looked at the pattern and noticed that it said something like this:
Rows 7, 9, 11, 13 – same as row 1
Rows 8, 10, 12, 14 – same was row 2
See, I didn’t notice the whole several-rows-each thing. (cf my state today.) I’m sure this kind of thing never happens to you.
another of my brilliant neologisms. or not.
I made up that word, “blogrumps,” and it’s not about the expansion of bloggers’ rumps (though that may be true, too), it’s a melding of blog and grumps. Most sincere apologies if I offend anyone, but I have a couple of complaints:
- the comment-leaving process. If you have a blog, sign out of your account and then go to one of your posts and try to leave a comment, as if you’re just a reader. Some blogs make it so easy – you write the comment, enter your info (or maybe it’s already there if you’re a regular commenter), click once, and you’re done. I LOVE THOSE. I hope my blog gives you an easy process, but please let me know if it doesn’t! Some blogs, and I think it happens most often on blogger, make it really difficult – and it’s just a matter of settings. I know most people don’t really understand all the settings and are just trying to keep spam off their blogs, but here’s what it takes to leave comments on some blogs: you write your comment, and pick the way you’ll be identified (I always use OpenID if I can, or url). So you enter that information and click post. You think you’re posting your comment, right? NOPE. Now a window opens and you have to enter the letters and numbers you see, so you do that and you click post, and you think you’re finally posting your comment, right? WRONG again. Now you have to click post again. This isn’t anything more than a mild irritation, obviously; no one is starving or dying because it takes multiple steps to leave a comment, but gee. Make it easier, please.
- photos – For this one, I think I have to point a blaming finger at Pioneer Woman. Heresy, I know! She’s greatly loved by one and all (and I’m a fan too), and it feels like saying bad things about Mother Theresa (though I’ve done that), but she started it. Pioneer Woman, I mean. Her posts — especially her cooking posts — feature a couple of words and a giant photo, repeated dozens of times in a post. It’s like this, here’s an imaginary post: First, melt the butter [giant photo of butter melting in a pan] and then stir in the garlic [giant photo of garlic in the melted butter] repeat 3 dozen times. This is great if you’re trying to learn how to melt butter and stir in garlic, but in my Google Reader, I have to pagedown pagedown pagedown pagedown so many times just to get to the end of the bloody post. In her wake, bloggers everywhere include step-by-step photos of every little thing, every tiny step. This is cool, this is great, but it’s really nice if you include a “more after the jump” deal so people can go see whole photo-laden post if they want to, but they aren’t subjected to it every bloody time they open their Google Reader.
And thus concludes the end of my blogrump. My blog grump. Maybe I’m just grumpy because I accidentally put too much cinnamon in my oatmeal this morning. And the city hasn’t picked up the trash since Christmas Eve, and there’s just a tiny narrow path down my street between the giant piles of trash spilling out from both sides of the street.
Here – this’ll change the mood. I love these little boys.
i really love my city, despite it all.
Every Wednesday I go down to Union Square. This involves taking the 1 train to Times Square and changing to the N/R/Q train. It takes me about 45 minutes each way, and depending on my mood, it can be an enjoyable experience with all the craziness that’s NYC, or it can be a hellish experience with all the craziness that’s NYC. Today was such a mix, I thought I’d share:
Clash of the ethnic musicians
As I was hurrying through the big Times Square subway station, I passed the regular group of Peruvian dudes playing their Andean flutes. Nice. (And I felt smug, because I’ve heard Peruvian dudes playing Andean flutes in Cusco, and in Puno, which is situated on Lake Titicaca (giggle), which is the highest navigable lake in the world.) Seconds later, I passed one of the many roving mariachi bands. Nice. (And I felt smug, because I’ve heard them playing in TexMex restaurants in Austin.)
Then I passed a Guy With a Guitar. He was yodeling Silent Night, and then he switched to……Mandarin Chinese! Surprise!
Austin has nothing on the NYC subway system.
Donation please
Around Union Square (the NYU neighborhood), you see an awful lot of homeless people sitting on the sidewalk with little signs. They usually describe a hard luck story, they often say God Bless, and the person sitting with the sign usually hangs his head (it’s usually a man). Every year, for the past 3 winters, there has been a young woman and her dog, sitting with exactly the same sign, year after year:
Got robbed and need bus fare to get back home. And need to feed my dog.
Either she has the worst luck in the world, or she counts on people not to remember her (or care about her sign). Well, I remember her and her sign. I have a very personal soft spot for homeless people — young people most of all — but come on, girl. Show some initiative.
She wasn’t there today. In her place was a tall, gaunt white man, slouching against the building. His patter was on an endless loop:
Donate a cigarette. Donate a cigarette.
I like that! Direct and honest, no pretending about “lending,” and I can believe him. If I had one, I’d have donated (but don’t smoke!).
After the beauty
Oh sure, it’s gorgeous coming down. The snow drifts that cover the cars are surprising, and lovely. So white, so clean.
You may think, if you’re inexperienced with these things, that the worst part is
- the way it all turns gray, black, and ugly the next day
- the way it hangs around for so long
- the way the snow plows can totally bury your car so you can’t even find it
Those are bad, don’t get me wrong. Big snows in a big city have a very short half-life of pleasure.
oh no!
But here’s the worst. The snow gets piled up at every corner of every intersection. The piles can be really high. People usually stomp out a path, but it’s very murky and ill-defined.
The problem is that filthy lakes form, at every corner. Since they’re surrounded by mountains of increasingly hard snow, they can’t runoff into the gutters so they just get bigger as the snow melts, and dirtier as time goes by. It’s best if you follow someone through, so if they take a step and it’s a LOT deeper than they thought, you can try to find another route. You can usually find one, but not always. But on my way downtown today, twice I stepped (surprise!) in very filthy water, up to my mid-calf. Once, nearly to my knee.
Here’s where the rubber really meets the road. Ugg boots? No way. Beautiful suede boots? Not on your life. Leather boots? Not if you care how they look. My boots are quite ugly. For real. Seriously. No kidding, ugly. But my feet and legs (and jeans) are warm and dry, and all those fancy ladies shrieking at that one intersection probably can’t say that.
in which i make much ado about really unimportant things.
I’ll give her this – she’s cheap. The price range for circular needle sets is pretty wide: Addi Turbo set, around $260; Knitpicks set around $85; and good old Denise comes in around $50. If you hang around the Ravelry forums, there are always a lot of people selling their Denise set “barely used,” and this seems instructive. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone sell their Addi Turbo set.
Well, not being overwhelmingly endowed with money, and preferring to spend any spare money on yarn rather than needles (a trade-off I’m reconsidering…easy to say since I have a nice enough stash at this point), I bought the KnitPicks Harmony set, and the Denise set. I thought that would give me all the possible options I’d need. I bought these before I knew much about knitting, and was just dazzled by having All! Those! Needles! In two neat little packs!
I’ve been knitting my Dark & Stormy sweater on the Denise needles, because it’s the only one I had available; my others were being held hostage in other UFOs. And when I first started knitting, I thought I absolutely adored Denise!! The lightweightness of the needles, the pleasing sound/feel of them clicking together, the ease of adding more sections to the cord as the sweater grew, the joins that seem awfully sturdy.
But I’ve been hating on them as the sweater grows. It feels like I’m knitting with drinking straws; that hollow straw-like cord connecting the needles is about the same size as the needles, so it really requires both hands to scootch the knitting around. I’m not liking that one little bit, I must say. It’s seriously slowing down my progress. I’m just about to divide for the sleeves so the rows will become shorter once that happens, but it’s taking me too long to get a row done. I may just have to stop at Knitty City this evening and pick up a better needle.
And in a stunning coincidence of technology FAIL, I went to take a photograph of my sweater for this post, but my camera battery seems to have thoroughly given up its little electronic ghost. When I got home from my vacation Saturday night, I put it in the recharger….plenty of time for a thorough and deep recharge for heaven’s sake! But when it’s in the camera, it still says it’s completely uncharged. Just as I was realizing that, I plugged my headphones into the headphone jack of my laptop so I could listen to music and the jack quit working. The headphones work, I tested them in my iPod, it’s just the jack in my computer. WTF electronics. Why do this expensive thing to me now, at Christmas.
Sorry for the lame-o griping. There are certainly much bigger things in the world to be griping about, and also plenty of wonder to appreciate. These are just like having a pebble in your shoe.
i fell down AGAIN but this time my computer also took a spill. dammit.
….ARGH. I was typing this post and got up to put my coffee cup in the dishwasher and somehow my feet got all tangled up in something, wires, footstool, pile o’ shoes, and I fell down hard. And this disaster caused my laptop to go flying, and land on an angle, on one of its corners, and as I hit the floor (hard) I was thinking “oh no! not my computer!! not now!!”
I now smell like coffee, my hands are shaking, my knees are all bruised, and my laptop is a bit out of whack. The top closes, and it seems to be working, but it’s kind of wonky. We always take it when we travel, because we upload the day’s photos and tell the day’s stories on our travel blog, so the timing of this little accident sucks. So far so good, though, so I hope the indestructibility of my ThinkPad continues.
Anyway, I’d written some of the post already, but now I’m kind of shaky so instead of reconstructing it, I’ll just leave this photo of where I am on my new birthday cardigan – the “52 is not dark and stormy” Dark and Stormy sweater by Thea Colman:
1 skein of yarn
Except for the rows where the cables do their biggest crossing, I cable without a cable needle now. The little twists, the easier crossing rows, it’s just me sliding stitches off the needle and rearranging them. Cool. Quick and easy, and no longer scary. I love the yarn (tosh vintage), the color shadings are fun (baltic) and make me happy. The design is simple and great fun to knit, and not boring — we’ll see what I’m saying when I hit the sleeves, of course.
So I’ll leave it here, at this point, and pick it up when we return. Off to put fresh sheets on our bed, put away the laundry, run the dishwasher, and pack. We’ll leave at 5 in the morning! WHEE!
every time you go away, i get fewer crap emails. i really like that about you.
Gradually it happens – I subscribe to this thing, to that newsletter, to the other updatey thing, and before I know it, I get several dozen crap emails every single day. SO, gradually it unhappens; as they arrive, I unsubscribe, relentlessly. Especially since we’re going to be on vacation before too long, I wanted to clean up, clean out, opt out. I just unsubscribed from all the etsy emails, and this was their final word to me. Made me love those folks just a little bit more:
Thank heavens I don’t have an electronic copy of that photo of me with the GIANT glasses, the giant-er earrings, the shirt with shoulder pads, and the bad feathered hair. Yikes. So don’t worry, Paul Young, I may be pointing a finger at your crazy hair but I have my own dark feathered secrets.
EDITED BECAUSE I HAVE NO SHAME, APPARENTLY: ok, really it was due to my own going-to-kill-me-someday curiosity….did I still have the photo I was remembering? I didn’t find the specific one, but I did find evidence that Paul Young wasn’t alone with the bad fashion statement. Oh the hair. The earrings. THE GLASSES.
where to start. the shirt, complete with shoulder pads? my feathery hair? my big ugly earrings? my enormous glasses? my poor little blow-dried son?
my son and i did the pinewood derby - yeah, pay attention to that, and to his beautiful face. if you can possibly ignore my GIANT GLASSES and 80s hair and earrings. Oy.
Gee whiz, I was a such a baby back then.
Theater! Kids! Can! Be! Hard! To! Take! In! An! Enclosed! Space!
One of the only things I miss (and really, just partially) about my old job is the daily exposure to New Yorkers during the commute. The New York stories have always been among my favorite posts to write (which is not to say that the NY stories were always pleasant experiences). Now, I’m in the subway three times a week, tops, and the rides are not very long.
But today I had to go way down to the other end of this island, so I had quite a long trip in the subway. Going down was quiet and quick, and I expected a relatively similar trip home, since it wasn’t rush hour and the train was pretty empty when I got on.
remember the Master Thespian, on SNL? ACTING!
But then, at the Penn Station stop, a thundering horde of THEATER! KIDS!! ran into my car. In their Very! Excited! (and Loud!) Way!
Oh my god! They were just So! Very! Excited! And SHOUTING! And once, a group of them broke into SONG! It wasn’t at all like being in an episode of Glee. One of the chaperons was standing right next to me at one end of the car, and just kept shouting at the other chaperon, who happened to be as far away as possible. Then he shouted at her (and they had to shout very loudly to be heard over All! The! Excitement!) and whatever he said made her laugh her excruciatingly loud and piercing cackle laugh. I put my knitting down and covered my ears with my hands, trying to minimize the feeling of being assaulted.
Thankfully, they got off at 66th, leaving me 7 quiet subway stops to home. I let my hands down and got ready to pick up my knitting when a screaming clattering horde of Puerto Rican teenage girls ran into the car and even though there were only 4 or 5 of them, they were every bit as loud as the 15 Theater! Kids! had been.
I sat there thinking about the shared public space of a subway car. Yeah, it’s a public space, so you can shout if you want to, play music if you want to, do whatever, as long as it isn’t illegal. But it’s shared, which ought to mean that extremes are modified a bit – especially in a tightly enclosed space. We don’t eat smelly food in the subway cars. We use earphones for our iPods (usually, though that’s no guarantee that I won’t have to be blasted by your irritating music). We talk to each other in normal conversational tones, with normal conversational volume (or even a little quieter, if we can). Because there are Other! People! On! the! Train!
geez. I’m thoroughly enjoying the absolute silence of my apartment right now. I think I’ll knit. Yeah.
she really pisses me off. sure, she’s “interesting” and “fascinating” and beautiful, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD she’s a pain in my ass.
You know the kind I’m talking about – at first you were just crazy about her. She’s so beautiful, interesting (we’ll come back to that one), endlessly fascinating, she adds a lot to your life, you imagine being friends for a long long time.
But then you start to realize that interesting should have quotes around it. She’s “interesting.” She’s beautiful, yeah, and she certainly does add a lot to your life, but the “interesting” and fascinating bits now make you suspect you won’t be friends for a long long time. Consultants call this the PITA factor (pain in the ass), and sometimes add a hidden PITA fee when offering a price quote to a known PITA client. Still, you can’t say this friend is boring. No, you could never say that, that’s for sure. You might say a lot of other things, but boring she’s not. Now and then you throw your hands up and say “that’s it, we’re done. I’ve had it this time.” But you go back…..at least for a while.
That has been the story of my relationship with my Eve Shrugged. At first? Smitten. Totally, totally smitten. Over the moon, endlessly fascinated. And then I hit the wall, not once, not twice, not even thrice (ha, thrice) but many more times than that. Knit frog knit frog knit frog knit frog. Repeat. But finally I got it, thanks to the help of many of you. I made it to the point of adding the sleeve stitches, where you then transition from Eve’s Ribs to Adam’s Ribs, and something went wrong. Knit frog knit frog knit frog knit frog. Repeat. This is why I haven’t been mentioning this project – it’s been in the Bad, Bad Knit Time-Out chair in the corner.
Last night I pulled out my ratty old cursed ball of this yarn and just worked the Adam’s Ribs repeats a few times, and it went fine. No problems at all. I knew the problem must be my haste, so I frogged it all one more time and started anew. Put stitch markers everywhere. Stopped and counted each tiny segment. As the French would say: et voila!
here's the transition point, from Eve's Ribs (on the bottom) to Adam's Ribs
good to go now. for a while.
famous last words.
Anyway. I’m feeling a little more hopeful about the old gal right now, and expect not to have any problems until I hit the next change, which will be (I think) adding the sleeve bells, after the sleeves and body are finished. I think Carol Sunday is a wonderful designer; her patterns are distinctively hers, typically feminine, and quite beautiful. But the way she writes patterns does not connect (like, at all) with the way I think, so they’re very frustrating to me. She’s not a bad designer or pattern writer, and I’m not a bad knitter or pattern reader, we just don’t think the same way so it’s 2 steps forward and 3 steps back for me. Other knitters sail right through.
I haven’t decided whether to take this project or the green tweed ribbon scarf project with me to Rhinebeck (Rhinebeck!!). If you’re going to Rhinebeck, I’ll be wearing my Peasy.
i have been my own worst enemy on this project, and we nearly came to blows. read what a little perseverence’ll do for ya.
ICK and YUCK. As lovely as Saturday’s weather was, today’s is that awful. It’s cold, gray, and drizzly, but not in a let’s-get-together-in-trench-coats-in-Casablanca kind of way. Just in that ick kind of way. The kind that makes the annual GYN trip just that much more pleasant. Yeah.
Here’s the transitional thing that straddles the awful-to-wonderful divide: my shrug. OK, so you would not believe the hell I’ve been through with this thing. First there was the whole oops I did it wrong debacle, resulting in frogging a whole skein’s worth of knitting. OK. Figured it out, cast on, got to the 2nd repeat (where we last left our cheerless heroine) and I made some kind of mistake. Shoulda just looked closely to figure out where I goofed, but I was getting a global sense of despair with this one so I just frogged.
Decided I’d better just try to figure out the stitch pattern before casting on again, so I cast on for 3 pattern repeats plus the edge stitches, and knit through three repeats. GENIUS!! IT WORKED!!! I must have just made an easy mistake the last time, I’m on it. Cast on again – 324 stitches, by the way, screwed up the first row. Frogged. Cast on agai…oh no, too short a tail, by ~5 stitches. Cast on again, got to the end of the row and still had ~30 stitches on the needle. Frogged. Cast on aga….too short a tail, by ~12 stitches (and p.s., how did THAT happen, because I kept the starting point the same as it had been the previous time, when I’d cast on way too many!!!).
Tried again, maybe 2 or 3 more times. It almost became funny. Almost. Maybe later it’ll be like, hysterical. I started thinking it was a sign; my friend Preeti used to see signs in everything, maybe I was just being dense about it. Maybe the universe was screaming at me “RUN AWAY LORI” and I was just sitting there like a dolt, trying again and again. After a couple more times, I finally gave up for the night.
I decided to try one. more. time. And if it didn’t work this time, I was going to cry uncle and decide that me and Carol Sunday, we’re one of those sad couples, the ones who love each other but it’s never going to work, and it’s no one’s fault. I cast on, put a stitch marker down every 10 stitches. Counted again. Counted by the 10s. Counted individually. Counted three more times, just to be sure.
Row 1, WHEW. Row 2, stopped after each 16-stitch repeat and checked obsessively. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16, ok. Next. I knew if I could just get past the first couple of rows, I’d be in like Flinn. AND I AM!
that baby hugs the curve just beautifully!
and look at that dimensionality!
it's right! it's right! it's right!
I know I said I wouldn’t blast you with more photos and stories about this project until I finished the collar and was working on the body, but you can appreciate the sense of triumph I have at persevering to this point. MAN. The good news is that it’s pretty fast knitting, and I know the pattern by heart (and it’s really very simple, despite me).
dang it! dang it dang it dang it. why didn’t i listen to myself. i am so smart – stupid me, not listening to smart me.
Well, it had to happen. If only I’d paid attention to the “w-a-i-t a m-i-n-u-t-e” thoughts that started tickling me about 3 rows ago. Why oh why – I’ll just blame my intoxication with the yarn. Yeah, that’s it.
I have to rip out 3 rows, I think. We’ll see if that makes it right, I certainly hope so. It’s not nearly as horse-race exciting unknitting as it is knitting. Boo.
i couldn't find an image with fabric, too bad. when i first saw this scene i thought she was sitting in Texas bluebonnets.
But as long as I have your attention, I’ll direct you to some true handwork pr0n. MAN oh man. Staceyvee on rav mentioned the movie in a blog post recently, and we had a little email back-and-forthing about it. I’d had the movie on my list, but her post moved it to the top, especially after our emailing. Bright Star, a Jane Campion movie about Keats and Fanny Brawne. And no, Keats doesn’t sew. Good grief, you’re in quite a mood today. But Fanny Brawne does, and Campion’s camera gets right in there. The opening scenes are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Highly recommended!
I think I’ll do a bit of yarn fondling instead of frogging. Sounds like a much nicer time to me.
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.