mamacate

I Just Need a Little Space Right Now

Well, it didn't take long for that fancy-pants yarn and me to have some issues.  I've mentioned before that starting lace is always a problem for me.  I do okay once I've got a few rows knitted, but the first couple are just one screw-up after another.  This is much less of an issue when the first couple of rows consist of say, 3 stitches, or maybe 12.  Two hundred and ninety-nine?  Not good.

There was a forgotten yo ("yarn forward" say the fancy-pants instructions, what is that?  And people, are we really k2tog tbl or is that just some fancy-pants way of saying ssk because, well, what the fuck?), there was tinking, though I could have just picked up some yarn on the next row, and, as near as I can make out, there was a dropped cast-on stitch during that whole tinking episode.

I also tried to knit during TONIGHT's bedtime, which did not exactly go smoothly.

Oh, and the PMS isn't helping.

So anyway, cast on 299 stitches, knit 297 stitches wrong, toss knitting petulantly into the corner, spin some Motley, glance balefully at the crack yarn, get ready to spin some Copper Moth tussah, have a glass of wine, blog about it...now what?  I suppose that after the wine and the bitter disappointment, now is not the time to try to set things right. 

We've had a little misunderstanding.  I thought, easy pattern, I can do this is poor light with a three-year-old writhing in the bed a few feet away.  Okay, so yeah, not so much.  And 1-2-3 Magic and charted patterns aren't exactly a perfect match either.  I need to knit socks at bedtime.  Or an established pattern I have already grokked.

More wine, and some spinning.  It's the only solution.  I need to calm down before I can look at that fancy-pants yarn again.  I know we promised we wouldn't go to bed mad, but honey, I don't know if this is going to work out.  I just need a little space right now.  Hopefully we'll feel better in the morning.  Good night.

Update: I didn't leave well enough alone.  I couldn't just let this attitude go, fancy-pants yarn or not.  I didn't spin tussah like a sensible person.

No more needles for you FPY!

For mohair, this stuff frogs really nicely.  Just so you know.

I now have 299 cast on (I actually put them back on the needle one by one--arguable whether that saved any time, I know).  I am tired and should really quit while I'm ahead.

Where's the chocolate?  This has been a very emotional evening.

Let's Talk About the Weather

There hasn't been really good porn weather lately.  Motley the Marvelous Montadale has yet to have his day in the sun.  But I brought my camera and a couple of goodies to work today, and my coworker kindly pitched in to take pictures in the 5 minutes of hazy sunshine we seem to be allotted today.  I have a lovely garden right outside my office door.

Ugh, now that I'm looking at it, that point looks like it's giving me a wedgie.  Trust me, no thongs were involved in the taking of this photograph.  This porn is strictly fiber-related.

I also felt the need to take gratuitous images of the shawl in repose on a lovely stone bench.  Just so you can see and appreciate the Indigo Moon fiber.  I think of it as the shawl freely expressing itself.

So, now that I've finished and even blocked (with the help of two three-year-olds, no lie) the shawl, I'm on to something completely different.  A shawl!

I cast on for Birch last night while putting the kids to bed.  It's good knitting time, at least when they're not trying to kill each other.

So, I get it now.  Why everyone keeps comparing KSH to a controlled substance.  It's just...just...oh my god.  What can I say?

Sampling

Yeah, just sampling.

Erm...

Further Distraction

Look what greeted me on my doorstep this afternoon.

Is that a big-ass box of wool, or what?

It's from Zeilinger's, and it contains the winter coat of a sheep named Motley, who paid his rent with his six pound fleece at the NH Sheep & Wool Festival.  That's Motley the Marvelous Montadale. 

Let's look inside.

(I will note here that it was too dark to do any really good wool porn.  I took a lot of pictures, and this here one is the best I got.  Risa was wondering, so I'll tell ya now that wool pornographers ply their trade--get it?--in the sun, with a fast macro lens.  No flash.  Not nohow.  I'm sure the sun will come out soon and wool porn will be forthcoming.  Just you wait.)

Monty is soft and springy and is just HOLLERING to become a cabled cardigan.  I've left him in the hallway to try to keep my wits about me, but I can hear him from all the way in the living room.  Staring at the Kidsilk Haze and the Copper Moth tussah is helping, but I think I might have to go spin me some Monty.  We'll call it sampling.  Yeah, that's it.

Does this ever happen to you?

Do you ever have one of those moments, when you're searching through the stash for, say, the pair of needles you knitted the first half of your FBS with, you know, the ebony ones that are all fancy-schmancy and will help to create consistency when you continue knitting on the shawl, which you were considering doing, and for some reason you took the shawl off the needles though you can't remember why, and you're looking through the mini-stash in the spot next to your couch (you know, the one that's 24 cubic feet and is only supposed to hold "active" projects), and you are pulling out all this stuff and thinking "wow, maybe I should spin this cormo/silk instead" and "hey, I've made a lot of yarn for this Rogue cardi project, I should get back on that" and "oh, I've got to send this too-big Soleil to Jo," and you STILL haven't found your ebony circs because that would be too much like right and you reflect on the fact that despite the fact that you have four orifice hooks, three bottles of oil, not fewer than eight tape measures, two pairs of scissors dedicated exclusively to the cutting of yarn, and at least five chibi needle thingys (all green, thanks), yet you can NEVER EVER find these when you need them, do you ever think to yourself, "self, I might want to get one of those organizer dealy-bop-thingummys?"

No, me neither.

Applying Myself, Idiotically

Knitting as metaphor for life, huh?  Sigh.

I have realized that suddenly, I am shockingly indecisive.  I swear to you that a few years back, I was quite capable of making good decisions quickly, without second-guessing myself.  Now, I need a poll, and still I dither.

Four out of five of you thought I should just pack it in and start Birch.  And of course you were right.  But very good points were made by Helen and Norma, among others, that a little more length might make me happier.  I also realized that part of my problem was not wanting to waste one little smidge of handspun yarn.  I had a small skein (and I do mean small, like 50 yards, plus some more in the ball I was working with), and there's something about having a whole skein, even though it's a piddling amount of yarn.  So I decided, in my dithering way, to knit HALF a repeat.  You see, basically two repeats of the pattern are charted, because of the way the diamonds grow, but I realized it wouldn't make a difference for the edging.  So I did that, the points, I applied the i-cord (that's idiot-cord for my non-knitting friends who are kind enough to read this blog anyway, hence the title, get it?), and here it is, unblocked.  I'll be really interested to see how it grows when I block it.

But remember how I didn't want to let my yarn go to waste?  Remember?  Check it out.  Swear to GAWD, this is how much yarn I had left over.

I haven't measured it, but it's less than a yard.  So for once I feel pretty confident that I did the right thing.  The stars aligned.  Thanks for all the good advice.

In addition to knitting obsessively on the shawl, I had a very busy, very knit bloggerly weekend.  On Friday night I had a wonderful and rare night out with Katy, during which I drank beer and knitted lace, and she, intelligent woman that she is, drank cranberry juice and knitted seed stitch. (No, I have not yet gone back to see what I need to rip out.  It didn't help that my damn Balene II circs kept breaking at the join.  Bryspun circs on order...)  I had a wonderful time swapping juggling-mama stories and woes, and came away feeling like I'd found another person paddling the same boat.  Thanks, Katy!

Saturday we braved the heat to see Dan Zanes at the Eric Carle Museum, and had a lovely meetup with Julia and her handsome young man, and with Amy and the little Cate and even littler Alex, as well as Amy's handsome grown-up man.  There was much kid-chasing, and I felt like I was a little melty and not my perky self (STOP LAUGHING), but it was a great way to spend the morning and give Rhys some mama-time.  The kids slept well that night.  Next time I meet those mamas, though, I hope we're spinning and/or knitting.  It just feels wrong to not be knitting when you meet up with knitbloggers, you know? 

The other thing I've been doing, since I don't have enough projects in progress, is spinning the Copper Moth tussah Stephanie forced me to suggested I buy in New Hampshire.

I'm done with about 3 out of 4 ounces now.  I'm thinking a small lacy scarf.  Maybe Branching Out, but maybe that would be too open for 100% silk and hmmm, it just isn't quite right.  I noticed this Little Leaf Scarf, a free pattern by the same designer (Sivia Harding) as the diamond shawl, and I'm leaning toward that.  We'll see how much I have.

Will it take precedence over Birch?  Will I finish my FBS now that I have the yarn?  Will I actually start pulling my weight in the laundry department?  Will the house ever get clean?

Maybe I need another poll...

In Which The Internet Tells Me What to Do

So, did I mention I have a few projects on the needles?  Yeah, I'd rather not talk about it too much.  But here's the thing.  Triangle shawls?  Unless you're knitting straight from the top down, you have OPTIONS.  This is why I prefer the tip-to-top or center-out methods of construction, but, um, you might have noticed that I'm not doing so well with OPTIONS right now.

So I've finished the number of repeats in the diamond shawl that are specified for the "scarf" version.  Here it is, still on the needles but draped with marginal verisimilitude around my shoulders (it will of course grow when blocked, plus the top is kind of bunched up).

So, it's not teeny, by any means, but I'm thinking I might want to knit a few more repeats.  Here are the pros and cons.

Reasons why I should keep knitting:

1. It's a nice warm, soft fabric.  It's not really a summer shawl; it will be much better as a snuggly winter garment, and as such it should be big enough to actually facilitate warmth and snuggling.  Right now I'd say it's a better size for a light accessory that is more about style than warmth.

2. I have more yarn.  Not definitely enough for another repeat plus finishing, but possibly, plus I have an entire additional batt of this fiber to spin.  I'm not dying to spin more for this shawl--I had some other ideas for that fiber--but I *do* have enough to keep going for a long time.  If I don't use the yarn I have already spun, I'll probably waste about 100 yards (maybe a little less), since my plan was to navajo ply the other batt. 

*Edited to add--thanks Kristen--that the other batt is almost 9 oz., the same size as the one that made the above plus about 100 yards.  So there's enough for another project, though obviously not two large shawls.  The rest of the fiber would still be useful for something (a scarf, or perhaps a coordinating hat & gloves to go with the shawl, I don't know yet).  The nice thing about spinning, as long as you're not spinning for a specific sweater pattern, is that you can spin fine if you're short on fiber or spin thick if you've got plenty.  So the fiber supply isn't the main issue.  Though I am not DYING to spin more of this stuff right now.  Since I'm kind of over this.  Did I mention that?

3. All the other shawls I'm making right now are about this size, and a larger shawl would give me some variety.

In the stop now category, we have the following rationales:

1.  I can't start Birch until I've finished this.

2. I'm a little over this shawl.  I'm not completely wild about the tweedy way the randomly-spun and plied multicolored batt came out, the diamond pattern is cool but doesn't completely rock my world, and you know, I'm just kind of ready to be done.

3. I would kind of rather not spin the second batt randomly, see 2 above.

4. I don't want it to be TOO big.  I'd like to be able to wear it to work, and I don't want it hanging down to my knees or anything.  Would a big shawl like that look too much like a Lithuanian peasant?  Or don't we care?

5. This is kind of 1 and 2 again, but there are a lot of other projects on the docket that do rock my world, and I'd kind of rather be working on those.  But I don't want to sell this project short just because I have the attention span of a flea.  Okay, a flea with ADD.  In a tree. For free.  (Somebody stop me.)  (Oh no, that rhymed too.)  (Okay, all better now.)

So, kindly save me from my indecisive self, and respond to this poll.  Your opinions are very important to us. Your responses are confidential, and will never be associated with your name.  We will use your comments to improve the quality of knitting offered to blogreaders like yourself.

WAIT!  That's the job.  Sorry.  I mean, hey, click a button.  Thanks.

What I Needed to Hear

Wow.  Steve Jobs is not necessarily my role model, though I don't really know much about him beyond Noah Wiley and the press, so I can't say either way.

But his commencement speech at Stanford is good medicine for me right now.  Stay Hungry.  Stay Foolish.  Sometimes the foolish part is hard, but it's where you do amazing things because you don't know any better.  (props to Tertia, the gorgeous and divine, for the link)

I've got a great life, and the options I have are truly wonderful.  In all my scattered frenzy of juggling, I never forget how lucky I am to have what I have (and believe me, I spent years wanting it and not having it, so I know all the more how precious it is).  All this luck makes me feel some responsibility for creating a life intentionally, and sometimes that's overwhelming.  It's not a bad thing, but it's a challenge.

Partly, I'm struggling because I'm in a holding pattern right now.  I'm a bit overloaded, temporarily, and it's all going to change in the fall.  I constantly flit from idea to idea for the future, mostly because I'm restless about my current situation.  It's hard to know whether to keep things small and manageable, or to try to do something I'll love and be excited by, on the professional side.  I'd love to have both, but I need to be intentional about what I'm doing.  Really, in the long run, it's just going to be a matter of, as Jenny suggested, just keeping swimming, a la Dory.  As I'm faced with choices, I'll make them.  As ever.  And I'll give myself a few years, until the kids are in school, to really get busy with something exciting to do work-wise.

No news on Rhys' work front, at least not from them.  Google news is another story.  Presumably they admitted wrongdoing (coming up with abusive tax schemes, for the few knitters who don't read the business pages, LOL) to avoid indictment, which, apparently, would be the end, immediately.  That's what happened at Andersen.  As soon as they were indicted, they could no longer do business, so they had to fold.  Rhys' closest coworker was at Andersen for the big meltdown there, so at least she has a good source of information.  Rhys was at HQ all day yesterday, and no one is talking about The Troubles.

In the end, I'm with Julia.  I just vant to knit.  And spin.  And cuddle my kids, but not deal with them when they're throwing sippy cups at me because the chocolate milk is stirred and not shaken ("Bond.  Eleanor Bond").  You think I could work that out?

Placing the Blame

There's a lot of blame to go around.  There have been a lot of stunning birches on blogs lately.  Claudia's orange wonder comes to mind.  Teresa's deep navy cloud made the whole thing seem worthwhile (I've seen it in person: the photos don't begin to do it justice).  Cassie, despite her birching, demonstrated how compelling the project could be.  But in the end, I must blame Stephanie.  And, of course, my inability to read a simple sign with a price on it.

I read Stephanie's finished birch post at my "in town" (read: walking distance to LYS) job on Monday, and was seized with this uncontrollable need to buy kidsilk haze.  Now Cassie can tell you that I have put in writing my refusal to knit Birch.  I was all "oh, Rowan is so overpriced!  It's just a Shetland pattern, why should I buy a $25 book (note, they didn't even bother to chart the damn thing)?  Too la-de-da.  I won't do it."  And forget the black hole effect and unavoidable insanity it seems to inflict on all who attempt it.  No way, baby.

Then I had this crazy idea that I had seen Kidsilk Haze priced very low at this LYS, and so I got off on a toot and went over there in search of a bar-gan.  And of course it was the same $14 it is everywhere else (duh) but by then it was done.  I was picking out a color and paying for yarn and the stupid overpriced pattern book (I had a momentary thought that maybe reading the book would make it worthwhile but my god do they have an editor?  My god the florid prose!  The basic grammatical errors!  Almost completely unreadable.  Sigh.) and my credit card is smoking and I'm thinking shit this is one expensive scarf.

But, as Risa points out, just look at the yarn.  Again, to quote my fellow twin mom and grasper of bright and shiny objects, I could plotz.

Yarn porn, anyone?

I am powerless in the thrall of kid mohair and silk.  But I really must finish something before I cast on.  And it doesn't help that I'm suddenly spinning the Copper Moth tussah Stephanie (again, who's fault is this?) forced me to buy in New Hampshire.  Because that's a lot like finishing my other projects.  Yeah.

After my career/family meltdown the other day (and wow, what a great discussion, you people rock), it turns out that I may not have the luxury of such choices after all.  All is not entirely well at DP's place of employment, and, well, we might both be out of a job in the next couple of months.  We're both pretty employable, our fixed expenses are low and we have savings, and in the end this could be a blessing in disguise (remind me that I said that, would you?).  But it makes the questions a bit different, doesn't it?  Ah well.  Maybe it will keep me away from the fancy-pants yarn for a while.

Oh, and PS: happy blogiversary to me!  I've been blathering on the internets for a whole year now.  Oh my.

Midsummer's Night

Today is midsummer.

On this, the longest day, the earth is teeming.  Greens are deepening, and the showy blooms of spring are giving way to the lush verdant leaves of deep summer.

The sun is close to our hemisphere, warming our earth and coaxing the newly sprouted seeds toward its nurturing light.  Our days are at their longest, with the deeply slanting rays lingering long into the evening, as if clinging to the leaves and trees for one last embrace before nightfall.

The summer solstice.  It's a time of growth, of bounty, and of great beauty.  And it's a time WHEN SMALL CHILDREN STAY UP SHREIKING AND ARGUING ABOUT BEDTIME BECAUSE THE GODDAMN SUN IS NOT COOPERATING WITH THE PARENTAL IDEA OF BEDTIME.

Not that I'm bitter.  I like summer.  A whole lot.  The sun--good stuff.  But short people, go to bed already.  Seriously, room-darkening shades, here I come.