New Math

I wasn't going to cast on any new socks. I thought that if I resisted that lure and focused on sweater knitting, I'd have a chance of finishing St. Brigid fairly soon.

Which would be true in theory, but doesn't quite work in practice.

I pulled out St. Brigid yesterday and went to sit in my big green knitting chair. Some of you know, I've recently gained some new roommates, courtesy of a bastard sonofabitch asshole piece of shit my sister very wisely, and at long last, is divorcing. (Not that I have formed an opinion of this man's character. These statements are all totally objective and based on clinical data. Ahem.)

So there I am in my big green chair, hunkering down for a spell o' knitting while watching the Purdue football game. And here's what happens --

-- The kid wants to watch cartoons. There are three other televisions in this house, but he wants this particular one. And this is the only one with a good knitting chair nearby. He whines when I tell him no, which is not too terrible to take, except that the whining is competing with the game.

-- My mother, currently in town again, decides to vacuum this room, muttering all the while about how there are two adult women living in this house and neither of them vacuums to her satisfaction. I wouldn't give a shit -- I have long practice in ignoring this sort of muttering -- but the noise was interfering with my ability to hear the game commentary. Vacuum + muttering mother + whining kid = starting to be a problem.

-- As soon as my mother leaves the room, my sister wants to complain about my mother's complaining. Mom's vacuuming other rooms now, and still muttering. Now we have Vacuum + muttering mother + whining kid + complaining sister = Goddamn, would you people shut up and let me watch the game and knit already.

-- Enter my father, who tolerates me watching football because he likes football quite a lot. But he wants the remote, and he wants to talk. A lot. He wants to talk about the game, which is a good thing, but I can't answer his questions about why the refs are making the calls they're making because I can't hear the commentary at all any longer. Also, he tends to change channels during commercials and replays, so we're missing quite a lot of commentary anyway.

Still with me? The end result:
Vacuum + muttering mother + whining kid + complaining sister + chatty father + constantly changing channels = mis-crossed cable in row 11.

Also, game? What game?

So I'll be saving St. Brigid for SnB nights, and when I need to knit at home, a simple sock will have to do. This one will be a 2x2 ribbed leg and instep out of Mountain Colors Bearfoot, a yarn I purchased about a thousand years ago from Nana's.

Worth noting: When I sat down at the kitchen table this morning to cast on and browse my Sensational Socks books for a leg pattern, the kid came in to play video games "with" me (a/k/a he plays and shows me the screen at intervals), my sister came in to complain about my mother, my mother came in to complain about housekeeping, and my father came in to talk football. The only difference from yesterday? Different room, no vacuum, and we were talking Bears instead of Boilermakers.

So I closed up the pattern books and opted for a simple ribbing.

Because sometimes, the best answer is the simplest one.

Ball One

I've been working on this afghan while watching Mad Men. (By the way, those of you following Mad Men, please read my editing blog and help me figure out whether there's a connection between Grandpa Gene and the dead snake. Or between baby Gene and the mouse.)

This is the first super-saver supersized skein of Red Heart, and it got me 8" of blanket. I bought twelve skeins. The future owner of this blanket, Danger Boy, is large for his age, and most growth charts peg his adult height at around 6'5" to 6'8". So the blanket needs to be large, too. Maybe ten skeins for the body, one or two for the border? We'll see!

The Curse Has Been Broken!

I spun around in a circle three times, clicked my heels, threw salt over my shoulder, and---


















--broke the antiknitting curse that some fiendish devil put on me.

The socks are done. I'll never be able to wear them without thinking of the last six months. The car wreck, all the trips to the pain clinic with my grandmother, the endless work hours, and all the other distractions, both good and bad.

I'd say that I'm happy to have them -- and this time in my life -- finished, but the truth is I'm more relieved.

I'm not going to cast on another pair of socks just yet. Next, I hope to finish the baby hat for Panera Larry's soon-to-be-born son. That's a small project, and I'm still just skittish enough to want to keep things simple. There's always the temptation to cast on something new, but practicality must prevail. Even without the hat, I still have three sweaters and a t-shirt on the needles. That's more than enough for now.

Post-Stitches

Got home from Stitches mid-day Sunday. Within hours, my parents had arrived in town, my sister left her husband and moved in here with her child and dog, and my life
changed dramatically. I've had to empty closets for her, just at a time when I wanted to reorganize my stash and spread it around a bit so things might be easier to find. Oh, well. Family comes first, even ahead of stash (though it is a very, very, very close second, lol).

Abbreviated Stitches report:
I bought some yarn.
I took some classes.
I enjoyed the uninterrupted company of knitters.
I ate amazingly good Indian food. Twice.


The best part was the company of knitters. There hasn't been enough of that lately, and I cannot begin to express how lovely it was to get away from the stress and chaos and just be with friends in a fun and relaxing environment. Big hugs for all my friends. You guys are the best!

The second best part was the Advanced Finishing class with Margaret Fisher, who is my new idol. Everyone should take this class. She'll blow you away with how much she manages to jam into a three-hour class, and all of it is useful. Plus she's adorable and very nice. And she agreed with me that my kitchener is weird, and she might have even pinpointed the problem. We'll see. I've spent years unable to figure out why my kitchener grafts always look grotesque, so if nothing else, there's comfort in knowing an expert also sees the same problems I see. It's nice to know I'm not imagining things!

Yarn. Yeah, okay, I bought some. Not as much as I had budgeted for -- I came home with a couple hundred (and then some) left over in my annual Stitches set-aside. The market was underwhelming this year. Many of our regular fave vendors were not in attendance -- the rainbow button lady, the antique button lady, The Fold, Black Water Abbey, Shelridge Farms, Jojoland, Manos, and this is but a partial list of missing vendors. The market was easily 20% smaller than in past years.

So there were some disappointments, but honestly, I'm not disappointed overall. I was able to get some new indie yarns and a few things not available around here. A skein of Kauni for a shawl, some cones of laceweight that were a real bargain -- don't have a clue why the laceweights are calling to me lately. I'm not a lace girl. Or maybe I am but didn't know it before now.

What's that? You want to see? Oh, okay. I guess I can understand that. ;)

The pink is an alpaca laceweight, about 800 yards, from Webs. And the other is the Kauni. If you could see through the layers of the Kauni skein, you would see all the colors of a rainbow. It's very bright and colorful. I really can't wait to knit it, and am torn between two patterns.

End/Begin

I was profoundly moved on Wednesday to learn of the death of Ted Kennedy. My father's family is Irish Catholic, and though many of them scorned the idealism of the liberal left, they honored the Kennedy family for its great accomplishments in the face of religious and national-origin discrimination. For many of the old cranks in my family, the 1960 presidential race was the one and only time in their entire lives at which they voted for a Democrat. They were proud that "one of their own" was voted into the highest office, much the same as today's African-American population is proud of President Obama. It took an Irishman in the highest job in the land to erase the pain of "Irish Need Not Apply" signs in job placement offices.

Like many Irish Catholics, my grandmother hung a picture of JFK in her house right under that of the Pope. He was a martyr in her eyes. When Bobby was assassinated, many in my family were sickened with grief and dread. If "they" could do this to, not one, but two Kennedys, what hope remained for the rest of us? What would stop "them" from picking us off, too? Such were the fears engendered by the second Kennedy assassination.

But Teddy remained. His was a long life scarred by tragedy, and if there's one thing an Irishman loves, it's a good lament. Even though many of my family members abhorred his politics, he became almost emblematic of the best and worst of us, a symbol of all we had gained and lost. And through it all, he endured. He avoided the assassin's bullet. He retained his high status. He sang, he roared, and despite his many great accomplishments, he failed to achieve his highest goals. There's something both tragic and beautiful in his life.

I had few qualms about his politics and agreed with him on most matters of social justice. I respected all that he did for the arts -- my community lost one of our strongest champions on Wednesday. Now that he has fallen, who will catch the flag? There is no one left in politics who cares about arts the way the Kennedys did. Instead of appealing to our highest humanity, today's leaders settle for the basest greed. Money is all that matters now. Greed is good.

His death marks not just the end of a life, but the end of an era.

Throughout the course of the week, those of us who watch the news were reminded again and again of the great care Teddy took of the next generation of Kennedys. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, about how he made sure that Bobby and Jack's kids were always a strong part of his life.

This is why, during the funeral yesterday as I listened to the speeches and songs and even cried a little, I started the next afghan for my nephew Dylan.

Bless you, Ted Kennedy, and thank you for inspiring so many. Eternal rest grant unto you, and perpetual light shine upon you.

Yarn Crawling, DC Style

Those are some happy knitters. On the left, in the black and white dress, is Rachael, who blogs as Yarnagogo, and whose first knitting mystery romance will be released early next spring. Believe me, you will all hear from me when her book comes out. She's a terrific writer and I've done what I can to mentor her along the way. She repaid me last year in San Francisco by introducing me to Kyoto, a truly fantastic mohair and silk worsted yarn.

In the middle is the glowing-with-pregnancy ninja knitter, MB, who blogs as Merry Gentlemen. She is also the entrepreneur who has brought us Rock Creek Yarns. That's another brand of crack to add to your collections. Gorgeous stuff, and if you need proof, it's at the end of this post. MB was a Chicago knitter until she became a DC knitter, and she was kind enough to play hostess for our little band of writer-knitters during the DC conference. She did a marvelous job of enabling our addictions.

On the right, wearing the uber-cool shades, is Tara, who blogs as Random Ranter. She's a writer in the early stages of her career, and a knitter of many talents. I don't get her love of cotton, but hey, she can have my share of the cotton if I can have her share of the shetland wool. Check out her blog for a really interesting multicolored cotton scarf that's so cool it makes me want to give cotton another try. And that's saying something.

We spent a lovely day touring the Maryland side of DC. Our lunch was in a little French bistro with outstanding spinach and brie crepes, which adds another line item for my theory that it's impossible to get a bad meal in DC. (Have I already mentioned that my hotel was across the street from the Lebanese Taverna? This is the best middle eastern restaurant I've ever visited, in DC or in any other place.)

Enough about the food. Let's talk about the important stuff. The yarn.

At the first shop we visited, which I think might have been in Bethesda, I bought this gorgeous pink laceweight merino and some wonderful Jojoland sock yarn. I have no idea what I'll do with the laceweight. There are about 1400 yards on that skein, so options abound.




















And this is the rest of my haul. This is the indie-dyer portion of the adventure. Left and center are sock yarns from local DC dyers purchased at a shop in, if memory serves, Hyattsville. Charming shop on a charming street. I fell in love with that blue at first sight, but fate alone knows when I will ever be able to knit it.

On the right is a skein of MB's wonderful silk laceweight. I love her color sense. This one feels like the color scheme you would find in a wild, modernist or impressionist painting of irises. The color manages to be both saturated and pale by turns. Very appealing stuff.

Another One Gone

This is the cabled cardigan back piece. Or I should say, WAS the cabled cardigan back piece. I was, as the guys in the trades say, balls-on with my gauge. The finished piece was four inches narrower than the pattern specs called for, though, even after I tried to block it wider.

So I spent a pleasant half-hour last night trying to rework the pattern schematics to come up with a garment that would go all the way around me. But this is a very tailored, fitted piece, and I gave up without even fighting too hard.

Check out the kink in that frogged yarn. I wound it into loose round balls to let the yarn relax a bit, and then will wind it into cakes in a few days or so.

My list of KIPs is shrinking, and I must confess, it feels good to ditch things that aren't right. It's liberating. Not sad or depressing at all. This is my mindset when I stare down Catherine Parr, still laying on my kitchen table in all her botched glory. I still haven't decided what to do about this one. It's the toughest call on the list.